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Sunday, December 15, 2013

there's somebody funding the independent media that's pushing hard for public banking. the arguments they provide are largely based on historical inaccuracies, probably not accidentally, and the whole thing is consequently just a big elaborate lie. i've tried to argue against these inaccuracies, and tried to argue against the bad economics...

at the end of the day, the bottom line is that it doesn't matter. it may be a little easier for the elites to control public banks than private ones. who owns the banks, how much money is printed and all these other things aren't actually valid questions if you're actually interested in changing anything, they're just distractions from a legitimate class analysis. will public ownership of banks make it harder to manipulate stock crashes? no, it would make it easier to co-ordinate.

so, i'm shifting to ignoring it. there isn't anything more substantial underlying the public banking thing than there is underlying the abolish the fed thing. they're variations on the same theme of channeling dissent to a harmless outlet.

it is enraging, though, to read through this stuff. it's logically incoherent at it's high points.

the problem isn't who owns the currency or how much gets printed, it's the idea of basing society on a concept of market exchange. do we have to run through every possible combination of possibilities before we get it and just stop placing arbitrary values on things in order to exchange them?

obviously, the universe isn't a holographic projection.

#sheer_idiocy

http://www.nature.com/news/water-seems-to-flow-freely-on-mars-1.14343
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strategies-for-aging-vary
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=massive-aquifers-under-the-sea-could-sate-thirst

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2013/12/extreme-diets-can-quickly-alter-gut-bacteria
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/134
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20131211-self-repairing-running-shoes-made-from-3d-printed-protocells.html
http://mitne.ws/1kCRs9S
https://blogs.plos.org/speakingofmedicine/2013/12/13/what-do-we-really-know-about-social-resistance-to-vaccines/
http://truth-out.org/news/item/20467-noam-chomsky-interview
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/02/the_kerry_doctrine
http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2013/12/09/leaked-pussy-riot-greenpeace-activists-and-rioters-in-russia-will-be-freed-under-amnesty/

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/09/asia-d09.html

the rantings of an out of touch old man. hyperbole aside, dude might want to consider if maybe the thrust of these actions are conscious, rather than the result of some kind of "illiteracy". silly liberals...
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20511-henry-giroux-the-spectacle-of-illiteracy-and-the-crisis-of-democracy

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/09/pers-d09.html
http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/story/montr%C3%A9al-police-kill-donald-m%C3%A9nard/20357
http://www8.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/11/indi-d11.html

right. because india is experiencing low population growth. ugh….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/court-in-india-criminalizes-homosexuality/2013/12/11/ea7274a6-6227-11e3-a7b4-4a75ebc432ab_story.html?hpid=z5

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/10/kerry_begins_iran_sales_job
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/02/the_design_and_fall_of_civilizations
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20456-in-europe-a-repudiation-of-austerity-policies

http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2013/12/10/qeqchi-leaders-attacked-with-machetes-on-eve-of-megadam-construction/

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/10/adiz-d10.html

i don't mind walking to the store at all. in fact, i'm excited about how this will decrease the amount of paper wasted in flyers.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/12/11/canada_post_to_announce_radical_changes_to_save_itself.html

if you consider {public, private, public-private} to be an oversimplification of the possible approaches, public-private is by far the worst - it combines the exploitation of corporatism with the monopolization of mercantilism. as critical as i am of free market approaches, at least they don't enforce themselves like corporatism does
http://truth-out.org/news/item/20546-when-outsourcing-public-services-to-private-companies-goes-wrong

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11123

because focusing too much hope on leadership, and the authoritarian structures that creates, has been identified as the primary cause of the tremendous failures of 20th century revolt?
http://fpif.org/twilight-leadership/

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20567-how-wall-street-power-brokers-are-designing-the-future-of-public-education-as-a-money-making-machine

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11160
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/12/11/the_secret_history_of_how_cuba
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11168
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/12/11/nelson_mandela_on_how_cuba_destroyed
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/11/how-the-anc-sold-out-south-africas-poor/

india is not interested in being a tool of american colonialism's desire to contain china.

this actually presents some serious problems for india, because america has made it clear that it demands that india be their central ally - more important than australia and even japan.

questioning whether he'll be banned from america is a little naive. will he be assassinated or overthrown?

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/10/will_india_s_next_leader_be_banned_in_america

mail delivery is a shitty job that has largely been rendered obsolete by technology. fighting for jobs against progress (which in a real leftist narrative is actually reactionary) is the kind of thing that makes the left seem like it's stuck in the past.

http://rabble.ca/news/2013/12/canadians-should-demand-reversal-canada-post-decision-cupw

no. this guy is living in a pre-libya reality.

the russians are not going to bend like this again any time in the near future. they understand that appeasement has reached it's limits. they understand that if they don't put up a fight they're going to eventually be negotiating with "terrorists" on the outskirts of moscow.

the reason the united states did not invade syria was because russia would have treated it like the uk treated germany invading poland.

the calculus of a single global superpower is over now. get your head around it.

put another way, the russians put down their own red line, and the americans wisely decided against crossing it.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/11/obama_adviser_extremism_possible_key_to_ending_syrian_civil_war

exactly. ultimately, i don't care if markets work (they don't). i just don't want to live that kind of lifestyle.

we can take it a step further. i don't want to be somebody's boss. i don't want to run a business. i don't want to stress out over bills and accounting and salaries. i don't want the responsibility of having somebody else's existence dependent on whether i "succeed" or "fail". i don't even want to think about the difference.

actual freedom is taking all that bullshit and burning it, not embracing it as a type of efficient order. fuck efficiency....

(link apparently lost)

yeah. i tried to point this out.

people are comparing baby trudeau to his father in 1967. but, if you were 30 in 1967 you're currently probably dead or close to it. we should be thinking about trudeau in 1984; people that are 50-60 now were 20-30 then. this is where the real nostalgic voting power exists.

of course, trudeau in 1984 was the guy that lost quebec to mulroney after pissing everybody off by plowing through an unpopular constitution a few years after putting the province under martial law. he's also the person that pissed off the west with the nap.

even with all that, mulroney won precisely because he swung the boomer vote in ontario.

there was a time, under dion, when i thought the liberal party was worth supporting as a lesser evil. i don't think that's the case any more.

but it's really painful to watch them repeatedly make just flat out stupid tactical decisions. not *just* stupid tactical decisions, either. *obviously* stupid tactical decisions.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/12/09/trudeau_hasnt_seized_laytons_quebec_legacy_hbert.html

*sigh*.

i don't think there was a thinking person in the world who believed for one moment that the accusations the americans leveled had the slightest tinge of legitimacy. if it were possible for credibility to be measured in a comparable way, american credibility would be *negative*. they have *anti-credibility*.

rather, when the americans make a claim, thinking people require that it be corroborated by a more trustworthy international actor, like russia. or china. in the absence of such a corroboration - or in the presence of contradictory claims - the null hypothesis of american hyper-pragmatism that treats truth as a casualty of ambition must be fallen back upon.

this is how we must operate. we must assume that american officials, even at the highest levels, are looking us in the eye and lying to us through their teeth. the burden of proof to demonstrate otherwise is entirely theirs. due to history, it is heightened, and also present in situations where the benefit of the doubt should be otherwise assumed - and ought to be outside of the extraneous circumstance of the americans having negative credibility.

so, this is the reality of things. the americans can say what they want, but nobody believes them anymore.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/12/08/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

there's something about this article that i like.

i could say something about the demographics. doesn't the author know the 00s are over, meaning the painful return of the 80s is consequently also over, and it's now the 90s again? the article could have easily been written 20 years ago about jaded gen xers and no doubt at various other points of history as well.

so, this kind of widespread apathy isn't something that is unique to people under 35.

it walks a fine line between suggesting apathy is dangerous and acknowledging that it's a rational reaction to empirical evidence. this is the thing i like about it. i've been reading articles like this in the news for a long time. they've taken every possible approach, from arguing that APATHY IS UNCOOL (which has worked, temporarily, in fact a few times) to condemning it as evil or even idiotic. this is the first time i've seen a level of agreement, even if it is done grudgingly.

you shouldn't tell us anything, michael. if you can't agree with us outright, you should at least recognize us as evidence that the ideals underlying western civilization are deeply flawed. we're either evidence that the system isn't working very well or are evidence that humans actually aren't what you assumed we are. either way, what we provide is a challenge for the system to adjust to, rather than an opponent to be debated with.

https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/12/08/suppose_they_threw_an_election_and_nobody_came.html

lol.

food & retail workers are no more revolutionary than factory workers. there's a large potential for reform in organizing them, but they are ultimately not opposed to the interests of capital but aligned with it. let's fast forward slightly to malatesta for an understanding of that.

i don't want to give off the wrong idea. i think factories and retail sectors should both be run on vaguely syndicalist principles.

but, a nihilistic worker revolt with a threat of fascist overtones? any kind of worker revolt at all? hilarious...

if you're worried about rising fascism at a grassroots level, i'd be more concerned about completely co-opted organizations like moveon - and totally controlled movements like the tea party.

(fascism is always pushed down by the "ineffectual liberals" to prevent socialism, and has never been this sort of uprising of the unwashed. once again, hedges is hiding behind a wall of socialist (and now anarchist) rhetoric while he upholds wildly inaccurate liberal propaganda.)

it's basic fear-mongering. so, who is he working for?

(link apparently lost)

....and obviously somebody like degrasse-tyson isn't going to deal with as much discrimination, and if people try it will be at their competitive disadvantage, sure. the free market argument makes some sense in this exceedingly restricted context.

in the context of flipping burgers, answering phones, running cash registers, hitting switches, doing patrols, etc....90+% of the jobs that actually exist...talent isn't any kind of factor in the hiring process, or in the ability to retain employment. human capital, here, is quite honestly just an input variable. so long as there are more unemployed people than there are jobs, employers will remain free to pick and choose based on whatever arbitrary nonsense they'd like.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-discrimination-tax

game theory is powerful, but like anything else it depends on it's assumptions.

the idea that stealing something from a store is wrong follows only from the enforcement of hierarchical property rights. there's nothing organic about this. so, while they're presenting the results in terms of connection to a community, the analyses is skewed by the underlying assumption of a system of "ordered capitalism" that is enforced through violence; conversely, it could be argued that the results provide empirical data for hierarchical class relations - the closer you are to the inner circle of the bosses and property owners, the more likely you are to be a class traitor (or an owner or boss).

http://phys.org/news/2013-12-game-theory-evolution-party.html

Saturday, December 14, 2013

it's curious how this manages to whitewash the reality that santa claus is not actually based on "st. nicholas" but is a merging of pagan mythology with colonialism. in the reformation era northern european legends, the "gifts" that "santa" brings are made by "elves" that happen to be black and under the colonial domination of the european nation that receives the gifts. the santa claus story, itself, is a rationalization of white supremacist ideology. it follows that santa is indeed as white as adolf hitler was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdkGA_rgHRY

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/protesters-occupy-quebec-education-minister-s-office-1.2458566

this strikes me as an answer. it incorporates what everybody realized, and it doesn't collapse into new age idiocy. this is how entanglement works.
http://mitne.ws/IVunni

http://www.nature.com/news/not-all-species-deteriorate-with-age-1.14322

silliness. i'm willing to openly acknowledge that something existed _before_ the universe, but everything has a start and an end. the idea of an infinite universe isn't worth seriously contemplating.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-gravity-universe-beginning

https://www.sciencemag.org/site/extra/curiosity/index.xhtml
http://www.news.gatech.edu/2013/12/07/harvesting-electricity-triboelectric-generators-capture-wasted-power
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/133

on the question of santa’s skin colour

jessica amber murray
santa isn't just white - he's a white supremacist, too. we should be deconstructing the racism, not denying it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas#The_Netherlands:_Zwarte_Piet

dave
Sinterklaas isn't Santa, hes one of the European predecessors that the Santa figure drew from when it was created in America in the 19th century

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ded_Moroz

Similiar to this guy, there is a number of European seasonal figures that Santa draws from

jessica amber murray
i think it's more accurate to say that sinterklaas evolved into santa claus in the dutch colony of new amsterdam (now called new york). some other ideas may have found their way into the construction, but he's the core of what santa claus is in the sense that he's the root story that the other traditions get attached to.

it seems like it's the same basic process, though, in the sense that both the german and slavic legends are the result of being colonized by christians. in both cases, traditional gods are converted into mythical figures that uphold rather than challenge the authority of the church.

my jesus year is fast approaching. i've been thinking about it a lot, actually.

i can only make one promise: i will not stare at anybody like they need to be saved.

this is a balanced and informative talk by somebody that knows what they're talking about. it's a much more realistic analysis than is usually rubber-stamped for academic consumption and may consequently provided a slightly different perspective than you're used to hearing. but this is the right perspective and the one you should hear.

Friday, December 13, 2013

actually, i would drastically prefer to live in a universe that is defined by logical rules and develops according to an understandable framework that follows a rational outline. i didn't choose to live within the chaos of absolute stochastic mayhem. alas...

prematurely republishing inri (inri015)

so, post-production on this is complete, along with some minor changes - removal of awkward samples, basically.

i consider this a listenable release. the lyrics are not always great (although there's a few i like that i'll pull out for inricycled B), but they either express valid viewpoints as i was experiencing them or they pull of the shock rock thing well enough to be effective. less than half of this will be recycled, but i would only really like to actually strike out track 8.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-lp

Thursday, December 12, 2013

i think this article makes some valid points, but it goes a little too far and in the process exposes the author's reactionary white privilege.

my reading of mandela is essentially that he didn't really know what he was doing. he campaigned from the left based on it's ideals and then found himself in power at the confluence of the collapse of communism and the rise of neo-liberalism. he followed his advisers to the implementation of failed reforms.

i've compared him to trudeau before and will again. people attack trudeau for his economic policies. the truth is trudeau didn't actually understand anything about economics, he was a lawyer with an interest in philosophy, and if you spend some time searching through his biography and reading some of his statements you'll realize he admitted as much. on the one hand, trudeau took power in an economic mess - nixon shock, opec embargo, collapse of keynesian economic theory. even if he did have a clue, the challenges were substantial. he would have had to rely on advice, regardless. and we now know that the experts studying the situation were as flabbergasted as anybody else.

so, trudeau - a social liberal by any concept of the term and one with a background in workplace organizing that ran on an election platform that promised direct democracy - ended up carrying out experiments on behalf of milton friedman. canada liked monetarism before it was cool. and trudeau had no idea what he was implementing.

likewise, when mandela's advisers came to him and presented trickle down as a solution, he went for it because he trusted the advice and believed it was the way forward in a post-communist future. the task, now, is to point out that it failed. there's no need to vilify and no value in it.

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/26519

the situation's sort of complex. apparently, the israeli right (netanyahu is actually in the centre of the heavily rightward-skewed israeli spectrum) rejected the idea of planned resettlement as a sort of welfare.

as mentioned, beyond the problems of resettlement itself, i'm concerned about the ramifications regarding forced resettlement of israeli citizens that happen to be arabs and the collapse of the rule of law in israel. this is a different thing than bulldozing over villages in the occupied territories. like most people on the left, i don't want multiple states in the region that are defined by ethnic or religious identities. that's a formula for perpetual violence, nationalism, racism, etc. rather, i want to see a single cosmopolitan, multicultural, multi-ethnic state that buries the nineteenth century ideal of ethnic nationalism. i reject the idea that jews and arabs are too different to live together. reality is that they're virtually indistinguishable - same genes, same language, same religion.

http://972mag.com/bill-to-displace-israels-bedouin-to-be-scrapped-laws-drafter-says/83525/

in all honesty, the best thing that could happen to the area is an invasion by an outside force. it's interesting to contemplate an alternate history where the ottoman empire maintained control of the area long enough to accommodate jewish resettlement after wwII.

another thing to think about is the possibility of a new messianic cult arising in the region. hey, religion is a statist fantasy to begin with; now's a good time to make a new one up.

i'm really not interested in ideas that maintain the status quo and merely seek to balance power. the problem is that there's a gang of armed morons in charge that think god has the right to grant fiefs. that's what needs to be resolved.

it's not a question of sharing the "holy land", it's a process of bringing people to terms with the truth that there is no such thing as "holy land".

only a secular, multicultural state that rejects ethnic nationalism can get us there.

and this idea of rounding up arabs and putting them on reserves is really damaging to that only possible end goal.

spent hours doing post-production, can't tell the difference between result and initial wave files.

grargh. let me try this again...

i'll never forgive myself for deleting all the source files for this ancient stuff. something as simple as boosting the guitars turns into a math problem about fundamental frequencies and harmonic overtones. ugh...

not to mention those samples. to be 17 again would be to understand what the fuck i was thinking.

the mastering process on this stuff consisted of compressing the wave files to mp3. the fraunhofer method, i suppose. hey, that *is* a type of compression and it was a valid best approach when mastering software was out of the reach of warez on home pcs.

btw, my take on warez is that if intellectual property is to exist at all then it should be very minimal in scope. ten years, tops. i don't tend to go after the newest releases, but i think previous cycle software should be treated as freeware.

anyways, this is long overdue to be run through some stereo imaging and harmonic exciters. but there's just a handful of places where the mix has come out fucked...

so, i'm running over the source material with parametric eqs trying to get just the right frequencies out. almost done. and it's almost painful, really.

^ only a perfectionist, huh? lol.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

http://projects.wsj.com/lobotomyfiles/?ch=one

publishing inricycled a (inri002)

so, i just spent the last several months flooding everybody's feed with music that i wrote in the 90s as a teenager, criticizing both it and myself and more or less suggesting that you don't bother listening to what i'm spamming you with.

this inri material has been a problem for me for years because quite a bit of it is some of the music i've written that's closest to me (consider i was around 15 when i wrote most of it), but quite a bit of it is also absolutely terrible and unoriginal garbage and it's all intertwined with itself.

i've gone over it a few times and pulled out sections for listenable consumption. it's the only really workable approach. I had never done that for the cassette demos, though.

i wanted everything available for analysis in it's rawest form, that's why i uploaded. but, that's not the material i'd ever send anybody to go listen to. i'm actually really happy that this is finally put together because it gives me a document of myself in early high school (the tenth grade) that i can actually send people towards.

so, no, you probably don't want to listen to the other 90s stuff i was posting. the awful lyrics, the rip-offs, the sometimes terrible playing and other characteristics make those demos of historical value only.

this compilation i've just pulled out, though, is void of all of that and is really quite listenable. if you like noisy grunge/punk/doom/hardcore with a prog/fusion/jazz/blues flair (and can handle the odd ambient or psychedelic pop embellishment) then you might get some enjoyment out of it. i was a pretty talented little guitarist...
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-a

===

i've released a dozen different things with the title "inricycled", making it more of a concept than a release. it's not just the material i'm recycling, now, it's the idea of recycling material.

i hope this is the final iteration. the difference, here, is that i'm trying to isolate segments of songs that people interested in my more recent compositions would find interesting. these fragments aren't entirely void of lyrics, but they're very minimal. they're also quite short.

i've retitled most of the tracks to get a feel of what the music sounds like and/or what i was thinking as i was writing it.

the material in this volume is taken from the following cassette demos:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-1 (1996)
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-2 (1997)

this is the best possible absolute starting point for my musical material.

sequenced and mildly modified in dec, 2013. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, drums, vocals, keyboards, tapes, found sounds, metronomes, digital wave editing, production.

released july 1, 1997

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

no they're not. this is a very misleading headline, covering very cynical politics. unifor is angling for refineries to be built in canada. they're going to co-opt the first nations struggle to try and get that done, but to suggest that they are "on the same side" as first nations, here, is a flat out lie.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/energy-union-backs-first-nations-against-northern-gateway/article15799496/

‘We’ll be there in solidarity to support them,’ says Unifor area director Gavin McGarrigle.

first nations would be wise to avoid any strategic planning with big labour.

thankfully, i think they mostly realize this.

the truth is that the article itself is probably trying to lump together the opposition to the pipeline as "unions and indians". the conservatives benefit from that kind of optics, as both groups are deeply unpopular.

you can hear ezra, now.

"today, an evil axis of communists and savages descended upon the peaceful oil executives of central alberta and threatened to sacrifice them to their nature gods unless certain concessions were made. we're going to dedicate this entire program to the existential threat that this axis poses to our freedoms in canada."

that's only a mild exaggeration.

in truth, unifor does not care about the ecological issues. if they get their way, and refineries get built, they will immediately swing their support for pipelines to move the refined product. that could conceivably have a catastrophic effect on the ability to actually resist.

it's hard to reject temporary allies, especially when they're powerful, but first nations should really be making an attempt to clarify that the nature of their opposition is drastically different than unifor's. unifor's solidarity should be rejected in no uncertain terms. this would hopefully have the effect of undercutting support for unifor's proposed refineries, which is a more important goal than building a level of transparently fake solidarity that will eventually backfire.

unifor's "solidarity" is, in fact, an attempt to co-opt an ecological movement into one for economic nationalism, at the cost of severe ecological ruin.

Monday, December 9, 2013

this is funny math. MLEs. probability theory. ugh. i sort of hate it. worse, you don't want to start letting programmers do the math because the flat reality is that they're going to do it wrong.

...but i realize that there's a huge class of relatively simple practical problems that are NP and that require complete rethinks to approach.

to put it another way, the algorithm is going to have very, very bad results from time to time. so, you write in a time-out operation and start again. it's random, so you could get 100 bad results in a row. that's extreme, but it will happen from time to time. when you do get a good result, though, the guessing is often going to be faster than a systematic approach.

but, it's all guessing and working with probabilities.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131202121546.htm

well, they sucked. they rode a wave of leftist indignation to a second place showing, then elected a fucking liberal. actually, that's not fair - mulcair has demonstrated that he's opposed to ideology, in general, and merely seeks power. so, they elected a megalomaniac masquerading as a fucking liberal.

suck. sorry.

http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2013/12/beyond-politics-origins-and-future-ndp%E2%80%99s-orange-wave

the denisovans hadn't been discovered yet when i was working this out (neither had the "hobbit"), but i can sort of work them in. this, i'm having trouble making meaning of. it's easy to make sense of, but i don't see it shedding light on anything.

except, maybe, this: basque is a language isolate, sometimes connected to caucasian languages and north american languages that are ultimately siberian. 400 000 years ago is clearly too early to be talking about any existing languages. however, if continuity can be developed until fairly recently it is a possible diffusion point.

https://phys.org/news/2013-12-oldest-hominin-dna-sequenced.html

this was bound to happen eventually. it's not that macs and linux machines are inherently safer. well, maybe they're a little harder to hack into, but you shouldn't be worried about somebody hacking into your machine. you should be worried about getting something in your email, or running a compromised program or opening the wrong website.

see, here's the thing: windows had something like 95% market share at one point. i know it's gone down a lot, but it's still dominant. you're an 31337 hax0r. why bother with the machine with 8% or 13% market share? no, you want the high probability option. so you write your 1337 scripts to go after windows. or, windoze, as you'd call it.

that's the only reason that macs and linux boxes have less viruses targeted towards them. it's just a smaller market. and, again, most viruses spread nowadays through user behaviour. the weakest link is not your operating system, it's you.

macs are growing steadily but slowly. they might maybe hit 15% soon if the current rate continues, and 20% by 2020. with those kinds of numbers, it's not likely that virus makers will bother targeting mac users any time soon.

android, though, is dominating the market. 81% market share in q3. and these are the devices that people are using to connect directly to their bank accounts, credit card companies...

https://phys.org/news/2013-12-symantec-worm-linuxthreat-devices.html

Sunday, December 8, 2013

i've wanted to do some projects with this sort of thing for a while, but i was thinking more along the lines of generating them in matlab.

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/december-2013/baryonic-acoustic-oscillations

timeline: 2005

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2005

mar 7: thee silver mt. zion memorial orchestra & tra-la-la band - horses in the sky

april 13: the angels of light, akron/family @ la sala rosa, montreal

july 10: do make say think, four tet @ bluesfest, ottawa

aug 29: system of a down @ bell centre, montreal

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/chronology/CE/2000/000/00/05.html

thee silver mt. zion memorial orchestra & tra-la-la band - horses in the sky

hit and miss

i've swung so wildly on this disc that it's hard to even order the thoughts. i think i've conjured up a basic idea, though.

suppose you approach it as a singular whole, as an album that cannot be modified - which, to be clear, is how it ought to be approached in an absolute sense. from this perspective, i'd have to say that, if there's another record out there with so much blown potential, i'm not sure what it is. it begins with two ridiculously powerful pieces of epic rock that are maybe a bit more conventional than an old fan would expect but are no less satisfying. it then collapses into a couple of boring folk songs and a pretty generic doom/grunge thing before bouncing back a bit with a throwback track that, as is often the case with throwback tracks, seems haphazardly thrown together, even in it's epic haze.

suppose, though, that you simply remove the third and fifth tracks from the disc. what is left is a record of four lengthy tracks that is arguably on par with the previous disc. the grading consequently comes with a very deep caveat: removing those two particularly awful misses produces a pretty big hit. half of me wants to overlook it, but it's just that the misses miss so badly....

thankfully, this disc represents the end of their folk phase, and i really don't know what they were thinking. then again, i don't know what any of the creative artists that felt the need to explore folk, of all things, were thinking around '05 or so. it was popular. trendy. ok. however, the audience such a thing can attract is very fickle (and not particularly suited for propaganda purposes). the nature of the mid noughties folk craze is practically the definition of fickle, trendy nonsense. how it was able to ensnare so many otherwise forward-thinking artists, i don't know; it was upper class, latte-drinking, small-business-supporting, pro-capitalist conservative-liberal shit, more or less the antithesis of what this band seemed to be. i suppose that breaks with the past are meant to be dramatic, but they need not be contradictory; did it cross their mind, at any point, that smashing the state had given way to playing for petty bourgeois aristocrats in thrown together courtyards.....? so, what were they thinking when they recorded an ironically perfect straight-to-starbucks classic like "horses in the sky" or a frat-house sing-along like "hang on to each other"? well, i suppose i answered my own question. unfortunately...

teddy roosevelt's guns is a different issue. thematically, this is interesting. i'll even admit a partiality to the mood they go with, as well as the general aesthetic of disconnected dreariness. yet, it seems like it was thrown together. it's filler. we don't really expect filler from this act and are a little confused by it when we find it. it's something similar for the last track, which is musically partially recycled from the last proper gybe! disc. there's a very good idea here, but it seems hampered by a refusal to break with the band's own conventions. what i'm trying to get across is a level of predictability. now, that being said, a casual listener may not even notice this; it may only really be apparent upon a close analysis of their entire discography, after listening to it fairly intensely for six years (at the time of release; nearly 15 at the time of this writing). this track is successful, but it's a little tired. can't win with me, can you? well, they pivoted massively on their next record...

i've previously alluded to the influence i may have had on the band, and have to wonder if the imagery in the second part of the last track (imagine the view as they bounce shit off the satellites) has anything to do with the cover art attached to a demo i sent their label. i think this is pushing it, though. substantially...

so, what is so special about the first two tracks, then? god saves our dead marines sounds sort of like freddie mercury delving into slavic folk, or perhaps roma ("gypsy") music. operatic grandeur has been replaced by an existential peasant angst that meditates on how fucked up the world around us is, making specific reference to some sneaky tactics the canadian government was using to hide it's war dead, but it's fundamentally a perverted queen tune. this opens up into an ambient second track, as many of their more upbeat tracks tend to, which presents some moral questions about the extant conflict in the levant from an anti-zionist jewish perspective. "this is their busted future, and this is our dream. which one do you believe in?". it's a remarkably powerful, gut-wrenching 21 minutes of music that really has few parallels. stop reading this and go listen to it...

despite the high points, as high as they are, the record lacks cohesion, as a whole. perhaps extraordinary goals require extraordinary results? you can't skip over this in the band's catalog, nor should you, but you need to prepare yourself to wonder what the fuck they were thinking.

stream:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnpQFjefXCROaSni7C2oteYu1PyWP5ywx

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/ASilverMtZion/2005-HorsesInTheSky/index.html

Saturday, December 7, 2013

william iron arm

born:
died: 1046
father: tancred d'hauteville [1]

william and drogo seem to have probably really been brothers. they were present in italy by 1035 at the latest. the legend is that he killed the emir of sicily with his bare arm. he was elected count of the normans in apulia, and successfully defended the province from an attempted byzantine reconquest, but died shortly afterwards. also lord of ascoli.

[1]: the deeds of count roger of calabria & sicily & of duke robert guiscard his brother , book I

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/gen/lines/hauteville/williamironarm.html

ok, so step one is to relisten to things closely. a lot of what i just uploaded was raw, and i may reupload. i won’t repost. i should be back to reposting deny everything material within about a week.

my goal was to be done remastering by jan 1. that was a full month with no headphones, so i'm going to need to work a little faster through it.

i have a rough outline of things. i'll be constructing several new releases to hold outtakes and alternate mixes. so there's a LOT coming...

...and then there's going to be a lot of new material coming, as i complete roughly 5 projects quite quickly.

found the contradiction i was looking for. it's kind of nasty.

in 1058, pope nicholas II started to more vigorously enforce rules against incest. the duke of apulia at the time, a norman landholder, was forced to divorce and remarry. this indicates that the duke of apulia (robert guiscard) must have been related to the ducal line of normandy, as the confused mythical history states.

robert guiscard took over control of sicily in an unclear way. either circumstance was remarkably fortuitous, or the history that exists is essentially a lie to justify his seizure of control, with the backing of the church. it is said he was the brother of the ruler he seized power from, putting him next in the line of succession. ok, let's accept that supposedly historical statement at face value.

it would then follow that robert guiscard was also the brother of a geoffrey, who had a son that entered the clergy and married into the norman aristocracy. oops.

first, note that the clergy were, at this point, permitted to marry. laws against priests marrying are actually fairly recent (and the reformists rejected them for that reason). so, there's nothing weird about a priest marrying. but, how do we explain a priest marrying into his own family, breaking the rules that the church were then recently so keen to enforce? how do we accept that the church forced the powerful duke to divorce and yet permitted his priestly nephew to marry his own cousin?

the solution is that geoffrey did not marry his cousin at all. to be clear, i'm not suggesting a reason to think that marriage that is recorded didn't happen. rather, the marriage was not one between cousins because geoffrey and robert guiscard were not actually brothers.

it is the sons of tancred from his first wife that comprise the likely historical fiction, as it was concocted by guiscard to justify his seizure of power after the death (and possible poisoning) of humphrey. so says my hypothesis, anyways.

but the contradiction that has been found does expose the lie and it can no longer be responsibly upheld.

i have conquered all of the mortals.

the only thing left for me to pwn is time.

"Today, Fighting Island is privately owned by BASF Corporation. "

that's a thing that happens?

it's ok, though. basf, which was created out of the decartelization of ig farben, which was the neural center of the nazi state and was never actually run through a "denazification process", which has led to many decades of reminders that they were once the neural center of the nazi state, are fully engaged in the process of reversing the effects of fordism in the region. don't feel bad, that one went over my head, too. http://riccawu.mnsi.net/story9.html

Friday, December 6, 2013

headphones have arrived at the post-office. back in business tomorrow.

timeline: 1041

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1041

unclear date:

tancred d'hauteville (died)

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/chronology/CE/1000/000/40/01.html

RE: Yes, All new homeowners can pick up their first recycling Red & Blue Boxes free at the Environmental Services Centre

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: city.windsor.on.ca

i picked some up at home hardware the other day....

thanks anyways.

j

ollie
I like going through my media chronologically, in all aspects. I started with wwi. After immersing myself in WWI media, docs, literature, art, etc for about a month, the joy of those early 20s jazz recording sprang to life and didn't seem trite in the slightest. I've actually been doing this for a couple of years now and I'm in the early 90s now. Its a fun experiment that I'd highly recommend.

I want someone to invent an app so people can build historical/chronological playlists with friends. It would be cool if people could have a best of 1990 cross media playlist to crowdsource

... or a best of 1782

jessica amber murray
i was building chronological playlists on youtube for a while, but have kind of let it sit since i moved here. 60s - 00s. plus one for "serialism" which i took a broad definition of to include any kind of abstract jazz. and i suppose i'm building something like that on my web page, slowly, although it's cross-linked to literature and other things as well. i think it's a neat idea, too. http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIx9xafrMCgYqDYIp4SK6tA/videos?view=1

ollie
I have this book, its a historical atlas of world history. I think it forms an excellent template for how people should interact with their media. Sort of like a google earth with a timeline that media could be tagged to by date.

I'm meeting with someone in the next month to develop the idea. If you have any input I'd be interested to hear about it.

I want it to be a crowdsourced documentary organiser that can serve as a tool for historical schooling.

jessica amber murray
i think that sounds like a lot of programming! i've played around with geographical lists to organize bands in scenes (montreal post-rock, or seattle grunge, or whatever) and can see the appeal to approaching music this way, at least up until about 2000 when the internet sort of abolished the local music scene by opening up the spread of ideas. the kind of isolation that created the washington/oregon punk scene probably isn't going to happen again. what we've seen more recently are scenes jumping up around hashtags. a good example of that is "chillwave". it's interesting, but is it anachronistic? and, if so, if the focus is *history*, does that matter? i was actually thinking of building something like this for my programming project. i ran it by a bunch of people and they all questioned whether there was any kind of demand for it. my answer was always "well, i'd use it.". but after thinking about it, i sort of think they're right. i mean, i like the idea - i'd use the site. but it's hard to see why people would move from spotify (although i should point out that spotify didn't exist at the time, and my idea may have been interpreted as an alternate model for spotify that took in aspects of discogs, which also didn't exist, and timeline, which also didn't exist....) or last.fm for that reason, or why the media companies would license it. i've been slowly building up a timeline on facebook, though. just my own records. just a hobby. but i do hope that, one day, it's a large resource. having something like that opened up and crowd-sourced would definitely be interesting. but, again, why would people use it instead of wikipedia, besides the gui? so, i guess my input is it's a cool idea that's going to require a lot of work and will probably have a hard time sustaining itself. but i'd use it. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessicas-Music-Collection/505092896244390?ref=hl

ollie
I don't know a thing about programming, but the first step from my basic perspective is meta-tagging fields for detailed date information, so your date tag for Sgt. Pepper says June 1, 1967 instead of 1967.

As for local scenes being relevant or not, think of how this could be applied as an event promotion/ local media collection tool.

jessica amber murray
you'd probably end up storing it all in xml files with those tags and then putting a searchable interface over top of it for usability. the user would be able to construct a timeline of desired events by genre, individual, whatever so that timelines of 'john lennon, 1960-1980' or 'punk rock, 1976-1996' could be constructed.

ollie
Bring in the geographic tag and it becomes a historical media atlas. With a calendrical interface, people can contextualise their media historically.

Computer, what was happening in October 1962?

its already on wikipedia, just not the direct link to the media

First James Bond movie, first Beach Boys album, first Beatles single, Cuban Missile Crisis.

jessica amber murray
yeah. it's a neat idea. i wish you had asked me this five years ago, though, when i was in the right head space. right now, i'm personally more interested in building a personalized timeline that focuses on my own writing, reviews, interpretations, etc than opening it up to crowdsourcing and objective analysis. but i do think the latter would be interesting to see exist.

ollie
That's where it becomes a promotional tool.

A database for event footage so that people can familiarise themselves with a local art scene.

I'm looking forward to developing it. Know a couple of teachers who think it will be a good teaching tool for history.

I'll keep you updated.

jessica amber murray
i'll just point out that if you compare it to something like discogs or librarything, something that bogs those sites down is the user content. wildly inaccurate or borderline reviews by people that don't really know what they're talking about. i guess that's more something to worry about down the line. but i think the major usability challenge on the timeline is likely to be clutter. maybe another example to look at is the phenomena of the soundcloud comment.

ollie
I see it working more like facebook, where you add users based on the quality of their content. For instance, there would be some interest in having an Idle No More or an Oxford History department newsfeed for tagged media.