yes, i am desperately poor.

when my parents met, my mother was a waitress of some sort and my father was a tax collector at a private collections firm that no longer exists. he took a detour into tech support, but he died doing collections for the government. he spent something like 30 years in the collections industry. it became more lucrative as time went on, but when i was born he was making something close to minimum wage.

my parents split up when i was four, and my mother has been on welfare ever since. so, i spent the next ten years of my life in subsidized housing; i was my mother's cash cow, the thing she needed to get paid. i was never homeless - i was not poor by global standards - but i was about as poor as a kid in canada got in the 80s. and, the other kids knew it, too.

my memory is a little blurry around 5 or 6, but, iirc, my dad ended up quickly remarrying - and he married a step up. he may have spent some time on friends' couches; what i actually remember, in the period right after the breakup, was that he just disappeared for months - until he started coming over, and we'd hang out in the basement. and, then he had a new house in britannia bay....

i grew up in trapper's park, and i talk about it being rough; my dad grew up on ritchie street, and that was even worse. 

i know that talking about the ghetttos of ottawa is going to produce eyerolls, but this is what happens when you google ritchie street in 2021:

i'm going to guess it's probably full of syrians nowadays. when i was a kid, it was full of somalis. when he was a kid, growing up there, it was full of italians, native americans & jews - which he was all of, in varying amounts.

so, he was dirt fucking poor. no intergenerational wealth. at all.

wife #2 seems to have been better off, but it was short-lived and my memory is pretty sketchy. his father - a literal mason, a brick-layer - died in that period. but, she seems to have owned the house because he ended up with a roomate in a condo in kanata...

wife #3 lasted the longest, by far - i guess it was around 25 years, give or take. she was wealthy. she had intergenerational wealth. he snagged her on the rebound, from what i hear (the guy that dumped her ended up being my grade 10 math teacher). and, she was strictly white, of apparent irish-french extraction. her surname started with "de", indicating actual noble background - and deep wealth, going very far back, back to feudal or potentially roman timeframes...

when i knew her, she was a lab tech and then a middle manager at the red cross.

so, i got to experience an upper middle class existence, for a few years of my life - about the ages of 15-22, give or take. but, that wealth was hers, and strictly hers; there was a pre-nup, and he died young. the will left it all to her - and there wasn't anything that was his, besides debt, regardless. 

the last traces of wife #3 on the internet dry up in 2018. i wonder if she's dead. i don't know. i've heard nothing, and don't expect anything.

what about my mom?

well, i don't know, actually. i've barely spoken to her since i was 13. i know her "father" worked in the rcmp and pretty high up; if he's not dead, he's in florida. i haven't seen him in 25 years. the thing is that everybody knows he's not her actual, biological father. my grandmother won't answer questions, but my mother (who was born in saskatchewan) is quite visibly of plains indian extraction - a bizarre truth given that her mother is irish-norse and her supposed father is scots-welsh. the guy knew she wasn't his daughter, and he did horrible, vicious things to her as a child; i talk of my mother being a drug addict, and the truth is her life was damaged from the start. so, there's wealth there, but my mother has never had access to it and there's no reason to think i ever will, either. my aunts both inherited quite a lot... 

my grandmother worked as an investment banker and ended up as a sort of mistress for an extremely wealthy italian property magnate in ottawa, and had access to quite incredible wealth as a result of it - something i again had a glimpse of, growing up. but, that wealth stayed in his family. i presume he died of prostate cancer a few years ago. she's in a retirement home in bc nowadays, suffering rather badly from alzheimer's. i keep meaning to call her, but it's clear enough that this wealth, whatever exists of it, is going directly to her youngest daughter - who is going to hand it off to her own son.

and, i had as much opportunity as a person with my background could ever hope for, but i threw it away to live a life of freedom; the irony is that i could exist so close to such wealth, and be told i had to work for a living, and then throw it away. i used to tell this to my father, to his bafflement, all of the time: i'd rather be free than rich. that made no sense to him, growing up the way he did - all he ever wanted was a way into the middle class. but, growing up the way i did, a stable middle class job was just giving up...i wanted meaning and purpose and the freedom to seek it.

and, so i am desperately poor, because i threw it all away to chase art and experience.

i don't regret it, in the bottom of the pandemic.

i just want my freedom back - because that trade-off has lost it's meaning, right now, as i sit at home in a pollution filled basement.

there's other ways around this, as well, and i think the concept of due diligence is probably being underutilized.

that working class dipshit that got a divinities degree at harvard and works at starbucks probably has an excellent argument that the banks should have known better than to given him that loan. and, it should fall to the courts to work these things out on a case-by-case basis, not the legislature to write laws about them.

now, if you're really insistent on eliminating private debt (and, i realize i'm using words in a confusing way. so, in this specific context, private debt means debt between individuals and privately owned institutions; public debt means debt between individuals and publicly owned institutions. so, government-financed student loans. which, is actually public debt, as well. but, yes - i'm abusing the language.), the government could make a decision to buy it out (rather than cancel it) and i'd have to take a look at the proposal before i could decide if i were to support it or not. 

i would not support a general amnesty on student loans that are privately held, for the reasons i've stated - it's just a bank bailout on bad debt. but, maybe this is where you can bring in ideas about means testing. some small percentage of working class dipshits no doubt went to harvard on private debt, got a divinities degree and ended up working at starbucks - it helps nobody at all to perpetuate this kind of debt. but, if it's a private institution, you have to pay them for it, so this should be done carefully and with a lot of thought put into it.

i hate sleeping, but i was absolutely exhausted last night. so, let's hope that's the end of it for a while and i can get myself back into the schedule i created for myself.

the brand new fan is working better than it has for a while, so it's actually more breathable in here now than it has been in quite a while. 

that's not a license to smoke, you disgusting worthless pigs. but it's better, at least.

i need to do court stuff this morning and should hopefully be back to what i was doing tonight.

so, should abolishing student loan payments be mean-tested?

no - that's not an argument i've ever made, i don't think. but, i have argued that it should be institution-specific, and i'm going to repeat as to why.

what are you doing when you talk about relieving student loan debt? are you talking about a one time wiping of the debt? or are you hoping for systemic, structural change?

i posted this in june of 2019:

jun 24, 2019

if you're going to wipe out student debt in the united states, it should be limited to people that attended public institutions.

income is perhaps not the most relevant factor, but i would oppose a bill that wipes out student debt for private institutions.

15:49  

there are only around 20 private universities in canada, and almost all of them are religious in focus. 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/education/canadian-university-report/article-why-there-are-only-a-few-private-universities-in-canada/

 15:58  

again: i'm not a muslim. i don't have a moral problem with usury. i'm not going to support an anti-debt bill for the sake of it. if consenting adults want to sign an agreement, it's up to the courts to regulate it, and that goes equally well for everything else that muslims don't like: divorce, child support, mortgages, pay day loans and student loan debt, too.

so, if the government wants to step in and cancel a debt that was taken out by citizens to attend an institution that is public in scope, that is a question of democratic oversight. if there is support for this, it is up to the people to enact it.

but, for a government to cancel a debt held between a private citizen and a private institution, even if it is acting as an intermediary in the loan, would be overstepping it's bounds and interfering in a process that should be determined via the rules of contract law and regulated by the courts - an area of law that is far more flexible than classical liberals would have you believe.

my position is actually that the government didn't do it's due diligence in researching my background before it gave me the money, and the loan should be declared a gift for that reason. if a banking institution doesn't do it's due diligence, it has no right to expectation; that is, the courts have determined long ago that if the bankers give money to people they had no reasonable expectation would be able to repay the loan, then the debt can be declared null and void. consent requires competency. i could very well argue this in court, one day. for now, i just ignore the loan collectors.

but, the point is that the issue of private debt is not up for the government to regulate, but up to the courts to deal with. public debt is a different issue - that is a question of the public will.

16:16  

another way to articulate what i'm saying is this: i would be opposed to bailing out the banks on private student loan debt.

and, let's be clear what a student loan forgiveness really is: it's a (ed: bank) bailout.

16:39 

jun 26, 2019

so, with the debt thing, to clarify.

the goal should be as follows:

1) public universities should be subsidized entirely by taxpayers.

2) it should be hard to get into these schools, and they should regulate their supply of professionals based on what statistics regarding market demand exists for them that government can conjure up. so, free university shouldn't mean an influx of fine arts grads, but should also mean a more centralized production of professional workers.

3) private universities should eventually be phased out.

so, the reason you leave the private school debt in place is because you're ultimately trying to nationalize these schools. universal debt relief doesn't make sense in the broader context of this, unless it comes with a total socialization of education, which nobody is currently talking about. but, in the end, it's that socialization that you really want, and what the policy ought to be angling for.

if you set up a system where one type of schooling is "free" and the other one isn't, the expectation should be that the best students will gravitate to the least expensive option, so long as it is just as good, leaving for profit schools for legacy students of the rich and stupid. that is, you set up the public schools to push the private schools out of the market, over time.

so, i'm not concerned about income as a dividing line, here. i'm not complaining about giving hand-outs to rich kids, or pushing for a "progressive" approach over a socialist one. what i'm doing is pointing out that the universality doesn't make sense so long as the market continues to function, and that if you're going to leave the market in place you should be starving it rather than funding it.

so, go ahead and bail out the public school students, but make it clear to everybody that private school students will receive no such treatment, not now and not ever in the future, either.

21:31 

so, i got my fan and i'm setting it up within minutes. i also got some actual calcium carbonate, which i'm going to use to replace the baking soda i picked up a few weeks ago.

i'll repeat the logic with this: calcium carbonate is basic in solution, so if you're concerned about acid wear on your teeth, it makes sense to swish with it after you eat - not really because of the calcium, but because of the carbonate. it's the same logic as with baking soda, but it's a little less abrasive, meaning you need to give it more time to work.

what about the calcium, though? well, it can't hurt, but calcium carbonate is apparently very insoluble, and when i went through this previously i came to the conclusion that rebuilding hydroxyapatite from calcium & phosphate doesn't seem to really actually be possible - you need to remineralize with the molecule in tact, or it's gone. so, that's probably not going to help much. but, i think it's a better idea than baking soda as an after meal rinse, even if i stick with the baking soda for after coffee rinses. we'll see how it works out...

i got the security guard's report & a response on the request about the conflict, so i have some writing to do tonight...

but, windsor got a lot of snow last night, and this was a vicious, three hour trudge through cold weather and heavy snow banks, the kind i really haven't interacted with since i lived in ottawa. i prepared though. we're talking about:

- two sweaters + heavy grey jacket (+ undershirt)

- two pairs of socks

- two pairs of jeans

- boots

- ski mask

- toque

- hoodie on second sweater

- kombi gloves

people seeing me might imagine i'm wearing a surgical mask under the ski mask; i am not. i just live in canada, and happen to have almost no tolerance to the cold. so, i dress like i'm going skiing when i go to the grocery store this time of year, and that's a constant going back quite a few years.

so, no - i haven't converted to islam (lol.) and i'm not wearing a mask for the virus. i'm just bundled up for the cold weather.

this is what i'm wearing, precisely:

it's sold as a "snowmobile mask", which is pretty canadian, but i bought it explicitly for bicycling in cold weather. hey, try biking anywhere in canada even in november or april. it's cold here, and for much of the year. it's really needed to avoid serious frostbite.

so, no - i'm not happy about the mask laws, and i wouldn't wear a mask if it was warmer out. but, this is how i dress in the winter anyways, so i happen to be kind of floating through...

i'm hoping that the mask laws are gone by mid-march; if not, i'm hoping there's enough of a backlash against mandated mask wearing that i'm not forced to create a conflict when i walk around without one.

for now, it's fucking cold out and i'm dressing for it, full stop.

here's what it was like in windsor, today:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/windsor-essex-school-buses-1.5915123

the sidewalks were partly plowed by local citizens only, meaning it was hard to get through long stretches of city property (like going under the freeway). if this was ottawa, it'd have been cleared by 10:00 am - it's nothing, really. but, windsor doesn't have the capacity, and i've noticed this before. it's almost like a yankee city, in that respect.

so, i had to dodge traffic both ways, with a 16" fan in my hands on the way back, while walking around six foot high snowbanks created by incomplete plowing. i thought i'd never have to do that again. hopefully, that was the last time - ever.

i need to clean in here, shower and probably nap - and i have a lot of things to do tomorrow, now that the files are here.

these vector bars are actually unusually good:

- vitamin a, 25%

- b1, 46%

- b2, 25%

- b3, 26%

- b5, 25%

- b6, 25%

- b7, 80%

- b9, 30%

- b12, 25%

- vitamin c, 32%

- vitamin d, 26%

- vitamin e, 21%

- ca, 32%

- p, 26%

- mg, 19%

- fe, 28%

- zn, 33%

- i, 20%

- cl, 3%

- cu, 20%

- mn, 50%

- se, 13%

- mo, 40%\

- na, 5.5%

- k, 6.5%

- k: na - 3.6

it seems to be discontinued.

obviously.

it's actually sort of wrong to call this capitalism, and i don't mean in the real vs really existing sense that you used to hear however many years ago. this system is the exact system that the initial capitalists were trying to overturn! and, what they called it was feudalism. i used to have these debates with these hayekian right-libertarians ten years ago, about what policies would really bring us back to serfdom. but, we're almost there...

for that reason, i acknowledge what hannah appel is saying, and would extrapolate that something like paine or locke might be more useful in the next few decades than something like marx. marx was attempting to reapply liberalism to an economy designed around socialized production, as the basic assumptions underlying liberalism collapsed with the advent of factory work. but, to an extent, the factory is just a different kind of plantation. i've been asking "what's the way to maximize freedom in a post-industrial economy?", and deduced some kind of superproduction, but this isn't the first time somebody has told me we're on a direct course back to feudalism, and then the theory flips over - the left needs to re-embrace liberalism. i'm not so sure...

and, this is what i'm left with regarding debtors' unions - they're no doubt going to be useful to help alleviate suffering, if you hold to the premises underlying the system. should debtors get a new deal? no doubt.

but, what you really want if you're a revolutionary is to abolish the debt, and i'm not sure i see the utility of this type of union for that purpose. rather, i want to suggest pointing to the production of parallel systems. and, in the end, the only solution is ever through democratization of the institutions, and public ownership of the services they offer.

the end result is that you have to support these unions, but you shouldn't be naive about them - they're not a revolutionary tactic, but a stop-gap reformist measure to make things a little bit better. and, they will tend towards conservative tendencies in the end, like unions always do...

in the end, the best thing that can come out of these kinds of things is the seeds for a more revolutionary movement.

but, you have the bombs. so, why not use them to build schools? what else are they good for?

yes - mmt is a pragmatic way to get some actual, concrete, meaningful change on the ground, it's not a revolutionary theory. but, you are the fucking empire. why not be a little pragmatic about it to get your living standards up to the rest of the world?

the talking point from bernie was that every other country in the world has universal health care, and there's just a bit of a reality check here as to why. you might imagine that these concessions were won through broad working class movements, but they actually had more to do with the realities underlying the corporate welfare that is inherently attached to state funded insurance monopolies - and there's actually an argument that the reason that never happened in the united states was because it didn't have to, because the amount of wealth in the period was so immense anyways...

in canada, what is being cynically written off as impossible actually did happen - the conservatives, ndp & liberals all got together and decided to build a system modeled on the british nhs. how did we get the conservatives to vote for universal health care? the reason is that the insurance lobby supported it. for the liberals, it had a lot to do with the auto pact - a 1965 agreement between the united states and canada to consolidate tariffs through the automobile sector. do you know the actual, technical reason that the liberals in canada supported universal health care? it was to support the automotive sector, by downloading health care costs to the state. so, if ford set up a factory in detroit, it would have to pay it's employees health care (ironically because the unions won it), whereas if they set up here in canada, the government would pay for it.

i'm as cynical a person as you'll meet, but the whole fucking world has this stuff; it is only the empire that doesn't. it's bizarre. and, you really shouldn't be cynical about basic rights that the rest of the world has had for decades. if we can figure it out, so can you.

that's not to discount the value of struggle but every other legislature in the world has given it's people access to these services, and you're selling yourself short by discarding it as impossible. that's too much cynicism.

and just to clarify a point - what modern monetary theory is is an argument that the theory that exists today is not reflective of how money is created in real life. so, it's correct that it doesn't change anything - the point is that it doesn't change anything. it just helps us better understand what already is, and how to best utilize it to our advantage.

i run the risk of them breaking something else when i'm out, but it's not habitable down here without air flow.

i opened it up to clean it, hoping it was just jammed, and when i did i realized the screws were loose - somebody had recently taken the device apart. 

there is a black chip attached to the motor, but i can't say for sure why it's there or what it does. it doesn't look like a part of the device, but i don't know for sure.

what i know is that the fan had clearly been dismantled recently and now no longer works.

i had to walk around with a puffer when i was a kid because my mom smoked in the house. the effects of this were permanent - they've never fully resolved, and never will.

it's 2021 and the cops in this city don't believe that second-hand smoke causes asthma.

how did i end up in this fucking hole in the earth?

it seems like the cops put some kind of surveillance chip in my floor fan, and what i'm thinking is that it broke because they're too incompetent to do anything. i've had this pile of broken hardware over the last few years, and it legitimately seems like they keep breaking it accidentally. but, i can't function without it. it's bad enough as it is, but it's just too dry and smoky and disgusting in here to do anything at all without it. i'm just going to cough and hack and wheeze until it's fixed.

they have something at canadian tire, but i have to order it on the internet and wait until tomorrow to pick it up, and i want it now.

so, i was hoping to be in for the rest of the month, but i need to walk across town to the walmart to pick up a fan, instead

ugh.

i haven't had time to eat a real meal in something like 36 hours, but i bought these meal replacement things and they're quick fixes at least. but i'm going to make some fruit before i go...

i'm angry and frustrated and can't even fucking breathe in here at all right now. and, the fucking idiot cops seem to think i'm making a bronchitis diagnosis up - because they are a bunch of loser nicotine addicts, themselves. i hope they all die young....

i'm essentially being targeted by a nazi, and the system is designed to protect the nazi, not me.

this process needs serious reform.

this person should not be allowed to do this, and is only able to do this because the system is so poorly designed.

any prejudiced idiot can show up anywhere online and flag whatever they want, and the burden to appeal it shifts to the accused, rather than the accuser. this is, legally, completely backwards.

if somebody is to make accusations like this, they should be:

1) forced to identify themselves to the people they're accusing. this is a fundamental right, the right to know your accuser.

2) actually provide an argument, before any action is taken.

as it is, the system allows for somebody like me to get targeted, and have no idea who is targeting them or why - although i can figure it out. 

i actually think the person is anti-jewish first and anti-queer second.

this anonymous anti-queer, anti-jewish bigot hides behind their computer and anonymously flags my posts as offensive - and always gets overturned, in the end.

who are you?

show your face!

because i want a restraining order put on you.

there's been about 20 things flagged at this point, and every single flag has been undone upon review.

it's frivolous, and wrong - and it needs to cease.

identify yourself, you coward.

i don't know who is doing this, but i want it stop.

it seems like i'm being filtered, but they've relented. i'm going to flip this around: i've been targeted by some anti-queer and anti-jewish voices on the internet for quite a long while, and this is just the latest example of it. i'm the one being harassed, here - there is somebody that keeps sorting through my content and reporting harmless posts to the authorities, in an attempt to shut me down. it seems to increase when i criticize certain voices on what i call the "fake left". if whomever is now filtering this could identify who these actors are and prevent them from bothering me any more, that would be greatly appreciated.

i will, unfortunately, need to go to toronto to have this surgery done, despite repeated pleas by surgeons in toronto for local doctors to do it - which have fallen on deaf ears. and, if the pandemic doesn't end soon, i may actually run out of time to do it.

i have asked the tribunal to order the local hospital to perform the surgery as a result of the discrimination i recently experienced at the hands of a psychiatrist in the er room.

it's a huge problem in this country and, if anything, it seems to be getting worse - trans people technically have access to care, but it's very, very hard for us to actually find it.

so, i got my first taste of censorship here, and i'm not interested in it.

the following post is posted to this blog and the travel blog at 15:03 on mar 15, 2020:

this is simply a true statement. i have contacted every urologist in windsor and they have all refused the voluntary orchidectomy for religious reasons.

i'm not somebody that gives a fuck about political correctness, but that's not even the issue at hand - somebody has decided that a true statement is offensive to them, and all i have to tell them is to go and fuck off.

i have reposted the post to where it was and i will continue to do so until the issue resolves itself.

actually, no - if you do it right, there's an obscure spot where it cancels. it's not obvious - at all. - but it's there. so, i gotta redo it...

the federal government has just dramatically increased taxes for poor people.

i'm disabled - literally.

and, i had to use my education credits to avoid paying taxes...

otherwise, they would have charged me $120 worth of taxes on an income that is entirely derived from disability payments. i repeat: they're forcing disabled people to pay taxes.

and, i'm going to once again lose my climate refund to my student loan; last year, they applied $28.01 to my $50,000 in defaulted provincial loans, which they won't cancel because i'm not disabled enough.

the liberals are slowly taking away all of the reasons that leftists might have considered them a lesser evil. this is the worst type of stupid fiscal conservatism and malicious, punitive attacks on the poor.....

ok, so i can file with the privacy commissioner online, so i still have until the end of the week.

as a result, i'm going to wait for the security guard's report. it's key to the argument.

i think the crown's office is closed today because it's "family day" in ontario, which is a bullshit, but stat, holiday that i always forget about.

so, i'm done for the day...

i have to file taxes.

nice to see stuff like this...

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/ecuador-pro-mining-politics-indigenous-green-movement-victory/

this is chinese propaganda. straight-up.

i'm reminded of the line that the liberal government in canada tries to get us to swallow, about how pipelines and hydro dams are good for the indigenous groups, while the indigenous groups themselves are out there blocking highways to try to stop them. cui bono? and, the answer is the destination for the resources being extracted, which, in both canada and south america, is primarily china.

i'd rather talk about morales and correa, because they're both known entities. these shady figures that appear in the crowd are always difficult to analyze with much certainty until some time passes, and it's often too late. so, is the guy they're attacking really a cia stooge? i don't know; it would hardly be surprising if he is. i'm not offering an opinion on something i don't know much about.

but, with correa and morales, it's one thing to criticize the americans for meddling in the region, which i offer no defense of, and another thing to look the other way at the environmental consequences of their behaviour, which are being carried out under massive chinese subsidies. one type of colonialism is not better than the other. so, when indigenous groups rise up against these governments for acting as fronts for chinese colonialism, there's a reason for it.

now, i know that if you ask morales, specifically, he'll tell you he's trying to help - that his people are poor, and he's legitimately trying to alleviate their suffering. and, frankly? i don't even think he's lying to you - i think he believes it. but, when the people you're trying to help rise up against you in revolt, and you don't listen, you're not helping much, are you?

so, this is all very subtle, but these guys aren't even mentioning the elephant in the room, here. this is being framed as existing solely in the context of american imperialism, with no mention at all of the substantive - in fact, dominant. - role that chinese capital is playing in developing the region. and, for that reason my accusation will be repeated: this is chinese propaganda. straight up.

to understand what is happening in the global south - by which i mean south america and subsaharan africa - you need to construct three sides in the discourse. on the one side, you have american imperialism, which is still there and still trying to dominate. opposing them, you have chinese capital, which seeks to develop the region and extract resources from it - and is winning the battle in many of these places. and, then you have the indigenous groups,  which resist both chinese capital and american imperialism, and wish to reassert their sovereignty.

so, it could very well be true that this guy they're talking about could be a cia plant sent to co-opt the indigenous movement; it wouldn't be the first time, and it won't be the last. but, i know what side i stand with in these three-sided battles, and it is not chinese capital. at all.

===

i repeat: the fact that they don't even mention china gives it away.

this is chinese propaganda.

straight up.

there should be a little "funded by chinese capital" button, here.

so, i stopped on saturday night to catch up with the cases and that's what i've been doing since then. what's the update on that?

- the karen case has two components:

a) the divisional court case, where i'm trying to get the cop charged with harassment and/or fired, is on indefinite hold until the end of the pandemic. there's nothing i can do, i don't think. but, i sent them an email asking if it was appropriate to resume the filing process at this time.

b) the human rights case, where i'm trying to get a pay out from the karen directly, is awaiting an imminent response. i've recently made a third & fourth request to rule in the absence of a response. i need to wait, but i've decided to file form 10s every monday tuesday morning. but, i also got a foia in the mail mid-week that omitted a statement and i made a request to the tribunal to ask the police to produce it, as well as an update to the request to add the false statement to the file. so, there''s a backlog of requests that i'm waiting for the tribunal to sort through and i could get an immediate ruling when they do. i can't post that here, yet.

c) i need to file with the privacy commissioner regarding the omitted statement, but i want to wait for a reaction from the cops, first.

d) i was going to subpoena the prosecutor that yelled the transphobic statement in court, but can i file a foia with the prosecutor instead? what was the conflict of interest in the case?

e) i will eventually be filing a constitutional challenge in this case.

f) i am still looking at filing criminal charges against the karen, and the results of the fippa were helpful, but i want to wait for a few things to play out, first. locating ryan myon as a real person would be helpful. what was the conflict of interest? that would be useful if i want to file charges.

i studied case law, but i've never worked as a legal researcher or anything, and they don't teach you that in school - you do this kind of thing via apprenticeship, which i have no history with at all. what i'm doing with this, though, is almost more like investigative journalism - which i have no training in at all. maybe i should have done this earlier. but, you learn as you go.

- the discrimination case against the hospital has two components:

a) i got my form 3 in on the 5th and my medical records in last week. so, i filed a major update via a form 10 that reacts to the medical records, and i can't post that here....yet. i will need to produce a second form 10 response when the security report arrives.

b) i have asked the opird to wait a few more days until the security report comes in. i will need to produce a large response when it does, but i'm also waiting for the foia.

c) the hospital has responded, and when i get the security report, i'll have everything i can get from them.

d) a foia is filed with the cops and will arrive mid-month.

e) i need to file with the privacy commissioner regarding the video immediately.

- the discrimination case against the grocery store is still waiting for the foia request, which should be here any day. so, i'll be filing that this week.

so, this week i am

- if i can file a foia with the crown about the conflict of interest, i'll do that. the karen won't respond, so this doesn't appear headed for a hearing, either way - i'm either going to get a ruling in my favour or a dismissal.

- wait for the criminal charges against the karen & the request to the privacy commissioner about the omitted statement, but both are coming up.

- file something with the privacy commissioner about the video.

- file a new form 10 when the security report appears

- file a first response with the oiprd

- file against the grocery store 

i finished watching this, and this is the simple truth: rudy rochman is a perfect example of a colonized mind. he's a machine programmed to produce colonial talking points. and, i wish noam would've pulled out the framework on him; the more relevant history isn't the derpowitz debates, it's gramscian conditioning, and manufacturing consent. but, seeing this in real life is also kind of scary - this is just a single point, just one example, of what the state of israel is creating.

garbage in, garbage out.

i never go out anywhere in the winter anyways, so i'm finding myself disinterested in following the news, and trying to figure out when the border is going to re-open - or at least when phog might have shows again.

that'll probably flip over in march, and i'll find myself more interested in following what's happening with that, again, as i'll have some reason to care.

if i may...

if you go far enough back - so, the period of david & solomon that chomsky briefly mentioned, or even further back to moses - what the archaeology states is that the region was a kind of backwater, to the point that real world archaeologists largely write off anything before the captivity - or a few generations before it. it's then widely understood that the area changed dramatically under the persians...

so, i thought chomsky was actually referencing the kurdish theory, and that's what the dna actually says - that the bulk of world jews today (outside of the few that stayed in israel) are genetically closer to kurds than they are to palestinians, a truth that seems to have more to do with the persian colonization, which is the event that truly changed the region. before persia, the region seems to have been ethnically and culturally phoenecian, rather than arab or jewish. what you call judaism then develops under very, very heavy iranian influence. it was under this period that the population adopted the language of aramaic. so, the language you speak of was not there, except in the temples.

there was then a period of greek hegemony, where the population absorbed grecian moral ideas, which were foundational to the construction of rabbinic judaism. the romans absorbed this, and then destroyed it. there was some jewish migration out of the region both before and after these events, and how much of it has to do with it isn't really clear. chomsky's family history is probably not entirely bunk - he's probably got some rabbinic ancestry somewhere along the way, but it would have intermarried with the local turkic and slavic groups. and, then we have yiddish. and there was spain...where neo-carthaginian patterns of migration were established, and they came full circle. everywhere they went, jews intermarried and absorbed the local gene pool.

but, most of the jews stayed put - and converted to islam. for that reason, chomsky is right: the real descendants of the historical hebrews are actually the palestinians, who adopted the identity of a greek tribe named the philistines under romanization, and then arabization. looking for jews scattered across the earth is as useful as looking for carthaginians - they're largely gone.

so, to address this guy's point about the jews being indigenous, it's not that he's wrong so much as he's confused - if you do the archaeology, what you see is how israel became arabized. that's the lesson to learn from that task - that one layer begets another. and, that the past is right in front of you.

to be clear: the karen made a horrible, bigoted transphobic statement and got the prosecutor to scream it in court. if i could get that statement, it would prove my case beyond a doubt.

but, it was removed from the transcript, and removed from the audio, somehow.

and, now the cops are telling me i can't have it - because it would be releasing evidence that could incriminate her. i need to get it via court order.

so, that's actually some progress, even if i can't get it.

so, if this thing got scrubbed, you have to wonder if it might have even gotten scrubbed by the crown, itself. 'cause, i mean...it's absurd...

it was an embarrassing moment for me, sure - but it was more embarrassing for her. or, at least, it should have been...

you could hear the air go out of the room. everybody was appalled at what they witnessed...

this wasn't some ignorant fundamentalist bigot on the street in idaho.

this was a prosecutor working for the crown, in canada.

that wasn't actually what i filed the foia for, though.

what i was actually looking for - and got - was a statement that the email address ryanmyon@gmail.com belonged to her - which contradicts the statement she made to the tribunal, that she wouldn't be representing ryan myon.

just to update on the "you're not welcome here" fiasco.

in a fit of ridiculous transphobia, the crown prosecutor (a muslim woman) made a dramatic show of pointing at me and screaming, at the top of her lungs: "your application for housing is illegitimate, and YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!!!!".

...which made everybody in the court room kind of gasp. it was like something you'd expect to see in saudi arabia.

while her dramatic attempt to other me as an unwelcome queer failed horribly, it also seems to have been completely scrubbed. it didn't appear in the transcript (which cost me $150), and it didn't appear in the audio, which i got via court order. it was blacked out in disclosure. and, the foia request i got denied it to me under the argument that it might be used against her.

no, really, that's the argument - we can't disclose this, because it might be used against her in a case against her. i have to get it via court order...

so, i sent in a court order. and, even if the justice doesn't want to overrule the cops, it sure makes her look bad to refuse disclosure under what amounts to some kind of abstract 5th.

so, it didn't show up, but there's no comments on that video over the last three months, either.

it looks like i'm shadow banned, but it might be more like that the college has it set to approve comments, and they're a little slow about it.

i'm going to cease from getting upset for the moment.

i got my package for the karen case in on thursday, and i got a form 10 out this morning. they gave me what i was looking for, but they also gave me an opening regarding the "you're not welcome here" fiasco, which, if i could get a record of, would help me dramatically.

the way they did it sort of helps, though, because it makes it look like they're protecting her by refusing to release incriminating evidence - which is absolutely true.

i am getting fed up with the delays, though. if i don't get something soon, i'm going to have to ask the divisional court to pull it...

....as soon as they re-open.

on second thought, the only shadow ban up to now is that parenti comment. 

or maybe that's the first one.

or maybe they undid it when i said it...

i have been systematically shut down from youtube in the past, because my discourses go viral, and they're deeply subversive - and i get it.

i'm even going to try to repost on the parenti video.

they've got me shadow-banned on youtube again - they're afraid of me engaging in discourse, and the consequences of me winning arguments in public. so, i can't post because they don't want the process of me winning debates to take place. if you flip through the lengthy discussions through here, the ones where i make my opponents look like idiots - that's what they don't want to exist.

so, i'll need to do some transferring and backposting back to here.

mar 17th is up here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pQ2-8EV5YwNAeI_d5HRA480_K-bkpSRa/view?usp=sharing

so, i've got up to the end of mar 16th up...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pQ2-8EV5YwNAeI_d5HRA480_K-bkpSRa/view?usp=sharing

i just jumped past 30,000 words with this thing.

but, when they gave cuba fake independence, was it not because they didn't want to deal with the dependency? imperialism is hierarchical, but it's not hobbesian - the hegemon isn't a leviathan, it's defined by it's decadence and laziness, at the top of the class hierarchy. it's not there to colonize, it's just there to extract - and that's the difference between the romans and the greeks, isn't it? history repeats itself: if the brits were neo-grecian colonists, america is a neo-roman imperialist.

just another point, though - nowadays, they call neo-imperialism something else: neo-liberalism. because neo-liberalism is actually neo-mercantilism...

yeah, i'm confident that my teeth are getting better.

i'm just as confident that my gums are not.

i need to call the fancy dentist on monday...

so, there's another minor update, here. it's time to stop to eat.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pQ2-8EV5YwNAeI_d5HRA480_K-bkpSRa/view?usp=sharing

some of the threads in thought may not come off as important or relevant at first, but all i can say is to wait for the narrative to develop.

i'd say every single one of these things is true about me.

https://introvertdear.com/news/intp-personality-signs/

i'm an intp.

firmly.

if you're curious.

but, like i say, i can't completely wall myself off.

i need some way to connect with reality.

and, is the guitar dead?

i don't really care - i do it because i love it, not because it's profitable.

if you're looking for somebody that cares about fashions and trends, you're in the wrong place.

i took blues lessons when i was a kid from a guitarist in ottawa named robert farrell. he was a kind of an srv knockoff, although he was also a huge mark knopfler fan.

i briefly took classical lessons not long after that. it was just an introduction - i just wanted a foundation, so i could pick a classical up and play it, and so i could create on it and transfer the knowledge back.

and, of course, i grew up listening to guitarists like billy corgan, lee ranaldo and kim thayil.

so, what you're hearing there is fundamentally classical guitar music, via a blues filter - and presented as alternative rock.

fwiw, here are some videos of me playing guitar, the first in ottawa and the second in windsor, if you somehow doubt i did or do, for some stupid childish reason:

but, i'm convinced i'm allergic to something, and i need to figure it out before it does more than force me to violently shit it out.

i got more sleep tonight than i have in quite a while, and it was partly as a reaction to the pasta bowl, again - the same reaction. at least i'm pretty sure now that the reaction is real, and it wasn't a virus...

i'm experiencing some mild beeturia, as well. it's not as bad as before. so, is it the beets? it seems to be something reacting with the beets...

so, i'm going to need to rip it apart and rebuild it back up piece by piece, again.

last time, it seemed to be the sunflower seeds....and then wasn't. if i'm to jump to conclusions, i think it might be that these seeds don't last so long in the cupboard, and i should buy them in smaller amounts. so, if i reduce it down to the seeds again, the right conclusion seems to be that they're rancid.

but, why do the seeds create these problems when consumed in the pasta bowl and not in the fruit bowl?

i'll have to sit down and figure it out.

it's also a part of the reason i go to so many concerts, or did back when i could; as an artist, i needed to maintain a connection to what was happening around me, so as to not become entirely divorced from reality. it's this danger that people working in the space that i work in come up against, this constant threat we're all up against of losing touch with reality entirely....

listen.

i like to read. i think that's obvious. but, reading is time consuming, and sitting down and reading something means you don't have time to do something else. i spend the bulk of my time creating media rather than consuming it...

and, you can't multitask; you can't read and write at the same time. or, you can't do that substantively - not unless you're just writing about what you're reading. but, then you're a critic and not an artist. and, i sort of envy the critic in a sense, and become one in various spurts, but i fundamentally want to create art, not consume it.

i remember reading an interview with michael gira where he explained how difficult it was to listen to music, when he spent all his time and energy thinking about making it - and yet concluding there was a contradiction in it, because it strips out the influences around you and kind of keeps you isolated from reality. he presented a multitasking compromise/solution - he listened to music on the tour bus.

i would rather get my information from the written medium, but the multitasking around being an artist provide for minimal opportunities, and i don't want to cut into the time i need to work on my projects with reading somebody else's thoughts. my compromised multitasking solution is consequently to watch lectures when i'm eating. that keeps me absorbing information, while my activities are focused on writing - which is what i'm primarily doing now and will be until i get through these projects directly in front of me. i don't expect to create much music in this basement; the drug-addled environment simply isn't conducive to creative thought, i really need to get out to a more stable studio space.

are lectures as good as books? no. but, they're the second best thing...

that's why it's so important that i ensure i'm getting information from good sources when i am eating, and why i can't be wasting my time with specious garbage.

so, i hit my posting limit for the day and am going to take a nap before i make some pasta, but there's a few more pages added here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pQ2-8EV5YwNAeI_d5HRA480_K-bkpSRa/view?usp=sharing

as you can see, i'm really just getting started. that's an 8.5x11 sized 53 pages, at 11 pt font and minimal spacing - it's already ~150 pages, if formatted for a novel type affair. and, i'm only halfway through last march...

it's going to be a very big and very wonkish text, when i'm done.

i am a huge fan of neil's guitar playing, actually.

he might be the single realest, rawest, most gutwrenching guitarist the rock era produced - it's all feel. no pretension...

here's a few you youngins might learn sumpin from.

and, old man neil is from winnipeg, canada - if you're curious. even if he doesn't like to admit it....

and, of course - the most sarcastic anthem ever:

i had to tell you that?

freakin kids.

i meant this, actually.

so did he.

if you were curious.

but, that's implicitly condoning the red scare. but wolff is a marxist, so you shouldn't be too surprised at the use of force to assert authority.

listen, i'm all for taking down nazis,  but we have to be sure they're actually nazis first, not just idiots with offensive hats.

this is useful.

this is less than i wanted, but it's time to eat. there's a few more pages up:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pQ2-8EV5YwNAeI_d5HRA480_K-bkpSRa/view?usp=sharing

i was listening almost exclusively to cardiacs, at the time.

so, my purpose is my art - not because it's real, but because it's what i want.

i admit this is hard, but that's too bad, it's all we've got.

there is no inherent meaning or purpose in existence "out there" somewhere. search all you may, there is nothing to find; you're here for no reason, and you have no function, no fate. everything around us is stochastic, random, chaotic...

but, that doesn't mean that the concept of purpose should be discarded. after all, we invented it because we wanted it. right? so, how can we salvage this?

and, i think the answer is actually very simple: instead of looking for something "out there", instead of searching and scouring and trying to find meaning and purpose through religion or communism or whatever else, we should instead retreat inwards and define what purpose means to ourselves, uniquely. just because there isn't some grand, overarching purpose that we all fit into together doesn't mean that the illusion of an individually defined self-purpose can't be upheld. 

so, define your own purpose - if you dare. if you accept being free enough to do so. if you want to be free...

but, maybe you don't - maybe you will continue to flail against yourself, and seek meaning in some whole, instead. i guess i can only wish you good luck. but, i think you're a pitiful slave.

if i thought there was even an infinitesimal chance that a god exists, i would accept pascal's wager and try to figure out some kind of.....i dunno. some kind of deism or something, i guess. i mean, it doesn't help us understand the nature of god - it provides no information as to which religion is correct, if any of them are at all. it could be that the god that exists is even satan. so, while the argument is admittedly shrouded in christian theology, it's not necessary to default to christianity - so long as your system of thought accepts the concept of a soul (and indian and greek religion both did and do, too), you can use pascal's wager in some modified sense. and, to be consistent, pascal would no doubt argue that you can't reasonably determine which one of these systems is the right one to follow, if any of them are at all.

but, if i thought there was a non-zero probability, i'd have to give in.

i don't. 

let x be the event that god exists.

p(x) = 0.

religion is boring.

but, pascal's wager is a better argument than any theology you can find anywhere. 

it's really the best you can do - the closest i'll ever get.

i actually don't think i've talked much about the realization i came to in the mid-00s regarding the futility of existence, and the rabbit hole i went down with it. i'm not sure why...

i say that as i deny being a philosopher. i guess that, if i have a philosophy, and i suppose we all do, this is it. i won't do this every day...

so, the futility of existence is some kind of existentialism, in the sisyphean sense - all of that stuff about pushing boulders up hills. i got out of school, and that's all i could find, anywhere i looked: boulders to push up hills every day. my parents (and my sister, and my ex-girlfriend) wanted me to put the boulder on my shoulders instead, but i didn't have the interest; they told me when i was a kid that i was a natural leader, and, being the first born genetic male, my family actually looked up to me in ways i thoroughly resented, but leadership is a funny thing, right? i spent a lot of time flailing against this - i didn't want to be a leader, and i think it's partly what attracted me to anarchism, this idea of a world without leaders; if we lived in a world without leaders, nobody would look to me for leadership anymore. so, i shrugged that boulder off years ago, and nobody seemed to notice: the only boulder i saw around me was the one i had to push up the hill every day. and, maybe i could lead people out of that to freedom...

and, isn't that real leadership? gandhi & moses were true leaders; steve jobs & john galt were really not.

to me, though, the futility lies primarily in the finiteness of it. i mean, what's the point, when it just abruptly stops, someday? was i merely coming to terms with my mortality at the age of 25? dour, i know, but there's something to it - i get out of school, i'm faced with tremendous existential dread and i decide it's a farce.

i looked at occupation after occupation and i just couldn't find emancipation in anything. why bother studying math, when you'll only take a bite out of it? why bother saving lives when everybody dies, anyways? the only thing that seemed valuable was art, but that was an algorithm for an early grave, as art eventually runs out. eventually....

but, what if there was a way to escape mortality? then knowledge regains it's value. lives become worth saving. and, art can reclaim it's value as expression beyond vocation, beyond purpose.

escape mortality? what?

well, i don't think it's such a hard problem, really. consciousness is chemical - it's all in your head. literally. whatever it is is in there, and it's not necessary to fully understand it in order to emulate it. so, we can sidestep these philosophical concerns; shapeshifting shouldn't be that hard of a problem at all. we just need to...

1) download ourselves to disk

2) create a clone - perhaps a gender modified clone. if you see where i'm going with this. if i could shapeshift, i'd shapeshift into an xx body.

3) reupload ourselves to the clone

that's not hard, in principle, at all. we just need to figure out the physics....

it would help to keep a backup in a safe place so that we can regenerate in case of an accident; maybe we could do that when we sleep. if we pick up cancer or aids or something, regeneration is the easy way to beat it - we can just compost our old hosts.

people tried to argue with me about the plausibility of such a thing, but their arguments tended to be very strange. i had one person convinced that the turing thesis disproved this (i don't think the turing thesis says anything about this at all, but humans are complicated quantum computers, we're not turing machines - and that is fundamental, here. i actually think the person was interpreting the clone as a robot, which is weird.). i remain convinced that this idea is possible in theory - if we can figure out the physics of our brain (not that hard.), find enough storage to store it in (getting harder) and build a computer fast enough to download & upload it (that's a little tougher).

i realized it would require some effort. but, the futility of existence is an oppressive truth...

so, what i did was make a pascal's wager with myself - if i spend the rest of my life seeking immortality and fail, i've lost nothing. but, if i do nothing, and evade a potential solution, i've lost everything. i consequently must abandon everything else in life and strictly chase this algorithm for immortality - it's the only way to reverse the futility, the only way to salvage any meaning or purpose. otherwise, mortality is inevitable, and existence is futile.

i took a course in complexity theory at some point, and while the p=np thing was not new to me, when i sat down and worked out the bounds i became truly distraught. the amount of data that physicists require to document trivialities is immense - they have giant processing centres to document events that last fractions of a second.

so, what kind of data centre is required to store a human brain? we can imagine there might be symbolic shortcuts or compression algorithms, but the answer is absolutely tremendous. and, if p is not np, these calculations are going to be incredibly time consuming....

my pascal's wager was that it didn't matter - you need to shift into a different host, or you will die, so you'd might as well die trying; you've lost nothing by failing. but, this requires a non-zero probability that there's an answer, in the end. i eventually convinced myself otherwise, and the pascal's wager flipped over - existence became paramount. the futility must be embraced. go have fun...

so, how could i find an approximation of communism, then, in this world of capitalist decay? and, i've gotten pretty close, i think.

if you could point me to an advance that reverses my complexity calculations, i might change my analysis. but, i just can't see these advances existing before 2050, which is my exit point, my upper bound.

i will only live once.

even if millions now living will never die.

so, the last time i was getting stomach aches, i wondered if i was having an allergic reaction. 

right now, i'm noticing what look like hives on my arms.

i'm almost certain it's that garlic salt.....

i ended up living in the loeb building, like matt damon, in goodwill hunting.

when i look back at the situation, there is no defense for her behaviour.

at all.

and, if she ends up in a homeless shelter, it's just karma.

my stepmother is legitimately psychotic - the story i heard was that she watched her younger sister get fatally hit by a car, in fact totally annihilated by it, and within a foot of her face, when she was a preteen (after her mother asked her to keep an eye on her...) and the trauma left her horribly damaged...

but, if you knew her, you knew she was addicted to the medication, and it was the drugs that were the cause of her outbursts.

so, she'd randomly break things. she'd yell at you for no reason. she'd ruin your stuff, or throw it in the trash. she was consistently irrational - borderline insane. she had frequent psychotic fantasies, was prone to conspiracy theories....and, in the end, became a born-again christian. obviously, right?

she was legit bonkers.

so, i called her delusional once, and maybe that wasn't nice, but is it grounds to get thrown out of the house? i called her a lunatic and suffered the same fate. i don't remember the third offence, but it was no more substantive.

and, these accusations were substantive - she was acting like a child.

would you throw your kid that is in the third year of a difficult math program out of the house for calling you a lunatic, after you did some irrational thing or made some irrational claim to justify it?

and, it's easy enough to get conspiratorial myself, but the truth is that this was just base stupidity on her behalf.

and, all he could do in response was feed me 20s and hope it worked out....

it wasn't one semester they ruined, either.

it was three.

the idiots kept at it, convinced to completely destroy my academic career, as best they could.

and, then they pleaded with me to go back after. 

idiots.

my step-mother would be more like 68 or so. i don't know exactly how old she is...

i haven't spoken to her since the funeral, or know if she's even still alive.

but, if she's running out of money right about now, i'm not of much use to her after she ruined my transcript, am i?

derrrrrp.

i mean, my father's dead.

but, if he was alive today, he'd be entering retirement, soon - he'd be almost 64.

i've made specific choices to avoid concerning myself with finances - i'm a struggling artist, and i decided that i wanted to be that. but, you could imagine a situation where he needs support from his kids about now, and i wouldn't be of much use to him after he ruined my transcript, would i?

derrrrrrrrp.

the lesson i learned from how they acted was that they were complete idiots.

my total gpa over all the years i was there when i left in mid-2013 was roughly 11.

that's 11/12.

my marks in university are best described as "inconsistent". i actually should have held off on graduating, because i ended up with this strong b+ that put me directly on the cusp of everything.

but, if you look through my transcript, you see these dramatic differences between semesters - i'd get 5 As one semester, then 5 Ds the next, and if you didn't know the story it would just look like i was all over the place...

so, they offered me a qualifying year, but i didn't see the point. all i could do with a masters degree was get a job i didn't want, which was the situation i was in with the bachelor's degree in the first place.

the reason my marks were all over the place is that my parents were assholes - they kept throwing me out of the house for stupid reasons to try to teach me backwards lessons. it was all about adhering to authority, which is the wrong thing to teach your children, and a bizarre thing to try to push down on an adult in their early 20s. and, the stupidity of their behaviour completely destroyed my transcript.

when i went back in 2008, they couldn't render me homeless anymore because i didn't live with them. and, my marks weren't just straight As but straight 99s. i just breezed through that comp sci degree like it was nothing, until they forced me to interact with the other students - and i just fell apart on the spot. i breezed through the curriculum, but i couldn't function in the social component. 

i couldn't do anything about the situation at the time, either - i had nowhere else to go.

the reality is that the fact that i was able to cobble together a strong b+ under the circumstances i was in was actually exceedingly impressive. most people would have had little choice but to drop out...but i undid what they left me with as best as i could, and turned it around just enough.

if i had stayed for another semester, i would have pulled my gpa up that extra two percent and it wouldn't have been an issue. but, it wouldn't have made me more interested in the topic, or more convinced it was worth my time.

hey catholics.

i've got an idea for something you can give up on lent.

your faith.

so, i seem to be doing paprika wrong, but i don't want to heat it because it'll just kill the vitamins...

i don't know what i expected it to taste like, but it doesn't taste like much. the thing is that i'm getting the same thing from the mustard, and i'm concluding it might be the source.

regardless, i might be better off just buying a fresh cayenne pepper, and boosting the amount of actual red pepper.

like i say, i need to try a few things...but i think the paprika is likely to get struck out, at least.

that frustrating stomach ache is back, and only after the pasta meal, again.

i think it's the garlic salt, this time. and it may just be old. it was just a pinch, too. i'll avoid it next time...

i did the tablespoon of paprika, and added just a bit of cayenne. i dunno, yet - it's not bad, but not really what i want. let me try it a bit longer...

if i take the salt out next time and the stomach ache goes away, great. if it doesn't, i'll need to strip it down, again.

why hasn't anybody bridged a dialectic between analytic & continental philosophy, anyways?

zizek's understanding of anarchism is the kind of thing you hear from a first year student with a circle-A hat that they bought at a corporate rock concert, or hot topic or something. or, it's like rooted in the term "anarchy in production" or something. yikes.

it's every stupid mistake you'd find on a reddit message board.

the difference, in context, is just whether you let the state whither away or you actively take it out, and what that means is removing the class at the top of the hierarchy. "the state" is really just another word for "the aristocracy". like, that's marxism 101 that zizek is failing, here.

===

it's one thing to point to different measures of different truth and realize they exist, but it's another to throw your hands up in the air and decide you're stuck with relativism because of it. given two different systems of truth, we should be able to compare them and determine which is a better way to understand truth than the other - we don't have to just see them as equally useful, or interchangeable, or whatnot. in fact, we have a system of mathematics that can help us systematize and work something like that out; this was worked out primarily by godel, in the middle part of the last century. we can, consequently, evaluate how useful a system of truth determination is, and whether a system has value or does not. and, of course, the great scandal in mathematics is that our system of arithmetic has some problems, and that kant was consequently pretty much dead wrong.

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you know, you don't need foucault to follow this discussion, you just need to ask the question:

if a tree falls in the forest, and there's nobody around, does it make a sound?

you can bring in this naive concept of the observer effect, and a bunch of quantum woo, which is what zizek is doing; it sounds like he got that from deepak chopra, or something. or, you could point to the fact that sound is energy being released by the motion of the tree, and the gravitational force ending with the *thump*.

tuberculosis is, of course, a bacterial infection, and while the bacteria has no doubt evolved , we can trace it's genetic history back. it would probably be more correct to say the pharoah died of a bacterial infection that is ancestral to tuberculosis. or, maybe you don't think that tree makes a sound.

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"the time will come when we will realize that co-operation is in our self interest". 

well, there you go, slavoj.

that's kropotkin. perhaps via dawkins.

atta boy.

it's even hegelian, too. right?

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no, i'm going to repeat the point - comparing tuberculosis to a perception is of course a basic category error. what he's saying about rape is true enough, but it doesn't make sense to apply that kind of language to tuberculosis....except regarding what i previously said, namely the fact that bacteria changes so dramatically and so quickly that the tuberculosis of thousands of years prior would really only be an ancestor of the tuberculosis of today. and, so, he's managing to accidentally make a valid point, but he should be appealing to actual darwinian evolution via natural selection, rather than this kind of dawkinsian thing, which is sort of about memes, really - to try and salvage a sciency-ness in a topic that should be approached purely empirically, not using this goofy theory he's citing. and, i haven't read  the paper by latour. maybe i should take a look at it and post something to my blog about it...

and, just to be clear - it's just a question of approaching specific questions with the right tactics. you can talk about perception with rape; perception is the only thing that matters with rape, as two people could experience even the most violent types of sex consensually or nonconsensually. but, how tuberculosis changes over time rather clearly reduces to an evolutionary question, and you need to be using the language of science to approach it; otherwise you're just being dumb. but, i'd like to see what latour actually said - did he talk about the tuberculosis strain evolving over time?

ok, he doesn't, and that's a shame, because he'd almost have a point if he had approached the question with the right tools. but, the article seems to really be as dumb as chomsky implies....

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i watched that twice to make sure i didn't miss something worthwhile the first time.

nope.

i was a big phil hartman fan when i was a kid....

that's really all i know about joe rogan:

you may remember me from such classic tv shows as newsradio, the one on mtv and a bunch of other bullshit nobody watched.

i really, honestly, couldn't tell you anything else about him, and i'm not interested in learning about it - not unless he gives me some reason to, and i'm not holding my breath.

i mean, i know that some people want to put philosophers at the top of the intellectual hierarchy, but i don't share that position; my epistemology places empirical science at the top of the hierarchy, and deductive or synthetic philosophy at the very bottom of it.

kant got this ass-backwards, as per usual.

outside of those topics - math, computer science, law, physics, economics, music - everything you see here is dabbling & self-taught.

and, i am more interested in dabbling in some things (history, politics, anthropology) than others (religion, philosophy).

we'll do this again.

- i do not believe i have a high school diploma. i didn't attend graduation because i didn't want to have to hang out with the kids in my graduating class; if a diploma was mailed to me, i don't have it now, and i've never seen it. i have a transcript. the reason i don't think i have a diploma is that there was a specific requirement introduced by the mike harris government to participate in a certain amount of community service (that is, unpaid labour) in order to graduate, and i boycotted it out of protest. so, this was a conscious decision on my behalf...

- i have a diploma from carleton university in my closet, somewhere. this is a b. mathematics (honours), 2006. that's a four-year degree. i was initially admitted for software engineering, and bounced around through several programs before i graduated with the math degree.

- i completed the requirements of a mcse while undergoing training directly from microsoft in 2007, but i did not pay to receive the accreditation, as it would have been more than they paid me to go through training and, again, i wasn't interested in working for free. this was, iirc, three months of paid training directly from microsoft.

- i went back to school in 2008 on my father's insistence, and against my better judgement - i was happy at the time, and it was probably the biggest mistake i've ever made in my life. i should have continued on the path i was on. alas. i was supposed to do a qualifying year for grad school in math, which he offered to pay for and i really had no actual interest in doing. but, he had to pull out at the last minute (you'll recall there was a market crash in '08...) and once i found myself faced with the need to fund this myself, and without an option to pull out due to the economic facts that asserted themselves (and have yet to undo themselves), i switched directions and decided i'd be better off with a more marketable undergraduate degree in computer science than a more or less useless masters degree in mathematics. i also decided to look into the application of a computer science degree into the field of neuroscience, with an intent to explore tactics towards accomplishing immortality, and had this idea in the back of my mind as i was going forwards. however, i found myself taking graduate math courses as electives.

- so, from 2008-2010, what i was really doing was completing an undergraduate degree in computer science and a graduate degree in mathematics,  at the same time. and, i actually got to within a half credit of the computer science degree, as i amassed not six but eight math credits at the graduate level.

- about 2010 or so, i realized that shapeshifting would require levels of computational complexity that would not be realistically developed in my lifetime, decided i was wasting my life, firmly concluded that i didn't want to work in the programming industry (i've never played computer games in my life and have no interest in them...) and shifted my focus towards law & political science, instead. if immortality was beyond my reach in this life, i decided i wanted to fight the fuckers within the futility of existence - to do something useful. i neither applied to graduate with a computer science degree, nor applied to graduate with a masters degree in mathematics, but i have completed the course load for the latter and am a half credit short for the former.

- i then had a mental breakdown that i maybe never fully recovered from and took a few years off.

- i got on odsp in 2012.

- without ever even transferring out of the comp sci program, i went back in the summer of 2012 and, over three heavy semesters, completed the requirements of a three year sociology of law program. while the requirements are complete, i never even applied for entry into the program - these courses were taken as a comp sci student (and, frankly, as alumni from the math degree).

- in the spring of 2013, i took a mushroom trip with some occupy activists near a creek and decided "fuck it, i'm wasting my life in school", and that i'd rather live on disability, instead -  i'd rather just exist. i just got up and walked away and moved to windsor to find affordable rent, instead....

so,

- i completed all of the requirements for high school except the bullshit community service nonsense, and therefore don't have the diploma. i don't think.

- i completed the four year math degree and have the diploma.

- i completed and passed training as an mcse but didn't pay for certification.

- i completed the requirements for a masters degree in math, but don't have the diploma and don't really think the diploma is actually worth anything.

- i completed the (substantive) requirements for a 4 year comp sci degree, but don't have the diploma, and don't care. i have no aspirations in the field, whatsoever.

- i completed the requirements for a three year sociology of law degree, but decided the system is too skewed to bother fighting in - that that would be a waste of time, too.

over that time, i also picked up undeclared minors in physics, economics and music, and maybe a few other things i'm forgetting.

what i want to do is exist as an artist blogger/musician with a gai in a small apartment in the urban core of a major city and experience life from that perspective. and, things weren't too bad before they closed the border...

if this continues much longer, i may need to move to toronto. i hope the rents continue to fall - that will help.

a few months ago, i was spending time with the stanford lectures, particularly the physics lectures as they were the ones i had the most interest in sorting through. i'll remind you that my academic background is in mathematics, physics, computer science....& law. 

i have never taken a philosophy course in my life and, frankly, wouldn't want to waste my time in a philosophy course. *yawn*.

but, i've pointed out many times here that i've had difficulties with surveillance on my machines, partly as a consequence of various illegal entries into this apartment. so, i put a password on the machine that required the use of an external keyboard.

what they did was break the external keyboard when i was gone, and i found myself defaulting to this chromebook to watch videos when i was eating, instead.

i initially starting watching a lot of paul jay, because i kind of missed him. but, then i found myself drifting off elsewhere...

youtube's algorithm's are notoriously terrible, and i've ranted about them in this space on multiple occasions. it's not just the fact that they're designed for maximizing ad revenue - they seem intended to maximize the spread of ignorance, as well. they seem to intentionally push religion and pseudoscience instead of valid scientific sources, and i'm not convinced that's some kind of accident. and, so i found myself watching all of this pacifica network garbage it was pushing down on me, which was fine during the election, but i've recently erupted a few times at the ignorance and stupidity of the media personalities and need to train the filters to stop pushing these garbage vloggers down on me, that present nonsense designed for uneducated morons.

seder is a little better. the rest of them are a bunch of ignorant idiots.

it's a sad truth that you need to be vigilant about this, nowadays - if you let them, youtube will turn your brain into mush with these garbage kyle kulinski and jimmy dore and the hill and katie halper and ... videos that all seem to be funded and directed by this corporate conglomeration directed by cenk uygur. this is a media oligopoly that's every bit as dangerous as the old nbc-abc-cbs triad. if we need antitrust legislation right now, that's what it should be directed towards - breaking up this vlogging network that pushes absolutely terrible information, and reduces the discourse to absolute trash.

i let my guard down for a few months there, and just found myself pissed off by it, in the end. i'm adjusting. and, i should be back to watching lectures and documentaries when i'm eating, rather than the garbage i've been polluting myself with recently.

what kind of literary genre is this?

well, it's in the tradition of the kind of commentary marx frequently did, but this is really an entirely new genrre, that's a reflection of the shift in technology - something i'm happy to embrace.

this is a new means of expression, and it has it's pros (the freeform nature, the cross-references to outside media) and cons (it's fragmented, by design).

but, this is how we write, now - and i'm more interested in making the most of it than flailing against it.

i've been distracted.

there's a minor update here that adds some posts about free speech (and trudeau's disinterest in it) to the jan, 2020 section, an important consideration in the developing narrative:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pQ2-8EV5YwNAeI_d5HRA480_K-bkpSRa/view?usp=sharing

now, what's going on at the moment is a little different; it's just empty, pointless, meaningless theatre that is explicitly designed to waste time in congress, and there should be a giant backlash on the left that this is what they're wasting time on, in the middle of a pandemic and the onset of an economic depression. worse, while it seems to be that republicans seem to agree with the censure right now, it's opening a can of worms.

is this going to become normal?

and, what should my concern be, here? should i be concerned about blowback on future democrats?

or should i embrace the potential collapse of the washington consensus and the return to partisan politics? we could only hope, right? we could only dream that such naivete may assert itself in reality...

it is true that, in canada, the prime minister is elected by the house of commons, and not by the people. so, the governing party has the ability to replace the prime minister with a member of it's own party....or a member of the opposite party, i guess, although that's a blurry part in the law for obvious reasons - it's absurd.

the impeachment hearings are not comparable to that, but are rather comparable to the situation where the opposition introduces a non-confidence motion. and, in canada, that triggers an election, it doesn't lead to a bureaucratic shift in power.

so, i'm backposting and that might be blurry, but the key is the context. and, i'll double down - i think impeachment is an undemocratic process that should be abolished.