dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja

Sunday, July 26, 2020

the second package to update is the august music journal at bandcamp, and the travel blog just got much bigger, jumping from 2 to 14 posts. while i have minimal documentation of my actual truck ride to windsor, this should help fill in the time gap a little bit better. also added are some posts documenting some trips i made around town after i moved in.

as this update is strictly to the travel blog, it will not be documented in the notes.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/08-2013-music-journal

the following four posts were made from ottawa, before i left, and added to the front of the blog:

4) $50 gift certificate pt 1
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/08/so-i-have-still-have-that-50-gift.html

5) disc scavenging
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/08/re-cds.html

6) $50 gift certificate pt 2
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/08/i-wasnt-expecting-them-to-give-me-cash.html

7) recovery
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/08/thankfully-i-was-at-least-able-to.html

the following eight posts were made from windsor, and document some trips made out of the house after moving in:

8) documents to print:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/08/documents-to-print.html

9) do i have internet now?
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/08/mom-i-guess-you-have-your-internet-now.html

10) new dresser sequence
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013_08_20_archive.html

11) wood improperly cut:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/08/i-should-probably-just-laugh.html

12) make-up self
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/08/building-myself-make-up-shelf-out-of.html

13) found tv
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/08/so-i-found-on-old-tv-on-curb-it-works.html

14) fitted shelf
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-fitted-shelf-eventually.html

15) found shoe rack
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/08/shoe-shelf-found-on-curb.html

so, why aren't i all in on climate change, then?

if only it were that easy, right?

when i talk about my genome being adapted to some kind of warm, humid climate, i want to be clear what stage of evolution i'm talking about, here.

clearly, there has been large amounts of gene flow through the western part of the old world, from the tip of norway to the reaches of the sahara, and from the distant island of ireland to the mountains overlooking the indian subcontinent. there has also been substantive gene flow into this region from the blackest reaches of africa and india, as well as the furthest reaches of the east. all of that substantive gene flow has prevented any sort of substantive subgrouping of broadly caucasian types from developing. if you take random people from britain, from libya, from italy, from turkey and from iran and mix them all up in non-descript clothing, or just observe them naked, you're consequently not going to find it as easy to identify them as you'd imagine.

i'm not suggesting that my warmer climate genetic history is suggestive of some kind of speciation event or something.

rather, i'm talking about percentages of alleles in the population that control for adaptations to climate, which i would imagine are not very likely to change over time in the presence of gene flow because the people that stay and thrive in whatever climate are those best able to adapt to it.

so, sure - people come and go. for that reason, people like me with a clear predisposition towards warmer weather get born in cooler climates, and those with a clear predisposition towards cooler weather get born in warmer climates. so, in any population, you're going to have a level of variation. but, what i'm getting at is that it's going to be those with the right match that actually thrive and reproduce, and that for that reason you would expect populations in sweden to be adapted to the weather differently than populations in sicily, when measured in aggregate. that is, alleles for the right kind of climate would predominate in either area.

i would thrive much better in a more tropical climate, and in a way where i'm able to enjoy the heat and humidity, i'm sure of it.

and, yes, i think that coverage surrounding the effectiveness of antibodies has, to say the least, been overblown.

it's the memory of the virus that's more important than the antibodies themselves. that said, i'll acknowledge that the testing seems to indicate that there's a higher percentage of people clearing the virus from their system without an immune response than was previously imagined.

so, let's logically beak down what might happen if you get the virus.

1) you might clear the virus without developing an immune response, which would essentially mean that your immune system just ate it without thinking about it twice. it may have just thought it was a variant of the common cold, and decided it wasn't worth amounting an immune response to (a very interesting conclusion, if true.). if this happens, then you are not going to be immune to the virus in the future. in theory, you could catch the disease repeatedly without getting sick, and act as a superspreader of it.

2) otherwise, you will get sick. if you get sick, that means that your body is mounting an immune response, and you should expect protective antibodies, if you beat it.

i) if you beat it, and your body successfully produces antibodies that clear it, it remembers how to produce those antibodies, again. forever. so, while antibody levels may fade over time (your body will prioritize that accordingly), you don't forget how to create the antibodies again. it's sort of a tempest in a teapot. but, note that your body may be dropping production of antibodies for this class of virus (the common cold.) because it knows that the virus mutates quickly.

ii) if you don't beat it, it's because you were unable to crack the virus' code and develop antibodies fast enough to clear it. and, you are now dead. sucks.

of course, if the virus has mutated by the next you come into contact with it then all bets are off.

so, the first package to update was the july music journal at bandcamp. the addition is minimal - four additions to the travel blog - and will not be documented in the notes.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/07-2013-music-journal-2-2

the following four posts were added to the very front of the travel blog:

1) legit drunk last night
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/07/consequences.html

2) moving thoughts:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/07/so-im-in-process-of-blowing-my-life-up.html
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/07/i-think-my-perspective-is-slightly.html

3) the plan
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-plan.html

i want to be clear: i wouldn't propose ramping up to 20%. you could blow up the system, just by doing it, and the thing could run out of control, for real.

i might at most suggest encouraging the spread amongst university students, which is about what's going to happen right now, anyways. 'cause you can cancel frosh, but you can't really cancel frosh.

so, it's going to make the most sense to post the errata on a month-by-month basis, and update each file, as it's updated.

soon.

i have to finish reinstalling the other drive first, because that's where my editing software is.

expect about 20 posts added to the travel blog, mostly before 11/2013. also expect about 20 posts added to dtk, all after 08/2013.

this was frustrating and slow and tedious but i'm a perfectionist, and there wasn't really any way around it - i had to let the blogs all develop a little before i was able to go back and ensure a concept of consistency within each of them. i want to be to the next thing, but that was necessary.

the numbers in the united states generally dip dramatically on the weekends. the fact that saturday's numbers did not dip dramatically from friday's is a red flag that next week will be brutal.

i wish i understood why some posts are broadcasting and others aren't. it's quite strange.

how much longer do we have to go with this?

with forty million confirmed cases globally, the actual number is something more like 600 million, as a lower bound - that's 7.5%. the seroprevalence to crude case count ratio has mostly been measured in advanced countries, and seems to be somewhat less than ten, but the spread is global and you would expect that ratio to be much higher in most of the world, so a factor of 15 is no doubt an underestimate.

so, we're probably pushing close to a 10% infection rate, with the vast majority of those people showing enough symptoms that they can expect to develop an immune response.

now, this is going to be very localized, with some regions having high levels of immunity and some regions having low levels of immunity. you should be able to loosely measure this by how hard the region was hit.

a reasonable estimate for the actual case count in the united states right now based on empirical data is roughly 40 million, which is 12% of the population. it seems that the magic number to drastically slow the spread is not 70% as previously thought but rather 20%. while regional variations in the united states will dominate, it would seem to be halfway there, overall.

we could of course stop this with a vaccine, if we can get one first. but, if we're halfway there, and the growth rate is an increasing function, that would suggest we have less than six months to get there before it burns itself out. three, probably. it's going to peak in september...

our governments have all spent a lot of money on these vaccines, but they may find themselves arriving to a muted threat.

that's not to say that this thing won't be dangerous for years to come, or that it won't continue to spread in much the same way that it does now, albeit at a reduced rate. it will still be out there, and the vulnerable will remain at risk. when the vaccines get here, the elderly and at risk should take them immediately.

it's just that 20% immunity seems to be enough to stop the actual pandemic.

i think people maybe have this binary view of herd immunity, but this isn't quantum physics, we can have continuity, here. herd immunity is an inflection point, but the reduction in spread will increase proportionally with the number of people infected. so, 70% is better than 50% is better than 20%. but, the magic number for the health system seems to be a lot lower than previously thought, making the concept a lot more attainable than previously imagined.

the same rough calculation produces less than 5% immunity in canada, as a whole, indicating that we have much further to go. but, we will still probably beat the vaccine to substantive immunity, in the end.

Saturday, July 25, 2020

so, what i've done is start at the beginning and, whenever i see a thread in one of the blogs, have noted it, with the hope of maintaining consistency and completeness, godel be damned. the blogs will each morph, now, to better fit these threads.

this should help everybody understand the differences between these blogs, which i'm only beginning to fully grasp, myself.

politics:
- life narrative. feelings. events. reflections. dialogues. stories.
- essays. rants. comments. short stories, notes, reactions to quotes.
- philosophical reflections
- political activism
- lectures exclusive
- debates
- news reports exclusive (except sarcasm)
- mathematical & scientific analysis, of varying levels
- historical analysis
- cultural analysis
- economic analysis
- legal analysis
- blogs of any sort, really
- any excerpts of existing texts
- anything published to the appspot site, including cd reviews, concert reviews & music web
- food blog
- all official music releases
- some extra discussions outside of the main narrative
- persies
- benchmark discs
- reviews of substantive influences in real time
- concerts
- headphones
- posts about isps & network topology
- installation files & scripts
- posts about non-musical celebrities, and about some newsworthy musical celebrities
- theory of art sequence
- other youtube videos posted and/or commentary around them should have some kind of relevance to one of these categories
- general commentary about web pages and their uses (with personal use commentary, too)

music:
- life narrative. feeling, events. reflections. dialogues.
- studio narrative
- cover art
- all official music releases
- damaged cds are part of the narrative.
- computer troubleshooting is a part of the narrative
- cleaning the studio. scripting machines.
- benchmark discs / obligatory influentials / comment threads about influences
- reviews of new records by selected artists that are of specific historical influence
- some obituaries of direct or indirect influences
- no appspot reviews, but reviews of new music affecting me as i'm recording.
- concerts
- persies
- headphones
- installation files & files created when recording
~~- posts about isps & network topology~~ (ends after getting isp access)
- posts about personal social media sites
- posts about music theory or music history or music as any other academic interest
- posts about music production, gear, equipment, etc
- posts about the guitar, the development of the guitar, guitar music history, specific guitarists, etc
- comments where i drop my own music
- comments where i present biographical information in a way that is relevant to understanding my influences and development as an artist
- theory of art sequence
- concepts that relate to topics explored in songs
- some excerpts of existing texts as they are relevant to art or my artistic development
- discussions with people inquiring about the music

dtk:
- any posts containing music videos of any sort
- any youtube videos or comments around videos except those that are considered official new sources
- tv show & film excerpts
- news source allowed for light content or content about music
- interviews with musicians or authors, but not speeches or lectures, or news reports.
- posts with pictures or comments on pop culture or music, broadly
- media commentary & criticism
- cds, cd reviews, cd collections, etc
- anything posted to the appspot site as a review
- music web
- official original album releases
- spontaneous song lyrics
- minimal personal commentary (almost none).
- no persies, except profile updates.
- gaming exclusive
- posts about isps & network topology
- any paintings & cover art
- release dates
- animal vids
- general commentary about web pages and their uses (but not personal use commentary)
- headphones sequence
- border stuff because of concerts
- concerts
- not considered official news sources: vice news.
- posts about music theory or music history or music as any other academic interest
- comments on articles about music and art in any abstraction
- some excerpts of existing texts as they are relevant to art or culture, broadly
- some (usually ironic) self-referential comments about my posting habits

travel:
- posts made to facebook, blogger, etc from somewhere physically outside the house or about things that happened outside of the house
- travel blog needs to be more about action scenes, and less about documenting every time i leave the house. so, actually try to avoid posts that just mention going somewhere, and make it more about the narrative of actually going somewhere.
- should avoid planning posts
- should include reflections on travelling or moving
- posts about isps & network topology
- posts made about the weather
- persies for going out only
- border stuff because of concerts
- concerts
- posts about time zones
- posts about odsp renewal
- posts about dr's offices

so, i have now finally finished a very careful run through of the first reconstruction phase, with the purpose of ensuring consistency & completeness, as i said i needed to do however many weeks ago, before i got badly slowed down with it. i started over several times, and rethought things many times in the process, but i'm done, i think, at this point.

two posts will follow. the first will contain a list of concepts that are running through each of the blogs for the the first reconstruction phase (07/13-01/14). this list will continue to update as i flip this over and keep moving through 2014 and into 2015 and beyond. the second will include a list of what i'm going to call errata to the already published deathtokoalas and travel blogs. i'm going to chew on that for a bit before it posts. there will not need to be a second errata because i can make the edits before any sort of publishing, which won't happen for a long time.

the next thing i'm going to need to do, once i'm certain of the various changes, will be to actually make the updates. so, i will need to update and reupload the pdfs for all of the deathtokoalas blogs and all of the travel blogs. as mentioned, the errata will be posted here for easy comparisons; these are not major edits, but are merely being done to ensure that the narrative flows through each of the blogs in a contextually self-contained manner. no changes are expected for the main two blogs.

that's a good way to get a lot of dogs very sick, very fast.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/dogs-detect-covid-19_ca_5f1b4463c5b6128e6825be1e

listen.

they're going to need to bring in mandatory testing & vaccination for foreign workers next year, anyways.

this is a federal responsibility, and it's the feds that need to make some changes.

this looks like it's going to mostly be a rain event.

but, i'm just imagining the effect that a major hurricane coming into a state like florida might have on the spread of the virus, if it results in the need for people to utilize things like sports arenas for shelter.

....or, what might happen if the earth finally swallowed los angeles, right now.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hurricane-hanna-texas-1.5663150

in crude terms...

we can't force the migrant workers to put a needle in their arm. it's their body; they maintain sovereignty over it. like, period. that's sec 7 in it's most assertive form, and the form i will generally interpret it.

but, we can tell them that if they don't want to get tested then they're not allowed to work and they have to go home. sort of. that's still likely to be deemed unconstitutional, but because it's a lesser breach, and in the name of public safety, it's likely to be allowed.

can doug ford order mandatory testing for agrifood workers?

no. sec 7, clearly.

however, the federal government can make periodic mandatory testing a work visa requirement and challenge the courts to undo it. it would no doubt fail an oakes test (that is, the oakes test would conclude that a breach is justified). so, this is one of those scenarios where the federal government breaking the rules on purpose could actually lead to a useful clarification of the rules, moving forward. this is the nature of our peculiar type of easily suspendable constitutional law - the government has to be willing to push loopholes.

if you want to look doug ford in the eye and give him a clear answer he understands, tell him it's out of his jurisdiction - but that the feds can effectively do it.

see, this has been understood the whole time.

the article doesn't really touch on it, but the canadian system of reporting has a lot of privacy restrictions built-in that can protect causes of death from becoming public for quite a while after it happens. quebec is always the caveat, when talking about canada. so, i keep arguing that the data is useless and it isn't worth seriously analyzing, and some of that is stating to come out in the wash.

the numbers for canada are going to be revised upwards, it's just a question of by how much.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/07/24/theres-a-death-gap-in-canadas-four-most-populous-provinces-if-covid-19-isnt-killing-these-people-what-is.html

it's sort of poetic, actually.

didn't even come close to getting it right.

and, he just shrugs it off, after.

Friday, July 24, 2020

you can't eliminate corruption from capitalism, that's crazy talk.

so, i don't want to talk about ending corruption, i want to talk about abolishing capitalism.

it's always funny to hear the conservatives put this charade on though, as though they aren't 100x more corrupt, right?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/scheer-trudeau-morneau-step-aside-1.5661717

what's the update on if it's safe to open schools or not?

my previous position was that it was a reasonable step to take to protect the staff of the institutions, particularly older professors. that said, i acknowledged that the early evidence suggested the virus posed little risk to children, and appreciated the midway point taken by sweden, where they allowed children under a specific age (i believe it was 16) to go to school.

i think the evidence as it has unfolded suggests that 16 may have been a little too old, if the intent was to stop the spread of the virus - that 12 might be a better age cutoff. that said, it would seem as though there is increasing evidence to be cautious even about younger kids.

it would be great if we had this early result and it withheld all kinds of scrutiny, and we could move ahead with confidence on it; that doesn't seem to be the case, here. rather, it seems as though the virus can sometimes affect children, and we're not quite sure what the reasons for it are.

you have to balance the level of risk in sending kids back to school, and this doesn't strike me as worse than a bad flu season, when it comes to young children, specifically; if anything, this seems to be far less dangerous to young kids than the flu is.

but, the virus could very well change, and what i'm getting at is that there is some indication that it might have.

so, i'd proceed with some caution.

the rt number really needs to be calculated experimentally, and that's exceedingly difficult without widespread serological testing. the modelling hasn't been very predictive, because they haven't been able to get very good data.

i know that the public health people keeping push this number as something to base policy on, and if you could find it easily then it certainly would be, but this is in truth a relic of the theoretical part of their academic training; the difficulty in determining it to the accuracy required makes it a metric of questionable relevance, in actual practice.

so, could the rt number be a key indicator? it could be, yeah - but you'd have to find it with a high level of confidence first, because it's a very delicate metric, and that's almost impossible.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/could-rt-number-be-a-key-indicator-of-whether-we-need-return-to-lockdown-mode-1.5037351

so, i think i've managed to save everything important. that's the most important thing.

on second thought, though, i am going to move to a new drive, and relegate this one to emergency backup. i probably should have done that some time ago, i guess i just needed the smart test to fail to get me to do it.

i mean, that's what this is there for - to tell you it's dying, and backup and replace. i have a backup that i was intending to move to soon anyways...

well, the chkdsk seems to have produced the mysteriously cut out folder entirely in tact, although i can't really know. it didn't cough up any chk files, either. so, let's hope it's fine.

i know that this seems like a good time to do a back up.

i just need to go back to the story about the guy in training for vista support, who repeatedly asked about how to stop physical attackers, and the eventual response from the trainer:

"scenarios where the bad guys can actually physically get a hold of the computer are not supported."

and, it's actually kind of an old trope.

so, my attacker is my landlord and appears to also be a police officer of some sort. he can physically touch the computer, when i am out. there is really no feasible defence.

i can only shame the officers into knocking it off.

so, i was fairly certain i got attacked due to looking at what happened to my install partition, but looking at what happened to my data drive just confirms it.

the data corruption appears to have been targeted to the directories where i stored specific pieces of data. i can't read a specific directory, where all kinds of tasty stuff is stored.

rest assured, it is all backed up, repeatedly....except maybe some of the most recent edits to personal files. so, i don't expect to permanently lose too much, even if it is lost. but, i'm going to have to run a chkdsk and hope it's not too garbled because reconstructing the folder could be a pain. and you never know what you forgot until you need it...

right now, it doesn't seem to be finding much, which could be good - it could mean the index file just needs to be rebuilt. and, indeed, it is now telling me it is recovering unindexed files, so i guess i should get these in a found folder - i just hope it's pretty close to what it was initially.

of course, the other option is it runs through silently and recovers empty space, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

just on the jefferson specifically, and the washington somewhat less so.

it's not that they weren't racist. they were racist, clearly, and especially when they were younger. but, stop for a second and imagine living in a reality where everybody is racist.

it's not that it was just business. it's not that the times were different. it's that everybody was racist - and that ridiculous displays of overt racism were normal. so, people express the norms that they are raised into - and jefferson and washington both did, absolutely. for that reason, they were both racist.

but.

jefferson, especially (although also washington, later in his life) were amongst the first members of the aristocratic class to wake up and realize just how horrific what they were doing really was. and, before you can take steps to make changes, you have to actually realize the need to do so.

so, when i stand up for jefferson particularly (and washington less so), it's really not meant to whitewash the truth - they owned slaves, they were racist. it's just to point out that they were amongst the first to question the system as it existed, and that we might still have slavery, if they hadn't asked those questions and put in motion some of the first steps to end it.

it's subtle. but, it's a part of understanding how we got here to realize that, in the larger unfolding of history, some of those guys were really on your side.

so, that's going to slow me down a bit tonight.

yeah, it seems like i pissed the cop off upstairs, so he's launching some kind of attack on me when i go out for a smoke. my chromebook just rebooted, too. lovely behaviour.

i've got the laptop drive reading via xp and it seems like the chkdsk had to recover the entire registry, so i'm not booting back into that install. i'm concerned about data integrity first, and then i'm going to format it and reinstall.

these attacks are generally more annoying than legitimately damaging, but it's an infringement on my personal space that is quite disconcerting coming from law enforcement, especially.

the second chkdsk got the partition table back, anyways. i tried to reboot and i'm getting bcd errors, which is something i understand well enough.

i'm going to just do a quick perusal through the drive to get anything substantive off before i try a reinstall, but i don't think there's anything substantive in there, anyways.

i mean, i know the smart error means my time is limited, but if i can back a few things up, i might let it crash.

the first chkdsk aborted, which left the partition unreadable. i'm also getting a smart error on boot-up.

this drive has been up an down for years and i have a backup but i don't know if i want to move to it just quite yet. i'm going to try another chkdsk first and go from there.

Thursday, July 23, 2020

that install was supposed to be temporary; it never registered. you have to wonder if windows scrambled the file system or something.

ok, i'm actually feeling better and am going to try to do some work.

the mft on my laptop drive, which i have plugged into my desktop, also seems to have just randomly crashed on me. weird. the chkdsk is recovering large amounts of the drive, and we'll have to see if it's enough.

this has happened to this drive before and it usually comes out fine, but i think it might be time for a reinstall.

i guess it's time for california to build some field hospitals, huh?

https://deadline.com/2020/07/los-angeles-coronavirus-hospitalizations-record-fourth-day-in-week-1202990045/

so, you all realize that when trump argues that mail-in ballots are going to rig the election, what he means is he's going to rig the election with mail-in ballots, right?

it's become a standard deflection topic - they tell you how they'll cheat, then project it to their opponents.

you might want to get a jump on this now if you want to uncover it.

as an aside, though, you would expect crime rates to decrease with a guaranteed annual income as it would eliminate a type of base desperation.

so, you might want to be extra careful to avoid cops right now, because they're likely to be looking to cause shit.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/lower-than-normal-windsor-crime-stats-continue-during-covid-19-times

if the samples are from may and june, i would expect very low transmission rates just about everywhere outside of toronto and montreal. so, when you take data over a wide area and are only concerned about a very small area, what you do is water down the data.

so, if you get 10% in toronto and .01% west of sudbury, that balances out to 1% overall - while distorting the actual findings. and, i suspect that's what you're seeing here.

so to be clear: as canada was last in, it will be last out and i would not expect to see high levels of antibodies in the canadian population in the may-june period, even in the quebec-windsor corridor. if they had found higher prevalence, overall, that would indicate much earlier spread than previously thought. but, the numbers are smoothing out regional hot spots, blurring the reporting accuracy. and, eight-ten week old data in a pandemic is of minimal use in understanding where those numbers are today.

it's like they got in right before it happened.

we're going to find out if toronto got over that 20% hump or not soon enough. and, i think it's clear enough that montreal probably did.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/early-antibody-tests-suggest-few-canadians-had-covid-19

in fact, the ruling has almost no relevancy to the roxham rd crossing at all. under international law, we will continue to need to allow refugees that set foot in the country to make a claim when they get here, and this will still be seen as a way to circumvent the process. people that have weak claims will still avoid the official border crossings, where they can still be denied immediately for any number of reasons, under the understanding that they will be barred permanently once their claims are denied; if they go to roxham rd instead, they'll still be able to actually get in first, which increases their chances of winning their case increase dramatically.

we also have to accept the reality that, normally, people can cross into the country with little to no justification if they show the right documents and then make their claim once they're in. the border, official port of entry or not, isn't exactly locked down.

it's not these little, bureaucratic changes that are going to have much of an effect on the flow of refugees to the country, but rather broader push and pull factors. people want to come to canada, and they're going to get in if they want to. what's more important is ensuring that we have the infrastructure to deal with it.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-federal-court-ruling-could-mean-the-end-of-roxham-road-border-crossings

this is actually a great example of science defeating "common sense", and i'm happy to see it for what it is.

i'll admit that i'm a little bit skeptical that this person could pass the test, and would expect the end outcome of this to be that this person will be unable to return to work. however, you can't just assume a priori that a person with one really good eye is less capable of driving a vehicle than a person with two average eyes. you have to perform the experiment, because you might actually be wrong.

it is certainly true, for example, that a one-eyed person is likely to have issues with stereoscopic vision, and consequently is likely to be at risk of accident in their blind spot. however, it is also true that individuals with two eyes may have issues with stereoscopic vision for some other reasons, and in either case the veracity of the statement has to be demonstrated with actual testing. further, the relevance of the blind spot needs to be assessed in the context of driving a vehicle like a bus.

i do wonder if there may be some kind of easily fittable device that could act as a false eye, in context. i presume she probably has a glass eye. so, it would be easy enough to wire the data in, in principle, depending on how badly damaged the nerves are in the region connecting the eye to the brain.

but, it needs to be the testing that determines the fitness of the driver in the end, not assumptions about their ability based on physical characteristics. the common sense mafia will no doubt scoff, but the ruling is really quite correct in it's deference to empiricism over deduction.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/one-eyed-bus-driver-wins-discrimination-case-judge-nixes-ontario-licence-rule-1.5036487

the five countries with the fast-growing coronavirus rates are:

brazil
russia
india
united states
south africa

seems like the brics have been replaced by the brius.

ok.

so, i just went for a walk and realized the temperature has come down a lot outside. again. that's before some warmer weather kicks in tomorrow.

so, i can't complain it's cold inside if it's cold outside, or at least not in the summer. i have no grounds, just right now.

i guess i'm really complaining about the weather.

i need to temper myself. i don't actually want to move, i want to find a way to counteract the air. filing a t2 is a last resort....

i slept all day, and there's a high chance i could sleep all night.

i've at least managed to get used to it (which is very sad, to me. i don't want to get used to it. i want to continue to react to air conditioning with revulsion and dread. i hate it. i don't want to coexist with it. i don't want to acclimatize to it.) enough to be able to avoid shivering with the following:

1) socks
2) shoes
3) a sweater
4) two blankets

that's what i needed to stop shivering in the air conditioning in my apartment, in july - in a unit that i've made repeated complaints about being cold in. worse, i know that all i will get back if i complain further are lies.

"it's just the fan."
"my thermostat says 23."

he's just pathologically dishonest, that way. and, there's no function of communicating with a liar. i'm not wasting my time debating with a liar.

so, it looks like i'm going to be spending the weekend struggling with my metabolism as much as anything else. when a person can barely generate enough heat to stop shivering in the cold, i guess they're going to end up very tired once they eventually do manage to adjust. and, that's the reality, here.

worse is that i'm hungry. that's the other thing about the heat - it suppresses your appetite, meaning you can waste less money on food. when it's cooler, you have to actually eat, and that's expensive. my budgeting relies heavily on cutting food-related expenses by up to 75% over the summer months, but i can't do that if i have to eat every day to generate enough heat to stave off hypothermia. i can normally only eat every 2-3 days in a nice, proper heat wave.

and, i'm not going to eat more, in the end - i'm just going to suffer myself through the cold.

it must be costing him a fortune, as well. i guess it's his priorities as to what he wants to spend his money on, but if i can't figure out something soon, i'm going have to file a t2 app over it to get out.

the last time, i could fix it by opening the windows. right now, this is actually worse than it was in the first basement :(.

so, i managed to get some sleep this morning after several days of shivering and i'm not exactly happy about the process around getting there. it had been several days since i'd slept more than 2-3 hours at a time...

i took a look at the weather forecast, and it seems like it may be reasonable to expect a cooler august (that happened last year, too). so, i decided to take my chance while i could get it sort of thing and bought some more pot.

i actually got an eighth of a berryish blend called subway scientist that seems a little weak, at this point, but i want to give it some more time. i haven't been sleeping, after all. but, it knocked me out for a few hours this morning, before i woke up again shivering around 5:30.

i just went straight into the shower, and sat in it for about an hour. that, combined with the sun coming up, was enough to warm me up enough to get some sleep.

but, i woke up in a cold sweat and had to take another shower around 10:30. i'm hoping that gets me through the day, at least - but i could find myself back in the shower in the evening.

i've repositioned my fans, and i think it is helping somewhat. instead of having them point directly towards the window, to keep drifting smoke away from my bed, i've got them blowing air from outside into the unit. it seems to have made a difference to start, but it remains to be seen if i just trigger the air to work harder.

i'm in a difficult point, in that i can neither work nor sleep when i'm cold, and the only thing that's really working is to go outside for a walk and come back every few hours. but, that's only helping me sleep, it's not helping me do any work.

so, i don't know what to do.

seriously, though.

if your argument is "god made me do it", then i need pics, or it didn't happen.

(i think this was a video of a murderer claiming god made them do it, but i don't explicitly recall, and cannot find a reference to the link)

so, do you determine that the church is not guilty due to insanity?

well, it's a tort case. negligence doesn't require mens rea, in most cases. or, not in that way, at least.

if they try it though, i want to see some evidence.

this is a court of law, after all.

i mean, did they get god on the phone?

did they text it?

sext it?

send it an email?

that argument has no place in a court room, except in determining the fitness of a mentally ill person to stand trial.

she should sue for discrimination and be given compensation for wrongful dismissal, like any other employee of any other corporation would. this institution should not be given special treatment; it should be forced to follow the law, like any other corporation should.

and, i think this is actually pretty obvious and an open/shut case, not something that is particularly controversial or difficult. "god told me to fire her" is not a legal argument - it's actually kind of comical when presented in a legal context.

there's no double standard, no ambiguity - it's just straight up discrimination in an employment context, and the existing remedies should be applied with zero modifications.

that said, note that the vote was 48%-52%, at a baptist church. the headline here ought to be about how much progress exists within such a close vote. perhaps a large percentage of that 48% will see through the absurdity of "god told me to do it" and apostatize from baptist corp. if she succeeds, however accidentally, in shattering the faith of this congregation, or otherwise holding up a mirror and helping people out of the cult, that is a massive accomplishment.

i also hope that the issue puts her own career decisions in perspective, and helps her realize the fallacy of faith.

so, she should get a check, yes. i don't know what the going rate for this tort is. a year's salary, perhaps? well, they save a lot of money in not paying taxes, you know.

but, there's a lot of positives to pull out of this, actually - if people make the right choice, and move on from this so-called moral institution that decided to try and justify discrimination with the incredibly weak excuse of "god made me do it".

i mean, if it was a criminal trial rather than a civil trial, the church would need to plead insanity to pull something ridiculous like that off.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/transgender-pastor-fired-1.5657371

even in recent history, it's a stupid statement. you had the southern strategy underlying nixon, which carter tried to co-opt, and reagan eventually inherited. reagan was frequently openly racist; remember the welfare queen? the first bush, on race issues, was actually maybe the high point, here. or maybe he was just inconsequential, as president, all around. clinton was vicious in his policies, and obviously ridiculously racist in his pandering, which sadly often worked. dubya was frequently accused of racism in his response to disasters like katrina, and also in his foreign policy. and, like it or not, the wealth of the average black household actually went dramatically down under obama's presidency, indicating that many of his policies, in the end, had dramatic racial inequity consequences.

is trump particularly different? well, compare the rapist mexican trope to the inner city superpredator scare mongering and ask yourself if it's that different. trump campaigned on building a wall, but obama campaigned on being deporter-in-chief; that didn't come out of nowhere, that was a campaign promise from day one. it's degrees of the same messaging, and different more in terms of business interests. it's like construction v prison-industrial. really, it's that trivial, in terms of actual messaging.

and, biden will just carry through with the same legacy. the poverty rates will move sideways, at best; i guess it depends on what kind of control wall street gets, in the end.

see, and it's not like biden needs to have this debate, either. he's wining black voters by a comfortable margin. this, as usual, was an unforced error. they build up, in the end.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-says-trump-is-americas-first-racist-president/2020/07/22/867017e8-cc4b-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html

ugh.

they just both keep getting worse every day.

if you're going to put troops on the street like this, it's an invitation to start a fight. but, that's just it; if people take the bait, it frames his message.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-operation-legend-federal-authorities-american-cities-1.5659139

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

yeah, but he's including all of the cases from the agricultural workers in the windsor-essex area, when the reality is that the spike in cases is localized in a population that is fairly isolated, generally.

these kinds of things are going to continue to come up, and the reality is that we're a bad data point, and should probably be removed from pretty much everything as an outlier.

you'd really want to split the county into two parts, which should have the dual effect of cutting the rate down for the city of windsor, and putting it through the roof for the outlying areas.

as it is, these kinds of stats are going to be an annoyance in trying to reopen the venues here until that area gets under control.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/windsor-essex-ranks-worst-in-province-on-covid-19-exposure-metrics-says-biostatistician

yeah.

i don't think the judge expected this ruling to hold.

[70] The Applicants say that the FCA in CCR 2008, did not consider whether section 102(3) created a condition precedent to the validity of the ongoing designation. They argue that the FCA did not make any finding on whether ongoing review is actually required. They argue that the FCA did not find subsequent factors are irrelevant, and that, as such, the FCA has not decided the vires issue they raise now. The Applicants further note that, unlike in CCR 2008, they are seeking a remedy for the alleged failure to review (see: CCR 2008 at para 83).

Analysis – Ultra Vires

[71] I begin the analysis of this issue by reference to the following statement from the FCA in CCR 2008, at para 57:

An attack aimed at the vires of a regulation involves the narrow question of whether the conditions precedent set out by Parliament for the exercise of the delegated authority are present at the time of the promulgation…

[72] Further, at paragraph 89, the FCA states:

There is one key date that the Applications judge had to be mindful of: December 29, 2004 when the Regulations came into force, the last relevant date for the assessment of the vires issue. Regardless of the conditions precedent which one wishes to apply, the vires of the Regulations could not be assessed on the basis of facts, events or developments that are subsequent to the date of the promulgation…

[73] On the decision to designate the US, the FCA found that “[o]nce …the GIC has given due consideration to these four factors, and formed the opinion that the candidate country is compliant with the relevant Articles of the Conventions, there is nothing left to be reviewed judicially” (CCR 2008 at para 78).

[74] Considering the clear statements from the FCA in CCR 2008, and notwithstanding the able arguments of counsel for the Applicants, I am bound by CCR 2008. While the Applicants have somewhat reframed the vires arguments on these judicial review applications, in my view, the FCA decision is a full answer to the vires argument even as the Applicants now present them.

[75] I have considered the cases relied upon by the Applicants (Katz, Thorne’s, Wildlands League v Ontario (Natural Resources and Forestry), 2016 ONCA 741), however I do not read these cases as opening the door for this Court to take post-promulgation facts into consideration to determine the vires of the regulation. These cases specify that judicial review of regulations is “usually restricted to the grounds that they are inconsistent with the purpose of the statute or that some condition precedent in the statute has not been observed” (Katz at para 27). This issue was addressed in CCR 2008.

[76] In CCR 2008, the FCA notes in paragraphs 74, 75, 76 and 78 that s. 101 of the IRPA does not require “actual compliance” or compliance in absolute terms. Further, the wording of s. 102(3) does not reference actual compliance with the Refugee Convention or the Convention against Torture, rather, it is compliance with the factors set out in s. 102(2) of the IRPA that is assessed.

[77] The Applicants’ arguments regarding the sufficiency of the ongoing review were also addressed by the FCA in CCR 2008 at paragraphs 92-97. For the timeframe post CCR 2008, in his Affidavit, Mr. Baril confirms that reporting on the STCA continued. Mr. Baril states that the IRCC prepared reports in December 2016, March 2017, and February 2018, although he acknowledges that these reports were not submitted to the Governor in Council (GIC).

[78] Redacted versions of the reports to the Minister were marked as exhibits to Mr. Baril’s cross-examination. Although the content of these reports was not in evidence, they do provide evidence that reporting continued after the 2015 OIC. Therefore, I am satisfied that the obligation to review and to report “when circumstances warrant” as noted in the 2015 OIC continued. Furthermore, the Applicants’ arguments regarding the 2015 OIC are an attempt to challenge the OIC itself, which is beyond the mandate of this judicial review.

[79] Overall, in my view, the Applicants have not convinced me that the threshold to revisit the binding nature of the FCA decision on the vires issue is met here. Notwithstanding that the factual circumstances of the Applicants here may differ from the circumstances before the FCA in 2008, what does not differ are the legal arguments aimed at the same legislative provisions as determined by the FCA in 2008.

[80] I therefore find that the issue of whether s.159.3 of the IRPR is ultra vires of the IRPA was determined by in CCR 2008 and I see no grounds to depart from binding authority.

------

she admits she doesn't have jurisdiction, then essentially ignores herself. so, what she's done instead is try to frame the issue for the next court up.

that happens frequently, when a judge knows she's out of jurisdiction, but wishes she wasn't.

if we ignore the second part and just look at the first part, what does that mean?

it just means that people would be able to arrive here from the united states and make claims. it doesn't alter the structure of the law at all, it just allows for due process.

and, i'm in favour of due process.

that's a minor tweak. it's not an overhaul. that's fine.

but, if we're going to legislate that the united states is not adhering to international human rights law anymore (which is what the ruling effectively does), we're going to need something a little bit more robust than a 10 page ruling based on judicial precedent, at the federal court.

i mean, what the court is trying to do is...

the legislation explicitly states this is an executive level decision. rather than try and discuss the executive precedents, the ruling relies on judicial precedents. that's just wrong.

the executive decision may, in the end, defer to the judicial precedents, but the judiciary can't assume the role of executive government and just do it.

it can order that the executive do it, yes.

it can't do itself, though.

ok, looking into this is...

no. this needs to be appealed. this isn't a judicial question, and the court is overstepping it's bounds; i would appeal it on grounds of parliamentary supremacy, and argue it's not specific enough in scope to react to it. i do agree that vavilov is irrelevant.

so there's an objective criteria that allows the united states to be seen as a "safe country". this is from a government of canada website as a summary:

the legislation requires that the review of a designated country be based on the following four factors:

(1) whether it is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1984 Convention Against Torture;
(2) its policies and practices with respect to claims under the 1951 Refugee Convention, and its obligations under the 1984 Convention Against Torture;
(3) its human rights record; and
(4) whether it is party to an agreement with the Government of Canada for the purpose of sharing responsibility with respect to claims for refugee protection.

In addition, the Governor in Council may issue directives to provide greater clarity on the review process. The current directives came into effect in June 2015. Under these directives:

For the United States:
The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will monitor, on a continual basis, the four factors described above and report to the Governor in Council should circumstances warrant.

For any other countries that may be designated as safe third countries in the future:
The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will review on a continual basis the four factors described above and will report to the Governor in Council regularly.

Reviews incorporate information obtained from a number of sources, including United Nations organizations, international human rights organizations, government agency reports, statistical records and policy announcements, relevant academic research, and media reports.

so, that's what actual domestic canadian law says about what it means to be a safe country.

i don't know how a court can walk in and undo that without even addressing it. if we put a country on the list and it hadn't signed that convention, the court could undo it. but, the court can't substitute itself for parliament and decide whether that is true or not, it can only interpret whether the laws are being followed or not.

that is, applying a correctness standard doesn't mean adjudicating whether the question is true or not, it means determining whether the law was applied correctly or not. giving deference to the proper branch, in context, is not about vavilov, it's about a separation of powers.

rather, the ruling did two things. first, it scratched out section e from the following law, which is what the above summarizes

101 (1) A claim is ineligible to be referred to the Refugee Protection Division if

(a) refugee protection has been conferred on the claimant under this Act;
(b) a claim for refugee protection by the claimant has been rejected by the Board;
(c) a prior claim by the claimant was determined to be ineligible to be referred to the Refugee Protection Division, or to have been withdrawn or abandoned;
(c.1) the claimant has, before making a claim for refugee protection in Canada, made a claim for refugee protection to a country other than Canada, and the fact of its having been made has been confirmed in accordance with an agreement or arrangement entered into by Canada and that country for the purpose of facilitating information sharing to assist in the administration and enforcement of their immigration and citizenship laws;
(d) the claimant has been recognized as a Convention refugee by a country other than Canada and can be sent or returned to that country;
~~(e) the claimant came directly or indirectly to Canada from a country designated by the regulations, other than a country of their nationality or their former habitual residence; or~~
(f) the claimant has been determined to be inadmissible on grounds of security, violating human or international rights, serious criminality or organized criminality, except for persons who are inadmissible solely on the grounds of paragraph 35(1)(c).

i posted the whole thing for context, because that's much more limited than i thought it would be. i thought they scratched the whole thing out....

the court is in it's jurisdiction here - it can cross that out. and, i don't really disagree. it's overly broad. but, by doing so, it's not taking the united states off the list - it's abolishing a specific clause in the criteria. further, my understanding is that these specific cases would have likely been denied under section c, anyways.

the other thing it scratched out is this:

~~Designation — United States~~

159.3 The United States is designated under paragraph 102(1)(a) of the Act as a country that complies with Article 33 of the Refugee Convention and Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture, and is a designated country for the purpose of the application of paragraph 101(1)(e) of the Act.

what has the court done here? it has carried out an executive task, and that is beyond it's jurisdiction. it's not up to the court to decide whether or not this is true. that's not about deference, it's about separation.

what the court can do is order a review of the question, and people can then even challenge that review. but the court can't make an executive choice like that that determines the outcome of the review for them; that's not the correct branch of government.

so, what should they do?

i initially suggested they rewrite the law to more specifically address the things they were initially concerned about (like draft dodging after the iraq war), but i thought i was dealing with the actual agreement as something that got struck down. that is, i thought they struck down the stca itself, and they did not - those clauses are from the irpa. that's bad reporting from global, that's why you have to read things yourself, and i apologize for posting over bad coverage without debunking the msm article, first.

now that i realize that that's not the case, there really isn't anything to rewrite.

had the court only scratched out the first part, i'd accept the ruling.

but, they can't accept the judge going in there and doing the job of government in scratching out the second part. they need to appeal the second part on the grounds that the court is overreaching it's jurisdiction, and it can't reasonably make a decision like that in a court room.

that said, it may be time to launch a review and present a report around the topic. is the united states abiding by the cited international law? if it is, let us see the evidence for it, and a paper supporting it; if it is not, the law should be adjusted accordingly.

the point is that the question is being addressed by the wrong branch of government, and the executive has to push back for that reason. they may, in the end, agree with the court. but, they have to actually do that review first - which is, of course, subject to review, and even on a correctness basis, although vavilov would appear to suggest deference to the minister in situations where the decision is explicitly legislated.

so, they should appeal.

but, they should get the point and launch a review, too.

the ruling is here:
https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/482757/index.do

"these guys don't tell me anything" - ronald reagan

as absurd as it is, he actually has plausible deniability.

and, don't be surprised if he uses it.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7203337/trudeau-we-charity-foundation-real-estate-holding-company/

it's an interesting ruling, and clear demonstration that you don't need to be a citizen in this country to have rights.

generally speaking, a candidate will be able to successfully claim refugee status here if they can convincingly argue that they are risk of inhumane treatment when returned to their home country. the basis of the agreement is that this isn't of serious concern when speaking of the united states, so that can be discarded a priori; instead, we will just return applicants when they appear.

opening up refugee status to americans like this presents a potential "floodgate of litigation" type scenario. we might grant people refugee status for a wide array of concerns, from escaping conscription to concerns about capital punishment to even avoiding prosecution for drug-related convictions. i believe that the actual purpose of the agreement had more to do with claims of this sort than with the types of claims that people may be imagining, right now.

but, that is because the types of thing people are imagining are legitimately novel. it saddens me to think that our court system is being forced to consider the ramifications of returning people to the united states because they may be tortured in prison. that's a very sad day for the united states of america.

but, insofar as that is true, we certainly should not be treating the united states differently; if people really are getting tortured in domestic prisons in the united states, we need to weigh sending people into their system the same way we view sending people to oppressive regimes, like iran.

if the government wants to keep the actual purpose of the legislation in place, it may help to rewrite it to be more specific. i'm actually on the side of people fleeing conscription, but i'm less excited about being a safe haven for drug traffickers. so, i would respond to the ruling by clarifying the legislation, rather than abolishing it, or appealing the ruling. and, i'm not entirely sure how i'd clarify it - i might have to think that through very carefully, and spend some time explicitly studying it, first.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7205230/federal-court-rules-canada-u-s-safe-third-country-agreement-unconstitutional/

the gyms are essentially renting the equipment, like blockbuster used to rent movies. but, technology changes and if the price of buying the equipment is less than the price of renting it in the medium term then there's no really future in renting it. the virus is just a catalyst, here.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7206604/canadians-cancelling-gym-memberships-coronavirus/

so, they don't have any actual leads and have made up what is really a ridiculous story.

a loving father just randomly crashed his car, left without his phone, and smuggled his perhaps injured kids into a cabin, where he killed them days later and then killed himself.

?

more likely, i think, is that somebody smashed up that car, and then took the three of them into that cabin where they were held hostage. that third party ultimately carried out the murders, and managed to succeed in making carpentier's death look like a suicide.

the cops have nothing, so they're just closing it up.

but, did anybody at least print the cabin?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/sq-update-martin-carpentier-daughters-1.5658615

no, he will never hear the end of that.

ever.

trudeau's new campaign song for his campaign for gg?

if you want an american comparison, ford is really more like that utter dipshit chris christie than a trump or anything like that.

and, i spoke too soon; the temperature in here just started falling.

it could have been the laundry that was effective, in the end.

hrmmn.

<cartman>

i'm not lazy! i'm efficient!

</cartman>

and, he'd probably tell you he's not lazy.

no.

he's "efficient".

he wishes he could say that about his metabolism too, right?

"i gotta pass it every month. fuck. whoever wrote these rules was such a hardass. i don't even walk around the block every month, you know?"

doug ford isn't scary, in that sense - he's a lazy, incompetent idiot. he's not some scary dictator.

i'm more afraid of chrystia freeland than i am of doug ford, even if i have a greater level of contempt for doug ford.

i said my bit about this.

i would rather that they continue to pass emergency legislation than do what they're doing, but i'm not interpreting this as a power grab. rather, this is the consequence of electing a fat, lazy piece of shit.

no, really - the reason this is happening is just simply because doug ford is too lazy to do it the right way. and, we should be grateful that he's so fucking lazy, too.

so, i would have voted against this as well, but i'm not particularly freaked out about it - so long as we all make sure to hold him to his sunset clause, when it comes up. that's key.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/belinda-karahalios-cambridge-progressive-conservative-1.5658084

this is just a reminder that i supported the mcguinty government for years, and was broadly supportive of the wynne government, although i don't think i actually voted for them directly.

when i was in ottawa, i voted for yasir naqvi (who i interpreted as an atheist) on several occasions. i didn't vote in 2014 because i had just moved here but i voted for the green party in 2018, due to concerns about some of the messaging around marijuana from the wynne campaign, which i interpreted as a desperate embrace of racist messaging.

so, i voted green to give the liberals a time-out.

...despite being very aware that the riding was not seriously in play.

the temperature in here seems to have flipped over around 6:00-7:00 or so, and i do suspect he turned something off.

so, thank you, pigs.

i'm sure this is surreal for everybody. i seem to have been placed in a temporary surveillance cell, then granted a nexus card while living in it, have threatened to sue over air quality (that is better, at least) and am apparently causing workplace violation hazards, as i complain that it's too cold, while the cops sweat. i mean, if he really is a cop (he is.), that temperature may be being regulated by provincial legislation.

it'd be a lot of easier if the city just paid me out now so i can move on, rather than make me go through ten years worth of legal fights.

...and liberals are the new conservatives.

muslims are the new evangelicals.

you want evidence?

doug ford.

rob ford.

john tory...

i'm not talking about rural ridings.

i'm talking about toronto.

i mean, could you imagine the fallout if chrystia freeland decides she's going to walk through the front door of a mosque?

as the prime minister of the country, you'd think she could walk through the front door, right?

but, the party actually forces it's female mps and staff to walk through the back door for these events.

and, if she does sink to the level of walking through the back door, how likely are they to take her seriously?

this is a key concept through this blog, this developing contradiction between the strategies these fake left political movements are taking to win voters, and what that implies for the kind of policies they end up legislating. eventually, when you find yourself reliant on the votes of specific groups, you're going to end up legislating in ways that appeal to them - and you're going to need to float candidates that appeal to them in order to win.

so, what next?

i don't know. what i know is that the demographics to elect a female liberal prime minister do not exist in this country at this time; in order for the liberals to swing the demographics they need to swing, they can't run women, and they can't run gays.

the thing about the liberals running female candidates is that they've run themselves into a contradiction around it because so much of their vote relies on winning over religious minorities via identity politics.

it's actually far worse here because the demographics swing that much more towards what the apparatchiks call "diversity". but, when your aphorism of "diversity" is actually 70% in key ridings, you're just blurring the facts by using that kind of language.

the liberals are trying to build a political base on a coalition between mostly white feminists and mostly brown religious groups. it's a total contradiction. and, while the white feminist groups may help strengthen wins in areas they would have already won (a triviality in the system.), the actual swing ridings are mostly focused around these mostly brown religious voters.

it's kind of similar to the kind of coalition that the republicans tried to build between moderates and evangelicals, and we see how that turned out.

the reality is that their electoral strategy means that they can't win with a female leader, and it's not clear that they understand that; if you want to build a coalition largely around religious groups, you're going to need to run a male leader to keep their interest.

so, what's left? leftists are going to hate chrystia freeland. the religious groups won't vote for a woman. so, you're left with this milquetoast suburban white female vote that is perhaps very excited about freeland, but should realize they live in a bubble around it.

freeland may end up as this generation's kim campbell, in the end - she may become pm for a few weeks or months on her way to massive defeat.

but, there's a reason that the uk has seen seen female conservative pms and has not seen female labour pms.

and, i suspect that the first serious female pm in canada will be a conservative.

speaking of which, i wanted to say something about what appears to be a developing movement to replace trudeau with freeland...

...which is likely to end in disaster. freeland is basically a fascist who ended up in the liberal party because it's the natural governing party, the canadian equivalent of an american neo-con that ended up in the republican party as a vehicle for power. she's very blatantly very far to the right of centre, and has a history of pretty vicious language against popular left-wing movements. any delusions that people continue to drag around about trudeau are going to evaporate on contact with freeland. freeland clearly doesn't respect trudeau very much. so, the major winner of a freeland coup is likely to be the ndp.

and, she lives on a different planet, so she's likely to argue the opposite - that canada is a culturally conservative country, and i'm out of the spectrum. we've seen this over and over - we saw it with ignatieff (who nearly allowed the ndp to actually win.), and we saw it with paul martin (who wasn't able to prevent an ndp surge from putting the conservatives in power). the ndp will shoot up ten points overnight...

but, what's going on? there used to be a kind of chretien faction on one side and a trudeau-freeland faction on the other. now, it seems like the entire machinery is aligning around freeland, and what's left of a chretien faction is fading fast.

these corruption scandals aren't helping, and i'm sure that the deep state upper management in the liberal party (the chretien/desmarais camp) is getting antsy about it.

but, what seems to have actually happened is that trudeau got stuck isolating, and found out people liked it better when he wasn't there.

i don't know if they try to do this to avoid losing the next election (which is stupid. trudeau will outpoll freeland on his worst day and her best.) or if they're planning on what to do when he inevitably does lose the next election.

but, unless some kind of movement develops to stop it, it seems like that's where we're heading.

and, hey.

if the liberals really need the governor-general to be black, they can always send trudeau out in costume.

if we have to have one (and we might. we have a constitution. i don't remember, but i think getting rid of the office is probably a difficult task. but do we have enough difficult tasks at this point to open the damn thing up?), do you know who would be a good fit for the next governor-general?

justin trudeau.

it's perhaps a better reflection of his talents and abilities, as well as his background. it's a role for an aristocrat...

he wouldn't even have to move.

science is so last decade.

the cool thing now is blackness.

it's hardly what anybody on the street wants. but, when you organize around race, this is what you get.

i'm surprised that the governor-general has staffers, and i'm curious as to what kind of "work" it is that was declared to be "shit". i didn't think the governor-general did any actual work at all...

this is a ceremonial post. she has to sign things sometimes, but she's not expected to actually think about it. it's just that somebody has to sign certain things as a formality, due to the nature of the state as a constitutional monarchy. and, that is what canada is - our head of state remains the queen of england. the queen is not supposed to think about what she signs either, and all the governor-general is supposed to do is sign things on her behalf.

i understand that she was chosen for this ceremonial role to demonstrate the role science will play in the sitting government, which it turns out has also been ceremonial (because this government has really been no less anti-science and no less willing to co-opt the science than the last). so, if she ends up shuffled out, it'll be interesting to see what kind of symbolic messaging gets attached to the process. i suspect the liberals may want to use this as some kind of hare-brained excuse to bring in a black governor-general, although we already went through that once.

but, beyond whatever symbolic messaging the government sends around this, the only time i like to talk about the governor-general is in the context of abolishing it, altogether. i would rather grasp upon the opportunity to minimize or otherwise discard the role, in the future.

whatever fleeting "work" it is that they're talking about, the job really shouldn't exist.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/julie-payette-governor-general-harassment-allegations-1.5657397

it helps that nobody wants to go to new brunswick, ever.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/covid-19-economic-recovery-new-brunswick-1.5658211

there's an interesting java applet on the page here. you can rewind it....

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/21/dr-ghaley-it-could-be-4-5-weeks-before-coronavirus-cases-decline/

california just passed new york in total cases, fwiw.

new york has half the population, so they're going to need to get to 820,000 before you're looking at a comparable infection rate. so, that's another 410,000 cases. at 10-15,000 cases/day, we're looking at at least another month.

don't be surprised if it's not much more than a month, though.

i think what it really demonstrates is that the virus must have been circulating in new york quite early on. that's the most probable cause of the time lag.

so, i started the migration to moving to the step for the night, and i decided to take a walk to get a grasp of the temperature. i came back in and realized that all of the things i'd been doing for the day to get the heat up in the unit had worked better than i thought, despite still getting that bone chilling reaction to the refrigerants. i've pointed out before that the "air conditioning effect" is very much like a windchill effect; it may say 25 on the thermostat, but it's going to feel more like 15 with the air conditioning. i ended up breaking out into another cold sweat within minutes. so, what next?

i took a shit, picked at my face a bit (at least all of the sweating is helping flush out my pores.) and noticed myself warming up a little. i suspect he turned the a/c off or down not long after i posted last, but i've also noticed something else: the fact that i was wearing shoes, meant my feet were off the cold floors. that appears to have made more of a difference than anything else i did, making me realize the extent of the problem being caused by the cold flooring.

the easy answer may be to put something over these tiles.

as the chills started coming down, i found myself mostly interested in what i've been trying to do, but can't due to the a.c: sleep. so, i napped for a few hours, and was up after midnight.

it was raining....i closed the window and knew i was in until the morning....

....and what i realized is that the other side of the apartment is much more pleasant, that this frustrating refrigeration is only happening on the side of the apartment i spend most of my time in; the air temperature on the side with the kitchen & bathroom was not being distorted by the refrigeration. it was actually almost comfortable in there.

so, i tried to force myself to finish the pasta and couldn't. i got some laundry done. and, i'm just waiting for it to warm up outside.

am i just sick? is that really what's happening?

i have no other symptoms, and a history of getting cold very easily. i'll admit that it feels a little like some kind of food poisoning, so maybe i ate something bad twice, but i don't feel i need to bring in the idea that i'm sick to explain this. i've been through violently adverse reactions to even minimal amounts of air conditioning far too many times for this. so, this seems more like the 76479th time i've been cold from air conditioning (it's admittedly extreme, but not by much) rather than the first time i caught this particular coronavirus.

it doesn't matter, really. i don't want to self-isolate, so i'm not getting tested. if i happened to pick it up at some store somewhere, i don't imagine that it'll take too long for me to clear it. but, i mean, is it possible that i picked up a virus, and that virus is exaggerating my natural aversion to indoor refrigeration? sure. but, it's just as likely that there was some bacteria in my bottle of caesar dressing, and it got me twice. or that i'm just an underweight transwoman with a bmi around 20 and i don't have the insulation required to adjust to large drops in temperature - especially not in the summer, when my diet cuts roughly in half, and especially not after long bike rides where i probably burned off upwards of 10 kg.

so, what now?

it doesn't seem like i'm going to get much done. i'm typing from my bedroom, but i can't sit in here, it's too cold. i might try to force myself to finish that pasta while watching physics lectures, until the heat comes up enough that i can get some sleep.