i'm really ideologically straight-edge, even if i'm not actually in practice.

with the exception of mushrooms, i've actually never done any other illegal drugs. i would probably legit beat the shit out of you if you ever offered me meth or cocaine, and i very well might kill you if you ever tried to get me to do opiates - and then argue self-defence in court. i have no interest in these drugs, no desire to be around people that do them and no patience with people trying to sell it. the day that you offer me drugs of this sort is the day that you're no longer a human being, in my estimation.

i watched an old friend start doing coke in front of me, and i've talked to him maybe twice since. through mutual friends, i later learned he got hooked on it and almost got fired for it. it was just an instant delete, 'cause i'm not going to be the friend that lets you drag me through that. not for a second. not dealing with that. nope; bye.

the only exception to the mushrooms/pot/alcohol triad that i'd ever even so much as think about trying is mdma. the reason i've avoided it to this point is that i know that you can't find it; i think the general understanding on the street nowadays is that molly doesn't even mean mdma anymore, it means meth. if you could get me legit, pure mdma, i'd give it a shot. but, i have zero faith in the market to provide it, and i just don't bother with it.

k isn't going to kill you, unless you accidentally fuck up, but it's going to turn you into mush. if you want those kinds of effects, it's far safer to try lsd.

safe drugs: marijuana. actual pure mdma. mushrooms.

iffy drugs: alcohol. lsd.

stupid drugs: k, meth, cocaine, heroin.

k is a really shit drug, and it's hard to stand up for people selling it. what was the other guy selling? was it an opiate? i do support some relaxation of laws around use, but i really don't support relaxing laws around selling dangerous or shitty drugs on the black market; k doesn't kill people directly, it just destroys them as people.

you have to work in china's unique history of westerners bringing drugs into the country into the situation as well.

i've been a little skeptical about the narrative, and it's why i'm not really paying a lot of attention to these arrests. i think that one of them was arrested on a triviality, but two of three arrests are for crimes that....i don't believe in the efficacy of punishment, but i don't have a lot of sympathy for them, and think they really belong in some kind of incarceration and/or treatment program, so long as the charges can actually be demonstrated, which is difficult in the chinese court system. it's so corrupt, that we tend to ignore the possibility of legitimate convictions.

i've been arguing that the huawei case is a legitimate process, and the chinese have no right to get pissed off about it. frankly, i'm not convinced that's not true of the other charges as well, or that the media isn't trying to game this for their own reasons.

sadly, there may also be a component in the canadian upper establishment that actually wants to talk in terms of hostage negotiations, which i find to be revolting on it's face.

so, is it possible that this guy was actually, really selling k in china and got busted? it's entirely plausible, and i'm not going to be the person standing up for him, so long as i suspect that's a likely truth.

if somebody could direct me to evidence suggesting the innocence of any of the three accused, though, that would be useful to me.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/china-sentences-third-canadian-to-death-on-drug-charges-1.5053191

remember.

just look at the name of the country:

saudi arabia.

saudi is not a geographic region, it's the name of the ruling family. and, arabia is a peninsula, not a country. the saudi family controls a considerable portion of that peninsula, but not all of it.

so, the actual name of the country literally translates as "the part of arabia under the control of the saud family". it's not south arabia, or central arabia, or the monarchy of arabia or anything. it's an area of land that is owned by the family, who named the fake country after it.

so, that's not a country, that's just a powerful family that owns land - and these people aren't heads of a state, they're mob bosses.

Article 21 of the United Nations' 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government".

well?

how do you give the house of saud crime family legitimacy as heads of state, in context?

you can't.

they aren't.

here's the good stuff, here:

The Enlightenment-era British social philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) said that political legitimacy derives from popular explicit and implicit consent of the governed: "The argument of the [Second] Treatise is that the government is not legitimate unless it is carried on with the consent of the governed."

i mean, what is legitimacy?

it's rooted in the ability to demonstrate the public will; that's legitimacy, that's what it means. this guy is just about the literal opposite of that.

and, if he has no legitimacy as a head of state, then removing him from power is to be seen as a part of a legitimate revolutionary process, and not an illegal assassination of a legitimate ruler.

he's really more like a mob boss than a head of state...

isn't it illegal to bomb a head of state?

i'd look the other way, just this time. call it an exception.

but, what legitimate grounds does the saudi monarchy have to call themselves heads of state? there's no election, no constitution - not even a pretense of democracy. the closest thing they have is a kind of "right of kings" type argument, which has been debunked as nonsense since the end of the dark ages.

so, i'd have a hard time calling mbs a "legitimate head of state"; he just isn't. he's an aristocrat that assumed power, and there's no legitimacy in that.

that's putting aside the fact, of course, that he's only an acting head of state just right now.

well, actually, i guess he's a disaster unfolding in slow motion....

as it is, it's hard to see how he avoids an eventual american bombing campaign unless he magically grows a brain, very fast.

he's a disaster waiting to happen.

the flip side, i guess, is that if he goes full retard (and he seems to be consistently on the brink), it could put enough strain on this old anglo-saudi alliance of convenience to help break the bond in half. in the end, if what you want is to see the saudi state dismantled like iraq was (and are we not funding them for the same reasons we funded iraq?), letting it play out may be a better course of action than taking him out before it happens.

but, you'd probably save a lot of lives in the long run if you just got it over with and got rid of him now.

i mean.

what if they had offed saddam in the 80s?

it would have prevented a lot of problems.

mbs doesn't strike me as having half the brain power as saddam, but he seems to be every bit as horrible. and, when you put together stupidity, power and wealth you get nightmares in the end.

if we can get rid of him now, it's probably a good idea.

a nice precision strike would do the job...

we haven't seen this level of despotism much of anywhere in really centuries.

it's truly alarming...and he's clearly going to cause massive amounts of problems if he's not removed sooner than later.

this despotic moron really needs a date at the hague sooner than later.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/saudi-hit-squad-aljabri-1.5676650

if we're going to make a statement, if we're going to push back, this is the time to do it, now.

if you don't fight back, if you treat people how they want to be treated rather than how they deserve to be treated, they will just continue to push you around...

you have to stand up to a bully, and this bully is currently at half strength - meaning it's a good time to pounce.

so, with the border closed and commerce down anyways, this is the time to hit them as hard as we can, in the hopes that it slaps some sense into them.

how about a major tariff on softwood lumber?

there's a point where we have the right to get fed up and just bludgeon them.

i mean, there's a pattern here.

you wanna go, donny? come at me. let's go.

at this point, we should actually be escalating.

if trump wants to pick a stupid fight with canada before the election, make it backfire. make it hurt.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-aluminum-tariff-1.5677036

ahahahahahahahahaha.

hope it gets him.

https://torontosun.com/news/world/former-u-of-t-prof-jordan-peterson-contracts-coronavirus

"she sounds like...."

i sound like a socialist.

and, i'd be happy to party like it's paris, 1793.

we need to get past this.

it will ruin us, if we don't.

the biggest threat to individual liberty has, throughout history, always been religion. that's just going to get worst, until it's finally defeated.

and, in the end, we can place our martyrs in the shrine where they belong, to remind us of our victory over this great threat to our freedom.

the hebrew nation has produced some great minds. don't get me wrong. some of our most important advances....

but, their religion is quite simply an abomination, and it's offshoots have been, without question, the single greatest retarding force in history.

if you're serious about decolonization, attacking organized religion should really be at the top of your agenda.

i mean, you realize that, don't you?

that's how they really get you - that's how they colonize you: they send you to church. it's what colonization is.

and, if colonization is essentially the same thing as christianization (or islamification, in some areas, like the middle east), then decolonization is the same thing as dechristianization (or deislamification).

and, i will assert that you will never truly undo the colonization if you don't address the centrality of religion in the process.

for me, as a self-identified european pagan, dechristianization means going back to the old ways, before christianity existed - which was the literal project of the renaissance, and it's flowering in the enlightenment.

for you, it might mean chanting at rocks or something.

but, the point is to throw christianity away, part and parcel, not to try to adjust it to fit modernity.

we don't put combustion engines on horses, and we shouldn't try to put science on religion.

the golden rule is garbage.

throw it away.

it's trash.

decolonization means dechristianization.

it's not just about saying "they were wrong about heliocentrism and evolution and homosexuality and ..., but they had a sound moral system, and are fixing the problems".

no...

decolonization is dechristianization means overthrowing the entire order, and reversing the system at it's most critical points.

it's not just about leaving the theology behind, or filling in gaps. it has to be a total revolution in thought, to a more enlightened way of seeing reality, as driven by data and evidence.

stated differently: if you're going to treat adults like children, you shouldn't be surprised when they act like it.

"We have to behave with other people as we would want them to behave with us"

well, i don't agree with this idea, in principle. rather, i think we need to treat people in a way that is reflective of the way they've already treated us - we should not be naive, and allow people to take advantage of us, in the hopes that they may change. they probably won't.

a statement like that coming from somebody that's supposed to be a socialist is actually rather disconcerting; it's an almost literal statement of the hard-right "golden rule", as pushed by backwards idiot christians.

that said, i would want those bar staff to accommodate my request for a larger seating area. by not treating me how i want to be treated, the bar owners are opening themselves up to reciprocal behaviour. it would follow that if the bar owners want to be treated with more respect, then they should treat their customers with more respect and cater to their requests to put the tables together.

if i was in that situation, i would not blame the staff, though. the staff are just doing their job. rather, i would bring the manager over and yell at them, as it's their behaviour that is not reflecting how i'd like to be treated.

in all likelihood though, given the circumstances, i would probably choose to avoid conflict.

here's what you do if bar owners want to get pushy and enforce bullshit laws on you.

1) ask for the manager.
2) calmly and tersely explain that you are taking your business elsewhere for the precise reason that they are enforcing the rules. that way, they know the reason for their loss of revenue; they understand why they're losing business.
3) write an informative review on the company's website that this establishment is enforcing questionably valid rules and if you don't like that to go elsewhere.
4) find somewhere that is more reasonable.
5) tell your friends about the more reasonable spot.

yelling at staff, who are underpaid and overworked, doesn't help.

go after the bar owners, and go after them where it hurts.

https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/b-c-premier-calls-restaurant-patrons-idiots-for-abusing-staff-over-covid-19-health-orders-1.5053892

mathematicians don't tend to have a lot of respect for epsilons. they are the weakest members of the real field - discarded as irrelevant, and often even multiplied or even squared and set as equal. a million epsilons is no more a threat than merely one. but, they're tenacious things, too - like the virus itself, always there.

cantor was a lunatic, but at least his ideas hinted at a new mathematics. we don't have the language to properly articulate it, and the mathematics is even in it's infancy, but we realize now that when we say there's an infinite number of numbers to count to and an infinite number of points on a real line that these are two different orders of infinity. we're not really there with infinitessimals, yet; we just produce epsilons and throw them away at will.

to you, an epsilon may be a person, and that's fine.

but, i can't and won't think like that. epsilons are to be thrown away and discarded.

i mean, we could plug in an epsilon, right?

but, people are going to look at you funny when they tell them that epsilon percent of the population under 40 are really just the walking dead, right now.

so, i went looking for an official ifr for kids, and it seems to be a standard practice right now to refer to the ifr for not just kids but "young adults" in general as "close to zero". here is one example:

The estimated IFR is close to zero for children and younger adults but rises exponentially with age, reaching about 0.3 percent for ages 50-59, 1.3 percent for ages 60-69, 4.6 percent for ages 70-79, and 25 percent for ages 80 and above. 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v2

that appears to be about as close as i'm going to get, right now.

so, 0.05% is probably a high estimate. but, when you start pushing the ifr much lower than that, you're just competing with error for results - it's effectively 0%, statistically.

no, that doesn't mean that the odd kid won't die; so long as the ifr is non-zero, which it clearly is, at least one kid will die. and, i'm sure the cameras will be on it like vultures on a carcass.

but, it's a number, and you need to plug in numbers if you want answers.

but, what have i learned in sum?

1) they tend not to broadcast posts that include links, with the exceptions of links to this site and links to my commercial sites (sometimes). as they don't appear to discriminate about the kind of link to a broad degree, i'm suspecting that there is probably a filter somewhere along the way. but, this filter appears to be being monitored by a live thug/pig.

2) when i try to get around this by posting a "post not broadcast" post (which does broadcast, and thereby broadcasts the link to the post with the link that wouldn't broadcast, effectively bypassing the censors), they will shut down broadcasting altogether within a few hours. so, they don't like that.

but, they're not communicating with me. i've tried opening this channel, which is clearly being read by the people that are trying to censor the broadcasts (which are only going to me, afaik), and i've received nothing at all but enigmatic behaviour that i'm left to try to interpret.

one of the principles i use in engaging with the thugs/pigs is to try to be as transparent as possible. i'm more law-abiding than most; since they legalized pot, they're going to have to bring me in on j-walking to get me. really. there's nothing to get me on, and they've tried, clearly. so, i'm all about being as honest as i can, to eliminate any ambiguities. the most dangerous armed people in any society are always the pigs in it. i am fully cognizant of that, and want to ensure that these dangerous thugs in our midst are not confused about my nature or intentions. this is consistent with my views as a free speech activist - the best way to get your head around something is via open discourse. so, by taking this approach, i can be confident that if i'm ever found dead via suspicious suicide, or if the cops ever brazenly just shoot up my front door, that they are not acting proportionally. this is in contrast to an approach that involves hiding information from the cops, which has the potential to lead to miscommunication.

it would be useful if that communication was two-way.

at the end of the day, it is likely that i will choose to disagree with any decisions made by censors and seek to find ways to evade them; it is not very likely that i will just abide by the rules. but, it would be useful to know what these people are trying to prevent, at the least. i may project otherwise, but i'm not an oracle. i need data to process before i can react, and in the absence of it, i can only make guesses.

so, that's what i know.

but, i don't fully understand what's happening.

they shut the broadcast down again...

see, i really don't understand what they're doing. they allow it, then stop it, then allow certain posts, etc. so, allow me to explain this yet again.

the only reason i have the broadcast set up at all is to archive the posts.

as it is not working, i have been archiving the posts using other means. but, ideally, i would like a copy of every post i make to this space to appear in my email, so i can eventually reconstruct it in a linear ordering, and reproduce it as a readable document.

i have no direct audience. there are two addresses that this broadcasts to - deathtokoalas and the koalacentralcommand. in both cases, it's simply intended to be back up. that's all.

so, the only audience that the pigs are stopping from getting these posts is, in fact, myself. there are no further recipients, afaik.

further, afaik, the posts are freely available at the actual blog, which is what i actually care about.

i guess i'm kind of struggling to articulate myself using concepts that i don't really understand well. i was very late to get on to social media, i never really liked it very much and i was very quick to get off. i do not interpret this space as "social media", and in fact have moved here explicitly so that i'm not interacting with a concept that i don't have a lot of interest in. i got on social media late, but i got on the internet early, so i still interpret the internet from the eyes of a 90s kid; i like simple web pages, i don't own a touch screen and i still use a mouse and keyboard. so, i'm getting the impression that i probably wouldn't even properly understand any of the accusations directed at me.

i do want people to subscribe to the feed, and get updates in their email. but, i don't want to interact with this space, or any other space that i create in, with any of the framework of "social media content". i don't see this as a "blogspot account", i see it as a personal website. and, i don't want you to log into a feed and interact with me in that way; i want you to come to the website and browse it.

so, i think they're approaching this with an intent to reduce potential virality of these posts, but in doing so they're trying to shut down an internet 1.0 site using internet 2.0 tactics. and, i'm just left confused.

i'm just trying to archive my posts, guys, and all you're really doing is just being pointlessly annoying.

as a parent, you will not be able to tell if your kid has a cold or has covid-19.

in fact, the testing might not be able to determine that with any clarity, either.

and, when your kid does get covid (and they will.) and beats it, you won't know, in the end, if they had it, or if it was just a cold.

so, yes - some fraction of a percentage of kids will die when they open the schools. if ifr for kids specifically is .05% (a high estimate), and 40% of the kids get it, then you should expect that 0.02% of the kids will die. very simple math.

but, that's a not a high number, and only the most ridiculously risk adverse people would see it as a reason to halt.

kids get sick from something they caught at school and die every year. kids are robust, but they're fragile; they die easily.

listen, nobody is saying the kids won't get it. if you send your kids to school, there's a good chance they're going to catch something or other - the cold, the flu, covid-19, whatever.

the point is that, as far as we can tell at this point, it's not going to affect them very much. so, as long as the kids aren't living with elderly parents...

of course, if you had children very late, or you live in a large extended family that includes old or infirm people, you might want to avoid sending your kids to school. in general, those are scenarios where families have extra responsibility to protect the people around them. in reality, great-grandma probably can't handle the regular old flu very well either, and you really want to keep her away from that, too.

so, yeah, your kids'll get sick. but, so what?

https://globalnews.ca/news/7254294/coronavirus-student-tests-positive-georgia-school/

or, maybe this is a good example of the kind of people that the feds are going to end up targeting with their most recent poor law.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7253174/calgary-identity-fraud-cerb/

because you want them to keep partying without being able to wash their hands, right?

stupidity. flat out.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/los-angeles-can-cut-off-power-and-water-at-properties-hosting-parties-during-the-pandemic-1.5053648

while they're maybe even past due for experimental treatments, i wouldn't expect a safe vaccine that you can actually hand out until some time next year.

that said...

at current growth rates, they may reach herd immunity by october - and months before anybody else.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7254536/coronavirus-possible-us-vaccine-before-election-trump/

while some of the posts started broadcasting again in the last few days of july, there were no posts between july 29 at 2:15 and aug 1 at 6:26, the first post for aug 1st.

while i would like to create a "not broadcast post" for each of the 170 posts created over these three days, i already have these posts archived in my records, and doing so would screw up my record keeping.

posts for july 29th:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020_07_29_archive.html

posts for july 30th:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020_07_30_archive.html

posts for july 31st:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020_07_31_archive.html

the following sequence was also only partially broadcast:

july 28, 2020

fat people have a genetic disease that cannot be cured.

therefore, they should be prevented from breeding in order to eliminate the disease from the genome.

discuss.

4:01

so, do i think that weight regulation is determined by genetic factors? that is, do i think that obese people are "born that way"?

no. not at all.

well, not really.

what does the science actually say? it's not what the media wants you to think, but that's normal - the media almost never gets the science right. generally, when you read a report about science at the cbc or cnn, it's been so distorted by the obscene religious censors that you essentially have to run through every clause with a giant not operation. their journalistic integrity is beyond atrocious.

so, forget about the nonsense you've read in the news - it's just that. nonsense.

so, let's ask a question we've asked a few times, now. what is a gene? and the answer is that a gene is a protein that regulates the production of hormones. so, in order to demonstrate that an issue is genetic, you have to show that it's regulated entirely or at least dominantly by hormone production. so, is obesity determined solely or even dominantly by hormone production? if it is, then you've found a genetic defect that should be targeted for elimination from the genome. if it's not, then you can't blame obesity on genetics.

so, is weight determined by hormones? this is the actual debate here underlying the media obfuscation, and the answer is sort of. two people standing side by side can eat the same meal and metabolize it differently, and that difference in metabolism will be caused by different levels of hormonal regulation (which, remember, is all that genes do), but at the end of the day they consumed the same amount of mass, and it's conservation of energy that is going to predominate in the end.

so, these news reports (which are designed to ensure nobody has their feelings hurt, first and foremost, and not as the cold, rationalist scientific explorations that they should be designed as, to discard emotions as meaningless subjective opinions) constantly want to bring up genes as this kind of black box explanation. our understanding of genetics is slowly pushing past the point where you can get away with this kind of lazy journalism, but for right now you can still throw just about anything in this pile of magic called "genetics" using tricks like "studies suggest" or "scientists estimate", and get the answer you expected out of it by designing the question that way. to call that a perversion of science would be an understatement. but, if you want to understand this properly, you're better off starting not from the assumption (and that is still all it actually is) that genetics are paramount and unalterable (as though god decided, right?), but rather from the conservation of energy, which we can use newtonian approximations for, in context.

energy stored = energy consumed - energy burned

so, if you're fat it's because you eat more than you need, and it's the most basic physics in the world to understand it as much.

it is consequently the case that if your fancy genetic model contradicts that simple equation then you can throw it in the trash - it's garbage. genetic/hormonal complications may affect the amount of energy your body burns, but the issue of stored weight is ultimately determined by how much one consumes and not by how much one burns and you simply can't store more energy than you've consumed. that's not biology; that's physics. you can't gain weight by not eating, and if you burn calories you will always lose some weight, even if your hormonal regulation is particularly defective and prevents you from burning fat like a healthy person in a particularly invasive way.

given that truth, hormonal regulation brought on by gene expression can at most be an annoyance. it's friction. it's a complicating factor. but, to say that you can't lose weight because of your genes is wrong. rather, people with poor hormone regulation due to defective genes will simply need to work harder and eat less to maintain healthy vital statistics.

that means that the issue is not genetic, at it's core - and that people with defective genes should be paying more attention to lifestyle, not giving into fatalistic assumptions, or giving up on life because god.

as an aside, do we want to conclude that obesity is a genetic defect? because, i can tell you that i'll never accept it. the unavoidable conclusion of trying to clinicize an issue that is in actual truth almost entirely about lifestyle would be that we need to find a way to eliminate the genetic disease/defect of obesity from the genome. i mean, we can't be walking around talking about accepting inferiority as normal. actual diseases need to be targeted and expunged. so, this intelligent design recast as liberalism thing only gets the religious people to the end point they want if it's rooted in religious assumptions in the first place; if you find the fatalism of these religious arguments laughable, i'm talking about the "god made me the way i am" crowd, you're just going to take the knowledge as an argument for eugenics. the idea that being fat is a choice and can be reversed is consequently a lot better than the alternative, which is that fat people have a genetic disease that cannot be cured and should be prevented from breeding.

4:25

and is it just natural variation?

no.

these people would be eaten instantly by lions. no chance at all.

4:41

it's been the sporadic efficacy of the conversion process at the one drive site that's screwed me up over the last few days. i'd be done by now if i wasn't stuck waiting and trying over and over to get the server to convert the file properly.

it was yesterday morning that the third trimester file refused to convert properly from doc to pdf (the error is that they introduce a conversion step, from doc to docx, that breaks the formatting). so, i fell asleep waiting for it to work, and was up in the afternoon. it converted, eventually.

then, i was ready to post the 2013 combined (final) updates yesterday afternoon when the machine rebooted on me before i got the chance to save the downloaded pdfs anywhere (after trying to get the conversion to work several times), so i'll need to go back to the one drive site and hope it works. this is the chromebook, and it's designed with this in mind, but it's a process to set back up, and it threw me for the day. i was going to wait until i was done, but i ended up eating for the first time in a few days, and that just knocked me right out, in the end, after however many days without eating or sleeping (which is what i actually prefer, fwiw. fuck eating. fuck sleeping. but, i don't have an energy source to plug into. not yet, anyways.). the warm & humid temperatures finally overpowered the a/c down here yesterday as well, which was highly conducive to sleep after however many weeks of the frigid air from upstairs making it so hard to sleep. i sleep best when the temperature is in the high 20s, and can't sleep at all when i'm even a little bit cold in the summer - even at 22 or 23, it just feels like somebody is dumping cold water on me.

 i was up a little after midnight, when it cooled down, and have mostly been focusing on catching up on eating this morning.

i uploaded the 2013 deathtokoalas file to smashwords yesterday, but i didn't get a chance to catch the conversion before the reboot.

that means i have the following left to do:

1) check the july-dec 2013 deathtokoalas file at smashwords. the formatting there is bad, i just need to check that the file actually updated.
2) there is no travel blog for january, so i will need to upload just the dtk update to the january bandcamp archive. i will need to upload that file to smashwords, as well.
3) i will need to get the full travel blog file up to smashwords
4) i will need to get the full travel blog file and the full deathtokoalas file both up at lulu
5) i'll need to update the google drive share as well.

these are minor edits and should take an afternoon, but i want to prioritize cleaning for today.

the 2014 run through should be much quicker because i've got the parameters better set, now. i won't be adding any new posts, but i will be likely removing a lot and maybe transferring quite a bit. the major change is that the politics blog is likely to become a little more focused, as specific concepts get moved entirely to dtk.

will i do a combined blog one day?

i might, in the end, but likely only as a total update. so, you might get it all thrown at you in one ridiculous 100,000 page file, in the end. for now, i'm not planning on that.

so, for the day, i'm doing a lot of cleaning (including of myself) and i'll get back to this when it's done.

7:22

 Genes contribute to the causes of obesity in many ways, by affecting appetite, satiety (the sense of fullness), metabolism, food cravings, body-fat distribution, and the tendency to use eating as a way to cope with stress.

i'll accept metabolism, primarily. body-fat distribution is a consequence of metabolism.

but, if you're going to tell me that you're fat because you have genetic factors that affect your appetite and there's nothing you can do to stop it, i'm going to laugh at you. yet, that seems to be what a lot of the argument is based on.

"well, sure i ate the entire cake. i was hungry! it's genetic!"

go take a holiday in africa and come back and tell me how you feel about that, now.

7:29

no, really.

the fucking retards think i'm some kind of spy. it's clear as day.

so, they've started letting a few posts through, but are blocking broadcast with anything with a link in it.

gotta stop me from repeating russian propaganda, i guess.

in actual fact, they've mostly blocked much needed deconstruction of worthless msm articles, and a lot of links to products that i have for sale. which is annoying...

...because the purpose of this page is to sell things.

so. pigs...

i'm trying to sell something, here. can you stop making it more difficult to do that? thanks.

is social media a religion?

so, i mean, i'm not going to knee-jerk into the kind of reaction you're going to get from a lot of american libertarians, very few of which seem to have a good grasp on the legalities around speech issues.

but, let us all remember that twitter is powerless, if we stop using it.

they only have as much power to control and subjugate as we give them.

“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19, which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,”

that's a thought crime.

that's where we are.

will you tolerate this?

while he may have been characteristically loose with details (immunity is the wrong term to use in context for children that have yet to see the virus but can be expected to defeat it very easily), as far as i can tell, trump's statements about children being virtually unaffected by the virus, up to statistical noise, are absolutely correct.

these people own the servers, they can do what they want. but, they're consistently wrong, and are consistently labeling correct information as false.

so, we need to make a choice whether we want to let them continue to do that or not.

i only use facebook as an update service; my facebook page is a cv, essentially. a link dump. and, this is a good example of the reasons i stopped using the site - i was unhappy with the content i was receiving, and felt the time i was spending arguing with people about it was just wasted. i make a conscious attempt to avoid any substantive discourse at all over facebook.

i have a twitter account, but i have only used it once or twice since i signed up in 2008. the reason i've avoided twitter is actually the character limit, which you might guess from sorting through this is something i'd find highly restrictive. but, watching it's restrictions on free discourse develop into an authoritarian body that deletes post for being wrong (but is usually wrong itself), i'm glad i never bothered with it.

but, i mean it's up to us to make a choice, here. the reality is that the "fact checkers" at twitter and facebook have an absolutely abysmal track record of actual fact-checking, to the point that you may want to assume that the opposite of everything they say is true. they're always wrong, to the point that they've become a great representation of paul krugman's "very serious people".

they're serious, alright. they're seriously wrong.

given all of this evidence against them as a fact-checking service, do you want to continue to use their sites? do you want to log in every day and have your opinions subject to alteration at the whim of people that don't know what the fuck they're talking about?

it's hard to get off the network, i get it. everybody's there. so, how do you get out?

i dunno. set up your own page. start a blog. there's ways out...

but, if it was predictable that a site like facebook would turn into the thought police, it has now happened, and we are now here. and, it's up to us to stop using it if we don't like it.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-facebook-pulls-trump-post-over-coronavirus-misinformation-presidents/

no solidarity for christians.

crucify them all.

i mean, that should be a hard case for me, as it pits two values i hold strongly against each other: anti-religiosity and free expression. even if these are really kind of actually the same thing, the law is pitting them against each other.

except that i don't actually give a fuck.

and i won't stand up for christians, ever.

now, here's a case that nobody should give a flying fuck about it.

technically speaking, i'm far more likely to stand up for the religionist's rights to free expression than to enforce any kind of health laws, even if i might cheer on the sidelines for anything that harms the faithful, in general.

but, i'm not actually going to stand up for a fucking christian.

let him rot.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadian-pastor-guilty-of-defying-myanmar-s-coronavirus-law-1.5053162

i woke up shivering, but i at least got some sleep over the last few days. i didn't sleep much over the weekend, and i'm known to move in extremes like that - sleep 20 hours a day for a week, then sleep 2 hours a day for a week. and, yes, it's weather-dependent - i sleep less when it's nice and hot, but i get cold easily and can't sleep in the presence of any kind of refrigeration, at all.

so, today is legitimately a clean-up day. and i'll get back to finishing up april tomorrow or late tonight.

i had to take a detour yesterday to add a number of categories to the travel blog. i also had to fix a few typos. but, i'm going to wait to upload until i get through 2014, first, so i don't have to do it more than once.

it's very chilly in here :(

it's downright cold outside. 16 degrees, in august. what the fuck?

we should get some more seasonable, pleasant, summer-like weather for a few more days on friday, after all. my fears of a falling down to sub-30 degree temperatures so early in the season seem to have been unfounded, in the end. the last week of unseasonably cold weather (we've had some days that have struggled to even get to a barely t-shirt acceptable level of 25 degrees) should lift temporarily, at least.

although it was true - there were really no summer days in the forecast at all, at the time. i think the hottest day was a decidedly spring-like 28, without humidity.

but, as long as they don't change it, this weekend should be a little bit more comfortable than this week has been. it's been unpleasant, here. it's been cold....

for the day, and probably tomorrow, i'm going to have to find ways to generate heat. i've got some dishes to do, as an excuse to run the hot water. i'll probably take a few showers. i just used the stove. i'll do some laundry later. etc. anything to try to generate warmth....

if the other published numbers are right, then the magic number you want to look for in the united states before this starts to slow down on it's own is 200,000 deaths.

but, i'm still calling for 350,000 deaths there, minimum.

in canada, the magic number is about 25,000.

so, this is the irony - as they are (much) closer to the hump than we are, they could get through this faster than us.

look at new york, today. the rest of the country will be there in another six weeks. i see no end to this here, at all - we could be dragging our asses through this six months from now.

fwiw, an ifr of .3% would suggest a true case count in the united states that is in excess of 50 million people. at .6%, considered a high estimate nowdays, it would suggest over 25 million cases.

in canada, a .3% ifr would suggest almost 3 million total cases, whereas a .6% ifr would suggest nearly 1.5 million.

if the ifr is under 0.3%, which i think is closer to the consensus since the last time i looked when 0.6 was considered reasonable, it would suggest pushing two million cases in quebec, given the death count of 5687.

and if it's more like 0.1%, which was the lowball i used in my model, then you'd be looking at 5.687 million cases. in ontario, .6% is 460K cases, .3% is 930K and .1% is 2.782 million cases.

obviously, nobody knows the exact number of people that have been infected in ontario or quebec. but, when your experimental indicators gives you a range in the 600K-5700K range, and your study throws out 125,000 (no doubt with a large error rate), you've either overturned the existing science or you've done something terribly wrong.

why would they lie?

so canada can win on twitter.

relative to the warped understanding of reality presented by twitter. of course.

well, maybe faulty tests are more likely...

maybe.

i wouldn't put it past them.

it's not consistent; there's something underlying what they did across the country that is deeply flawed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently has a best guess of 0.65% for the IFR. 

so, that 4.5% in quebec, as well as that 2.5% in ontario, are really red flags as to consistency in the data.

if the death rate for the virus is 0.6%, a more acceptable estimate, than we would expect upwards of a million total cases in quebec, at this point. even if you creep it up to 1%, you're still looking at upwards of 600,000.

as we've seen low-ball testing throughout canada, the most reasonable way to explain the dramatic disconnect is to point fingers at the tests. i know that the media was focusing on false positives when these tests rolled out, but the actual issue in front of doctors was false negatives. that is, the tests available at the time were known to miss a large number of cases. it's still hard to recoup reasonable numbers out of the ones presented, given published error rates, unless you assume that they're over-sampling rural areas relative to urban areas.

again, there's really only two possibilities, given that we know that death rates are pushing 1% at the very highest, and should be lower in advanced health care systems like canada.

1) canada has an astronomically high death rate, compared to similar countries or
2) the data is drastically underestimating the prevalence of antibody immunity in the general population

...and (2) is far more likely.

that 4.5% death rate in quebec is a higher number than can be calculated by naively dividing out the number of deaths by the number of actual found cases in the united states, which is roughly 3%.

so, i don't expect those results to hold up.

really, if i didn't know any better, i might think there's been an attempt to fit the data to naive who numbers, and an attempt to downplay any regional spread.

and, to be clear: i wouldn't trust the canadian government to tell me the time of day when we're standing directly below the peace tower. they have a history of just rank dishonesty, especially in times of crises. truth is malleable to a greater cause. and, if i didn't know better, i might think that's exactly what it's all about.

so, i'll wait for some independent analysis.

but, what have we sacrificed all of this for, if we're no closer to ending it? what have we gained, in all of this misery, if the end result is one of the highest death rates in the world, and no immunity to show for it?

i mean, you might look at those numbers and think you won some kind of stupid game or something because you kept the infection rate the lowest.

but, you're not winning if it means the death rate is the highest.

so, i'm going to assume that the canadian government must be using malfunctioning tests that are missing a lot of positives, and expect that independent testing eventually adds up a little bit better with the data in front of us than the government results have.

so, call me skeptical...

i mean, what's the death rate in quebec if there's only 125,000 cases? it's 4.5%! quebec's health care system has poorer outcomes than other places in canada, but those are 3rd world mortality rates.

in ontario, the official stats would suggest a 2.5% death rate, which would imply ontario must have a terrible health care system.

the numbers are just not consistent with the facts that we have, meaning:

1) our health care results have been alarmingly poor or
2) they're wrong.

i think (2) is probably more right than (1).

but, we'll need to wait for independent studies to verify the results.

it's very frustrating to consider the possibility that the government has banned everybody from having fun for months, with no end in sight, and we're not even close to immunity yet.

and, it's not consistent with findings in other hard hit areas. bc was not hit hard, but montreal had a proper pandemic, and toronto at least saw a substantive number of cases. with that many cases, if there's not substantive immunity developing, why not?

there have been a lot of reports of these antibody tests missing a lot of positives. we've seen this across this country now, and while the bc results seemed reasonable, the ontario results did not and the quebec results are just not believable at all. if you're to take these studies seriously, the prevalence seems to be about the same across the country, and differences in testing and outcome are just error.

i guess if the results are correct, it means we're going to need to see a whole lot more dead canadians before we get through this.

but, i'm going to put out a call for non-government bodies to do some antibody testing in canada, because what the government is presenting to us doesn't make any sense.

the longer it takes to build immunity, the longer this goes on for.

i don't want to be the least immune, weakest, most vulnerable country in the world :(.

https://nationalpost.com/news/national/almost-125000-quebecers-aged-18-69-infected-with-novel-coronavirus-study

i've made my concerns about china relatively clear over a long period of time. they are an expansionist, imperialist civilization that would see this continent as empty land to colonize. if they could, they'd enslave us and move in - don't trick yourself into believing otherwise.

and, they are a different civilization; no aristotle, no jesus, no alexander. the only meaningful historical point of diffusion was via mongol expansion, and they came merely to slaughter and subjugate. expect no different in the future, should it end that way.

so, canada has a choice that needs to be made in a broader civilizational context than i think is currently fully understood, or is even fashionable to try to understand. it's our nature to be open, and that's preferable, but we need to maintain some lines of defence.

yet, my concerns be as they may be, i know that history is littered with decadent aristocrats that are just as happy to sell their nations out to rising tyrants as they are to try to mount a defence.

if the chinese were to stop shipment of a vaccine to canada over a legitimate legal process involving a relative of a valued member of the ruling clique (rather than any actual threat to it's security), it would reflect rather poorly upon them. that is corruption, plain and simple.

faced with this kind of corruption in the chinese ruling class, canada should not be compliant, or wonder what may have been had it been more compliant. rather, it should seek a greater level of autonomy in the production of this material.

as it is, i do not believe that vaccine research is an area that has been harmed by the neo-liberal order in this sense, although manufacturing a vaccine in the end may be an open question - and something that the federal government should be monitoring and perhaps altering the capacity for.

so, one hopes this does not actually happen; if it does, it should be seen as a disincentive to integrate supply chains with the chinese, rather than as an incentive to be compliant.

https://nationalpost.com/health/china-spat-may-be-threatening-canadas-bid-to-get-early-access-to-leading-covid-19-vaccine-experts

and, now it's time for the inevitable round of trivially criticizing sexism in the media around a prominent candidate, or, as it would be, category of candidates - 'cause all them black women are all the same, right. it's via occupying that unique intersection point between gender and race that the negro female develops her unique characteristics, and artificially imposed hindrances within society.

listen, these gender roles are ancient; they're cultural, they're symbolic, they're religious, they're remnants of something that developed socio-biologically and they're baked into every day life. we're just beginning to understand them, we're not even close to making them go away. so, it's up to individual candidates to define themselves transcendent to their assigned roles, and that's going to be hard for as long as those cultural realities remain around us as we exist, in our lives.

so, it's kind of just background noise. you're yelling at the moon. it's how things are, and something women know they just have to deal with.

i'm not opposed in principle to the symbolic placement of a black woman on the throne as a placation tactic, as i think even the most cynical instance of the concept would have positive ramifications, socially. but, i just don't see a candidate i could actively support, and am finding myself more attracted to 2024 instead.

march is done.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/03/
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/03/
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/03/
https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/

so, february, 2014 is now both consistent & complete. i ended up copying a few files around, and deleting a couple as well

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/02/

https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/02/

https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/02/

https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/

i know i've said this before, but that's really it for a long time, now.

if i had kids, i would get them immunized on the existing immunization schedule, which does not include any experimental vaccines, but the way this law is written would be a model for any vaccine legislation in canada, in the sense that you would have the opportunity to opt-out by signing a statement of conscience. that is, it's only mandatory if you refrain from freely choosing to arbitrarily opt-out.

so, if some libertarian group decided this was terrible, all the court is going to tell them at the end of the day is "look, there's a waiver, you don't have to actually do it.". at the end of the day, a truly forced vaccination law would be unconstitutional; instead, we consistently legislate strongly worded suggestions with loopholes inserted by the constitution that are wide enough as to make the law worthless, then claim the supreme court upholds the violation.

what the supreme court upholds is that those who choose not to be vaccinated due to their beliefs cannot be forced to do so. the government can pass whatever law it wants, so long as it upholds that rule. that is the precedent, and it will carry forward.

fwiw, there is a difference between giving your kids a tetanus shot and give them an experimental vaccine for the common cold. i think that older people may want to be a little more risk adverse here, but i wouldn't actually be in much of a hurry to vaccinate the kids - i'd want to wait that out a bit and see how it goes.

public health units are also subject to a level of proportionality in their decisions. that is, they can't just cite a precedent as an excuse and then do whatever they want. so, the question of coercive legislation regarding this virus will ultimately need to be weighed against it's actual threat, which is where i think the disconnect is.

we don't legislate mandatory flu vaccinations for children to attend school, and i don't imagine we'll legislate covid-19, either.

but, if we did, you could always opt-out.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/court-challenge-of-ontario-s-vaccination-law-unlikely-to-succeed-experts-1.4661318

see, this is what happens when a communist experiment needs to rely on the imperialist hegemon for protection.

at least their autonomous self-discipline should make them good slaves as oil exporters in the petro-empire. and, i'm sure there will be some oil produced for local use....for a few months.

i'm sorry that i'm just not naive; it's not that i didn't want to believe in the possibility of an autonomous socialist kurdish state, it's just that it doesn't make sense at such a subregional level, and the ramifications of cooperation with the americans were simply impossible to evade. when you accept help from america, you become it's client.

is this legal? no. but, the united states seems to have carved an enclave out of the country by sheer force, and it's probably not wise to try to dislodge them. assad may have won the war, but he seems to have lost the northeast, perhaps for good.

all of this is better than open warfare, and it does remain true that building strong interconnected economic foundations remains the key to building peace in the region (which is what america has constantly tried to prevent, until recently).

as i'm a climate activist, i don't assign the middle east the same tactical value as other regions in the world. the united states is even producing it's own oil, right now. it doesn't seem worth it. so, my prime concern is the conflict halting (so long as the crazies are suppressed), and really my biggest opposition to the outcome is the exact commodity being traded. leave the oil in the ground....

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/03/delta-crescent-energy-syrian-oil-391033

see, i can go along with this to push for smaller class sizes, anyways. that's some good kleinist thinking.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/08/03/thousands-sign-petition-asking-ontario-to-reduce-class-sizes-for-elementary-school-students-this-fall.html

these are very low numbers for toronto, which makes it incredibly vulnerable moving forward, if subsequent studies back up the findings.

do the numbers make sense?

well, these are about the same numbers as presented by bc, and we know that the outbreak in vancouver was much milder than in toronto. if about the same percentage of people were infected in toronto as in vancouver, why was the death count so much higher in toronto? the population size doesn't account for it.

so, not really; given the number of deaths that are publicly acknowledged, and the fact that it is publicly acknowledged that many deaths are uncounted, one would expect a much higher rate in toronto than vancouver.

so, are there potential biases around the sample? well, they made some attempt to randomize it; i'd rather wait to see what further studies say than aimlessly nitpick.

so, i'll acknowledge the study, but i'm a little skeptical about it, it just seems a little too low.

https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/epi/2020/07/covid-19-epi-seroprevalence-in-ontario.pdf?la=en

with that, i have now finished updating the things i needed to update for the already published sections of the blog.

i am going to run through a similar analysis of the things already posted to 2014, but it will be a much faster process. as mentioned previously, the primary motion should be a slimming of the politics blog to include less frivolous posts.

i also have the full first reconstruction phase blogs up at the appropriate sites, which are:

1) the full travel blog is the only way to get the travel blog at smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026660

2) both files are uploaded to lulu:
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-travel-blog/ebook/product-nm4jeq.html
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-deathtokoalas-blog/ebook/product-zrgr94.html

3) the updated google drive share is up here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NI_sEi1t9NxTeOB9Es3A2Ge8ji4iTXit

full errata repost:

travel:

july

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

august

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

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

september

16) new kitchen items
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-kitchen-items.html

17) new facecloth holder:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-facecloth-holder.html

18) so, i've been to...
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/09/ok-so-ive-been-going-to-same-handful-of.html

october

20)  deleting facebook friends
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/10/deleting-95-of-my-facebook-friends.html

21) victoria death hysteria:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/10/you-can-imagine-that-this-isnt-what-i.html

22) blender
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/10/i-picked-up-this-little-one-person.html

23) article
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/10/part-of-reason-i-just-moved-to-area-is.html

november:

december:

24) silly bros
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/12/its-always-so-hard-to-tell-when-bros.html

25) stalked by cats
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/12/we-need-stray-cat-cull.html

26) timezone
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/12/i-just-clued-in-that-distance-one-lives.html


january:

deathtokoalas

september

1) profile picture update:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/09/i-got-little-lazy-or-was-that.html

2) potential cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/09/death-valley-in-bloom-good-potential.html

october

3) kimmel post:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/10/note-that-26-states-so-far-have-opted.html

4) delete this:
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2013/10/google-account-password-changed.html

5) demo #1 cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/10/blog-post_14.html

6) profile pic:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/10/blog-post.html

november

7) demo #2 cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/demo-2-cover-art.html

8) inrisampled cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/inrisampled-cover-art.html

9) inriched cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/inriched-cover-art.html

10) inrijected cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/inrijected-cover-art.html

11) warning cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/warning-cover-art.html

december

12) delete this:
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2013/12/this-is-balanced-and-informative-talk.html

13) weird wave form:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/very-fucking-weird-waveform.html

14) inrimixed cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inrimixed-cover-art.html

15) inridiculous cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inridiculous-cover-art.html

16) inricycled a cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inricycled-cover-art.html

17) inricycled b cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inricycled-b-cover-art.html

18) inrimake cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inrimake-cover-art.html

january

19) pynchon quote
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/01/its.html

20) courtney love essay
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/01/classic-essay.html

21) pop music cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/pop-music-tribute-to-dioxide-cover-art.html

22) curious george suite cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/blog-post_9.html

23) ignorance is bliss cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/ignorance-is-bliss-cover-art.html

24) deny everything cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/deny-everything-cover-art.html

25) acidosis cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/acidosis-cover-art.html

29) delete this:
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-world-has-changed-very-little-in.html

the january music journal package at bandcamp has been updated by updating the files for the deathtokoalas blog. the purpose of this update is solely to ensure that a level of consistency around certain types of posts is maintained throughout the blog.

as these updates are minor and to the deathtokoalas blog only, it will not be documented in the notes.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/01-2014-music-journal

the deathtokoalas blog was edited to remove a news link, add a pynchon quote, add a courtney love article and also to add five cover art posts in order to ensure consistency of type across the blog:

january

19) pynchon quote
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/01/its.html

20) courtney love essay
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/01/classic-essay.html

21) pop music cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/pop-music-tribute-to-dioxide-cover-art.html

22) curious george suite cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/blog-post_9.html

23) ignorance is bliss cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/ignorance-is-bliss-cover-art.html

24) deny everything cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/deny-everything-cover-art.html

25) acidosis cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/acidosis-cover-art.html

29) delete this:
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-world-has-changed-very-little-in.html

this file was also updated at the smashwords site:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026660

got the files.

finally.

so, here comes a bunch of update posts.

they're talking about moving troops from germany to poland, in the long run, making it more of a shift of troops towards the russian border.

they won't like that, you know. there were verbal agreements made....

https://www.c-span.org/video/?474327-1/defense-secretary-esper-announces-11900-troops-withdraw-germany#

see, this is a good example of the stupid side of donald trump's foreign policy.

trump's argument for pulling troops out of germany goes something like this: because germany engages in commerce with russia, it is unfair for it to ask the united states to protect it from russian aggression. i guess that the conclusion is that if they are going to engage in commerce with russia then they should face the consequences of russian tactics.

it's trumpian in that it's a threat, an intimidation tactic. the goal is probably not to remove troops from germany, but to bully the germans into buying fracked natural gas from the united states. so, it's a bluff, and we'll see if it actually happens.

but, it still demonstrates a fundamentally untactical way to view the world that has the potential for strongly self-defeating outcomes.

years ago, the united states saw germany as a tactical subject-ally, both in the sense of it's utility as a manufacturing center and in the sense of it being a buffer state to the access of western technology; that is, it was necessary to control germany for no other reason than to keep the russians from benefiting so dramatically from the understanding of vastly superior german technology. so, the united states deployed troops in the region to protect something very valuable to it.

while commercial links of the type described by trump did not exist in the cold war, an america of the past may have actually found it convenient that so much of the energy potential of russia's productive capacity was being exported to their competitors, who are our client-state, instead. stalin would have laughed at the idea of exporting gas to western europe - that gas belonged to russia.

so, the germans might have some right to a little self-dignity in the face of trump throwing away as valuable a prize as they, on such flimsy pretexts; the existence of those troops is hardly an act of benevolence, but muscle to protect a valuable asset.

if it weren't a bluff.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/31/president-trump-takes-on-the-permanent-war-lobby-over-germany/

so, they're projecting 230K dead, now.

i'm standing by 350K, minimum.

so, i got the 2013 travel blog to convert, which is just for personal use, but it means i can close that folder and keep trying with the 2014 stuff.

two more files left to convert, and a handful of things left to update.

so, the last update that i posted was for the december music journal. i was then able to get my third trimester files converted, which right now is for personal storage. i had initially converted the full 2013 documents last week, but the chromebook crashed before i could transfer them, and i've been fighting with that now all day.

i managed to get the full 2013 deathtokoalas pdf downloaded early this morning, but i'm still struggling with the travel blog.

it also took me all day to remember the trick to get smashwords to update the pdf file (you have to unclick online version, then reclick it after). this is the only place that the 2013 deathtokoalas compilation is uploaded to, but it is the most appropriate way to present it here.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026620

this is the errata for this update:

deathtokoalas

september

1) profile picture update:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/09/i-got-little-lazy-or-was-that.html

2) potential cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/09/death-valley-in-bloom-good-potential.html

october

3) kimmel post:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/10/note-that-26-states-so-far-have-opted.html

4) delete this:
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2013/10/google-account-password-changed.html

5) demo #1 cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/10/blog-post_14.html

6) profile pic:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/10/blog-post.html

november

7) demo #2 cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/demo-2-cover-art.html

8) inrisampled cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/inrisampled-cover-art.html

9) inriched cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/inriched-cover-art.html

10) inrijected cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/inrijected-cover-art.html

11) warning cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/warning-cover-art.html

december

12) delete this:
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2013/12/this-is-balanced-and-informative-talk.html

13) weird wave form:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/very-fucking-weird-waveform.html

14) inrimixed cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inrimixed-cover-art.html

15) inridiculous cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inridiculous-cover-art.html

16) inricycled a cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inricycled-cover-art.html

17) inricycled b cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inricycled-b-cover-art.html

18) inrimake cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inrimake-cover-art.html

i've spent a fair amount of time park drinking, and i have a few tips if you're concerned about the cops bugging you.

it's not toronto, but in ottawa there's a large amount of wooded areas near the river that are on what i believe is ncc property that can accommodate a reasonably large group - 30-40 people. a frequent social event that came out of the local occupy encampment was bush fires in a series of clearings off the parkway. just make sure you take your garbage with you.

if larger groups clear out of the public parks proper in favour of more secluded spaces, it could open up more possibilities for smaller groups to enjoy the parks, which is more typical of normal life. while i agree that alcohol bylaws in parks are an infringement of personal liberty, there are a few ways to get around it.

i would suggest, for example, that if you bring alcohol to the park then you do so in unmarked or differently marked (even better.) containers. i tend to carry around a bottle of mountain dew with me, so i always have a flask of convenience. if some cops walk by and you're drinking a bottle of coke, they won't have anything to say to you.

but, i like this kind of thinking, and i'm curious to hear the nature of any official response to it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/public-drinking-ontario-fines-parks-1.5670177

i'm a little baked; i'm going to re-articulate the kind of main point that i'm trying to get across.

if you elect biden in 2020, he's going to pick a youngish female vp, and the assumption is that she's going to be in power within 2-3 years. so, you're essentially allowing biden to pick the 2024 candidate for you, which turns him into the lamest duck of all time. a biden administration will almost instantly transition to the vp; he'll have six months to take a few trips, and that's it. further, we're going to know who that is fairly soon.

a key question that those on the american left need to ponder is whether it makes more sense to accept the candidate biden is presenting to them, or whether they are better off waiting and trying to pick a new candidate in 2024.

you should expect almost nothing from biden's presidency itself, at all.

a biden win may just end up blunting any momentum brewing up, as people take on a false sense of victory, and misplace their faith in a conservative administration to make changes it has no intention to make.

a trump win could accelerate that momentum, and lead to a more substantive change of power the next time around.

i guess the question is this.

what is more likely, at this point?

will a biden administration pave the way for a new generation of leadership that advances the ideas of the left, or will it impede that progress, requiring the process to essentially restart?

if the latter, are we better off essentially bypassing biden and looking to start fresh in the next cycle?

i remember back in 2016 that there was this argument that you should vote for trump because, in four years, he'll create such a backlash that it'll flush in a left of centre voice, for sure. i think that the face of this argument is probably jimmy dore; it's who i remember hearing it from.

that struck me as wishful thinking. rather, it seemed obvious to me that widespread opposition against trump would lead to a weakening of the centre, and a wholesale shift of the democratic party to the right - which is how we went from carter to clinton to obama, a sequential move towards conservatism, remember. like, that was exactly what we didn't want to do, because it was exactly what got us into this mess. if the intent was to create a revolt within the democratic party, the way to do it would be to let the democratic party rule and run itself into the ground.

at this point, it seems like i was right. joe biden is basically a republican, and the movement in the party over the last four years has been a very hard shift to the right, despite what some delusional media would have you think. now, people are just hoping that a biden win will be helpful for this swath of issues, with all evidence suggesting the exact opposite. along with this has been an influx of wealthier voters into the democratic party that seem interested primarily in identity issues, which is just going to lead them on further in the same direction of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism.

my primary interest is not in removing donald trump, but in recharting the cultural course in the other direction. so, how does that argument work, now?

well, if what we didn't want was a big-tent, right-of-centre democrat than we got exactly what we dreaded. so, does the argument work better now? is it better to vote for trump in hopes that four more years will lead to some substantive upheaval?

i don't know yet - we need some more data about where the democrats are going with this. if biden picks susan rice and broadcasts that he's going to bring back the neo-cons and pick up where obama left off, it could very well be that this argument from jimmy dore makes more sense now than it did then - despite the reality that i'm sure he's distanced himself from it, and is all about stopping trump now (ironically). certainly, the left has a worse choice now than it did four years ago. if he picks somebody more left-wing, it makes the choice a bit more blurry.

so, what might happen if trump wins?

well, the unrest we've been seeing around race issues, while not revolutionary in scope at the moment, could become revolutionary if it refocuses away from race and puts a greater focus on organizing around class. when will the society break under climate change? how bad is the virus going to get, and might it provide for the possibility of more radical change in four years, when the ongoing demographic changes are that much more accelerated?

if we pick biden, it could slow that revolt down by 8-12 years if it just puts in place another conservative government that people need to reject all over again. if we pick trump, now, at this juncture in time, it could pave the way for a much better democratic candidate in 2024.

i'm not going to make a prediction, i don't know. i need to see the vp pick, first. but, the names in contention are all intending to appeal to a conservative black vote, which is charting a path towards competition with the republicans over the south. they always all want the south....

but, that argument would appeal to be more compelling now than it did then. and it's something i'll be thinking about, moving forwards.

so, i've got the following files updated, but i can't get the site to convert them:

- full 2013 travel blog  [personal records]
- january 2014 deathtokoalas  [bandcamp, smashwords]
- full first reconstruction phase deathtokoalas blog [lulu, drive]
- full first reconstruction phase travel blog [lulu, drive, smashwords]

there is no january 2014 travel blog, and i was able to download the 2013 deathtokoalas blog, which is also having trouble converting at the smashwords site.

so, i'm going to stop to eat and hope everything works when i'm done.

it's extra frustrating because i had downloaded a working copy previously but i lost it when the machine crashed.

i've been sitting here for hours trying to get this to work.

as mentioned previously, there are reasons why i want to use the microsoft site to convert and not one of these shady free conversion sites, but if the microsoft site refuses to skip the conversion to docx, i don't have a choice but to resort to the shady sites.

docx is simply not an acceptable file format for me.

so, i guess i'll try again when i get through the next phase, but, for now, i need to move on.

this is such a horrible waste of my time.

upload.

view version history.

fail.

delete.

repeat.

over. and over. for hours. why?

but, on the 35456th try it will work. and all i can do is wait.

:(.

i really wish there was a way to force the microsoft server to read the file properly.

it's just random. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but something seems to flip when it does.

maybe i should make a clear post about where i stand regarding gimbutas, renfrew, cavalli-sforza and the role of religion in science.

colin renfrew is a christian fundamentalist, and i don't think it's a coincidence that his model is essentially a relabeled telling of the biblical narrative regarding the tower of babel. that is a vicious statement to level at somebody that has legitimate academic qualifications, but it would appear to be true nonetheless.

the issue was ultimately to be decided by sforza, who was able to provide an empirical test for which model was more correct, and what he discovered was that the answer to the problem is better resolved via dialectic than via competition.

while renfrew's anatolian model was shown to be inconsistent with the spread of indo-european languages, which was shown to instead conform very closely to gimbutas' kurgan model, his anatolian model was also shown to be a relatively good survey of the existing understanding of the spread of farming from an origin in turkey, which was uncovered rather clearly in the data.

that would mean that renfrew's anatolian hypothesis could be salvaged by attaching it to earlier language groups, which we can currently only find in the substratum but may have been ancestral to poorly understood languages like etruscan, pelasgian, sumerian and elamite. so, instead of renfrew's very late linguistic derivations of every language group, as per the tower of babel, you have instead a model of linguistic diffusion via farming that is strictly local in scope, and now entirely lost.

so, the chronology in the synthesis is that this neolithic expansion would have taken place first, in the years 10000-6000 bce or so and then the kurgan invasion would have come in after that, starting around 4000 bce or so.

the megaliths seem to be strongly correlated with this cultural farming expansion, and central to the existence of these people in rather profound ways.

fwiw, i think it's pretty much settled that homo sapiens probably just outbred neanderthals, and overwhelmed them with sheer numbers. there was substantive neanderthal introgression into the anatomically modern homo sapiens, but in the end they just got back-crossed out.

one would expect that a species like neanderthal, that was adapted to a cold climate with scare resources, would develop lower breeding rates than a species like sapiens, which lived in warm climates and had abundant predators. when the climate warmed up, allowing sapiens to move north, they would have carried those higher fertility rates north, and there you go.

they tell us we have some percentage of neanderthal genes depending on our existing racial genotypes, but it's never really discussed what those genes are. i would expect that we'll eventually learn that the genes we inherited from neanderthals largely have to do with adaptations to colder climates. if true, the introgression no doubt increased the fitness of the donor species.

https://www.washington.edu/news/2003/09/22/bones-from-french-cave-show-neanderthals-cro-magnon-hunted-same-prey/

i'm going to suspend disbelief around the evidence, and wonder if it upholds the idea of neanderthals worshipping bears, in the first place. there's quite a bit of reason to expect early hominids to have had some kind of perceived spiritual relationship with wild bears, whatever one thinks of the arrangement of the bone fragments.

i've previously pointed to lions as the perfect representation of the word monster, but for humans living in more northern climates, the best example of a monster would clearly be a bear. like humans, bears demonstrate a large amount of bipedalism, to the point that they seem vaguely hominid. if i didn't know what a bear was, and i saw it coming at me, i might wonder if it was some kind of zombie apocalypse or something. further, i would imagine that any species of hominid in a bear's range would have experienced a large amount of predation at the hands of those bears until relatively recently, meaning living humans may very well have had memories of having their children or other family members eaten by these monsters that roamed around them.

my understanding is that humans eventually developed some very specific rituals around the killing of bears; there appears to have been a procedure that involved puncturing their lungs with arrows, to make sure they were really dead. this suggests that early hominids may have ultimately seen bears as dangerous competitors for the niche of head omnivore, rather than as superiors. one wonders if any observed ritual behaviour around the bears may have been to disturb their spirits, in an attempt to try to stop them from returning.

https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-cult-of-the-cave-bear/