how far would she have had to swim?

well, the scale here is just copy and pasted from the scale in the lower right-hand corner of the screen shot. i just opened it up in paste and copied it across.

it's roughly 1 km. if she was out a bit, it'd be less than that. that's a workout, no doubt, but it's not insurmountable, for somebody in athletic shape. i bicycled 110 km a few weeks ago, out of the blue.

the kid says he didn't see her leave the water, but what does that mean? are you going to rely on a child's ability to discern characters a km in the distance, over open water? i dunno.

hey, if they find her mutilated corpse, desecrated by a tree branch, snapped at the sternum three ways, the sanctity of her existence irrelevant to the forces of physics, then so be it.

but, if they don't?

if she vanishes without a trace?

that's a doable swim. certainly. does naya swim?

so, is it possible that naya rivera could have swam out to the other side of the lake and got out and taken off?

it's weird that her life jacket was left in the boat. if she was going for a leisurely swim, she surely would have worn it - she took it with her, and if not for that reason than for what reason? so, was she suicidal? then, why bring it at all? and why bring the kid?

it's almost like she left the life jacket there as evidence that she was last seen in the boat.

it's a very strange situation, all around. and, if they don't find her? well, maybe she's not there...

nobody gets a point for the question about facebook. the right answer is that we need to teach kids better critical thinking skills, so the disinformation stops working.

nobody gets a point for the question about rural v urban, which they all reduced to a question about internet access. there are deep changes coming to rural areas that are going to blur the difference between urban and rural, and fundamentally change the concept of a rural settlement. increasing internet access to these regions is going to a part of the changing infrastructure, but it's such a shallow point to hit on. the actual answer is that the growth of exurban regions is likely to blur the differences between rural and urban regions, as rural north america really goes through a sort of reformation.

nobody gets a point for the question about how to work with indigenous groups, as everybody just produced politically correct boilerplate.

there were apparently no questions about climate change policy, and almost no discussion of it at all.

i believe in free voting, although it may be reasonable to bring up the issue with certain members that consistently vote against the party. nobody gets a point for that.

on the question of vote splitting with the ndp, i think the greens should actually be aggressively positioning themselves to replace the ndp. but, can you represent multiple parties in canada? that would be the answer, of course - have somebody run simultaneously for the greens and ndp and then run that one person for both parties. standing down is a goofy idea. but, this is something that a preferential ballot would address best...

nobody gets a point for the second thing, either.

i'm going to zero out the third question as well, and note simply that it is somewhat unusual for a moderator to ask about threats to democracy at a green party debate and get mostly answers about inequality and identity; only one of them mentioned the climate crisis, and only in french.

the second question actually seemed to be phishing for a discussion of the guaranteed income, but it got a mishmash of answers that i'm going to zero out across the board.

i would support redistricting to allow for a more equitable population distribution across ridings before i supported any kind of mmp or whatever hybrid system.

here's a question.

is proportional representation so unpopular in canada that the ndp might have gained more influence by dropping support for it than they would have gained by implementing it?

cause it's this albatross around the neck of the canadian left; support for pr has long been a massively unpopular major reason that the left can't break through here, but it sees it as it's only path to power...

maybe the apparatchiks are wrong. maybe the left would be better off leaving this idea behind and putting more focus back into more participatory forms of democracy...

so, i'm sorting through this.

i don't consider the first question to be worth grading. the second question was about proportional representation.

again - i liked dimitri lascaris' answer on proportional representation the best, even though i don't actually support proportional representation. he's pushing the right strategy for aggressive, leftist reform, even if i think this particular reform is neither very left wing nor a very good idea (i would support ranked ballots to help prevent false majorities, but i want to maintain a strong traditional riding system and flat out reject party lists outright. no taxation without representation.). i don't consider my opposition to proportional representation to be a reason to vote against the greens or ndp, even if i actually agree more with the left side of the liberal party, as represented by a stephane dion, on this particular issue than i do with the protest parties. glenn murray was also thinking tactically instead of idealistically, which is good to see/hear. anamie paul was right to question merner & haddad for their horrifically anti-democratic responses, but she basically just reproduced the broken liberal plan.

judy green claims people keep voting against pr because they don't understand it, rather than that they don't support it. amita kuttner claims she'll figure it out when she forms government, suggesting she's maybe been spending too much time under the telescope, lately. these weren't serious answers and deserve particular ridicule.

so, these are the scores for the first question:

lascaris: +1
murray: +1
paul: 0
merner: -1
haddad: -1
kuttner: -2
green -2

just as a reality check, i've carefully sorted through posts until the end of august, 2013 (a few days into september, actually) and found 16 posts to add to the travel blog and 0 to add to the others. so, it's clear enough what i'm going to need to do, just let me finish it up until the end of january.

ok, so we're starting to see the kinds of numbers, now, that we were hoping to see at the end of april, it's just taken a little longer.

new york was hit first, so you're looking at what? 5-6 months to get to herd immunity?

we also saw transmission flatten enough to allow for a manageable case load at around 20-30%, although my error analysis suggested the true prevalence of antibodies may have been much higher than reported. subsequent testing on these antibody tests have in fact indicated that they tend to produce more false negatives than false positives, so i had the right line of thinking. but, the point i'm making is that merely having a moderate level of immunity actually seems to have slowed this virus down a lot, meaning it's probably only that initial couple of weeks where immunity is at near zero that hospitals needs to seriously concern themselves about reaching capacity. distancing aside, 20% immunity seems to be putting enough of a dent in transmission to make it manageable...

so, that's just what's happening in the south right now - the virus is running through a population with almost no immunity. this is the first wave. it may take a long time to burn itself out, but it should slow down considerably when immunity gets to around 20%.

up here in canada, it's harder to tell if we've been slowly and quietly inching towards those initial ramp down numbers, or if we managed to actually stop it at a lower rate of precedence through public health measures. you know what i think, but we don't actually know. there's some randomized bloodbank tests underway that should give a better picture...and this will help us understand how vulnerable we remain...

you have to understand that my position from the start of this is that herd immunity isn't a policy decision, it's an inevitable reality. we can't decide to have herd immunity or not; we will have it, whether we like it or not. so, i'm quite adamantly avoiding this idea of needing to take this position that one thing is more important than the other; i'm rather arguing that the public health measures are only going to, at most, slow it down - at great cost.

is new york the first place to actually measure this? are they first to the end of this? they won't be the last - this is going to be reality in most places in the world, in a year, while the anti-immunity idiots sit around waiting for a vaccine.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/health/queens-antibody-testing-coronavirus/index.html

back when i was doing my human origins projects, i needed to create this evasive placeholder group called northeast asians that brought genetic continuity with the west to northern asia. it was a necessity, but largely ignored by the specialist literature because there wasn't any useful evidence of migration, or even a worthwhile mechanism. but the genes say it happened, so i erected it. i then derived a sino-tibetan clade as a hybrid population of "southeast asians", who otherwise became austronesians, and a siberian-like group that became native americans. so, this phantom population (which remains extant in siberia) actually got up and went to america, which is why nobody has traced it, only stopping in china on the way there, and being subsumed by the chinese population - but altering it dramatically. what that means is that the modern northern chinese population, as well as korean and japanese population, would actually have substantive northwest asian ancestry. well, that's what we know; what i'm doing in erecting this phantom population is provide a hypothesis for the movement.

i just came across some pictures of the offspring of a melanesian man and a white woman, and they do not look like either of their parents. they could both pass as chinese. i won't post them here.

while hardly any kind of evidence, it is at least consistent with the theory i developed, which is that the ethnogenesis of the modern chinese actually lies in this somewhat unique process of hybridization between west asian and southeast asian subtypes in multiple layers, but most prominently over a siberian-austronesian mix that was left as collateral in the movement of siberian peoples to the new world.

i'm going to focus, now. i've been sleeping all day...

it's not in our collective self-interest to taunt the american military personnel we have stationed here. i mean, we do want them here.

listen, the canadian government is trying to build up this anti-american narrative to distract from it's own middling handling of the problem. it's true that the case rates in the united states seem to have diverged from those in canada recently, but we've always been a few months behind them, and if you divide out statistics related to population with that time lag in mind you'll see that canada is doing a little bit better - but not substantively better.

we'll see if the kind of infection rates we're seeing in the deep south make their way to canada in august or september or not. based on any evidence i've seen, that's a reasonable projection - that we will continue to follow them, at levels more proportional to our population levels.

so, the reality is that the contrast is fairly muted, which is why the government is fomenting this anti-american distraction and exaggerating the differences in the process.

i'm not interested in this. from a public health standpoint, the border has been open the whole time, we've just restricted americans coming over by car. the effects of this policy are merely assumed; there's never been any attempt to actually measure what kind of effect this might actually have on reducing transmission. nor is there reason to be optimistic about it; in the abstract, virtually all of the studies ever done on the topic indicate that border closures have almost no efficacy in slowing the spread of pathogens.

so, this is all just empty political rhetoric; the government sought the easiest way out, by fomenting anti-americanism, and it seems to have worked, to some degree, whatever the consequences. opening the border is therefore now a political question, not a public health question. and, my pleas to look at the science are likely to fall to the wayside, as evan solomon takes centre stage over the summer.

i'm not flailing against unwinnable battles. but, i'm profoundly disappointed by the stupidity of all of this, and i can only hope it lifts relatively soon.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/american-military-airforce-members-harassed-winnipeg-1.5644364

ok.

so, what i'm going to do is rewind and make a comprehensive list of all posts that i might any to any other blog. right now, the only thing i've found has to do with the travel blog, but if i rewind i might find something else.

then, i'll decide what to do after.

i expect a list of upwards of 50 posts to add to the travel blog in the end, and little else. i will probably go ahead and add them in bulk, then update everything. that's fine; it's really only stored in monthly journals at bandcamp. that is, updating the travel blog once would actually be pretty painless.

see, this is...

the purpose of the travel blog has shifted somewhat dramatically over time. it was initially set up as a fake account so that if i were to log in to the internet from a coffee shop i wouldn't be exposing my main passwords on the unsecure network. that way, i could still blog safely, remotely.

but, over time, it's expanded to any recollection of an event that occurred when i was out. as such, the early travel blog really needs to be overhauled.

the other three are holding up fairly well, right now.

the thing is that i don't want to do that, so i'm coming up with excuses, and sort of hitting a brick wall with it.

it's two months. let me get the list of changes and see.

so, here's my last december update, subject to that pruning process which will begin very shortly.

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/12/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/12/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/12/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/

i want to say those are done for a while, but what am i doing in the pruning process?

i'm going back to the very start, and trying to build consistency around a number of major threads in the blogs, including the following:

1) how much fluff will appear at the politics blog?
2) is the real life narrative in sync with itself? that is, are the narratives complete and self-contained? this applies less to the travel blog.
3) cross-posting from deathtokoalas to the other two blogs, mostly.

the end result will probably be a more focused political side and a more whimsical deathtkoalas side, which is more most of the shuffling around will occur.

i don't know how long this will take, but let's hope it's relatively quick.

2015 will be a slower rebuild, as the smaller blogs haven't had a pass from the politics blog yet. i'm going to do it all at once, though, so it should be faster, in total.

also, what's the posting damage on the deathtokoalas blog? that's 1067 posts for 2014, with monthly posting amounts ranging from 57 (january) to 143 (october). it's looking like a real blog, almost. let me just get these mental lines in order...

this disability benefit thing has become a political issue, despite the reality that almost nobody was eligible for it.

if the canadian government wanted to quickly pass something that would send money to as many of the low income canadians that have not seen extra income from the crisis as is possible, it would send out a large gst rebate. that would be the high impact, quick policy.

this is google ad spam, and i had to click on it. had researchers found noah's ark?

https://mydailymagazine.com/could-these-be-the-remains-of/

well, they found some wood in the mountains that was treated by humans, but there's lots of wood in those mountains (and all over the world) that's been treated by humans, and you'd really need a pretty high bar of evidence to demonstrate that the ark belonged to the actual character noah (and i guess you'd by proxy prove the historicity of noah. who lived to be how old? i can't remember. it was measured in centuries though, right?). i don't even know what that high bar of evidence would even be. maybe noah might have carved "noah was here" on the deck; maybe the ark had a nice paint job noah's ark. maybe they could find fossilized remains of all of the animals, lined up by twos.

that would mean that if they were to finally find a fossilized unicorn, it would falsify the theory. it is falsifiable, at least.

i'm being facetious, to dance around the point that this isn't science. maybe the wood they found is actually interesting, but there's no way to prove or disprove it has anything to do with the flood myth; like, you can't even reasonably articulate the claim.

but, the persistent existence of these flood myths does suggest that something happened deep in our history, and there is actual science that backs up the point. we should be talking about something like the great anthropocene-induced flood, because the factors that created the flooding are related to our colonization of the planet. we have enough archaeology and enough of a climate record to back this up - there were floods to close the neolithic period, as a consequence of the neolithic period, itself.

see, we built our settlements on the beaches. we still do, and we did it back then, and we did it everywhere. we cut down the inland forests to clear space for agriculture and to build structures just around the beaches that we built our settlements around. and, then we bred heavily, as we had more than enough to eat. these three changes - forest clearing, the growth of agriculture, a spike in human population - led to increased concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, which led to ice cap melting.

and, there were floods, as the oceans rose - which wiped out our idyllic beach settlements. the stories remember this catastrophic event that we created, via anthropogenic climate change, as a consequence of the neolithic revolution.

in the the judaic version of the myth, god promises never to send another flood, and gives us a rainbow as a covenant for it. i have this sneaking suspicion that this is the actual real reason that americans are so skeptical about climate change; god promised he wouldn't do that again. but, of course, this is just a story, and the myth is just a hope - although one wonders how badly damaged judaism may have been in the long run had there, indeed, been another flood in the region.

in time, the atmosphere stabilized, but then we discovered oil. and coal. and here we go again - although this time it may be too much.

so, i wouldn't expect to find substantive evidence of noah's ark out there any time soon. but, seeking it out is really missing the point of the story, which is a memory of a time where we flooded ourselves due to the consequences of technological advancement - and then lacked the understanding to put it in the proper context. this story is actually a vital part of our history, and it is important that we reclaim it from the peddlers of myth and prophesy and understand it and it's lessons correctly.

but, note that google gave me the link through an ad. that's as scary as anything else.

opposition parties just need to start voting these omnibus bills down, when they can. fuck it.

ok.

so, this is the bill that extends the emergency act, with the sunset clause - which i don't like, but i'll deal with.
https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/bill-195

this is the omnibus bill that the media is portraying as a power grab:
https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/bill-197

it does seem as though a large percentage of the second bill is random and frivolous. but, my previous comments were about the first bill.

so, wait. when i first read about this law that the tories want to pass, it was suggested that they wanted to download portions of the emergency powers act to normal legislation, subject to a sunset clause. so, they were essentially taking the parts of the emergency act they need out for a while, relegislating them out of the emergency act and then pretending we weren't in a state of emergency anymore; i didn't like this one bit, but i decided that as long as the sunset clause was held to, it made little functional difference which option they decided upon.

but, talk of this sunset clause has disappeared from the coverage.

there is no way for me to rationalize my way through simple power grab legislation. if there was a sunset, i could put dissent aside until later; without one, the dissent must occur immediately.

so, the scientists are debating whether the virus is airborne, and doug ford wants to mandate air conditioners in geriatric facilities. brilliant.

if i make it that long, i'm going to end up in one of those homes, and i'd want to request a room without air conditioning. i wouldn't want a clunky window machine ruining my window, either - i'd want it taken right out of there.

the focus by these facilities at this point in time should be to restrict the amount of shared air, not increase it. as such, i might call on people that have family in care to check on them and ask them if they'd like help installing a window unit, and for the owners of the facilities to ensure this is feasible.

so, dec, 2014 is now updated.

one more step before i stop to eat, and then one more step after that before 2014 is put aside indefinitely.

so, here is the final update for november, 2014, subject to some pruning i'm going to do after i get through december. i just want to do it at once so i maintain consistency.

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/11/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/11/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/11/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/

what i'm doing is very dry, and i've been easily distracted.

i'm going to try to focus again. soon.

what does a tabula rasa mean in the context of modern science?

we are not literally born with empty brains, but what role genetics plays on our cognitive development is still a pretty open question, and there really isn't any evidence to actually support the premise that it plays a great role. i think it's important to kind of take a step back and ask the question what is a gene, actually and the answer is that it's an instruction set to code for the production of hormones. it's not some magical thing; it's something very concrete. it follows that what genetics can do is really limited to the production of hormones, and that the role that genetics may play in more complicated development questions is really limited to the role that the hormones may play. while hormones do inform questions of sexual identity, as well as perhaps of sexual orientation in some contexts, it's harder to understand how hormones might potentially alter cognitive development, except in terms of perhaps providing for a greater opportunity to build capacity (that is physically store learning opportunities) under the presence of certain nutritional pre-requisites. that is, maybe some people may be born genetically configured with more brain-building hormones. but, you still need to allow for experience to actually allow for those learning opportunities - it is still a tabula rasa, in the sense of knowledge that exists, even if there are genetic factors underlying how efficiently what exists can be stored.

the idea that you're born more intelligent than other people is consequently probably absolute nonsense, even if the idea that some people are born with a larger cognitive potential is not. that is properly understanding the role of genetics in the tabula rasa question, which is restricting the role of genetics to a set of questions that don't directly address it, but rather set up the necessity of actual learning for the implied system to function, anyways.

what about these ideas that language and whatnot are in-born? well, again, that doesn't actually address the question of tabula rasa. humans may have a region in their brain that deals specifically with language, but it needs to be input a language in order to function. so, pointing to the brain as possessing language processing capabilities does nothing to address the tabula rasa hypothesis.

rather, consider an infant raised alone, without the use of language. that would be cruel, and i doubt it's been done, but would that infant spontaneously learn the language of it's parents, with no contact to it? no. like all advanced mammals, the human needs to be taught the language. we don't need to do that experiment to know it's true, but we know that adopted children will learn the language they are taught, rather than spontaneously start speaking the language of their parents.

there is still no hard-wired language, then, even if there are hard-wired language abilities. but, it is the former question that informs the question of a tabula rasa, not the latter.

then, what is this language processing ability in that region in your brain? well, it's just an organ in your body like any other. your stomach seems to know what it's doing, but it's just operating on chemical instructions. ultimately, it's processing information from outside of the body in the way it was programmed to do. it's just the same thing for that part of your brain.

so, i want to separate between the realization that there are certain mechanical functions in your brain and the question of whether the mind is a blank slate, or not. one does not disprove the other, it merely puts bounds around how such a blank slate would operate.

it is beautiful out...

there's a fiscal update today and it's going to be very scary and everything, but something that hasn't been reported on is that the government created this debt by printing money through the bank of canada rather than by borrowing it on the market from private banks. in printing this money interest-free, the government did the right thing in picking the more responsible way for governments to pump money into the economy; the result is internal national debt and not private or external debt, so the primary longterm issue surrounding this debt, namely interest payments, is of a very different nature than the type of debt we're used to talking about.

normally, when the government borrows money, it does so by taking a private loan out from a private bank, which many people (myself included.) think is sort of insane. they just borrow money on the market like everybody else, and then have to pay interest on the amount borrowed from the bank to the bank. there is some shoddily written theory underlying this to poorly justify it, but it's obvious that the truth is just that the bankers run the world and have designed the system so that they can get their pound of flesh.

that's not what this debt is. instead, the government printed bonds and then printed money at the central bank, interest free, to buy those bonds. in a modern economy, buying up bonds with printed money is what the government does when it seeks to expand the money supply, not what it does when it seeks to go into debt; this would have been less unusual before the nixon shock, but this is an unusual step to take in the post bretton woods system, where debt is supposed to be privately held. what it indicates is the severity of the situation, and how the pandemic is different than a budget deficit.

the bank of canada is in complete control of this debt, because it’s entirely of it’s own creation; they're in debt to themselves. they could, in the end, just destroy the bonds, which would undo the expansion of the money supply. more likely is that the bonds will be sold to mutual funds, meaning that this is likely to work out to a strict expansion of the money supply, as the assets just get shifted to the markets, albeit in slow motion. the bank of canada will then recover the debt it incurred to buy the bonds when it sells the bonds, and we just end up with more money in circulation, in the long run. money creation of this sort is broadly inconsequential, and largely good for the economy, as it’s just fiscal stimulus.

as mentioned, taking on this kind of debt is unusual in the really existing system of global capitalism, for shaky economic reasons that have really just been speciously upheld by the media-academic complex to ensure that the bankers get their cut. frankly, in terms of actual economic outcomes, the most lasting effect is likely to be a decreased level of competitiveness for the canadian dollar; actual inflation in the price of goods doesn't seem to ever happen from macreoeconomic effects. that’s an entirely debunked pseudo-academic non-theory with absolutely no empirical and absolutely no theoretical basis. it’s a total mythology derived from absolutely nothing.

yes, these numbers are going to be scary and, in response, you're going to see certain segments of the elite attempt to exploit and capitalize off of the crisis as they argue for the need to implement budget austerity and sell-off publicly owned resources to the private sector in order to implement a shock doctrine of structural readjustment programs, like the imf just woke up from a wet dream. this is coming. it’s the reason why i was so apprehensive about creating so much debt, as i didn’t want it to lead to a backdoor for the imf into the country.

however, the government actually created this debt responsibly. this debt is not real, it's just a slow motion expansion of the money supply. there is no justification for the imf to stomp it’s way in here and start smashing skulls and bludgeoning everything.

that said, certain metrics do need to be kept within certain limits in order to keep the imf away and it is imperative that everybody realizes that and seeks to hold the government to reasonable budget restraints that mostly have to do with debt-gdp ratios. this doesn’t apply to the united states, but canada has bondholders out there, and those bankers need their flesh.

however.

we could always use this as an excuse to raise taxes on the rich, anyways.

i've got all of the posts for nov, 2014 up, now.

i actually could get this done before i sleep next, but right now is a good time to stop to eat in the thunderstorm.

so, october, 2014 is now permanently put aside for a long time.

i'm actually going to do a final run through over 2014 to ensure consistency across various threads (what i'm doing right now is uploading all of the posts, and i lost consistency at some point), so duplicate posts may be deleted from one or more blogs, and some posts may be move around.

but, i need to get through november & december, first.

for now, here are the updated blogs for october, 2014

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/10/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/10/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/10/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/

so, they want to legislate the powers granted under the declaration of a state of emergency...

obviously, i'm a little apprehensive about that.

listen - if the options are that you stay in a state of emergency for the next year, or you pass a law that grants you emergency powers for the next year with specific oversight committees, then the second option is even arguably allowing for more oversight, even if it runs the dangers of normalizing these powers. but, staying in a state of emergency indefinitely is going to do that, anyways. it seems largely trivial, in the short run.

if they decide to try to normalize this through legislation any further, it just signals that they weren't going to ease up on the state of emergency, and we would have had to fight that, anyways.

for now, it's concerning, if trivial.

but, let's be ready to keep them at their word when these terms expire.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-set-to-extend-some-emergency-orders-until-next-year-1.5013598

october is updated, and it's time to eat.

and, september is now updated. for a long time.

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/09/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/09/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/09/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/

september was again lengthy due to a lot of posts, and the document i'm generating them from is now far more than 75% done so this should pick up soon. i hope.

bob rae is a liberal party insider of the highest level, with all kinds of personal ties to the shady desmarais clan, which seems to be the high priesthood of canadian colonialism. he's been deployed in recent decades as a soft face for hard power, being used to negotiate with the native americans, or to document human rights abuses in bangladesh (no doubt while carrying out some corporate espionage for power corp). i've generally advised not to trust bob rae; he will appear to you in an appealing manner, and he will talk your ear off about whatever it is that you want to hear, but he firmly represents the deepest bowels of canadian colonialism, which is the petro-state.

that said, he's a smart and capable policy wonk and sending him to the united nations is consequently a fairly good position for him. this is perhaps a surprisingly appropriate appointment.

is the coronavirus airborne?

i think that depends on your definition of 'airborne', and that trying to work these questions out in the popular press risks losing the important subtleties associated with them.

the virus appears to be more contagious than was previously thought at this point, and that may be due to a mutation that happened in europe a few months ago. if that strain has been further selected for over the last few months, perhaps even aided artificially by human behaviour like social distancing, then the increased contagiousness of the virus may be a characteristic of an upcoming second wave. 

but, does that meet the scientific definition of "airborne"? that is a more difficult question and one that wonks are going to probably spend quite a time working out, in reverse.

so, i wouldn't expect a firm answer on that question for quite a while, actually.

but, it may be prudent to adjust to the reality of a more contagious virus than we saw previously.

september, 2014 is updated.

let's hope i can finalize it today.

listen, i don't doubt that masks, if worn sensibly by a substantive amount of the population, would reduce the spread of the disease. i would argue that, unless we want to commit to wearing masks all of the time, it's just a stop-gap measure. but, i don't doubt the abstract premise.

like it was with social distancing, though, the way we're doing the mask thing actually has the potential to make it worse.

i was handed masks by two different store attendants on friday, a gift i refused on both occasions. i'm asthmatic, you see. but, the way the masks were handed out seemed to me more likely to spread the disease than prevent it's spread, given that these attendants were in high traffic areas and the masks were just handed to me loosely, after the actual masks had been pawed all over by these employees. so, i'm in essence being asked to put this device on my face that's been grab-handed all over by somebody at a heightened risk. no thank you.

i'm seeing reports about handing out masks at drive thrus. well, the whole fucking point of the drive thru is that people are isolated in their cars; if you send a guy around with masks, you're just creating a transmission vector.

and, of course, people are going to, in truth, do things like reuse masks and put them in their pockets and stuff, which is just going to make things worse, as their masks act like a wet mop in pulling virus particles out of the air.

i don't really see the utility of mask-wearing at this time. transmission rates in this community seem to be low to non-existent, and i've been self-isolating for months. i would consider that to be a drastic step, and i'm not nearly concerned enough to take it.

but, is a push to use masks in this way likely to be effective? i worry that the pro-active approach mandated in the public health law may have the effect of increasing spread, even if the voluntary recommendation, itself, is reasonable for those that are responsible about it.

so, here are the not-so-final, but final for a long time, updates for august, 2014.

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/08/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/08/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/08/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/

that's done now, for a long time.

i hope that september is a little faster.

susan rice is getting close to screwing it up.

ugh.

who biden picks for vp is going to be substantive, because the ominous reality underlying a second trump presidency is that he, himself, is likely to succumb to some form of mental decline, if he hasn't already. so, it seems likely that a vice president is going to end up president within the next four years or so. all bets are off as soon as pence assumes power - he is not likely to carry through with any of the foreign policy shifts that have been defined by this administration, and that i'm not that critical of, except the ones in israel, which i am critical of. pence is going to line up unfavourably against just about any vp candidate.

that is another possible developing ballot question - which vp is preferable? is the democratic vp substantively preferable, enough to generate a vote over pence for? this is a lower bar, but it does still have to be demonstrated. it is possible that biden could screw that up, but i couldn't imagine how.

again: we'll see how my thinking develops on the topic.

but, even if i decide that i must vote green to stop biden from letting the neo-cons takeover, if the vp looks decisively not neo-con, then i may prioritize voting for the vp to stop pence as being a goal of greater value.

i may, in the end, decide that voting for the greens is the best passive way to try to keep the neo-cons out of the white house. i may decide that this is the most pressing concern at hand, out of all of the pressing concerns. it may be the ballot question for me.

i wish there was a better climate option, but i have to be realistic, and i have absolutely no faith in biden advancing any kind of serious climate legislation. that is going to have to come from congress.

as it is, that is one major upside to trump - he's not listening to the neo-cons.

there's going to be all kinds of other narratives, and i may explain why i don't find them compelling, as they present themselves. i'm going to be more interested in the nature of the commander in chief for the course of this election.

the united states may be at a critical juncture, in it's ability to project it's power. a trump presidency would likely continue to erode that ability, something that is not so terrible, whereas a biden presidency may feel the need to take drastic steps to reassert it, if it is helmed by neo-cons. i'm not convinced i want to see the latter happen, even if the alternative leads to a less policed and more unstable world.

these regions are fracturing around fracture points that were designed to fracture; the maps were all drawn to throw the people into disarray, so they couldn't organize against an empire that's long withdrawn, leaving it's system of control in place over a populace that is now hamstrung by it. so, in order to have stability in the long run, the maps need to be redrawn, and all over asia, to eliminate these designed fracture points. stepping back and letting the people redraw these borders as they see fit on their own is necessary, even if it gets messy. the best we can do is help try to talk them down, and figure out ways to share and shit.

so, yes - the empire is collapsing under trump. do you really want to watch biden try to bring it back? what's that going to require?

if that is the serious choice at hand, i'll gladly advocate voting green to keep the neo-cons out.

we'll see how things unfold.

so, the neo-con intelligentsia behind the bush presidency is endorsing joe biden over donald trump.

that's reassuring.

i will never advocate voting for donald trump. but, i may make a principled point about supporting the greens (have they got their shit worked out yet?) in the face of such a terrible choice. which is truly worse here?

on issues of militarism, trump may be terrible. but, biden seems to actually be even worse. so, do you vote for biden, hoping he'll be better for the climate? well, according to what evidence? i don't see any. his eventually no doubt heavily promoted, but in effect piddling, changes are unlikely to even slow it down, at this point. it's the difference between somebody that does nothing and is honest about it, and somebody that pays lip service to the dangers surrounding the upcoming changes, without doing anything substantive about it.

i want to hear somebody articulate plans for adaptation. we have to face the facts, here. and, industry will be more likely to respond to a request to build shit than to a demand to shut down - there's big contracts involved with adaptation measures, which are inevitable. it's time to get a handle on what needs to be done.

so, if there's no substantive difference on climate change, and biden is the more militaristic of the two, which is the lesser evil?

i know that there are domestic issues surrounding trump, but i need you to cautiously weigh the evidence around biden's past support for various things and do a stark comparison between where the two stand on a host of issues. you may find yourself severely disappointed by the amount of actual change you can expect from a biden presidency.

he's said it himself, to specific wall street audiences.

"if i'm elected president, nothing will change." - joe biden

that is a very close paraphrase; you'll excuse me for not looking it up, exactly.

so, you will tell me that if i advocate voting green then i'm just helping trump win. that may not land as hard with me as you're expecting; i may see the upside to it.

it's a terrible set of options, and i'm just trying to give it a fair analysis. i've still got time to come to a firm decision on my advocacy, this time around. but, expect passivity - expect me to go at this one from afar.

it's absolutely surreal how american political strategy is developing around this nexus of black identity politics.

while the death of george floyd was clearly unnecessary, and outrage about it is justified, it's not hard to see the hand of the democratic party machinery in the unfolding of the narrative around the events. the party has fully embraced a strategy that is heavily reliant on high levels of african-american turnout in key urban areas, to offset an increasingly wandering union vote. so, it wants the election to have a specifically black narrative, to maximize black voter turnout. it's clearly taken advantage of the opportunity to do this, and no doubt intends to ride support for that specifically black narrative to the high levels of turnout it wants to drive in the black community in november.

so, if you want to try to mute or overturn that momentum, you throw a wrench in it by introducing a third candidate to entice those black identity politics voters. in a crazy scenario, that third party candidate could even capture that building momentum, and go on to win a surprise upset.

is kanye west signing up for this type of stalking horse candidacy?

but, seriously.

is this kanye west thing a stalking horse campaign to bleed black support from biden? is that it?

you know that if he wins, they're going to have to run taylor swift against him.

this was supposed to be a joke, dammit.

*sigh*

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/kanye-west-twitter-us-president-trump-1.5638157

so, i got the first pass for august done and it's time to stop to eat and clean.

so, here are the last updates for the july, 2014 blogs for a long time.

july was just a lot of data, with over 150 posts at the music blog, 130 at the politics blog and nearly 90 at the media blog. it slows down, soon. for a bit.

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/07/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/07/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/07/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/

on to august...

tearing down mt. rushmore, huh?

i guess we've run out of bamiyan statues to destroy?

i'm never going to stand with anybody that wants to destroy any kind of art. it may be true that there are statues of people all over the world that upset or offend some people, sometimes for better reasons than others, and i'll accept any democratic decisions about removing or replacing those statues if it comes to that point, but i would generally advocate that they be moved to museums or private collections if it is decided that they are not fit for public monuments, or otherwise don't represent current social norms or values. if a community wants to remove a statue, that's entirely their prerogative. however, the historical and cultural significance of the work needs to be respected, in moving the statues elsewhere, rather than destroying them.

so, move the jefferson davis statue to a civil war museum, then. i agree that this is long overdue; i have no argument. just don't break it, like a bunch of puritanical hooligans smashing up some graven images, or something. in that sense, i guess i'm just being an old pagan, in reacting against a typical, if particularly vile, form of judaic zealotry; this is an old argument.

but, what do you do with mt rushmore if you find that the statues are too offensive to too many people, just right now? you can't move them to a museum. so, do you cover them with a tarp?

there's going to be lines, of course. if there was a similar monument on mt. asshole in dumbfuckistan with hitler, stalin, napoleon and genghis khan on it, or something, then some more serious thought would have to be put into removing the monument from public view. but, as it is, i will argue that you surely can't destroy them. this is a major work of art; it must be preserved. like, forever.

i'll state up front that teddy roosevelt does not belong there and should be replaced. full stop.

but, who are the other three presidents? while two of them supported slavery, one of them is responsible for legally abolishing it. however, jefferson's support for slavery is a nuanced and complicated topic of study that i'm not going to delve too far into right now. it's technically true, but slightly unfair, to suggest that jefferson was an advocate of slavery, and it's certainly not fair to trivialize his role in history as a symbol for white supremacy. while washington was far worse than jefferson, especially when he was younger, it is thought that his thinking on the topic evolved greatly as he aged - which is about all you can ask for from an 18th century colonial landlord running an economy that is reliant on forced labour.

so, if these are your symbols of white supremacism and colonial dominance, they are not particularly vile ones, with the exception of roosevelt (who really was a vicious monster, and in fact actually proud of it). now, what if it was teddy roosevelt, andrew jackson, james monroe and andrew johnson? well, those are more substantive symbols of white supremacism and vicious colonialism, none of whom really have any other substantive accomplishments to their names. again: i think some more serious discussion about what to do with the mountain might be more justified, in that case. but, that's not the case...

of washington? & jefferson? & lincoln? there couldn't have been a serious abolition movement without the revolution, of which the civil war was kind of part two of. it's been remarked that the revolutionary war was more of an actual civil war, and the civil war was more of an actual revolution. so, by comparison, and in context, these are, together, the presidents most responsible for ending slavery. following that thinking, perhaps roosevelt could be replaced by madison (although i'd argue they actually just got the wrong roosevelt).

it's not that i'm trying to warp around the history, so much as i'm trying to draw attention to the reality that these were actually the good ones, the ones who pushed back against the system and ultimately succeeded in eroding it. jefferson, especially, wrote widely on a great deal many topics, and was widely influential. reducing his life to an unfair caricature on his ownership of slaves is exactly that, unfair. it's a skewed concept of history, arrived at via tunnel vision.

so, i might ask people to rethink this a little; i wouldn't be very upset if they chiseled out the roosevelt statue, granted, but is targeting mt rushmore really an appropriate outlet of anger? there's lots of statues of actual confederates to make museum pieces out of. maybe you ought to leave mt rushmore alone.

the fact that the statues are on indigenous territory is another question entirely, but i would actually call on the lakota to recognize the historical value of the monument and maintain it for the sake of history. and, i'd suspect a majority would see the sense in that. they're not who i'm worried about.

it seems like too absurd a topic to take seriously, but it is actually recurrent. you hear about this every few years. might the zealots finally get their way, and smash the statues, for being false idols? you'll know that america has truly collapsed into backwardsness, if they ever do.

i would support a government jobs program for students in these times or any other, but a basic pre-requisite of any program of this sort really needs to be compensation at at least the provincial minimum wage.

the truth is that this was likely a hare-brained scheme, designed by a pmo trying to multitask in a foolish way, and that it reflects a lot on the prime minister's warped religious value system. the underlying premise is that young people should be obligated to serve their elders, an idea that is both primitive and outdated and should be left in the trashbin of history. young people are autonomous individuals that should be encouraged to look forwards in life, not be harangued to take care of their grandparents. they owe nothing to their ancestors. that's what these social systems exist for - to emancipate us from our families. but, it's also reflective of the kind of old tory, aristocratic value system that trudeau was raised into and no doubt had enforced on him going through these elite schools for kids. you actually see this kind of do-gooder nonsense really saturating government policy. it is true that liberals are supposed to believe in self-enlightened self-interest, and consequently act more altruistically than their opponents, but the way trudeau and his government breathes this is through a concept of noblesse oblige, and he seems to actually believe it - so long as the benefactors of the charity are considered sufficiently worthy. concepts of rights are being submerged into deprecated concepts coming from puritanical type thinking, where the poor are rewarded for their good behaviour. trudeau's operating principle seems to be that he has some kind of obligation to oversee this charity work, as a duty to his destiny and as a member of some kind of class vanguard.

it's weird stuff that most people will only ever be able to understand abstractly. but, this guy sees himself as some kind of enlightened despot. and, as hackneyed as this scheme may have been, it's perhaps a window into the kind of giant leap backwards into more entrenched conservative values that trudeau really imagines when he sits down at night.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/we-charity-student-grant-program-1.5636332

july took a long time to post because there were a lot of things to post.

let's hope i can get the finalization done, soon.

again: none of these are final updates, and they will all be expanded greatly when i get around to finishing these journals up, one day.

but, these blogs for june, 2014 will not be touched again for some time:

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/06/

2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/06/

3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/06/

4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/

posting has been heavy the last few months. iirc, that flips over soon.

june is updated...

so, that's it.

may, 2014 is done, too.

for a long time.

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/05/
2) http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/05/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/05/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/

the posting for may, 2014 is done.

let's hope i can finalize it tonight, too.

so, this is the end of april, 2014 for a long while, now.

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/04/
2) http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/04/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/04/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/

fell asleep this morning. april should be done shortly.

see, this kind of behaviour shouldn't make anybody want to cooperate too closely with beijing; it's very much a precautionary tale, this sort of random act of pointless retribution, as though this woman has anything to do with this. it's not an adult way for a major power to act; the interpretation, once again, is that china really has to grow up, and fast. the reality is that they are a developing major power; the reality is also that they act like petty tyrants, and frequently.

am i asking for a wise chinese emperor? no, i think what i'm asking for is the chinese to take control of their own society. this layer of vulgar marxists has done wonders for the economy, but there needs to be some kind of constitution that refrains the rulers from just doing whatever the fuck they want. the unfortunate likelihood is that china is going to remain impossible to deal with until that materializes, in some way, and it's not clear exactly what the best thing to do about it is.

so, is there a travel warning for canadians seeking to go to china?

https://nationalpost.com/news/canadian-citizen-sentenced-to-eight-years-by-china-is-latest-victim-of-huawei-feud-beijing-lawyer-says

april first pass done.

finalization coming soon.

yup.

march is now closed. for a long time....

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/03/
2) http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/03/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/03/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/

i got march input quickly. it'll update soon.

so, here we have it - 02/2014 done for the near future:

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/02/
2) http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/02/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/02/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/

don't expect me to touch that again for years.

so, i've got the posting for 02/2014 done and am about to finish a final read through the blogs. and that will be it, for a while.

this is a sudden shift and something i wanted to avoid, but i have to put this aside for a while.

so, that means that each of the four february blogs is in a state of stasis that could last years. i'll post when i'm finished, but almost. i haven't added extra photos, email communications, discussions with family or landlord or etc and a lot of the other stuff i was putting into the blogs when i was preparing them for journal downloads, and i'm not going to for a long time. but i do have all of the posts in my master document reposted, for that month, and that's all you're getting for the foreseeable future.

when i eventually pick back up at this, the rebuild portion should at least be minimal and that might speed me up (given the work already done).

so, that's what i'm doing, and it's going to pick up, soon.

so, now ford is launching a war against covid in migrant workers, to prove he's not ignoring the problem. "look", he's saying, "we've found a problem and we're addressing it.'. well, bravo.

but, the reality is that if you pulled out just about any random subdivision of people in most places south of sudbury, you'd be likely to find rates just as high. this is really the only place they've gone looking for it like this (besides the geriatric facilities).

so, will he launch mandatory testing in, say, subsidized housing in toronto? in off-campus student residences in windsor?

not unless there's a problem to dramatically stamp out. and, nobody wants that.

just keep it away from the old people and we'll probably be fine. that's what the focus should have been from the start. if we've learned anything, right? surely? let's not get our hopes up...

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/premier-pledges-full-out-onslaught-in-response-to-surge-in-local-covid-19-farm-cases

i have now thoroughly sorted through the 2014 archives of this blog to reuse segments for the deathtokoalas and travel blog, but as i was finishing it up i realized that it wouldn't be fair to just leave that sitting for who knows how long, maybe even forever. if i'm going to fill in the deathtokoalas blog, i need to include the comments on music videos, which i was saving until i did the formal write-up.

i'm not doing those formal write-ups. i do have several liner notes for january, 2014 to finish, but i'm stopping there. so, when i get through this posting blitz that will mostly affect the deathtokoalas blog, these will not be final journals for this period. they will not include personal life correspondences, or any of the nerdier stuff related to filekeeping, on my end. they will just be the sum totals of the blogs, as they were.

i hope that straight posting out of a file can be done fairly efficiently, but i expect google to accuse me of being a robot and force me to slow down a bit.

i'm starting soon with feb, 2014. let's hope i can get through this quickly.

these are the other five candidates, and what a lark. it's not clear whether that guy with the top hat intends to be taken seriously or not.

i know dimitri lascaris from his work with the real news, and have a rough understanding of where he's coming from as a result of it. he's a bit of a hard-ass, actually; he does not like corruption. i have to say that he performed well here, even if his opponents were weak.

the fact that there's ten candidates is reflective of the place where the green party is, right now. if they make the right choice here, they could give the ndp (who continue to be uninspiring) a serious run for third party in the next election.

there's only five in the first part of this discussion, which could hardly be called a debate of any sort, and which mostly featured softball questions. it's kind of a shame that they didn't talk much about anything substantive...

i am not familiar with any of the three women on the council. the two males are both former liberals, and i am familiar with both of them. david merner is the kind of liberal i'd prefer to tend to avoid, but glen murray is actually the kind of liberal that i wish there were more of.

on paper, glen murray ought to be the front-runner here, by a good margin. as useful or knowledgeable as the other people may be, none of them has run a major ministry before. when or if these debates get going, he could potentially outwonk these people rather terribly.

but, the greens are a protest party, and glen's experience may actually be seen as baggage by a lot of voters that want to vote against the establishment, whether that's fair to glen or not.

for right now, all i can say is that this discussion didn't help much and i hope that the next round is more enlightening.

regarding the question about when you end the lesser evilism...

the interviewer seemed kind of frustrated by paul's insistence on the binary nature of the choice, which he seemed to write off as defeatism, but is in truth a realistic assessment of the political system in the united states, at the presidential level. the interviewer's frustration is as a result of seeing the decision through the prism of his own voting choices in germany, which is a multiparty parliamentary system with proportional representation, where the parliament elects the head of state without a popular plebiscite. one can indeed vote for smaller parties in germany, because the system allows for it. however, the election for the presidency is nothing like the bundestag elections, at all.

nor is it imaginable how it could be. how do you elect a president by proportional representation? can the president be 13% green? it's a run-off vote. these are your candidates...

see, i'm not actually convinced that the premise that trump is worse than biden is actually true. i line them up and i can't tell the difference between them. i actually worry that biden's hawks may end up more efficient than trump's hawks; that is, the difference in hawkishness may ultimately boil down to the greater competence of the democrats, to potentially disastrous consequences. trump has actually been quite reluctant to use force, and i appreciate that. i worry that we all may regret seeing biden as a more stable applicant.

there is a body in the united states that is a little bit like the bundestag, and it is the house of representatives, which does not assign seating via proportional representation, but does offer some possibility for third party resistance, perhaps more like you see in canada or britain. i don't think the rules currently call for it, but i would support a rule change to bring up a run-off vote in a scenario where there are initially three strong challengers; a president is an executive, and the nature of the position is such that a binary choice, in the end, seems proper. but, the dearth of third parties in the united states at the parliamentary level is an anomaly, and focus on third-party organizing should be directed at that level.

so, that's the answer to the question - the focus on third party organizing is overdue but it does not make sense at the presidential level, where a lesser evil choice is always inevitable, and should be rather directed at the parliamentary level, where third parties could conceivably pass laws. sanders lost. deal with it. further, recognizing that focusing third party energy at the appropriate parliamentary level is more efficient doesn't negate the necessity to make a sober contribution to determining the nature of the figurehead commander-in-chief. you still have to vote for one of the shitty choices, dammit.

so, it seems like paul quietly relaunched on vimeo when i wasn't paying attention.

it seems like you have to go to his site to watch the video, which is not a surprising development, as he often complained about people watching therealnews on youtube. but, it's catch-grabby web design. i just want a simple list of videos to click on, in order, to make sure i didn't miss one.

so, this may be the more ordered way to go at this.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/TheAnalysisnews-111882350255869/posts/?ref=page_internal

i'm going to finish that classical mechanics lecture series first, and i'll have a few things to say about it when i do. introduction to classical mechanics? ha! that's a trick, this is a meta grad course.

so, it sounds like one thing that could be done to increase the power of migrant workers without granting them permanent status would be to make deportation orders subject to judicial review - that is to put the issue before an immigration judge. if a worker feels like he's being deported due to standing up for his rights, he should have access to due process to determine if that is true or not, and be awarded damages if it is found out to be true.

ultimately, these issues are going to end up in the courts, anyways. so, granting permanent residence is really the same thing as providing for due process, in the end, in context. why not just give them due process, instead?

the hope of course is that the farmers address the issue in good faith, in the presence of a formal rights framework, in either way.

it's just that if we respond to every refugee & worker issue by granting permanent status, we'll be undoing a lot of our targeted immigration policy, which exists as it does for good reasons. my concern is really in ensuring that employers, in general, aren't able to use these programs as a way to avoid implementing labour codes, which appears to be exactly what the reality is. that should be the focus at hand...

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-sees-jump-in-migrant-farm-workers-with-covid-19/

this is still the first wave, though.

i don't think it was preventable, and we're just going to see a time lag before it happens in ontario, although montreal may have already experienced the brunt of it. this is just the rest of the united states going through the phase of the process that europe and new york went through a few months ago.

it's an open question as to whether the steps taken to reduce the spread of the virus did so, temporarily, or if it just took a little longer for the virus to take hold in these areas. i'd lean towards the dominant factor being the latter, even if you can manage to barely measure a signal from the former.

i don't think we've seen a first wave crest yet in toronto. at least not according to the numbers. but i've been clear that i don't think the numbers released in ontario are very useful in understanding reality.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/only-two-u-s-states-are-reporting-a-decline-in-new-coronavirus-cases-1.5003399

i agree that the neo-liberal appropriation of identity politics for it's own purposes of socially engineering a more racially diverse elite is not a revolutionary politics, but i also have little opposition to it, and while i will sign off on any petitions arguing that it is ultimately a distraction for the left, i wonder if it isn't better to stand back and let it happen.

i understand that a component of the neo-liberal appropriation of identity politics is the expectation that minorities within the elite will act with influence in the communities they "represent" for the ultimate benefit of the elite, which is sort of feudal in character; i wonder if expanding access to the elite might rather aid in building the kind of cross-community solidarity that the working class, itself, needs to develop to better organize. what i'm saying is that there might be greater revolutionary potential in organizing in the future if we allow for this neo-liberal identity project to work itself out. after all, they've been using identity politics to rip us apart for ages, and it's actually kind of worked pretty well; having them undo their own control system, which has harmed us so greatly, may have beneficial outcomes, in the end.

or, maybe i'm being naive - maybe we're just being set up for the next round of divide and conquer.

so, i'm waiting this out, is what i'm doing, and i'm hoping it works itself out into something more revolutionary.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opinion/bernie-sanders-protesters-democrats.html

i'm still building boundaries, abstractly, but some rules of thumb surrounding the differences between this blog and the deathtokoalas blog are developing as follows:

- the deathtokoalas blog will avoid direct news coverage altogether, with the exception of smart-ass remarks. note, however, that some institutions (like vice news) are not treated as news coverage, but as an entertainment broadcast about news, and that some hand-picked discussions from these sites are included.
- the deathtokoalas blog will not feature commentary or discussions around lectures, speeches or other lengthy interviews.
- the deathtokoalas blog will otherwise make an attempt to document all commentary and discussions around videos that are not posted to official news sites.
- the deathtokoalas blog will not include personal commentary, insofsar as it is separate from other comments and discussions.
- this blog will avoid commentary around music videos, unless there is a political component to it.

after some very careful thought, i'm hoping i can pick this up a bit.

it's interesting to see that kind of retraction in and of itself, though.

we're all taught this model in grade school about the planets rotating around the central fire, and we're told it's newtonian, the grand achievement of the copernican revolution, without spending much time contemplating the fact that the newtonian-copernican system is actually a revised ptolemaic system, with the gravitational center of the system corrected. worse, ptolemy himself was actually reversing existing greek systems (coming from aristarchus, with origins in pythagoreanism) that at least actually got the idea of heliocentrism correct. so, we may discuss how the understanding that the earth orbits the sun, rather than vice versa, was a revolutionary achievement in the history of science, but we fail to recognize that, through all of these changes, we've held to the concept of a system orbiting a center of some sort, without really challenging the premise. and, it's something that is taught to us over and over, no doubt as a consequence of the christian appropriation of newtonianism, something the english-speaking world needs to be more forthright and open about. so, we don't challenge our conception of the solar system as being this ordered, mechanical thing, despite the utter ancientness of the assumption - and the fact that it's totally wrong.

a much more substantive scientific revolution took place at the beginning of the last century, which finally broke the old pythagorean model. all of the ideas are developed in the system that was devised by newton, but they weren't properly understood until einstein. we realize today that the solar system is really not a set of well behaved planets orbiting the sun in this polite manner, but rather a system of masses that is suspended in it's own forces, engaging in a constant tug-of-war that no side can ever win. and, if we are to calculate their orbits, we must do so in such a way that takes into account the effects of all of the participants in this gravitational soup, which means constructing difficult n-body problems, rather than ignoring them as too distant or irrelevant. that simplifying newtonian assumption, that goes back to the pythagoreans, can no longer be tolerated.

but, what are the results? don't just tell me you've "lost confidence" in the outcome. do the actual work, and tell me what happens.

this retraction is curious to me. it seems to retract the article based on some inaccurate modelling of the planetary gravitational system (they seem to have ignored the gravitational effects of the planets), and then claims a lack of confidence in the results due to that error.

but, they don't mention whether they tried to correct the results of the paper based on that better modelling decision and what would happen if they did. generally, when a paper makes an error, it can be corrected.

so, has anybody attempted to make the proper adjustments and see what the effects on the results are?

i know that this paper was keyed in on by certain denialist groups as evidence of onsetting cooling rather than the reality of warming, but what i'm more interested in is the predictive modelling of solar sunspot activity. i think that the scientific consensus is that an extended solar minimum would not prevent warming due to increased greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere altogether, but that it will slow it down a little, with exaggerated regional consequences, particularly in terrestrial regions of the northern hemisphere. 

so, i understand that the publisher and one of the authors have "lost confidence" in the correctness of the outcome due to some poor modelling decisions. but, i'd kind of like to see it actually worked out, to see if those adjustments actually affect the outcome or not.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61020-3

i do hope that the ambassador bridge is eventually expropriated and turned into a pedestrian walkway. the bridge may be of questionable use for heavy loads in the near future, but it could very well remain maintained for lighter foot traffic for quite some time.

i'm going to have to move, eventually, and i'm wondering if i don't want to focus my attention in regions around the new bridge, rather than regions around the tunnel.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/michigan-court-rules-against-morouns-bid-to-stop-gordie-howe-bridge/wcm/f8408edc-1b38-425f-8563-f74307f49511/

so, it seems to be that the developing strategy in ontario is to delay the reporting, and tell everybody to wear a mask. that way, we can continue to try to ignore it, on purpose.

my position from the start is that these measures are useless in the long run, and there's essentially nothing a city like toronto can do about it. toronto is in a weird point, where the poor quality of the statistics that are available make it hard to measure whether it's reached a peak, like detroit or montreal. it could be that the delaying tactics were actually marginally effective, but in that case, that's all they were - delaying tactics. so, toronto is either unusually vulnerable to a late first wave attack, or it's got a lot of delayed reporting to do. either way, let's hope that the extended delay, reporting deficit or not, was enough that the system doesn't reach capacity along with whatever bump is inevitable on reopening.

and, let's hope that lessons have been learned about isolating the elderly properly. it should be a long time before normal social behaviour can resume again.

so, the mask thing is....it's a hope. really, the system is just giving up, realizing it can't wait this out, it can't delay and smother forever. so, go back to work. even if you're sick. just wear a mask.

my personal aversion to mask-wearing of any sort seems like somewhat of a marginal concern, in context. but, you still won't see me wearing one, in a city where there is actually no evidence of recent community transmission.

and, i'm curious how people react, in the long run.

i've got enough supplies, including some more marijuana, to last me another two weeks or so. let's see what happens.

workers tend to be far more naive about this than managers are, but don't you confuse yourself for a minute - the class war is perpetual. and, they'll strike whenever it's opportune.

if capital can find a way to use this as an excuse to decrease wages, it will.

i've made my aversion to the red cross, specifically, very clear - in addendum to my general aversion to the concept of private sector charity, which i'd argue should be outright abolished, and folded into government run services, instead.

but, they're really doing everything they can to avoid the obvious necessity, which is that they need to hire full-time, properly trained workers at living wages. they're going to bring in students, red cross workers...what's next, pilgrims? isis "refugees"?

until they get the basic fact through their head that they have to pay fair wages for labour if they want workers to give a fuck, our geriatric care sector will continue to lag others in the developed world. that's what we're doing wrong, and it's not just in this sector, it's across the board - we're not paying workers enough.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/coronavirus-live-updates-montreal-bar-owners-grapple-with-sudden-reopening/wcm/2622ef59-66ea-4707-be63-26239641522c/

no, listen.

china really, honestly needs to start behaving more responsibly. this is a growing major world power that appears to be trying to negotiate a hostage exchange with a mid-level economy, to evade the legal outcome of an ongoing extradition request. that any of this should for a moment be even given the slightest level of seriousness is preposterous.

so, you've got people like allan rock out there musing about how we're antagonizing the chinese, afraid that they might upset this country that continually acts like a rotten teenager. no. it's imperative that china be helped to grow up and behave more responsibly, and very quickly. otherwise, we're going to have a very strange world on our hands in a few decades.

so, the media has just fastforwarded this case through all kinds of stuff...

first of all, would intervening in the case be consistent with upholding the rule of law? there's a simplistic narrative in the media that just because the law allows for a specific power abstractly, that it can therefore be used in any way desirable, without following certain customs and regulations placed down by existing precedent, which is, in fact, actually a key component of analyzing whether a specific behaviour upholds the rule of law or not, in the specific anglo-canadian legal context. i guess that, in the chinese context, power is expected to be used; in the british context, power is expected to be restrained. so, any foreign reading of our law that deduces that the presence of a power allows for it's arbitrary use on command by some type of sovereign is reading it out without the context of our legal traditions, and is consequently doing so incorrectly.

there was recently a court decision in this case that the issue should proceed. so, for the minister to intervene would be to overturn the court - explicitly, directly. in canada, we have judicial independence, and intervening it is also a disastrous breach in the rule of law; that would be overturning a set of precedents that underlies our legal traditions.

it is unclear exactly when it would be appropriate for a minister to intervene, but it would likely be at the beginning of a trial, or perhaps at the end of one. the minister may, for example, deduce that the outcome of a trial is illegitimate, for some very clear and well argued reason. or, the minister may decide, at the outset, that a trial should not take place for some also very clearly and well argued reasons. these occurrences would need to be exceedingly rare for the minister to withstand accusations of abuse, and the system to withstand reform and reversal.

what is crystal clear is that the minister cannot flagrantly intervene in the middle of proceedings because it doesn't like a specific outcome, or due to political pressure of any sort. for, that is the rule of law, in context - judicial independence, as a central component of our legal tradition.

now, what about this idea of a hostage release?

well, first, we're talking about this like the prime minister can order this woman released for that reason, which is absurd. the prime minister is not holding this woman hostage, she's being held under house arrest by an independent judicial process.

ignoring the inappropriateness of the premise, do i think that actually carrying through with a trade is going to endanger canadians? this is rooted in the premise that terrorist groups may get a greenlight to hold people hostage under the expectation of payment, but that's kind of a weird argument. first, we're talking about an exchange of humans, not a ransom payment. second, china isn't a terrorist group.

well, wait a second - i just said china isn't a terrorist group. why is it acting like one, then?

and, this is my actual reaction to the scenario - what? we're talking about a hostage exchange with china, in 2020?

china needs to be told that it needs to discard all discussion of exchanging hostages as a pre-requisite for further constructive dialogue.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7105816/china-kovrig-spavor-wanzhou-intervention/

when they found cases in the meat plants, they didn't send the workers back to the factories, so long as they promise to self-isolate.

they shut the fucking factories down.

so, umm...

wash your leamington produce extra good, i guess?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-eases-isolation-rules-to-boost-covid-19-testing-for-migrant/

apparently, the federal government thinks it's not bound by provincial minimum wage laws, and that offering work below the minimum wage to students is some kind of act of generosity.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/feds-offering-students-1k-for-every-100-hours-of-covid-19-volunteer-work-1.4999165

$1000 for 100 hours of work is $10/hr, which is considerably below the minimum wage in all of the large provinces.

ontario - $14/hr

alberta - $15/hr

bc - $14.60/hr

quebec - $12.50/hr

so, if your kid signs up for this, s/he's essentially subsidizing the executives at some corporate charity, who get to siphon wages from the workers out of the "donations" to the organization. 

i understand that employment opportunities for students may be slim this summer, and this may have longterm implications on their finances, but that's not some kind of excuse for the federal government, of all institutions, to trample all over minimum wage legislation. 

so, somebody should launch legal action to ensure that these workers are being paid a legal wage, if they choose to take this labour on.

i've really had some difficulty slimming down the deathtokoalas moniker to just media related posts. i got loose with my definitions, for a bit....

so, i've been going over the blog repeatedly trying top make sure i understand what makes sense and what doesn't.

i hope to get a substantive amount done today.

what do i think about them reopening in windsor?

well, i never supported them closing in the first place, remember.

what do the facts say about this?

1) the border isn't closed, there's still people transporting goods back and forth, and there's even still health care workers moving back and forth from what was, at one time, a fairly hard hit region (although they seem to have recovered well, in the long run). so, the premise that the city is under a level of restricted movement in and out of it is a fantasy. i really maintain that there is little point in locking down a city that is on an open international border.

2) that said, there aren't a lot of cases here. the cases that are showing up are in the farm sector in the southeastern tip of the county. i bicycled there last week; it's about 55 km up county road 34, although you may be able to reduce the total travel distanced by taking the freeways in a car. leamington is not exactly far from here. but, that sector is relatively isolated from the city of windsor. i agree that pairing policy together with this region is of questionable utility to the city, and some form of separation or mutual autonomy may be beneficial to both of us.

3) the data in ontario is of limited help in determining policy, to say the least. everything is lagged by weeks or months. when they set up a testing centre in leamington, they shut it down after they started finding a lot of cases; it was easier to cover the problem up than to deal with it. if you're paying close attention to the way that data is being released, you can see fingerprints of this kind of thing everywhere. so, we don't actually know what the rates of transmission or even what the death rates actually are in toronto right now, because the data is being suppressed. it follows that trying to compare an obvious pr disaster for the province to information that we know is incomplete is kind of absurd.

4) you're left to conclude that windsor has gone from being perpetually ignored to being punished for fucking up the province's reopening. and, we're kind of stuck; because we've exposed a problem, we have to deal with it.

i don't see a lot to get excited about regarding stage 2, frankly. the things that would be opening would not be the things i'd see myself going to, and certainly not in the way they'd exist. i'm probably not going to actually go anywhere until they get to stage 4 or stage 5.

i don't think it's fair to pin the whole problem on this guy, or really much of the problem on him at all. he has little control over the situation, which as it's root cause is unregulated globalization.

see, and this is why this is so frustrating for so many people - they want somebody to blame. they want to look at what went wrong, fire the idiots responsible, fix the problem and everything's great forever. but, that's old economy thinking. nothing works like that anymore...

there is no single person to blame, nobody to take the fall, nobody's head to chop off. it's the system that's at fault, and the system that needs to adjust.

that said, if there is widespread protest against the mask laws in the upcoming days or weeks, i would call on his resignation at that time. and, i do believe that this abuse of power is indeed grave enough to warrant legitimate calls for his removal.

so, i would like to see him resign.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/online-petition-calls-for-removal-of-windsor-essex-medical-officer

i'm stopping to eat, and will run over this a second time afterwards, but i've got up to the end of aug, 2016 rebuilt for the two smaller blogs. that was just the first run from the music blog, but i did it like this because i thought it would be quicker to get the big stuff out first, and leave more subtle questions of inclusion for later. that more ponderous second run is going to start next, after i double check 2016, after i eat.

so, i'll be running back over 2014-2016 a second time, adding segments that are currently only published on this specific blog over that period.

https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2016/
https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2016/

i think this is an abuse of power, legally speaking.

the legislation that they are citing to enact this order is intended for small scale quarantines of the population, not to bring in sweeping rules and restrictions. the legislation allows for quarantine rules to apply to a "class" of the population; what the health unit is doing is labeling the entire population a class of itself, which may work in an introductory algebra course, but is an abuse of the concept when applied to applying abstract legislation to real-life use. this legislation was never meant for this purpose.

further, the grounds of applying this kind of legislation at all are at best questionable. while the virus does clearly pose heightened risks for understood segments of the population, the question of proportionality, here, is very relevant. is this a reasonable step to take given the actual risk that exists?

i think i have enough supplies to last me a week or two, i just need to double check my meds in the morning.

as noted previously, i am not expecting this to be adhered to or enforced. but, i want to understand what reality actually is before i dive into it.

https://www.wechu.org/sites/default/files/create-resource/class-action-order-face-coverings-wec-june-2020.pdf?mc_cid=99ac203490&mc_eid=97a466ded0

i've been vocal about my support for regulatory overhaul in the foreign workers sector, in fact i've called to abolish it and mechanize instead, but there is perhaps a better approach than offering these people permanent resident status. surely the law can find a way to invest people with social rights in this country, without making permanent residents out of them. i would be more likely to support a more thorough safety net and more detailed social rights for temporary workers as it's own thing, and please understand that there'd need to be some tax involved in that, than jump all the way to permanent residence. that should be something that has a higher level of value attached to it. and we do want it to be valuable, right?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ottawa-vows-crackdown-on-employers-violating-health-protection-rules/