deathtokoalas

and, yes - hitchens ripped him apart in the q & a.

he's christopher hitchens.

he'd do that to anybody.

Throw Away

Were we watching the same debate, Hitchens was juvenile, doing nothing but parroting neolib talking points.

deathtokoalas

i actually found much of what parenti said in the q & a section (such as resorting to questioning the motives of the rulers, which is irrelevant) to be somewhat idealistic and juvenile. but, you forget that what you call "neoliberalism" (the more correct neologism is neoconservatism) is rebranded trostkyism, and hitchens was a self-identified trotskyist. the difference is in the honesty of the discourse; the neo-cons presented left-wing arguments in a dishonest manner to advance their empire, and all evidence is that hitchens actually believed what he said. so, it's the difference between a fake trostkyist and a real one.

but, i've noticed this continually over the last 15 years - yes, hitchens was wrong. but, he was also badly misunderstood. few people seemed to really follow his argument.

mr t

Many neoconservatives did start out as Trotskyists but the ones that did usually renounced Trotskyism by the time they became neocons (Hitchens, Horowitz, Howe, Schachtman etc.) There's definitely a "pipeline" between the two since Trotskyists indirectly support imperialism, and continuing to follow their logic and mindset can lead hem to coming full circle and becoming totally pro-empire. That being said, the broader ideology of Trotskyism and neoconservatism are totally incompatible. Neocon arguments are definitely not left-wing. I'm saying this as someone who hates Trotskyism by the way.

deathtokoalas

hitchens did not denounce trotskyism, and you can find videos of him identifying as a trotskyist as late as 2009 - four years after this debate. hitchens' arguments here are explicitly trostkyist, and only resemble neo-conservatism by proxy.

i mean, he starts off by citing hegel, ffs.

hitchens points it out himself - this is really a debate between a trostkyist and a...i'm not going to call parenti a stalinist. maybe a titoist. but, it's a debate between two different strains of the left, and the actual truth is that hitchens is really representing the further left variant of the two.

mr. t

Hitchens explicitly renounces Marxism (of which Trotskyism is a variant) in God is Not Great. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FcBeyEWgSM) Even in this debate he alludes to having formerly been "in the same church" with Parenti, ie he used to be a socialist. And supporting imperialist war and the deaths of thousands of innocent people for corporate profits is not left-wing in any possible sense and is certainly not "more left-wing" than not wanting to do that. No offense but I honestly laughed out loud at that last part i mean wow.

 

deathotkoalas

that's not a renunciation of trotskyism or a step away from the left, it's a statement of skepticism towards the dogmatic precepts of theory in the context of a text written to uphold independent thought. you've completely misunderstood what he said there, as you are misunderstanding what he's said here. listen to that short excerpt again and you can hear why hitchens supported the invasion, and it had nothing to do with supporting imperialism or corporate profits - it was a legitimate, if misguided, statement of solidarity with the iraqi people from an explicitly trostkyist position, in an honest attempt to liberate them from abject tyranny. so, yes - supporting imperialist war and the deaths of thousands of innocent people for corporate profit is entirely consistent with a trostkyist position if that imperialism and death also leads to the overthrow of a bourgeois state, and the emancipation of millions more - which is the point he hoped for and the point he was wrong about, and not any of these other things, which are irrelevant to any argument he made. to a leftist, it is the outcome that matters and not the intent, because the left is pragmatic and not idealistic.

 

(edit: hitchens also argued repeatedly that the nazi state was deeply christian, so that picture of hitler in the video is instructive in it's intent to mislead. that video was no doubt put together by one of hitchens' admirers on the far right, which has co-opted his statements for it's own purposes. to state that hitchens was not a member of the bill o'reilly faction on atheism, which is no doubt where the implication in putting the picture in the video originates, is an understatement; he would have argued that nazi atrocities were carried out in the name of religion and were a reason to abolish religion, rather than that they were carried out in the name of atheism, or a reason to support religion. the statement no doubt referred primarily to mao, and also to stalin - and he would have made those arguments during his days as an accepted leftist, as well.)

you can see hitchens reaffirm his trotskyist identity in a 2009 video at the hoover institute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pkWQ-DwgmA

when he says he "used to be in the same church as parenti" and "used to be a marxist", what he means is he got kicked out, not that he left - and that is true. hitchens was renounced by the left and had to react, but he did not renounce the left, himself.

on the socialist spectrum, you have anarchists like chomsky (and myself) in the furthest left position, and then you have the rosa luxemburgs, and then the "permanent revolution" folks at the fourth international that far-left anarchists can mostly deal with. parenti is a kind of centrist socialist, so i'm being kind by calling him a titoist - he has flirted with the far-right variants, as presented by stalin. and, hitch is right to point out that parenti is acting out a sympathy with systems of authoritarian dictatorship, as embodied by the failed "arab socialist" revolution of the baath party. parenti is not as far right as zizek, but he's well to the right of hitchens. 

that's just a question of actually knowing who these people actually are.

a good way to understand what happened to hitchens is to look at what's happening to glenn greenwald. greenwald has been denounced by much of the left, but he'll still identify as belonging to it. the reality is that he's been banned from virtually every left-wing media outlet - and still gets invited to speak to audiences of conservatives. over time, will people call him a conservative? well, they might. but, glenn hasn't left the left - rather, the left has thrown him out.

there is a 2009 article written in the atlantic entitled "the revenge of karl marx", where hitchens makes his continuing marxist views abundantly clear.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/04/the-revenge-of-karl-marx/307317/

if i'm to concede slightly, it seems as though the late hitchens - who we have to realize actually understood this stuff - seemed to shift his focus towards the need for a fuller capitalist expression in the existing period, which, if anything, is a shift towards leninism. remember: marxists don't argue that capitalism and communism are in opposition to another, but that capitalism is the required first stage towards socialist evolution. so, what you hear in hitchens' later years is a sort of realization (after 1989, although it took until 2003 to fully form) of the need to actually go through the capitalist phase. but, his criticism was always constructive, and he never embraced capitalism as an alternative to the left, or stood back from his insistence on the struggle against tyranny and oppression.

and, so while there is certainly room to introduce subtlety in the late hitchens' views towards marxist theory it is absolutely clear that he never lost an identification with the left, or with the ideals of the left, even as he became aware of the limitations of it, and ended up disenfranchised by it for not falling in line.

mr. t

First of all, just in the interest of reality I have to contradict that interpretation of both of those videos. I don't personally care if he was a Trotskyist or not but in both cases he so clearly identifies himself as not being one. In the 2009 one he simply explains why he used to be one and why he still admires Trotsky as an individual in some ways. You're basically saying that because he still claims to have a certain "leftist spirit" surrounding his beliefs that he's still a Marxist even though he doesn't call himself one, doesn't identify with any Marxist movements or governments, actively supports Western imperialism against Marxist movements, and doesn't support any Marxist positions (apart from perhaps some long-term, utopian vision for the future, but he supports none of the short-term goals that might bring us there). 

And as far as excuses for imperialism goes you could make the same argument for George Bush. He didn't say he was going into Iraq to steal the oil and overthrow an uncooperative government, he used the same arguments Hitchens used. They all make up humanitarian sounding reasons for imperialism, whether they believe it or not, but that doesn't make it leftist. Anyone who thinks that the overthrow of the 20th century socialist countries was a good thing, and that things are better off since then, is not holding a left-wing position on that question. You can say you disagree with those countries or you don't think they were real socialism, but to say that the US-installed neoliberalism of the 90s was better (as he says in this video) is straight-up pro-imperialism.

deathtokoalas

you're tearing down a strawman of hitchens, and i'm not interested in counteracting what amounts to a smear campaign on a dead man. the historical record is clear enough, and people that know what they're talking about can look it up. i would ask you to back up some of your claims, though - and claim you have the burden of proof when arguing that hitchens "doesn't call himself a marxist" (in fact, he continued to call himself one until his death, as i demonstrated with two links), "doesn't support any marxist governments" (which means what, exactly? where are there marxist governments? and he certainly continued to identify with marxist movements.), "actively supported western imperialism" (an absurd claim) or "doesn't support any marxist positions" (when he clearly did, until his death).

and, talking about "short term goals that might bring us to marxism" means what exactly? have you read any marx at all? that's absurd on it's face, unless you're an anarchist.

if you think that bush and hitchens used the same argument, you either haven't listened to hitchens, haven't listened to bush or haven't listened to either. maybe you read that in some progressive rag or something, but that's absolute nonsense. or, maybe you've managed to listen thoroughly to hitchens and fail to understand a word he said.

i'd love to see a clip of dubya citing hegel in his justification for the overthrow of saddam hussein, though. that'd make my day.

and, i mean, what to make of this?:

Anyone who thinks that the overthrow of the 20th century socialist countries was a good thing, and that things are better off since then, is not holding a left-wing position on that question.

i mean, we'd have to cross off a long list of people, then - your list of leftists would be restricted to the hardest right stalinists and the most genocidal maoists. that's a ridiculous, offensively stupid statement. the quality of life in eastern europe has gone through the fucking roof.

the bizarre confusion underlying your post is setting capitalism and socialism off against each other, which just indicates you don't understand either.

 

mr. t

Wow, well alright, I definitely did learn something from this (about psychology if nothing else). I'll just leave with this, and I mean this in as helpful of a way as possible. It sounds like some of your statements regarding Hitchens are some form of projection. The idea that the "far-right stalinist left" won't take you "real leftists" seriously when you go around supporting imperialist war and CIA interventions in socialist countries.

Leftism is more than just saying "I'm for good things and against bad things." There's no ideology on the planet that doesn't make the same claim. Leftism is a specific definition of what that "pro-good things" vision looks like, and how to get there.

One of the main movements associated with leftism is workers' rights and workers' liberation. That's probably the most basic thing. So if a capitalist imperialist empire is invading a country where the workers have liberated themselves, and attempting to bring capitalism back into that country, supporting that is not leftist. You should just call yourself a neoliberal if you're gonna do that. Then this wouldn't be so confusing, but I'm glad you helped clarify it anyway. Good luck.

 

deathtokoalas

again: the stupidity inherent in this comment is baffling - as though iraq was a socialist country (baffling stupidity.) and the reason hitchens supported it had anything to do with the cia. i will state this again: no leftist would give the slightest fuck what the reason the american military goes into a country is, or base their support or opposition for the action on why it is occurring. the left cares strictly about outcomes and would base it's opposition or support strictly on what would happen or would not happen should such an event occur. so, for somebody that clearly has not read much of any marx, or know anything about the left to try to lecture me that leftism isn't deontological is just baffling in it's application of the dunning-kruger effect - you are the one presenting a conservative,  kantian ethics here, and i'm the one channeling the liberalism of machiavelli, as per trotsky, via hitchens.

 let me ask you this, though: what was your position on the recent fiasco regarding the american withdrawal from syria, insofar as to how it pertained to "protecting the kurds"? i'm just curious if you can even string together a coherent thought on the topic.

to be clear: hitchens was not making a deontological argument - he was making a consequentialist argument. and, that's why he was making a more purely left-wing argument, and why parenti's deontological defense is inherently conservative. but, you don't even know what those words mean, do you?

 ...and hitchens was wrong - because he misunderstood the consequence, not because he misinterpreted the intent.

and, to alter your facile and stupid language, let me clarify that you have the concept backwards - leftism is for saying "i don't remotely fucking care if the intent is good or bad, i care only if the outcome is positive".

this is useful, though - it demonstrates just how badly hitchens was misunderstood by people that did not have the intellectual capability to understand what he said.

...it was this uprising of incredibly stupid people, reacting to his arguments in the most base, facile way possible.

no wonder he become withdrawn and distraught.

so, i got an answer on the conflict of interest:

the karen used to work for the crown's office.

so, it's clear enough what happened: she called up her friends in the crown's office, had them file bullshit charges and it goes from there.

i want this woman thrown in jail.

Mikey Schilling

Jessica Murray is a disinformation agent and probably a bot account. Screaming about China on a video that has nothing to do with China, lmao.

deathtokoalas

so, i accuse them of propaganda, and they just repeat the accusation back at me.

the fact that you think this has nothing to do with china indicates that the propaganda has been effective.

Mikey Schilling

kisses. Have fun with WWIII. Hope Biden sees this.

deathtokoalas

it's quite baffling how people will make stupid assumptions of binary political alignment based on ignorant media framing. my recent posts have both denounced this as chinese propaganda, and attacked the canadian parliament for politically denouncing the uighur "genocide". what side do you think i'm on, here? i'll tell you clearly - i'm an anarchist, and i align with the underclass, everywhere, the lumpen, the slaves, the dispossessed...

but, what are we to do about china?

the chinese are an aggressive, expansionist, imperialist, colonialist and hypercapitalist empire. they're just like us. history teaches us that conflict in these situations is difficult, but not impossible, to avoid. if we are to avoid conflict how are we to do it?

and, we must rely on the fact that the chinese are at least rational.

if we do not project strength, they will attack us and reduce us to their slaves, if they don't just eliminate us for lebensraum, as they invade and extract our resources. some form of defense is consequently required for peace. but, we must also be flexible in recognizing that we are currently infringing in their historical civilizational sphere, and be reasonable in pulling back somewhat - albeit not for a reasonable exchange.

the intent of these mechanisms is to prevent war, and not to advance it. let us hope we don't get so far gone as to rely on mutually assured destruction, but we have to jam up the board if we want to stop them from acting.

and, if biden is relying on me for advice, that's a sad reflection on the quality of the people around him.

Mikey Schilling

I'd much rather live under Chinese rule at this point. Anarchists don't want to protect the US State, or any state for that matter. Sounds like you're an AnCap and that's not real. Bye bye.

deathtokoalas

no, i'm not an ancap, nor would any ancap identify with the lumpenproletariat or the dispossessed. you fucking idiot.

but, let's hope you're first in line for the slaughter when it happens. it'll be good for the gene pool...

but, we need more censorship to fight right-wing extremism.

ugh. you idiots. you walked right the fuck into it.

and, you'll be the first to go.

remember: the party of competent fascism is the democrats.

what do i think about this theory?

i think paul seems to be drawing attention to something that is curious, but i also think that the real power actually got what they wanted, which was to get rid of trump. we have a tendency to grasp on to these monolithic narratives on the left, about "the elite" while forgetting that the elite has factions. paul seem to eventually get the point right after playing with hypotheticals for a while.

i think there's some danger in looking into this too carefully; paul is arguing against censorship of a report that would have the outcome of him getting censored, if it were to be acted upon in any serious way. it's a non-story, in my estimation.

toppling dictators and bringing in democracies is what the left is about.

if you deny that, or disagree with it, you have, somewhere along the way, lost the plot.

"splendid isolation", "non-interventionism" and "isolationism" are ideas that are historically associated with the political right.

and, this is the irony everybody misses - hitchens was wrong, because he misinterpreted the facts in front of him. i offer no defense of his conclusions or deductions at all. but, he represented the left in almost every debate i've seen him have regarding the topic - and his opponents, who opposed intervention on ideological grounds, were almost exclusively ideological conservatives. in the sense that this debate represents the left v the right on ideological grounds of intervention v non-intervention, the spectrum has entirely reversed.

so, something happened to the spectrum in those years, but it wasn't a rightwards movement of christopher hitchens, it was much more of a broader shift of forces on the ground to the right. reagan famously said that the democratic party left him. and, this is much closer to the truth: hitch didn't leave the left, so much as the left left him behind.

and, today, we have fake leftists everywhere we turn, that think the left is about ensuring equal pay for upper middle class employees of non-unionized corporations and revolution is an idea that belongs to the uneducated poor people on the political right.

for that reason, a part of me wants history to prove hitchens right. i prefer his argument, on a purely aesthetic basis.

but i know better, when he so obviously and so tragically didn't, as a consequence of his disastrous americanization.

let me ask this question here and we can have this discourse if you'd like - in terms of composition and ideology, how different do you think that the mob that stormed the capitol on jan 6th was from the one that stormed the winter palace in 1917?

like him or hate him, and call him naive and criticize his ability to ascertain truth from fiction all you like, but mr hitchens was the purest leftist that you ever will find - a real left in a sea of fraudulence and a critical mass of poseurs.

his arguments were empirically wrong.

but, they were thoroughly left-wing, nonetheless.

i have to continually state that hitchens was wrong about iraq. now, maybe you have some secret information about hitch taking checks from lockheed martin, but i strongly doubt that such a suspicion is rooted in any fact. rather, all evidence is that he was just legitimately wrong. and, we can be frustrated by how such an intelligent person can be so easily misled, but it ultimately doesn't add much to the analysis of whether he was right or wrong.

i blame it on his americanization, in a process i refer bleakly to as the americanization of christopher hitchens. this text is a tragedy.

and, i've stated previously that he might not have been wrong, if the empire had acted slightly differently, or the facts on the ground had been somewhat altered. further, events in iraq may still transpire in such a way that makes him seem less wrong - although we should not be tricked or confused by that. there may still be a twist of irony, yet to come - but he was wrong, and it can't be undone.

so, the next time that you foolishly attack mr. hitchens for parroting "neo-liberal talking points" (and, you mean neo-con, not neo-lib), it may do you some good to remind yourself that mr. hitchens was a self-identified trostkyist, and he was consequently approaching many of these arguments from many of the same places, except honestly rather than disingenuously.

unlike the neo-con cabal, i have every reason to think he believed what he said.

he was just wrong - because he was naive.

it happens to all of us, sometimes.

deathtokoalas

and, yes - hitchens ripped him apart in the q & a.

he's christopher hitchens.

he'd do that to anybody.

Throw Away

Were we watching the same debate, Hitchens was juvenile, doing nothing but parroting neolib talking points.

deathtokoalas

i actually found much of what parenti said in the q & a section (such as resorting to questioning the motives of the rulers, which is irrelevant) to be somewhat idealistic and juvenile. but, you forget that what you call "neoliberalism" (the more correct neologism is neoconservatism) is rebranded trostkyism, and hitchens was a self-identified trotskyist. the difference is in the honesty of the discourse; the neo-cons presented left-wing arguments in a dishonest manner to advance their empire, and all evidence is that hitchens actually believed what he said. so, it's the difference between a fake trostkyist and a real one.

but, i've noticed this continually over the last 15 years - yes, hitchens was wrong. but, he was also badly misunderstood. few people seemed to really follow his argument.

what you really need to do is fix the thirteenth amendment so that it abolishes all slavery.

before i get to that...

this is from the lengthy paper i just posted on reversing corneal damage:

Anti-collagenases include tetracycline antibiotics, chelating agents and blood products (serum and plasma). 

chelating agents are a bad idea on teeth.

blood serum seems unrealistic or medieval.

what about tetracycline antiobiotics?

and, in fact there is some literature on this that i'm going to summarize as follows: it seems like this works, but is considered unnecessary in the face of traditional dental practices.

well....these antibiotics are covered and "traditional dental practices" are not.

search and you'll find, right? 

so, i think i've got something close to an answer here, maybe, finally. let me look this up carefully. i'll need an rx, and i'll need to run it by my doctor, but this neither seems unsafe nor experimental - this is an understood class of drugs that has been used for this purpose and has been demonstrated to be effective. it's just not used because normal dental procedures (root planing, gum grafting) work as well or better.

i'm going to stop to take a shower and get back to it after.

the answer appears to be 'no' - i can't buy serum, i can't buy plasma and i can't buy alpha 2-macroglobulin, either.

the paper seems to be strictly about topical use. even if i could generate this stuff in my liver, it's not clear what my body would do with it.

so, that's the next series of questions.

so, this is a hefty paper that suggests that topical application of blood serum and plasma can help reduce degradation of the cornea.

....which perhaps suggests that the problem was a lack of bloodflow and that merely increasing bloodflow might help, too? but, again: no sane person would purposefully increase their blood pressure.

i'm doing everything right in terms of maximizing blood flow, although i realize i may have a genetic condition (my father had the same problem). the only thing that might be somewhat of a problem is that it's cold in here sometimes. are there studies tying air conditioning to gum recession? it would make some sense.

gargling with my own blood seems a little medieval for me.

can i isolate the mechanism here? it seems to be "alpha 2-macroglobulin". can i get that in a supplement? are there side effects?

https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2296&context=open_access_theses

it's not just that the marketization of education has reduced access to it.

it's also that it's reduced the quality of it.

it's just a product for sale. really. we say that; let's actually believe it and understand it and adjust to it.

it's a status symbol - a marker of wealth.

it's not much more. and, it's not of much further value.

analyze my writings for what they're worth, don't get bourgeois on me and start waving around letters and papers. they mean nothing at all...

listen.

a degree, nowadays, is a product that you purchase on a market. i don't like that, but i came to terms with it a very long time ago.

that doesn't mean you shouldn't go to school, if you can afford it, or if buying that degree is a step on the path to the life that you want to live.

but, the premise of "consulting experts" has been broken by the marketization of education; the sanctity of the process has been utterly decimated, and it is now as easy to find an expert in a topic without a degree in it as it is to find somebody with a degree that doesn't have a clue what they're talking about. the affirmation process has become meaningless for any substantive or meaningful purpose.

it really doesn't mean anything at all.

so, yeah - i'm adamant about my anarchism, and we're not keen on divisions of labour or hierarchies of knowledge. but, i claim my rejection of formal education is empirical.

the best and worst schools are all diploma mills at this point, because all you're really doing is purchasing the product, for sale.

i'm going to start a kickstarter to raise funds to pay for surgery to remove my tongue from my cheek.

i wonder if surgery to separate my tongue from my cheek is covered...

something else i can't rule out entirely is that this recession may be caused by my tongue being lodged firmly in my cheek tissue, creating a force of pressure on my jaw that is separating the gingiva from the bone.

i'd need xrays to know for sure.

calcium is generally presented in media reports as a white powder, which is probably just another example of structural racism.

this is actually elemental calcium, believe it or not:

to be clear: if you were to inject a calcium blocker in your arm, it would remove calcium from your blood, which would lower your blood pressure - and seems to often have the side-effect of gingival overgrowth.

injecting edta seems likely to actually kill you, although it seems to be used in small doses to clear the body of metal like lead. it might act as a calcium blocker in that context, by clearing the blood of calcium, if it doesn't give you a stroke first by calcifying it out.

but, if you put a collagenase inhibitor like edta on your teeth, it should pull the calcium out and leave your tooth a mushy mess of phosphate and whatever else has been uptaken into them.

so, if i'm going to use a collagenase inhibitor topically, i need to make sure it's not a chelating agent, as most of them seem to be, because it will just dissolve the metals in your mouth (calcium is technically a metal, kids) like a powerful acid.

this is making more sense as i'm reading more, but it's not helping me develop usable answers.

one of the complications is that these molecules seem to dissolve calcium on contact, so i don't want to put them on my teeth.

collagenase inhibitors are actually well studied in terms of:

- how or where they exist in plaque buildups, which might be of some use topically but largely isn't what i'm dealing with

- cornea and vision loss

the collagen/collagenase equilibrium seems to be the same mechanism underlying certain types of age-related vision loss. so, i wonder if boosting production in the liver might help with more than gum recession. i said that already, but it was less clear then than it is now.

i've got some lengthy, paper-length reports to read before i comment further, if i can stay awake long enough. and, we'll see in the end if i think that trying to get my liver to produce something and distribute it is an effective strategy or not - or if i think i have to do this purely topically.

it's an embarrassing show of ignorance by our parliament.

but, i don't expect much better.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/uighur-genocide-motion-vote-1.5922711

am i awake yet?

let's try again.

she used to tease me for wearing mascara and denying it because i had perfect eyelashes.

but, i never wore mascara...

i was just born with it. i guess.

whatever air tight logic she had in the fourth grade had evaporated by the 8th, as i had to deal with her giving me lap dances on the bus - and fully realized she expected me to ignore her, but wanted me to grab her. and, i did ignore her. so, it turned into a twisted game - how far could she push me?

i was happy when the routes changed.

and, i strictly avoided that one until graduation.

so, i have a distinct memory of getting fag hagged in the girl's washroom at the school dance in the fourth grade after she dragged me to it and i didn't react to her at all, and realizing the logic and absurdity of it at the same time.

hey, give the kid credit - she tried five or six times and after getting no response at all reacted empirically to what she observed in front of her - i was, in fact, obviously a girl. and, she was right, too.

after a few fails, that little girl that i tattletaled on for, amongst other things, trying to kiss me in the library was the first person to actually figure it out and decide i was actually a girl.

she figured it out before i did.

all i knew is that i didn't like the attention and wanted her to stop.

consequently, all that drugging me is going to do is make me more depressed and less social.

it's the worst thing you could possibly do to me.

i know that people might guffaw at this, but the annoying truth is that i've never been able to build substantive friendships with women because they all want to fuck me, and the feeling just simply isn't mutual. every time i've tried, i've just ended up frustrated by the reality that they're not able to interpret me in the gender i identify as. i don't bother.

further, i can't build friendships with men because i end up repressing an attraction to them, and it's not fair for me to be dishonest about that. i've avoided this in recent years, as well.

i cannot expect any kind of meaningful social existence until i can fully transition, first, and people can drop their delusions and misperceptions - until women are no longer attracted to me and can interpret me as one of them, and until men stop broing me, without realizing i want them to fuck me. there's just no reasonable way forward, there; there's no set of outcomes besides frustration and wastes of time.

until then, i will continue to live a solitary existence because the social pressures are too difficult for me to deal with. 

i'd rather just sit alone by myself than have to deal with expectations i don't want.

....but i'm not interested in a sex life at this point in my life.

what i want is to suppress and eliminate all sexuality; i want to be post-sexuality and post-sex.

my only experiment was a short relationship with a woman in my early 20s, almost 20 years ago.

that experiment failed.

while i haven't acted anything out because i don't have the body parts to do it with, i have, generally, been more interested in sex with men.

i'm still unable to stay awake, and i'm not confused about the reasons for that - i understand i'm being drugged against my will, and i don't know the source. if i did, i would reverse it. but, again, i can't starve myself.

i'm convinced that this drugging is rooted in a misperception of my sexuality, which i've written about the long way here on multiple occasions. so, let me try the short version.

- while i always felt more like a girl, serious gender dysphoria didn't start to sink in until around high school

- i have memories of young girls being attracted to me as a pre-teen and being confused when i didn't react to them. there was one little girl that explicitly hit on me, and i went to the teacher to ask him to ask her to stop, and he didn't understand, either. so, while i didn't have a formed identity at the time, i was certainly a queer kid, and the only reaction i got from anybody around me was that i was too stupid to understand the benefits of girls chasing me around. 

- i have distinct memories of being attracted to boys in my class in grades 7-12, and also the first two years of university, but no memories of being attracted to girls in my class. i didn't act on these impulses, and didn't even really understand them at the time. i know that people that knew me at the time have remarked to me that my disinterest in girls was an idiosyncrasy, and something they noticed about me; i had no interest, and they knew i had no interest because i broadcast it pretty clearly, and i'm pretty sure they had to tell a few that asked about me that i had no interest. 

- in fact, i was not as oblivious as i came off as - i did in fact realize that there were girls that were attracted to me in high school, and i reacted by going out of my way to avoid them because i didn't want to deal with the stigma of coming out as explicitly queer. when i knew that a girl was interested in me, i would avoid being in the same space as them for as long as it took for them to move on. some didn't move on at all, and the avoidance occurred over 4 or 5 years. my prerogative, at the time, was strict avoidance in an attempt to prevent a conflict. the unintended consequence of this was that i didn't build any substantive friendships with the gender i identified as, because i was too busy avoiding their sexual interest, which i did not want.

- during this period, i identified as a homosexual male online and simply didn't explore the issue in real life. i had dysphoric feelings from the start of puberty or before it, around the age of 13-14, but i suppressed them as unrealistic fantasies. these feelings became unmanageable around the age of 20. 

- so, i did not date in high school. at all. my tactic was total avoidance of the issue, and i assumed at the time that i would maintain a tactic of avoidance for as long as i was alive. 

- the dysphoria became unmanageable during the second year of university, and i went to see a psychiatrist about it, eventually starting hormone therapy at the end of second year.

- i was a complete and total virgin when i went on hormones - i had never had sex, i had never kissed anybody, i had never been on a date, i had never asked anybody on a date and i had turned down a few people that indicated interest in me. i had the sexual (im)maturity and experience of a 10-11 year-old.

- i got a job as a coffee barista in the fall of that year.

- there was a girl that worked there that aggressively pursued me, and i finally relented. smartly appealing to my empirically-driven nature, she insisted i couldn't know if i liked sex until i tried it and convinced me to conduct an experiment.

- my absolute lack of sexual and emotional maturity was unable to deal with what followed, at first. but, in the end, i made a clear decision: the experiment failed.

- that was in the mid 00s, and i have not had sex since.

so, i tried the experiment, and the experiment produce a clear result - i didn't like it.

the rdi for vitamin c for me would be 90 mg. again - i don't know why the health authorities would suggest differing rdis for men and women for vitamin c, except basing it on sexist (and very bad.) assumptions about body weight and height. but, i want to pick the higher number to err on the side of caution. (menstruating) women have higher iron requirements, and that at least makes sense, and i've chosen the higher numbers, as well. and, then i've lowballed everything...

so, why take 100 mg per meal, then?

because vitamin c is cleared by your body within hours - it's the reason these megadoses don't work. pauling didn't understand that because the science wasn't there yet. his argument was not bad, but he assumed that we'd store vitamin c for a while if we took huge amounts of it and we just don't - we process it as we come into contact with it and eliminate it as soon as we're done with it.

so, all that taking a 2000 mg pill of vitamin c is going to actually do is put unnecessary strain on your kidneys. unfortunately.

if we could hack ourselves to actually store and release - or potentially even synthesize - vitamin c, the kinds of things that people like pauling talked about could reassert themselves. we all know that we need vitamin c because we can't produce it, but we might not realize that most animals can make their own c and don't need to consume much at all. your dog can make it's own vitamin c, but your cat can't make it's own taurine. we're similar, but these are differences - and they're genetic.

we could flip the switch:

https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2019/1/221/5556105

and, then these megadoses would transport c to the liver, where it would be released.

as it is, we just get rid of it very fast - so replenishment is necessary at regular intervals. so, if you're going to do this, you should take 100 mg 2-3 times daily, rather than a large dose all at once.

the truth is that what i'm doing right now is how real advances in the field of health science have always actually occurred.

so, what i've got here is something like this:

- collagen needs vitamin c & various amino acids

- collagenase seems to require folate

- so, whatever the rdis and intakes are, i may be experiencing the effects of more folate than c; i may be getting more than enough of both, but the b9:c equilibrium appears to be out of whack

- as a consequence, i'm producing more collagense than collagen

don't publish that or anything, but i think it's what is actually correct.

what do i do about it?

- i could take more vitamin c, but i may be maxxed out. i could try topical c on my mouth.

- topical collagen in my mouth

- i want to find a study of some sort before i jump to reducing folate, but i need to find some kind of collagenase inhibitor, regardless.

i don't want to say that this is cutting edge science; it seems like it's more along the lines of butter-knife science, in that nobody seems to want to approach gum loss with medication. it's just not how anybody does this. but, i have more brains than dollars, and little choice but to try and make some guesses and carry out the experiment. you can publish the result somewhere if you'd like, in the end.

there's a study here about vitamin c and oral health:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6678404/

i can't find any studies arguing that excess folates may cause recession.

but, i'm back to the c. as i'm nodding off. again.

the studies on vitamin c are consistent over a long period: bombarding yourself with c won't undo anything, and won't cure anything, but it's exceedingly important to ensure you're getting enough, as a preventative.

in theory, i should be getting lots of c - but that relies on the fruit i'm eating actually containing it, and that's a little sketchy. strawberries, kiwis, red peppers, grapefruit & guava are all very high in c; limes, raspberries, bananas & avocados are useful supplements.

but i don't know for sure.

i can't, really.

so, what if i start popping c? it's one of the very few pills i'd consider popping...

that's not going to stop me from needing to find some kind of way to get the collagen in topically, and some kind of way to inhibit collagenase. but, i need to ensure i have sufficient c to start with, and it's perhaps the only way to do it.

i'm not talking about a superdose.

but, 100 mg with each meal in addition to what i'm taking will make sure i'm getting enough, for sure.

so, i don't want to take cyclosporin or any type of anticonvulsant (well, what if it works, right? but i don't want to shut off my t-cells, especially not in a pandemic) and calcium channel blockers strike me as dangerous, given my low blood pressure and general fit health.

further, the mechanism for the anticonvulsants seems to have to do with folate deficiency. that is, gingival enlargement may be caused by folate deficiency.

my folate intake levels are pushing the maximum daily safe amounts.

so, if folate deficiency causes gingival overgrowth, does that mean the excess folate can lead to gum recession? chemistry isn't logical - that's the foundational observation defining modern science. so, i can't and shouldn't make that deduction. but, what do experiments suggest about excess folate on gum health?

decreasing my folic acid intake is something i could do with minimal effort.

what fixed the b5 deficiency?

avocados. mostly.

i also increased the amount of fortified soy milk i was drinking dramatically, started eating a specific kind of highly fortified cereal and started eating fortified yogurt. i replaced my store bought caesar salad dressing with a homemade dressing that used fortified probiotic yogurt & fortified soy as a base. in the process, i went from getting about 60% of the rdi on a good day to getting over 200% of it, regularly. i also started eating eggs far more regularly, instead of as a once-a-week top-up. 

i think that was a potential cause. i don't know...

the increased amount of soy also boosted my vitamin d count. low d in the winter is a known risk factor for ms.

as seems to be normal in this country, the doctor assumed i was exaggerating it, and told me it was just a headache. so, i don't really know. again, universal coverage and competent care are different things.

the frustrations i'm having with the smoking cop upstairs aside, i should point out that it's near the end of february now and i haven't had a migraine since december, and i hadn't had one before that since the spring. so, the frequency of the attacks is decreasing.

and, i'm calling these "hemiplegic migraines" and suggesting they're triggered by smoke and pollution, but they could very well be ms attacks or a dozen other things. i last spoke to a neurologist over the phone a few months ago and he wasn't very helpful.

what has changed? my diet has improved, in terms of nutrition. this time last year, i was eating infrequently and modulating between soy fruit smoothies and pasta dishes - neither of which were terrible, but when i actually worked it out, i realized i was low on almost everything. i was very, very low on b5. 

so, was i just malnourished?

well, i say that like it's a triviality.

"oh. i was merely malnourished. i'm ok now."

but, chronic malnutrition has some pretty serious side effects, and we just don't even know what causes half of this stuff.

the last time i said this, i got a migraine, so i don't want to get cocky. but, it's also the only one i've had in roughly a year. so, let's hope i've fixed this...

what the progesterone does is increase blood flow to the mouth, which causes a series of problems.

that does not seem to be what i'm dealing with. at all.

i'm actually ruling out the progesterone, which appears to be known to cause bleeding and inflammation, but not recession, exactly.

again: i've had no bleeding, no inflammation, no redness, etc. it's just solely recession, with no signs of actual gingivitis.

"you're free to do what you're told"

"freedom of religion" is always a contradiction in terms.

one is never "free to worship" - one can only be captured by the system of religion, enslaved by it, brainwashed by it and placed under it's subservience and control.

it's just a strictly orwellian phrase, that is equivalent to "freedom is slavery".

that said, this may be of some interest to you if you think your recession is bacteria-related:

https://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jdms/papers/Vol16-issue9/Version-5/H1609053646.pdf

so, i stumbled upon the aspirin bit when sorting through this article, one of the few i've seen that addresses the potential of drug use to regrow gingival tissue, while looking for options regarding collagenase inhibitors:

https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2014.905#Tab2

....but this is related specifically to plaque, which is not what i'm dealing with.

i don't have cavities, and my oral health is quite good; i'm dealing with recession due to some combination of factors that does not appear to be related to gingivitis at all.

so, we'll forget about the aspirin, it's not what i want.

but, i am getting some salicylates in my diet, regardless.

so, aspirin would help by acting as a prostaglandin inhibitor.

what does that actually mean, though?

this weekend was utterly wasted and i'm not happy about it.

let's see if i can get back to what i was doing, which is trying to derive some way to try to stimulate gingival growth in my mouth - which does appear to be possible, if perhaps somewhat perilous due to a lack of development, despite what the dentistry industry says.

the indigenous cultures of central asia and siberia are actually startlingly similar to the indigenous cultures of north america, to the point that it's hard to really believe that they're separated by 15,000 years of history.

i'm also going to smack you down if you try to argue that muslims are indigenous to anywhere.

no - islam is an imperial system of control. it is not indigenous to anywhere, and certainly not indigenous to central asia.

if anything, the turks are an eastern people that were colonized by imperialist arabs and undoing that is a process of reconnecting them to their ancestry. but, i'm a leftist -  i don't think in terms of identity, like that.

just briefly.

the argument i'm going to advance against religionists that are condemning what china is doing is in the definition of control, and the question as to which means of control is more negative, overall.

see, these people will condemn what china is doing as "brainwashing", and then point to participating in the religion of islam as an act of free expression. this is an utterly ridiculous way to frame the discourse. whatever we think of what is going on, we have to begin with the understanding that islam is, itself, a system of brainwashing and control, and that these people were brainwashed into this system from the time they were born.

so, i don't want to engage in this discourse that is about statist brainwashing v religious freedom, as that is an absurd framing from the start. what we have, here, is rather a question of two different systems of brainwashing and two different systems of control. once these people get through their training with the "communist" party in china (which is anything but...), they will no doubt see islam as what it is, and wonder how they could have ever seen it differently. and, while i have a list of criticisms directed at china, i'm at least more on the side of the chinese on the specific question of religion.

if real, ideologically pure leftists were to take over the universe tomorrow and do this right, it would no doubt look a whole lot like what china is doing, except cleaned up to be a little less vicious. insofar as the focus is on undoing the religious brainwashing, i'm entirely on their side, on this - but i want to replace it with critical thinking, rather than obedience to the chinese state. so, i'm calling for the chinese to be humane.

but, that's the extent of my disagreement with what they're doing - it's a big disagreement, but it's about what to replace islam with, rather than about the process of doing away with it.

and, at the end of the day, i would consider china to be less of a threat to global peace and less of a barrier to progress than islam. so, it's a step in the right direction, however minimal and however flawed.

but, it's a good demonstration of why i'm a leftist and not a liberal, and a good purity test for the left. if you find yourself standing up for "freedom of religion" to "protect islam", you're just missing the basic plot on the left - you're failing to recognize religion as a tool of control that must be eradicated to become civilized and live freely, which is foundational to any coherent concept of leftism, and instead retreating to these liberal/conservative concepts of bourgeois rights, that are just intended to uphold the status quo of capitalist and aristocratic hegemony.

ultimately, i support modernization in western china.

i've already posted an analysis of the uighur thing and this is the conclusion of it: i would call on the chinese government to be as humane as is possible in it's attempts to help the turkic populations in it's western regions leave the past behind and enter the modern world.

this house hereby declares that a genocide is currently underway in the people's republic of china

(pause)

"glad that's over with."

"same"

"so, what's for lunch?"

"i hear there's a nice spot up on sparks."

"chinese?"

i would advise that the broadly ignorant individuals that make up the canadian parliament (there are some exceptions, but these people are, broadly, hardly anything approaching scholars.) avoid making foolish statements about what is or is not a genocide, without the benefit of clear facts on the ground.

the facts of the matter are not clear and anybody suggesting they are is operating on political bias.

so, if it turns out that they're wrong, they look like idiots and tarnish the reputation of the country as a rash, authoritarian state that legislates without properly investigating, largely in the servitude of neo-british imperialism. it would just be an empty attack rooted in politicized rhetoric, and somebody will need to apologize for it, one day, in the end.

if it turns out they're right, they open up legitimate questions as to inaction. and, let's be clear - the parliament is not proposing actually doing anything about this genocide, it just wishes to decide a complex historical question on a party-line snap vote and then use it to whip up identity-driven voters to drive them to the polls in the next election. but, if an actual genocide is occurring, and they have evidence to support it, and they decide as much in the legislative body, do they not have a moral responsibility to act? of course they do. the criticism then rightly falls to the government for inaction.

they should just shut up.

but, this is true about their foreign policy, in general: this government, and this prime minister, should just shut up and leave the room when the topic comes up. it lacks basic experience, basic wisdom and basic knowledge.

canada needs to avoid being the bull in the china shop, here, and just not do this at all.

and, if i was in the house or the senate, i would refrain from voting by citing a lack of evidence required to present an informed analysis.

fell asleep again.

let's try again.

i've said this about hitchens and iraq before: his argument is airtight, but his facts are completely wrong. so, like the worst type of medieval religionists, he's erected a perfectly correct syllogism that is erected on a framework of absolute bullshit; it's a perfect deduction, a flawless exercise in logic, but follows uniquely from a set of facts that simply are not true. and, so one is reminded of the witch drowning scene in monty python's holy grail, as this basic truth must be gotten across to him, and never was: christopher, you cannot build a castle in a swamp!

parenti's response is consequently the appropriate one, in that he mostly focuses on correcting the facts.

see, i don't believe that the rulers believe what they tell us. but, they aren't revolutionary leftists. and, i consequently don't really even care what the elite believe, or even care why they do the things they do - i care what i believe, and base my support on the projected outcome, and whether it aligns with what i believe in and want or does not.

i opposed the invasion of iraq in 2003 and i think that was the right position. there was no opposition on the ground.

but, if the american government were to present to me the same argument about iran, i might go along with it - not because i care about what the elite thinks or why they're doing it, but because i would have solidarity with the secular left on the ground, and would see it as a way to advance their causes.

this goes back to the old debate they had in spain about accepting support from stalin. they knew better, and stalin slaughtered them, in the end. but, it's not that easy.

sometimes, base pragmatism is the right choice. 

while hitchens was wrong about iraq, he might not have been. and, in the long run, he may seem less wrong than he does now - which doesn't and can never excuse the error, but can only mitigate it.

---

and, yes - hitchens ripped him apart in the q & a.

he's christopher hitchens.

he'd do that to anybody.

---

the united states has convened all four.

the only other country i can think of is israel.

...& the saudis.

again: the democrats have the chance to materially improve the lives of their voters by expanding access to education and healthcare, and they are instead choosing to restrict the rights of people to express themselves on the internet.

let nobody be surprised by the inevitable backlash against them.

and, force them to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

another night wasted sleeping.

why bother to exist under such meaningless conditions?

where has my energy gone?

the answer is that i've been drugged with "medicine" that is stealing my life from me.

fuck off. i want this to stop. i want my 72 hour days back, again.

there's some evidence that aspirin might help.

hrmmn.

let me look into this more.

it's the bicycling, and the walking.

the irony, right?

see, the problem with me just taking calcium channel blockers is that they're intended to treat high blood pressure.

i have low blood pressure.

i might even have "athlete's heart".

so, it's potentially dangerous....

i still have that spironolactone, so i found myself wondering if it might act as a calcium blocker, and the answer seems to be "sort of", but nobody is linking it to gingival overgrowth, probably because it also causes dry mouth.

and, the cyproterone causes dry mouth as well.

but, progesterone is a kind of known issue for gum recession, and that might be more at the root of it, in combination with the crooked teeth. hrmmn.

i'll probably never get a clear cause, and i'm more interested in finding some way to graft over it. if i undid everything that might cause it, i'd have to starve to death.

those hydroxyapatite pills come in a gelatin shell that i could potentially recover some collagen from, although i would doubt this is useful as a topical.

i could add a little to the daily fluoride bath....

i need to do some more research before i do anything.

cysteine is, supposedly, a powerful collagenase inhibitor.

so, i think i have my candidates:

- type I collagen + cysteine 

i need to stop for some fruit.

ok, so i'm back to where i was.

- i think the primary problem is that my teeth are crooked.

- i need a topical collagen application of some sort to try to stimulate regrowth. ingested collagen could end up anywhere, including in the ligament space, where it might even do the opposite of what i want. i need to put the collagen where i want it and hope it works. but, how?

- i need some kind of collagenase inhibitor, but should that be topical as well?

and, it could also be caused by crooked teeth, which i have, and which is where the problem is worst..

i'm entirely absolving myself of blame, here, i think.

and, that's important for my self esteem.

but, that means i need to cover up the roots, or it's just going to get worse and worse.

so, i don't know how to figure that out without doing xrays.

but, in a sense it doesn't matter; what i needed to know was how it could be that excess collagen and deficient collagen could lead to the same result. but, i get it now - you can both have actual, literal receding gums (collagen deficiency, or collagenase excess) and emulate the effect of it by having an expanding jaw (excess collagen, manifested in that specific way).

it's ultimately because collagen is a medium rather than a mechanism; it's the thing that other cells grow in, and depending on where it ends up it can have opposite outcomes.

for me, i'm going to need to find a way to emulate a graft, regardless - so it doesn't matter if my bones are overgrowing or my gums are receding. i fix it by doing the same thing.

ok.

next step....

Radiographically, the striking feature of this disease is the widening of the periodontal ligament space. Seifert, White and others have reported that this is an inconsistent finding in all patients with Progressive systemic sclerosis; however, this was contradicted by Marmary and others, who observed widened periodontal ligament space in all 21 patients examined.[5,14,15] In our study, 66% of the patients showed widened periodontal ligament space... 

what is this "periodontal ligament space"?

this helps:

https://www.slideshare.net/malvika014/periodontal-ligament-64860505

so, if i understand correctly, what's happening here is not that the gum is actually receding, but that the jaw is actually increasing. as your body doesn't grow new gum tissue, the increased amount of bone and tooth ends up pulling the gum back, creating the impression of gum recession - and ultimately exposing the tooth. and, this is a consequence of excess collagen in the "periodontal ligament space".

ok.

so, even if i don't have sclerosis, can i figure out if i actually have gum recession or am actually producing excess bone?

this doesn't sound much like what i'm experiencing, though, even if the pictures look similar:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232232188_Oral_and_periodontal_manifestations_associated_with_systemic_sclerosis_A_case_series_and_review

the thing about those pictures is that the recession and staining is not due to poor hygiene, and, further, you don't see the bone loss you typically see with periodontitis. so, your typical picture has these receding gums and these little teeth with these gaps between them; where these pictures are more similar is that they have receding gums, but full, healthy teeth - which is more like what i'm experiencing.

but, i mean, i can open my mouth. my fingers aren't falling off...

i still want to understand the mechanism before i move on.

yeah, i'm looking at pictures of people experiencing dental concerns due to scleroderma and it definitely looks more like my mouth than the pictures of gingivitis.

let's see if i can understand the mechanism.

i've been concerned about the onset of an autoimmune disorder - like ms - for years.

i've had migraines, seizures - weird attacks.

and, gum recession is a symptom of ms, as well.

i don't expect to be able to cure this. i just want to figure out how to treat it.

the volume's back to working again, which just demonstrates how weird the situation really was.

so, we are indeed starting to see the start of an anti-mask backlash in ontario, and it seems to be targeted at doug ford, rather than justin trudeau. 

the ndp are even worse than the liberals.

so, what happens if a serious anti-mask backlash kicks in?

the answer is that this is one of those classic scenarios where a far right party has a space to walk in, as it can latch on to a populist position that is rejected by the entire mainstream spectrum.

for that reason, i am calling on the liberal party of ontario to be fucking liberals and push the idea of individual choice when it comes to mask use. you don't have to be anti-mask, exactly - i wouldn't categorize myself that way, either. i'm pro-choice on masks, and would label people pushing mask mandates as anti-choice. my body, my choice.

if the liberals take this position - and it is the right position for them to take, as a liberal party - this will give the upswell of frustration a way out of voting for a far right party.

otherwise, this election might get messy, as people find themselves with nowhere to turn.

i think i'd have to assume that any scleroderma i may be suffering from is mild, and not likely to be the major factor in the substantive gum recession i'm dealing with.

so, is it possible that i might have scleroderma and i should be reducing collagen levels rather than increasing them?

i don't have any of the more dramatic symptoms of it, but i do have a few areas of my body where there's noticeable scaliness, including my hands and what i've been thinking of as a regular build up of dry skin on my cheeks. i've been blaming it on pollution and dry air, and...i think that's correct. but, i can't rule it out completely. there's some consistency with the idea.

it would appear to be unlikely that it would be caused by too much vitamin c or something else in my diet. rather, if that's the case, and the cause of the gum recession, i'd have to file it under "genetic". and, then what? there's no cure, and no convincing diagnosis.

so, no - i don't appear to be able to test for collagen levels and base my reaction on that. unfortunately.

i'm consequently going to kind of put this aside as an exotic idea, but i have an appointment coming up and i'll run it by him. he once suggested to me that i may have raynaud's disease...

somebody seems to have gone through this page and replaced a large number of words with their homophones - things like they're/there.

i'm going to fix it.

but, this is something i do not do wrong, and if you see a large amount of it in my writing in the near future, it should come off as a red flag that somebody is altering the content.

actually, i'm going to unplug the modem and take a shower.

no. i still can't hear it...

oddly, music is continuing to stream. am i supposed to get a hint or something?

that's not happening - i refuse to listen to music until the lectures work again. i'll try again when i make breakfast.

what if i embed it?

that didn't work, and the issue appears to be site-wide so i suppose there's two possibilities:

a) youtube has made some internal change to reduce the volume.

b) i'm being targeted.

i guess we'll have to see if other people have the same problem or not.

i could plug this chromebook into the amplifier in the other room, but that would be annoying. so, i'm going to wait a few days and see if i can get a headphone amp, instead, if i have to.

if you've also noticed that the volume on youtube has decreased substantively site-wide, please post somewhere so i can see it.

this is quite strange - the volume on youtube just decreased to the point that i can no longer hear it.

i'm actually going to powerwash the machine and see what happens.

so, when you say things like "there's no evidence that canaanites existed", please realize what you're actually saying.

these people were erased.

the romans famously wiped carthage out of history, and i strongly suspect that the reason we have no history of phoenicia - the culture that invented the fucking alphabet - is that the romans wiped them out, as well, as the ancestral culture of the hated carthaginians.

and, i strongly suspect that anti-semitism, as we understand it, is in truth the legacy of the roman genocide of carthage and phoenicia.

but, phoenicia is what the greeks called them, after a purple dye that was exported from the region. that purple dye became the imperial colour, years later. even in their destruction and hate and contempt, the romans elevated the legacy of these people to the highest symbol of status that they had.

all evidence suggests that the carthaginians and phoenicians alike called themselves "canaanites", as far into history as they existed for.

but, we don't really know.

carthago delenda est.

so, cyrus - an important historical figure outside of the biblical narrative that definitely existed and created the first major empire in the middle east, by uniting the egyptian, hittite and mesopotamian regions under iranian hegemony - is presented in the biblical narrative as this protector of the jews, that allowed for some return of jewish sovereignty.

but, if you look at real history, what you see is that the persians were broadly supportive of phoenician civilization, in general, because they recognized it as the most advanced in the region. it was the phoenicians that built the persian navy that later harassed the greek colonies. but, they were more than military planners - they were the protectors of the knowledge in the region.

so, while the biblical narrative is of course very silly and cannot be taken at face value, the reality is that the persians did give the phoencian city-states privileged status in the empire due to their role as purveyor of scientific and engineering knowledge, things that the persians, as a barbarian people, lacked. that presentation of cyrus is consequently somewhat grounded.

and, you can't understand what judaism is without understanding that synthesis between phoenician and persian culture, which later became a synthesis between phoenician and greek culture, when the greeks replaced the iranians as the hegemonic power.

that is what you learn by studying levantine archaeology - that the region has shifted dramatically under the influence of various hegemonic powers, from egypt to assyria to iran to greece to rome to the arabs to the turks and now to ukrainian migrants - and this idea of a pure judaism outside of the forces of history simply does not exist.

judaism could neither exist without iran, nor without greece.

they'd still be worshipping tanit.

no, i'm going to repeat the point about jewish migration before the destruction of the temple.

this is a passage from a roman writer named juvenal who lived roughly at the same time as the destruction of the second temple, which we can at least be sure actually happened

For the Syrian Orontes has long since polluted the Tiber,

Bringing its language and customs, pipes and harp-strings,

And even their native timbrels are dragged along too,

And the girls forced to offer themselves in the Circus.

the reality is that the romans took huge numbers of slaves from the region, and that roman slavery was both brutal and sort of liberal, in the sense that slaves were routinely emancipated. so, the end result is that the romans settled huge numbers of people from the middle east on the italian peninsula. and, i mean, just look at a picture of your classical, arian roman with his northern, alpine features and a picture of your modern day arab-looking italian and tell me that isn't fucking obvious.

that is what happened: the romans inherited a middle eastern cultural hegemony and eventually become subsumed by it, through both voluntary and involuntary migration from the middle east to western europe.

so, attaching jewish migration to the destruction of the temple is no doubt a glossing over of history. the event happened, and some migration was no doubt a direct consequence of it. but, migration in and out of the region - to spain and northern africa, especially - had been occurring for centuries previous to it. i mean, the carthaginian state in modern day tunisia was the force that truly built and urbanized spain (which was initially inhabited by indigenous basques and warlike tribal celtic groups) before it was romanized, and they were the sibling culture to the ancient jews; what the archaeology actually says is that the "jews" of the period before the captivity were essentially a forgotten backwater of phoenecian civilization and essentially worshipped phoenician gods and carried out phoenician cultural practices, and that judaism is an essentially iranian religion that entered the region after cyrus, wiping out what was left of ancestral phoenecian culture - which completely disappeared altogether, under first the persians and then the greeks, until the day that carthage was, indeed, destroyed.

so, it's a kind of oversimplification of history to assign all of this migration to this scattering event - the migration took place for centuries before 70 ce, and for centuries after it, as well. and, you can look this up yourself and find out that, yes, i'm summarizing experts, even if i'm too lazy to look it up right now.

so, i'm going to make some eggs, take a shower and get back to this.

can i test my collagen levels?

people waste a third of their fucking lives sleeping and the doctors tell you that's "healthy".

?

i don't want to sleep for eight hours every fucking day. ugh.

what a fucking wasted night.

give me awakeness, alertness and sobriety.

or give me fucking death.

the life of a zombie isn't worth living.

:(.

i am exhausted when i want to be alert.

that is all.

i fucking hate being tired like this.

there is no purpose or value to sleep. it is literally the absence of existence, the absolute destruction of life.

give me a pill that ends sleep, and gives me my short, finite, meaningless life back.

i'm again convinced i've been drugged with some kind of "medication", and all i can do is say "fuck off, i don't want your filth.". but i'm back up and all i can do is try to stay awake.

so, the disease that they attach to excess collagen production is called scelroderma  and one of the symptoms is gum recession.

i'm a logician.

i don't like contradictions.

alas.

let's take a step back, here.

so, if i don't get enough collagen, my gums might recede. and, if i get too much collagen my gums might recede. where's goldilocks when you need her, right? but, how do i figure that out?

and am i barking up the wrong tree?

i don't want to shut off that specific growth factor, tgf-β, as it kills cancer cells.

hrmmn.

so, collagen excess may not be a serious concern, but shutting down the underlying mechanism might have unintended consequences in letting other things run out of control. and being specific about it isn't likely to work.

i'm probably better off with collagen bombardment, then.

oh no.

so, estrogen both creates and destroys collagen?

ack.

how do i get it to do one and not the other?

to be clear: i'm taking roughly the amount of vitamin c that a person my size can absorb.

if i wanted more vitamin c, i'd have to inject it.

i don't want to talk about dr. pauling spinning anywhere. he disproved that.

but, maybe his activation energy just fluctuated.

what about collagen supplements?

you'd expect me to tell you that's bullshit. but, it might not be, it depends on your diet.

collagen is a protein, so it's composed of amino acids, and your body will break it down into amino acids and reuse it. so, you won't necessarily get increased collagen production from eating collagen, but you're at least giving your body the building blocks to do it with.

if you really need more collagen production, i'd advise trying something other than eating it directly.

i'm wondering if a collagen injection in my gums might be worth it....in conjunction with a collagenase inhibition strategy. it seems to be the latter that's more important.

i'm mildly concerned that if i just take a general collagenase inhibitor it might lead to excess collagen somewhere else, but what does that mean? i mean, restricting collagenase could actually help with my hair, my skin...even my eyesight....it's not clear to me why i'd be concerned about shutting that off.

let's be sure, though. is collagen excess ever a problem?

so, if i want to hack myself to regrow gum tissue, i think i need to do the following:

- some kind of topical to act as a medium is likely useful. the collagen is used to help the body regrow the tissue, rather than to regrow the tissue directly.

- i need to inhibit collagenase production.

The Colored Alliance occasionally cooperated with the Southern Alliance. Both advocated the abolition of the Louisiana lottery, fearing it would lead farmers further into debt. To keep vegetable-oil prices low in comparison to the prices of animal fats, they opposed the Conger lard bill, a measure that attempted to impose taxes upon the production of vegetable oil. The two alliances sometimes joined forces in attempting to improve their business ventures. Despite their mutual support for some goals, however, the two organizations had sharp differences, as they revealed in a clash over the Lodge election bill, which promised federal protection to safeguard voting rights in the South. The Southern Alliance condemned that measure, while the Colored Alliance supported it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodge_Bill

so, this is pretty much exactly what i needed.

it's type 1 collagen.

i'm not going to graft myself, but i should be able to buy this fairly readily, i think. 

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bpb/28/10/28_10_1817/_pdf

fuck.

if it's this easy...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120305081419.htm

so, apparently, what's happening with the overgrowth is that the collagen/collagenase balance undoes itself, and the overabundance of collagen leads to gum overgrowth.

i get tons of vitamin c, but is this a reason to cut down my folic acid intake?

or should i find ways to get more collagen in my mouth? and, what will my body do with it if i do? is it even topical?

actually, before i do that, let me look into this induced hyperplasia.

supposedly, the class of drugs that does this is "calcium channel blockers". these are rx drugs and i probably don't want to put the stress on my organs. but, can i isolate the mechanism?

maybe there's a sneaky way, after all.

ok, so i'm getting started on this and i'm going to rewind to the start because it's been a little while.

so, here i go.

let's hope i can get something new up before i crash.

the anti-semitism was embedded in the christianity, a point that scholars constantly forget - nazism was christian to it's bones.

this is the thing that bugs me about nietzsche, this idea that the death of god will lead to all kinds of depravity, and his supposed prophesy of nazism. the exact opposite is true. he lived through the high period of western civilization, and longed for a period of backwardsness - which returned with nazism, via bismarck perhaps, but nonetheless.

and, so, it's true that you see a kind of interregnum of barbarity in the 19th century, but it's precisely because the civilization had done away with christianity. then you see a return to barbarity with the return of christianity, in the form of nazism. and, now, post-1945, you see the death of anti-semitism in germany - because christianity was once again put aside. except that it is still there, and still threatens to return...

the problem is that history is written by christians, so they consistently misunderstand this accidentally on purpose.

this is better, but he's still purposefully forgetting to mention that jim crow was a consequence of the populist movement, and not something that happened in opposition to it. the major opposition on the ground to voting rights for blacks in the 1870s was in fact the southern farmers alliance, which is the major precursor party of the populists.

now, we can be sneaky about this - what was really going on, here? were these farmers being divided and conquered, as is the central thesis in much of zinn's work? maybe.

but, my singular point was that the contrast being presented between the populism of the 1800s as this egalitarian force and the populism of today as these racist inbreds is total revision - on the issue of race, there's broad continuity, not difference.

also, "history is written by the winners" is an ancient quote that i've seen attributed to everyone from orwell to caesar.

i might believe it was napoleon, but who knows.

Christlich

The incredibly rude way they treat the actual survivor, shows what they really want to achieve. It‘s not really about the victims.

deathtokoalas

yeah, i found the body language here disturbing, as well. it's easy to understand why people connected to the event would show an interest in the history, but it's interesting to ask the following question: what kind of (relatively) young white person enjoys researching and writing a book about the holocaust? what draws people to spending their time doing that? and the body language in this presentation answers a lot of questions.

debbie

God makes all kinds of interesting people. I

deathtokoalas

well, i might suggest instead that the stochastics in chaos theory provide for infinite variation in the face of natural selection. but, i take your point.

so, i tried to make some calls today and all the offices are closed early on fridays. ugh.

i only have a handful of choices, unless i want to take a bike ride out of town.

but, i've got a start on it and i'll need to follow up on monday.

i didn't get a chance to do the reading last night because i fell asleep, again. i've been sleeping far too much, recently, and i get depressed when i sleep too much. sleeping is such a fucking waste of time.

but, i've got the laundry done in here, so i'm going to make some pasta and get back to what i was doing.

honestly?

you should really shut the fuck up and listen to me.

i have an academic background that helps me devise tactics. that's my skillset, that's what i can do.

so, i contribute primarily by advising on tactics - because that's what i'm able to contribute.

you can listen to me or ignore me.

but, don't give me shit when you fail because you didn't listen to me, or tell me to contribute in a way i don't have the skillset to contribute with.

from each according to their ability...

and, i simply have no social skills. at all.

i'm just not good at that.

this is what i'm good at...

listen - it's very easy to criticize me for not organizing in real life, but you're ignoring the fact that i live on disability for an anxiety disorder.

i'm not a philosopher that sits inside and works out empty nonsense because i'm too lazy to do anything; i'm an activist that contributes in the only way i actually can, which is to ask people to think before they act - a request that is sorely lacking in the activist community. and, i get pushback from people that really, really don't want to think before they act!

the fact is that i'm not capable of organizing people.

this is what i can actually do. and, if you claim it's invaluable, i deny that - tactics are important. 

your disinterest in tactics is why you fail.

i would actually be more likely to use facebook more frequently if it removed news content, as one of the reasons i got off of it was that i got fed up with the amount of garbage being shared on it. a depoliticized facebook that is focused on art and lifestyle would actually be more attractive to me - it would be a more appropriate use of the platform.

so, i'm with facebook on this issue; they own the servers, they have the right to regulate them. i'd rather see these servers nationalized, granted. but, to have an authoritarian state dictate terms like this is the worst possible outcome.

and, what kind of legislation are they bringing in? like, are they going to tell me to pay to post this link? because i'll tell you what that will do - it will prevent me from posting links to "official sources". i'll link to blogs, instead. or, i'll just talk around them.

i'm actually in favour of letting the newspaper industry die, and good riddance to it. so, they may want to be careful. is what they're doing going to hinder or help?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-condemns-facebooks-highly-irresponsible-australian-news-ban/

in the american discourse, i'm actually a "big government liberal". but, i won't use that language, because i reject the discourse.

just so you're not confused...

i frequently rail against "the state", but i don't mean "the government" when i do that. this is kind of a basic point that you deal with in anarchism 101 and that i sometimes forget that most americans are oblivious to.

but, like, fucking learn it.

so, what is the state, if it's not the government? and, what is the government if it's not the state?

the state refers to what donald trump might call the swamp, or what the populists of days past might have called the "elite". the state is always there - it is beyond the reach of electoral politics, and not removed or altered by the popular will. it inhabits the public and private institutions, it permeates the police and it governs without direction by popular will. the french called it the aristocracy; marx called it the bourgeoisie. but, it's there, behind the working of things, at all times. when leftists (and here, i mean not just anarchists and marxists but "real liberals" as well) talk about "abolishing the state", this is what they mean - abolishing the nexus of power that exists between banks, politicians, corporations and the upper class that runs the world.

and what do leftists want to replace the state with?

the answer is government.

government refers to the democratization of institutions, and not just traditional political institutions but also the democratization of work and the democratization of services, such as health care. you can talk about proudhonian mutualism, the kind of co-operatives pushed by kropotkin & bakunin, the syndicalism in spain or boring old marxist labour unions, but the basic point here is the democratization of every facet of existence - and that is government, in opposition to the tyranny and authority of the state.

the discourse in america is, as usual, deeply confused.

but, just remember this - you are not the state, unless you are at the very top of the elite. but, you are the government.