it's starting to look like where i am is going to just duck under the jetstream most of the winter this year, and may actually see above average temperatures. there might be a lot of rain, but that's less annoying than periodic deep freezes.

the rest of eastern canada doesn't seem like it's going to be so lucky.

i think they may have slightly exaggerated the effect of the vortex, and slightly underexaggerated the effect of the el nino, which positioned the path of the jetstream about 100 km south of where it seems to be settling. which takes me from right on top of it to right underneath it, and makes the difference between a winter defined by north winds and a winter defined by moist rains.

as i mentioned before, i think this has to do with them not integrating solar effects into their models. it's a minor thing. but, being positioned where i am, it's a huge difference maker.

forecast temperatures this week are between 2 and 8. no snow on the ground. no snow in the forecast. they're claiming it will get cold in two weeks, but they've been saying that for a few weeks and keep bumping it up. it seems like they misforecasted...

i mean, it could still switch. and it will no doubt get cold once or twice. but i think i'm in a sweet little spot this year...

the bad news is that, if i'm right, the fact that we're at the peak of a very weak solar cycle means winter could get pretty nasty for a few years after this year...

this is a good graph, because it balances the things out at the end.

(the blue is "global warming", the yellow is the sun, the red is the temperature, which is flatlining as the blue and yellow move in opposite directions.)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Temp-sunspot-co2.svg

but where we are, what's more important is how the sun affects the factors that affect the jetstream. there seems to be research that suggests that these dips in the jetstream are correlated with solar activity, which is something very localized (temperature wise) to eastern north america - and tends to create warmer temperatures in the western part of the continent. so, you're not looking at a decrease in global temperature caused by the sun's decrease in power so much as you're looking at the global spread of energy modified in a way that makes us, specifically, colder - and other places warmer.

so, what that means is that even if carbon dioxide keeps skyrocketing, if the sun doesn't come back hard we could very well be stuck with all kinds of wind blowing south from the arctic making us very cold - while africa and india fry.

i've blocked them all, but i don't think it's an exaggeration to state that the reddit army is killing youtube.

you can't get a word in past them. they upvote each other. and they're complete fucking idiots. it's very unfortunate.

i don't know why they're doing this, but it would be great if they'd just stop.

i don't want to really argue with any of the points in the video, i just want to kind of point out that being an academic in the neo-liberal era is going to result in picking up some biases, no matter how much one may align against them, and point out a few things that, by being omitted, presented the kind of status quo idea of markets being drivers of peace.

1) the us military (and i'm going to include intelligence agencies in that category, for the purposes of this comment) acts as an enforcement arm on the "liberalization" policies pushed by the imf and similar organizations. that is, those states that don't want to do what they're told are subject to intervention, destabilization and all manners of coups, who will impose violent policies on the population. it's consequently rather inaccurate to suggest or imply that this is a peaceful or stabilizing process. even canada has arguably seen some soft coups over the last several decades (trudeau, chretien).

2) these policies mostly apply to small states, and it's of course a process of extraction. large states, like russia, cannot be controlled quite like this. and, so you don't get this peaceful market order of capitalists colluding for profit; rather, you get the old nineteenth century model of empires competing for resources. and, we saw this all through the cold war and still see it with american policy against russia and china.

now, i understand it's hard to stand in front of a classroom and speak like this in 2014. but, that's a reflection of academia's willingness to tow the line, rather than of reality.

deathtokoalas
the title of john maus' new thesis has been leaked:

"On Projecting Pseudo-Intellectuality Through Performing Bad Retro for Stoned Teenagers."

RedPill Swallowed
Jealous.

deathtokoalas
naw. even in my late 90s synth-pop phase, i never had any aspirations towards this. and while my background is in math, and math is kind of like philosophy, my epistemology has always been empirically driven. i'm just dismissive.

RedPill Swallowed
I'm not even going to pretend that I don't need to google some of those words, lol....I'll just agree.  Have a nice day. :)

deathtokoalas
it's not that rough. if you ignore silly people like kant, like you should, and like maus doesn't, mathematics and philosophy share an approach to understanding knowledge, which is based in deducing things from assumptions with logic. this is somewhat - albeit not entirely - contradictory to a scientific worldview, which attempts to understand knowledge through experiment.

it gets confusing when you acknowledge that there are quasi-empirical branches of mathematics (like constructivism). but that can kind of be glossed over for the purposes of getting to my point.

....which is that i don't really have time for speculative branches of philosophy. well, i guess it's fun to read sometimes. and you have to define questions before you can test them. but there's not much room for jealousy, there, as a result of that.

accidentalprotégé
I don't agree with everything that comes out of John Maus' mouth but what makes his music "Bad Retro?" As someone who dislikes socialized medicine I still think Rights For Gays is a banger.

deathtokoalas
i'm a fan of the period he's drawing on, but i just don't hear anything except watered down emulation.

Me Ear
Do ya get out much? Me neither. I'm a fat, damaged idiot tho. And your aspirations to truth are fine if it gets you thru shit. Really. I'm not being sarcastic. Even your aspirations to a superiority over others are harmless here in youtube comment sections. Bluntly tho, you don't know shit. Humanity is a tribe of monkeys that fell out of a tree one unfortunate day. And there's good folks and cunts. That's it. But what do I know? lol. Best wishes.

deathtokoalas
yeah. i'm post-godel. i get that. that doesn't have much to do with what i was saying, though. if anything, it's an argument in favour of empiricism.

Me Ear
Well, thanks for replying. 1 or 2 folks were nasty to you on here. I can be nasty too, very. Godel? Not heard of him, if it's a dude. It's in humans to value truth, yes. But there isn't any. And what you believe? It's not important. I'm exaggerating somewhat, yes.

Religion, philosophy, science, can have a place, yes. But anyway, one guy, or girl, sees a cat with 3 legs, kicks it across the road. Another guy or girl feeds it. All the rest is theory, in my view. And, no, I wouldn't kick the cat, on my worst possible day.

deathtokoalas
godel was an early 20th century mathematician that produced a series of important proofs. he's been described as the most important logician since aristotle. and, in some sense he defined a type of thinking that is necessarily post-aristotlian.

i have to oversimplify dramatically. but, he demonstrated that we have a choice between completeness and consistency. what that means is that there are necessarily true statements that can never be proven true - and that we can in fact prove can never be proven, despite being true.

that has a lot of implications to the axiom-deduction approach to epistemology. it throws kant out the window, to begin with. his whole concept of synthetic a priori knowledge being superior is rendered ridiculous.

again: i don't really see any point where you're disagreeing with me. you're just displaying that you didn't really understand what i typed.

Me Ear
I drink, listen to music and type shit for something to do, which I don't usually remember because I'm mentally disordered, damaged and drunk.

A serious (not sarcastic) question - why post clever stuff on youtube? And, again seriously,  where can doing so lead to?

(There's clever folks on youtube, yes, but most of them seem to end up wanting to die fairly soon after they've posted on the toob amongst folk like me, don't they?) 

deathtokoalas
see, here's the thing: maybe people reading my ranting might click on my name and check out my channel, and then go to my bandcamp site. the more places i leave links, the higher the possibility.

it's a benevolent type of spam/marketing, in the sense that people get something out of it. and, i don't get deleted or marked as spam, either.

Me Ear
I'll look at your channel then. I used to rant til I got a troll. Who had a channel. lol. I looked at it eventually, worst music ever. lol again. You know what tho? Your enemy is your helper too. I imagine you're smart enough to have heard of the concept. Except young kids are killing themselves coz of trolls now.. There was a case of somebody in this country who trolled somebody on 6000 websites. Those 2 should've got married, they had very similar interests.lol. Peace. xxx

if you were a dog, you'd realize that pineapples have a very strong piney odour that could be easily mistaken for another dog. see, it's a weird dog though: spiky hair, stationary. and on the counter. da fuck?

dogs operate almost entirely on smell, and they can pick up things with their noses that you can only contemplate in the abstract. it's not reacting to the way it looks...

but, put your face up against a fresh, unpeeled pineapple the next time you get a chance. you'll only get a fraction of what a dog will get. but it's enough to demonstrate the point. it has a very territorial smell.

i mean, if you have a better idea i'd like to hear it, but just keep in mind that it's going to be smell-related rather than sight-related. i think we all know this, but i think we easily forget it - because we're so vision-centric, ourselves.

you'll notice that when she puts the pineapple down, the dog smells it from a distance and instantly reacts. that's what's going on...

now, it doesn't have to think it's a dog, exactly, to get that kind of confused reaction. i'm sure the chemical reaction happening in the dog's brain is fairly specific in it's "that's a dog" reaction. i don't know if the glandy smells coming off a pineapple are chemically close enough to trick the dog's brain in that respect (and if it's just a few bonds off, that confusion is entirely plausible - it's about the geometry of the molecules sticking together). but, given that pineapples have such a territorial almost urine-like smell, i'm fairly convinced that it's interpreting it as some kind of living thing, and is just unaware as to how it should react.

put another way, i think the idea that this is a territorial reaction is correct. that pineapple's territorial smell is invading it's turf.

stripping that provision out of the bill would not protect taxpayers. rather, they'd lose their savings when the banks collapse again. the problem is much deeper than opposing bailouts, which are unfortunately required to protect taxpayers against irresponsible banks.

fighting the symptom, not the problem. typical democrat...

deathtokoalas
simply breaking them up isn't much of an answer, either. it didn't work then, and it's not going to work now.

there needs to be stronger regulations on what banks are allowed to do, not an increase in the number of ceos in the cartel.

to put it another way, what warren is saying is that the solution to unregulated capitalism is the enforcement of liberal market theory. and this is somehow being understood as "left wing"?

from a class war perspective, this is rather intriguing.

so, years ago people started drawing connections between violent behaviour and violent messaging. so, studies were done and the conclusions come to were largely that the violence in these kinds of games act as an outlet for rage at a system that treats us as worthless commodities. that is, the evidence seems to suggest that video games do more to prevent violence than they do to create it, thereby creating a pliable and subservient population that takes out it's anguish on a screen rather than on the system that produced the anguish. it's kind of marxist, really. video games are a sort of opiate of the masses...

now, if you extrapolate that to something like this, you can construct a kind of sedative out of it.

so, are you done clinging to the one aspect of your humanity that you have left? good. get back to fucking work...

ok, here's the thing: elephants are remarkably intelligent. they've recently been classed with apes and dolphins, and it's becoming clearer and clearer that they really belong in a class of their own. they are the animal which surpasses all others in wit and mind. there's some evidence that they're able to understand syntax. that's extremely rare. really, we can only be sure that humans can do that.

what does that mean? well, you can teach a dog to fetch a stick, and you can teach a dog to fetch a beer. but the dog doesn't understand that fetch is a verb. it takes the two commands as independent things. so, you'll need to teach it to fetch a third object as a new task. it seems to be that elephants can be taught what the idea of fetch means, then apply it independently to different objects without being explicitly taught. that's a remarkable level of cognitive advancement.

so, all these comments that are like "look. even a dumb elephant can figure this out." are really missing the point. smart ass comments about bratty kids aside, the reality is that full grown elephants are as intelligent as toddlers.

so, entanglement....which i was thinking about as i was walking back from the store....

something's communicating. it's impossible to deny this. figuring this out means figuring out what's communicating and how. that's the problem. i think a big part of the confusion is not being able to define the problem properly.

...which is because our current theories state that communication is impossible. but, there's no way around this. despite the need to uphold existing dogma in the field, i have to think pretty much everybody into this understands this.

if that means reevaluating things we're pretty sure are accurate, that's a necessity. because the problem is figuring out what's communicating and how.

i think one of the things that needs to be reevaluated is the idea of light as a speed limit. there's not really any good reason for this. now, if things can move faster than light, it opens up the possibility that something is communicating at superluminal speeds. that doesn't solve the problem, but it puts some structure around it. meaning, you're looking for some kind of tachyon.

and, if you acknowledge that light has a mass, then all you really need to do is find something with less mass than light to find an object that could possibly qualify as a tachyon. there's not really any good reason to think that light doesn't have mass, either.

but, i think the key thing that i can contribute from where i am is properly defining the problem. something is communicating. the problem is figuring out what is communicating and how. in the end, a proper theory needs to explain this, not deny it.

one of the things i want to focus on when i shift is trying to find assumptions that are embedded in science, figure out their source and expose them for merely being assumptions. once they've been disarmed, they can be questioned. my understanding is that the idea of light as massless is essentially a religious statement. there's a wide range of stuff in biology i want to focus on as well - the relation between natural selection and economic liberalism, the relation between creationism and the rejection of hybridization as a driver of evolution, etc. i guess my main thesis is that the separation of science from religion (and they were historically both branches of philosophy so they share a lot in common) is incomplete and that some attention needs to be drawn to this incomplete separation in order to get to the core of some contradictions.

that is to say that religious ignorance remains at the heart of science, but it's not really widely understood that this is the case.

so, i got my extension pretty easily. i didn't even have to ask for it. suggesting somebody's reading this....

hey, it's alright. it's evidence in my favour, right?

so, i have until april, now. camh is on the 12th of january. that gives me plenty of time to work something out in a less dramatic fashion and pushes possible appeals forward until july. that's actually enough time that i might get the discography done, at which point plans begin to shift.

i'm hoping i can get at least two more years on odsp, which should hopefully give me enough time to (1) complete the discography and (2) get a good chunk of the reading i want to do before i go back to school done. if i can get five years, it should transition me just about perfectly into a master's program somewhere. possibly in kitchener or london. there's reasons i moved to windsor, but the local place of higher education is not one of them. i stayed at carleton for a really long time because i was tied to the city and it was really a better option than ottawa for the things i was studying (and also because i liked the campus). but i think that going to a lower ranked school actually stifled me a little in terms of dealing with less than brilliant profs and slightly tedious curricula. if i'm going back to school, i'm going to go to a good one.

the flip side of that is that i really, really like where i'm staying. i wouldn't move unless i was pretty serious about it. and i'm projecting that forwards, but it's hard to predict where my head is going to be in 5 years.

and, if i can get permanent, i can basically just work out my ideas without the necessity of having to deal with the education system at all. i think there's something to be said for being the eccentric oddball that escapes peer review by publishing papers to appspot.

but, one thing at a time: i got my extension. so i can relax for the holidays and start scheming in january.

for fuck's sake, lucas...

you've been pushing the point for a week that deserting should imply the guy shouldn't be "rescued". it's getting annoying. she's been diplomatic in her response, as is her job, but let me break it down for you...

an institution such as the us army cannot allow any deserters to go unpunished for any reason under any circumstance. it must push down the message - loud and clear - that what will happen if you get caught will be so severe that you don't want to even think about it.

the army is not a democratic institution, and it can't be in order to maintain an empire like america's. it must be a ruthless, top down structure that makes dramatic public examples of people that break ranks. and, it must jump through every hoop possible to punish those people in as violent a way as they possibly can be punished.

so, deserting is not a reason to leave him there. deserting is a reason to bring him back, so his peers can see what happens if they get the same ideas in their heads.

i think i got it. or at least i think i'm happy with it. but the undo function isn't really good enough. i want total rewind. maybe that's a use for those glasses google is trying to sell, and nobody seems to want. because, really, what the fuck are they besides a surveillance device?

i'm seriously considering installing a camera on my screen to keep track of what i'm doing, so i can rewind the thing in case i haphazardly change something and forget what i did.

i mean, telling myself doesn't seem to work. and it's not even feasible, when you really think about it.

i bet the cia'd love that, huh?

when you manage to make chris hedges seem like the grounded, rational, less alarmist person in the conversation, you know you're a complete fucking idiot...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7P9P5lke-o

untitled (pretentious mix)

this is the version that i modified from the cakewalk output, but i ended up rejecting it because i added some guitar and synth parts that don't really work well with the track. i do a lot of improvisational noise, and wanted to integrate that aesthetic, but, instead, it just comes off sounding a little pretentious.

it wasn't long before i realized my error, but i hadn't saved a version i could go back to so i was sort out of luck. what i ended up doing was cutting the middle part out of the track when i used it for the reflections ep, then just dropped it from the symphony altogether.

nor can this be effectively reconstructed from the source, due to it having multiple paste overs after the cakewalk mixdown that are impossible to locate in the file. the result is something like a little reverb/delay on the track. it's consequently a unique, discarded mix that must simply be left as is.

dated to sept 10, 2002. uploaded, unmodified, on dec 14, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-pretentious-mix

i don't entirely agree with the ideas in this article, but it makes a very good point - the tar sands are not economically viable when oil is cheap.

i disagree with the idea that they'll keep pumping. if it lasts a while, it very well might shut them down. they'd be losing money. and, that's not why they're doing this.

http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/j-l-granatstein-low-saudi-oil-prices-are-just-part-of-a-long-game

uploading already completed mixes of untitled to inri061 & inri070

1) this track was initially written as a folk punk song, but i jumped to the scorewriter with it almost immediately. the expanded guitar demo was written in a scorewriter and then performed, rather than vice versa. it was initially less about explicitly creating a techno song and more about ordering the parts in a way that could be deconstructed more effectively.

the taiko drum part was initially just to keep time; it wasn't supposed to be a part of the song. but, as i built it up i began to realize how interesting it sounded as a techno tune and sort of ran with it.

written over the summer of 2002. this render is from dec 13, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled


2) i programmed this over late july and early august, 2002. render from december 13, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/soundblaster-mix-7


3) when i initially recorded the track in cakewalk (as an experiment with the program) on a windows 98 machine, i ran out of ram after eight tracks and had to go back to my normal wave editor collage-build mixing process to finish it. unfortunately, i didn't really like the edits i made and ended up defaulting to this version for many years. however, it was only saved in mp3...

on aug 11, 2010, i converted the track to 32-bit directly from the mp3 (which i verified in dec, 2014 via phase inversion) and uploaded it to bandcamp, as a part of the never really finished and with now unclear future tetris project ( jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/tetris ). while i don't feel that the sound quality of the track is sufficient to act as a base for a final version, the process of compressing, decompressing and then converting to 32-bit produced something special on the bottom end that i feel is worth keeping for it's own sake.

dated to sept 1, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-out-of-ram-mix

uploading guitar demos to inri061

1) this song was first demoed as a rabit is wolf song, but the changes i made to it were not well received. this is as far as the track got in that context. recorded july 14, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/penny-shoeman-initial-demo


2) this is a second guitar demo, expanded to be a little more elaborate in the guitar playing. notating this formed the basis of the electronic version. recorded july 21, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-expanded-guitar-demo

publishing atom’s / taught to twist the affected so low (inri060)

this is two conceptually linked outtakes from mid 2002 that document an event that i'm going to be vague and obscure about.

written in august, 2002. track one was mildly remixed on dec 12, 2014; two and three were uploaded unmodified. final completion date is dec 12, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitar, effects, bass, drum sampling, drum and other programming, digital wave editing, vocals

released august 31, 2002

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/atoms-taught-to-twist-the-affected-so-low



1) i've been very apprehensive about publishing this, but i want to be complete and it was a long time ago.

the summer of 2002 is pretty messy for me. i was very isolated, going through hormone therapy and on the brink of psychological collapse. so, my memory over those months is quite blurry.

for this reason - and others - i'm going to withhold the back story to this track. part of what i'm doing here is writing a biography, and the purpose of that is obviously for readers at some point in the future. that's inevitably going to lead to me framing certain things in a specific and subjective way. as far as this track and these months are concerned, something happened that i'd rather is just simply forgotten. i'd prefer to leave it at that, and for readers and listeners in the future to simply respect that.

to be blunt, it would be difficult to make much sense out of the situation by interpreting these lyrics, anyway. they in no way reflect anything close to an accurate analysis of the situation. it is better to interpret them as rambling lunacy triggered by a schizophrenic episode than to try and make any actual sense out of them as a reaction to something that happened in real life. i was simply not living in the condition of sanity at the time.

i do want to point out that i'm taking some poetic license in the lyrics - you can't really make literal scientific sense of it, so don't try. i was actually more reflecting on my feeling that this science/math education thing wasn't really getting me where i wanted to get to in life. there's a few layers in there, but it's the last line that's the key one.

this was completed in a messy state over a few days in august, 2002. i mildly remixed it to turn the rest of the track up relative to the vocals on dec 12, 2014.

spinning alone
through an empty shell
a sole electron
moves out of it's orbit

the number is zero
this is the covalence
a bond is impossible
while surrounded by neutrons

yet a sole positron floats
in and out of the sphere
the attraction is strong
but it never comes near

the laws now collapse
as the electron moves out
the positron senses
and runs in fear

electrostatics
multiplicity
inverse attraction
the smaller repelled by the larger

physical laws only mean so much
even an electron seeks a positron's touch
the purpose of living is to lose what you crave
bohr, bohr, bohr, BORE spins alone in his grave

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/atoms


2) the effected solo. i thought it was clever at the time.

this was recorded in one take while i was doing guitar parts for the untitled techno tune. my head was blurry and i needed to just stop and jam. i then took the part (which was isolated from a much longer improvisation) and ran it through a series of effects to create this soundscape. dated to august 25, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/taught-to-twist-the-affected-so-low


3) i was doing bass parts on the untitled techno tune when i received the wake-up call...

dated to aug 31, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/wake-up-call

i still don't understand why they don't use soy....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o6Hh6tQj2w

well, i'm not particularly convinced that collusion is not taking place, but i got the refill....

when i got there, he told me it wasn't in yet. so i yelled and screamed for a few minutes, providing the ultimatum to provide me a refund or get on the phone and call around to get it in right away. the owner just coincidentally happened to be in the back, and she took care of it - the refill was there in about twenty minutes. that's how you have to deal with shit like that...

the excuse they gave me was they thought they gave me seven days (but i take them twice daily, so they gave me 3.5). it's a bad excuse, either way, because they told me it would be in by monday....

so, i dunno. all the information to conclude incompetence is there, but it's not really sitting right with me. for the immediate moment, it's sort of irrelevant.

you know, i still think this whole argument is missing the major underlying factor, which is demographics.

put all this stuff about lending and bubbles aside for a moment, and you're left with a boomer generation that was told to invest in housing to fuel their retirement. now, contrast that with stagnant wages since the 1970s. if you have housing rising faster than inflation and wages rising slower than inflation it's eventually going to crash when the boomers go to cash in their investment, and there's nothing that can be really done to stop that. this is the consequence of building a society on spiralling debt: in the end, the investment turns out to be worthless. what's going to burst is the boomers' retirement plans.

it gets a little worse when you consider the fact that they're all going to sell at the same time. they're still a demographic bubble. so, if they all decide to retire at the same time and all put their houses up at the same time they're going to crash the price through over-supply.

now, the banks could react to this by reducing supply, but it creates a headache in itself.

at the end of it, what you're left with is the understanding that the bubble is the collective entitlement of the boomer generation, and that it will disappear along with them - likely in the benefit of their children and grandchildren, who will see prices adjust downwards to their earning potential.

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/17/canada-housing-correction-could-trigger-another-recession-bmo-report-says/

even if the banks go full asshole and leave the houses abandoned (and i can't see that happening here), in the end they're going to have to sell for a song - provided the buyers are willing to repair them.

this idea of infinitely building houses into never ending suburbia doesn't take into account the fact that people die and the population growth rate is pretty low here....

i mean, for the last 20-30 years, you had a pretty stable situation where boomers could sell houses to each other based on their mutual levels of inflated equity. the whole thing just kept spiralling out, and the banks just kept making money. it's all on paper, though. the younger generation simply doesn't have 20 years of inflated equity to cash in. they're not going to buy a bungalow for $600,000 on a $50,000/yr salary - which, to us, is a quarter of what it was to them. it's an impossibility. the price of that bungalow has to fall to half or a third of that - to where wages are, which is a tremendous disconnect. and, that leaves betty boomer with an empty hat.

there's no way around it. the kids aren't going to generate that kind of equity. they can't inherit it unless their parents sell - circular logic, an impossibility.  they're not going to see 500% pay increases. the market just simply has to fall.

i think that pretentious is probably the most overused and least understood word in the english language. the only other word that really comes close is liberal.

which is sort of comical....

help me fix this...

the next time somebody calls you pretentious, ask them if they know what it means - and don't be surprised when they sputter.

i'm actually rather convinced that matt lee's purpose in these daily briefings is to waste time in order to prevent legitimate questions.

the question deserved the response it got, as a consequence of it's utter naivete. how are the iranians supposed to know what the americans don't want them to do? yeesh. the subtle propaganda in the question isn't the idea that the iranians are malleable to american influence - for in truth they are, and anybody that knows the situation knows this (despite matt's enforcement of the axis of evil narrative). rather, the subtle propaganda is the idea that the iranians can somehow get out of the situation they're in by playing along - that the americans are reasonable actors in the conflict, driven by rational concerns and a desire for dialogue. ask ghadaffi or saddam or even assad how well that worked out.

it's not a question of whether the iranians care about or know what the americans want. it's a question of whether the americans care if the iranians are being co-operative. the answer is they don't.

and i'd have laughed at him, too, if i were her.

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

the "incentives" driving the sanctions are not to change the behaviour of the regime, they're to try and incite the population to revolt.

this ends one of two ways...

1) the regime is overthrown.
2) iran becomes a russian protectorate.

....and the "detente" driving talks is a reaction to the increasing likelihood of the second option, not something coming out of a desire to bring the iranian regime back into the international community. on that point you have to give the obama administration a little bit of credit. that's something successive american administrations have not really taken seriously.

"if you grab his tail, he might take off..."

yeah. take off, eh.

hosers...

deathtokoalas
we've seen a few videos of these "crystal clean" lakes, and...

clear water like this is generally not indicative of a healthy lake. a healthy lake has plant-like stuff floating around in it.

you know what actually creates that kind of a situation? acidification. the clarity is generally a response of the ph sinking to a point that it can't support any kind of life. these crystal clear lakes that have been destroyed by acidification to the point that they cannot support life are called "dead lakes".

that doesn't mean that every lake that looks like this is the result of acid rain. there are other factors that may create the same result. but a lake in a mountain in slovakia would likely not be this clear unless it's been destroyed by emissions floating south from germany.

Michal Špondr
Maybe there are just no plants in such height. :-P And maybe it's a melted snow which got frozen again, snow doesn't contain animals. If you were right, Europe should be full of such lakes because of the emissions.

deathtokoalas
europe is full of these lakes, and slovakia is the most affected area.

Nox Solitudo 
I mean, Slovakia usually gets a lot of emissions floating SOUTH from Germany, and probably north from France too.

deathtokoalas
yeah, it's not like this is something that hasn't been studied to death. there's a lot of industrialization in the east of france, but it's the tremendous industrial production in germany (and, to a lesser extent, production in russia) that are the culprits here. really, it's a little surprising how few people have an awareness of this. if you google something like "acid rain europe", you'll see a number of maps that designate the worst areas as existing in a swath through the center of europe that includes sweden, poland and the former czechoslavakia.

SuperMegaUltraPigeon
I thought it was clear because of the shear altitude meaning there is little dirt or plant/animal life, sort of like an isolated lake.

deathtokoalas
yeah, i know this is an idea out there, but i don't think it's really accurate.

so, why do some high altitude lakes lack fish? obviously, fish need a way to migrate to the lake - they can't fly in. they could maybe get dropped by a bird, but that's a fluke thing, and unless they're asexual or pregnant they can't breed alone anyways. so, a relatively new lake that has no way for fish to get in to it will not have fish in it. but, those factors don't apply as well to other types of life. the idea that high altitudes eliminate soil, plants, insects, mammals, etc is not accurate. these kinds of things exist at all altitudes...

nor is there any connection between the glacial origin of a lake and it's ability to sustain an ecosystem - except that sometimes these lakes have unique ecosystems. there are glacial lakes all over canada with elaborate ecosystems. some of the best fishing is in the rocky mountains.

similarly, high altitudes are not a buffer against the high acidity in the rain in the region - which is well established. looking at pictures of the lake doesn't tell me anything. but a google search for tatra mountains and acid rain pulls up several results.

i'm acknowledging that i'm putting two and two together, here. but acidification is really a far more likely explanation for the clarity of the water than the idea that there's no life or soil because it's an isolated glacial lake. glacial lakes are isolated from the waterways in the region. they're not isolated from all the other ways for life to find their way to them. and, they're generally not void of life - unless they've been acidified.

SuperMegaUltraPigeon
You are probably right, i was just doing my bit of speculation. However i imagine even at such altitudes if the lake wasn't acidified then even some form of algae might live, causing the lake to not be clear.

deathtokoalas
ok, i've deleted enough people regurgitating something they read at some pop science website to make a final point and close the thread. just because you've found a link to something on slashdot or reddit doesn't mean the information in the link is worth reading. and, it's certainly not a reason to swing it around the internet like a biblical quote.

my point is that the popular media perception of this is probably wrong.

yes, black ice is more transparent than snow. but what this describes is how well you can see through the ice. it doesn't describe how well you can see through the water. a healthy lake full of black ice would be...black. because the water would be full of stuff. that's why they call it "black ice".

to get that kind of clarity through the lake, you have to be dealing with extraordinarily clear water - water that really only exists as (1) water coming from treatment plants and (2) water in lakes killed off from acidification.

thread closed.

similarly, everybody in the entire world (including the state department) understands that the detainees at guantanomo are pow's, but the state department will never call them that, regardless of the logic, because to do so would invoke the geneva convention. you could stamp "pow" on their forehead and have them sing "we are prisoners of war!", perhaps in the key of c, accompanied by a kaz...no, i'm really not that guy, honest, but you could do that - and they wouldn't crack.

it's a nice try, granted. but it's a waste of time.

i'm starting to think there's a conspiracy amongst the medical establishment in this town.

i went on saturday to fill my last refill on the emergency estrace prescription. they had 7 pills they could give me, and told me to come back on monday. i gave them a few extra days to make sure it was in. they didn't order it at all and told me to come back tomorrow...

i have a high expectation for incompetence in general, and am more than willing to assign it to the pharmacy at shopper's drug mart. but, there's a general pattern, here. did i upset somebody by going out of town for a rx? awww.

now, i have a new prescription and i haven't brought it in yet. if it's not there tomorrow, i'm going to have to take that prescription to a different pharmacy.

but i'm left wondering about collusion occurring. it's a small town....

then again, i know i get schizophrenic under stress. which is why i need to avoid stress. you dumb system, you.

we'll find out tomorrow...

i mean, they owe me 53 pills. i paid for them. i need to get them, eventually. but i need the refill by friday morning, too.

again: i think i might be dealing with a religious issue, which is the same problem i had with the local clinic. the main guy back there refuses to refer to me as jessica...

it seems to be a specifically muslim thing. i mean, i don't think one religion is more intolerant than the other with this. but it seems to be that some muslims in the community are having a hard time reconciling their religious value system with our dominant secular value system, and may be a little confused about what our law prioritizes when there's a conflict in place.

i don't have a lot of opposition to diversity. i don't think increasing immigration in a contracting economy is smart, but that has nothing to do with where people are coming from, it just has to do with the gross number of people in. given that we have little reason to think we can expect anything other than near zero to negative growth for the foreseeable future, i think restricting our immigration policy, overall, would be the preferable economic choice at this point in time. but that's an economic calculation, rather than a perspective on diversity.

however, i don't like this idea of religious people enforcing their value systems - regardless of the religion they're enforcing. and, i feel that may be a developing problem.

it's something that needs to be dealt with by the courts, who need to strongly enforce access to health care as a priority over religious objections to providing it. that law needs to be laid down, with extreme force.

i'd argue that it should be an offense that should necessitate a loss of license.

but we'll see what happens tomorrow.

i see that this is actually a current issue...

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2014/08/doctors-do-not-have-right-to-discriminate-and-deny-basic-health-care

ok. it turns out that this is under review, and a set of stricter guidelines is likely to come into force in 2015.

so, that's good news. i'd expect some court cases out of it...

the court isn't going to think in terms of balancing one right against another - it's repeatedly rejected that kind of thinking. but there is a contradiction.

the way i see it is that people make a choice to be a doctor, and in doing so they waive their right to religious objections. doctors work in the service industry. they're required to provide the services they're requested. and if they can't carry out those requests, they should find a different job that doesn't conflict with their religious views.

what that means is that i think being licensed to practice medicine in canada should be attached to upholding a secular value system. you'd have to rephrase that in terms of upholding science to make it legal, but it's the essential idea.

another way you could look at it is that, in canada, doctors are quasi-employees of the government. they're not technically. they run private businesses and cash in insurance hours. but it's being paid for by tax money.

as such, they really *ought* to be under the same legal purview as any other government body (and i don't know if they legally are). but, if they are, as they should be, the argument turns around the other way: conscientious objection becomes something that infringes on the patient's freedom of religion. which is kind of what i'm *feeling* about it...

when a doctor refuses treatment based on a religious view, they're enforcing their views on the patient as much as they're upholding their own. which is really what the actual problem is and really what needs to be addressed.

i mean, consider the issue applied to any other government service. could you imagine welfare refusing to hand out checks to single mothers because it feels their behaviour is sinful? city hall refusing to hand out drivers licenses to women because it believes women should stay at home? that's not the analogy people want to use because we have all these wonky class ideas. but, in canada, it's closer to the right one - whether it conforms to the legal technicality or not.

it was too cold to stand at a pay phone for an hour this morning....

and will be tomorrow, too. and probably also friday. it'll be nice on monday.

i still have over a month. and once i set this in motion there's not going to be any option but to work it out quickly. i mean, i'm not going to wait between attempts. i'm going to go back to camh and do it again the immediate moment i'm released, and i'm going to do it until they fill out the forms. they can't let that happen more than a few times...

i don't have any problems ruining everybody else's christmas, either. i mean, if you're still celebrating the birth of fictional characters, who can be bothered with your opinion? burn the tree already. yeesh.

bonus: if we were to collectively stop celebrating christmas, our entire economic system would collapse.

it's the wind rather than the temperature. it's actually been pleasant, temperature wise, all fall. it's hovering around 0 this week, which is fine. but the winds are coming in from the north at gale gusts and dropping the temperature to around -10. it's not fun to stand in...

it'll be nice when this pattern shifts.

i'm thinking the longer i leave it, the more likely i am to get an extension, as well. because they can tell me i still have a month. if i get an extension, it pushes the whole process forwards in time...that's what i really want...as far as i can push it...

in situations where there's a civil war, the legitimacy of the government is called into question.

they want you to call the legitimacy of the syrian government into question. they do not want you to call the legitimacy of the ukrainian government into question.

it's not an inconsistency, it's carefully worded propaganda.

(deleted) 

bah. marie knows what she's talking about. i wouldn't believe much of what she actually says, but she has a strong grasp of the situation.

and, now we're about to zoom in on the mating rituals of the appropriating upper class american white woman. it may seem confusing, as there are no male suitors in sight, but the appropriating upper class american white woman is taught to perform and practice the mating ritual for many years before it is actually used. they must shape themselves into spectacular sex objects in order to compete with other appropriating upper class american white women and ensure access to a mate.

updating inrijected (inri022)

so, i've added four more silly minutes to this silly release of silly rejected outtakes from the late 90s...

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrijected

convoy

originally constructed in april, 1998 on some kind of forgotten dare. reconstructed from source on dec 10, 2014.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/convoy

rap news 30

as for the vid, it's a long debate that goes around in circles. i don't think anybody that can think clearly about it really denies our own role (although maybe a vid like this helps in holding that mirror up), but trying to address it becomes recursive very quickly, breaking down into the obvious statement that we have to change ourselves but without a clear approach on how to actually do it.

there's this whole gramscian view that we uphold the system because we're taught to. from this perspective, it's impossible to do this "the revolution starts inside" bit until we're able to abolish the institutions that put the bit of the oppressor inside of us. but, we'd need to transcend the condition in the first place. and around in circles we go, tracing out an infinite series....

the only way to break this is to acknowledge a vanguard or what could be called an anti-vanguard. i think vanguard politics are discredited, myself. the anti-vanguard takes us into post-leftist thinking. temporary autonomous zones. but this assumes real revolution is impossible. that sounds defeatist, but is it merely realism?

the expanded pyramid you put up is worth dwelling upon. i think that, existing in the middle of the pyramid, we lack the ability to really change anything - largely because we can't adjust to a system that we neither have the right to tear down nor the right to reconstruct. the best we can really do is stand in solidarity with the people at the bottom of the pyramid, in helping them reassert their autonomy, the meaning of which changes from situation to situation. it's only once we can start talking about labour rights in china or land-use rights in brazil that we can understand how we can adjust to a fairer globe.

in the mean time, it probably means that post-leftism is realism rather than defeatism. that's a level of humility that inhabitants of the heart of the empire are going to find difficult to adjust to. perhaps that humility is in truth the real necessary first step.

i mean, i think the expanded pyramid sort of obscures the controlling aspect. you see a pyramid like that and you think that each level is dominant over the next, but is it really so? there's little doubt that "debt slaves" in the advanced industrial world are heavily reliant on production outside of it, but it's worth pointing out that that's a situation that keeps them in place rather than one that empowers them. we're increasingly seeing a situation of structural high unemployment in the developed world that's a reaction to unionization and is directly caused by outsourcing the labour that would alleviate the unemployment; while the unemployed may end up consuming foreign products with what amounts to debt, that doesn't put them in a less dependent position, or in any kind of a position of control. the pyramid presentation is consequently somewhat inaccurate. but, it's inaccurate at the higher levels, as well - this absolutely ordered hierarchy is a gloss any way you look at it. we used to think of this the other way around - we used to think of colonial areas as places to dump goods, in order to enrich the colonizing powers. switching the relationship doesn't construct a power relationship so much as it exposes the underlying economic mechanism. that is, it's more accurate to think in terms of two ends of a market. in order to make money, you need to be able to produce goods cheaply and have a place to sell them. if you take either end point out, the whole thing collapses. it's not entirely fair to suggest that the consuming side of this is as well off as the producing side of it. but it is perhaps instructive to point out that the entire purpose of the new world order (if it's defined as advancing neo-liberalism in the post-soviet era) is to slowly place them on an equal footing. i'm going to agree that if you ask the factory worker in china what the nwo is, they'll tell you it's the consumer base in america. but, if you ask the mass of unemployed workers in spain, they'll tell you it's the absence of economic opportunity created by the globalization of labour. and, maybe they're both right. that takes away a lot of our own agency. and, again, i think that's even more frightening. but i think it's very true.

i've been watching the daily press briefings from april and may over the last few months. it's not because i think i'm going to get valuable insight or analysis, but because i want to see/hear the spin first hand.

the reaction to jen psaki seems to miss the point in one extreme or another. she's not the parachuted-in fool that some people want to cast her as, and she'll prove that from time to time by citing an obscure regulation or law - often catching the journalist (who has been carefully manipulated for low expectations) off guard. nor is she the calculated, conniving insider some people want to pretend that she is. there's little reason to think she knows more than she lets on knowing...

rather, she's simply a public relations expert that doesn't know a whole lot about the ministry she's representing, but doesn't need to in order to present the proper face on it. that she was put in the position she's in speaks a lot about the administration's perception of how the media should be dealt with. they didn't put somebody there that knows a lot about the ministry and can explain complicated things to reporters. they put somebody there with little understanding of foreign policy but that has a masters in manipulation, with the aim of controlling and shaping the message in the way most beneficial to it.

her undersecretary (marie harf) is clearly far more knowledgeable and is probably the actual go-to person in the office.

i think the point is not to shoot the messenger. she clearly knows how to control the message in a room of reporters, which is what her job actually is. the concerns - and they're real - should be directed more at the people that gave her the job.

the idiots have a valid point: progress from where we are forwards happens when this kind of thing is no longer necessary. dude really shouldn't have to do this, and it shouldn't be effective as a ratings boost.

cat’s apocalypse (reclaimed instrumental and final mix)

this was a song about doing mean things to cats, with the intent of being aggravating, but who wants to listen to that? so, i've taken the vocals out, here.

the drum collage was created digitally out of samples and then dumped to a four-track where the guitar and bass were added. when i compiled my first record, i decided the guitars weren't worth the tape hiss and loss of definition that came with converting to analog and back to digital.

originally created in 1997. reconstructed from source on dec 8, 2014.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/cats-apocalypse

prematurely publishing atom's / taught to twist the affected so low

on second thought, i need to squeeze an ep in to august, 2002. i believe the first track is done, but i need to spend some time with the second.

before i left for a backpacking cross-canada trip in mid 2003, i burned a handful of cds and formatted my pc. i didn't want anybody snooping around when i was gone. unfortunately, the burns picked up a weird setting that dated everything to the date of the burn. this issue affects almost everything that was left unfinished between 2001 and 2003, which is a lot of stuff. i was able to date the rabit stuff better because the discs had been burnt previously to this...

the summer of 2002 is pretty messy for me. i was very isolated, going through hormone therapy and on the brink of psychological collapse. so, my memory over those months is quite blurry.

but i've convinced myself that this ep belongs before the untitled piece in the chronology. the truth is it's not in exact order. i specifically remember that the second track was a kind of an excursion in the middle of recording the untitled piece, which i spent most of august and september doing. i put it aside for later completion, which never happened. and a process of deduction suggests to me that the first track must have been in august.

these tracks are both messy, conceptually. i've resisted publishing them up until this point. i'll have to write explanations over the next few days.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/atoms-taught-to-twist-the-affected-so-low

i think the best way to understand my situation is to look at the results of the two tests i took when i applied for a cra job around 07 or 08 or something. it's a concise argument...

the first test they had me do was the general competency level test. there were actually two tests, but let's consider the second. this is basically an iq test. i had a score of 80/90. nobody scores that high. the stats i saw put that in the 95th percentile, but that was the highest percentile published, so it means it's at least the 95th percentile. that means i scored higher on this test than at least 95% of the people that take it. the minimum pass mark is 51/90. now, this is something that's consistent for me - i've repeatedly scored at elite levels on every iq-type test i've ever taken.

the second test they had me do was the situational judgement test, which tests workplace behaviour. i've actually failed this test three times. this is also consistent with my history of anti-social behaviour.

now, the government's perspective was that they couldn't hire me because i don't understand workplace behaviour. maybe that's actually a correct analysis. further, maybe these things are related. maybe i can't pass the behavioural test because my intelligence is too high. maybe the smart-person approach is inherently contradictory to a hierarchical organizing principle. maybe i'm just an anarchist. or maybe there's an underlying condition.

but, for employment purposes, it's the results of the second test that are more important. the challenge i have, now, is getting a health professional to put two and two together.

line is busy. i'll try again tomorrow at 8:30 sharp. i should clean and stuff today...

ok. time to make some phone calls. let's see what happens...

publishing trepanation nation (inri058)

there are a few ideas in my discography that i've explored from multiple angles, but nothing else at all like this track, which has been through multiple complete rethinks involving multiple people over the course of thirteen years. as the revisions are so diverse, i think that a comprehensive collection of interpretations is a proper entry within my discography.

in the end, this emerges as my fourth symphony.

the collection is to be arranged chronologically in two discs, with the first disc consisting of mixes that were meant for inclusion in band projects* and the second consisting of mixes that were created after the track was moved into my own various one-person projects. i've placed the second disc at the front of the sequence to stress the july, 2002 release date.

further discussions of the various incarnations of the tracks appear on the track pages, or are linked out from the track pages. please click through.

written over 2001 and rethought repeatedly over 2002, again in 2007, a third time in 2009 and one last time in late 2014. final mixes were completed over the last week of november and the first week of december, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

*the classical guitar version and quiet isolation mix are available for download only due to space limitations on the physical media

credits:
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, classical), bass, synthesizers, drum programming, orchestral sequencing (10), drum manipulation, vocal manipulation, voice (8), live & digital effects processing, digital wave editing, loops, equalizers, soundscaping, sampling, composition, production, cover art

sean - vocals/lyrics (2,4,6), ring modulator (6,7,8)
greg - drum performance sample source (5,6,7,8)

the rendered electronic orchestra on track 10 includes tuba, saxophone, flute, clarinet, orchestra hit, piano, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections.

numbers refer to the physical tracklisting, rather than the bandcamp ordering.

released july 4, 2002

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/trepanation-nation



1) it was around 2006 that i first decided to clear my discography of what had become irrelevant sample work - not irrelevant in the sense of the messaging being obsolete, but irrelevant in terms of listening value. i feel that listeners should be given the opportunity to choose. i've tried to keep instrumental mixes of conceptual tracks since that point.

however, i wasn't able to find the instrumental rabit is wolf copy that i knew existed so i tried to build the mix from scratch. i wasn't able to recreate large sections, or get the volume correct, so i put it aside until the the last few days of july, 2007 when i tried again. at this time, i was able to find an early instrumental remix from roughly april, 2002. this mix was only about half done. i added some of the remaining parts, but was still working in cool edit at the time and consequently had some difficulty syncing them well. i also added some extra production effects. however, i still wasn't really happy with the result and just put it aside.

i went back to school in the fall of 2008 with the aim of putting the music aside permanently. this didn't happen, and the truth is i never really thought it would. however, i wanted to compile a disc of symphonic shorts (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/symphonic-shorts) as a last release. some further modifications were made at this time, but it still didn't really feel right.

it wasn't until april 24, 2009 that i got a mix together that i felt ok about. while it doesn't include every piece of the track, it includes everything i could integrate well. that version has been in the symphony's final resting place (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa) ever since.

unfortunately, some of the sequencing on the 2009 mix is suspect, and i ran it through a transform at some point that made the mix sound tinny at points, while introducing some digital noise. this mix has now been discarded.

in line with my decision to comprehensively complete my discography, i've completely deconstructed and reconstructed the track in cubase by carefully lining up the files using clues provided by the waveform. i've also deconstructed parts of it using the technique of digital phase reversal. this has allowed me to remaster it properly and also to ensure that it's completely in sync. this process included liberal use of digital effects to make it finally sound how i always wanted it to sound.

this is the final and definitive version of the track. the song was completed in this form on july 1, 2002 but the manipulations in the mix also date to (1) july, 2007, (2) august, 2008, (3) april, 2009 and (4) nov/dec, 2014. final mix completed on dec 7, 2014. no new sound was recorded after july 1, 2002.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/07-trepanation-nation

yeah. here's the thing. as far as existing capitalism is concerned, academics are a step down the ladder of uselessness from artists. at least artists make a product. academics are basically just collecting bloated welfare checks from the government.

so, you ivory tower types might want to be careful about those arguments. when it comes down to it, you're ahead of me in line for the market guillotine.

there's actually even been talk of the student loan bubble bursting....

it's really a matter of time before the lending institutions clue into the reality that they're giving out loans to people that can't pay them back. and, when that happens, and they pull the plug, the whole sector is going down.

the reality is that education isn't a way to anywhere, it's just a state sector economy. and it's not profitable. that's not sustainable in the economic system we live in.

so, let's be careful about what kind of ideas you're throwing around, alright?

no. no. stop. logic...

if people can't pay their loans back, it means there's not enough jobs. and, if there's not enough jobs, there's not a value in sending people to school. it becomes an unprofitable investment.

so, the logic of student loan forgiveness or reduced tuition does not exist. the logic that does exist is one of pushing people into service sector jobs, and returning higher education back to the upper classes.

with that, comes massive layoffs in the education sector.

trepanation nation (quiet isolation mix) (initial upload)

this is a bonus mix for the digital download that draws closer attention to some of the quieter aspects of the mix by removing the rhythmic components, leaving an ambient soundscape. track constructed on dec 5, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/11-trepanation-nation-quiet-isolation-mix

i got the school board to double check the files, and they sent me a document claiming i was angry about being adopted when i was in the second grade.

the problem is i wasn't adopted...

i guess it's predictable. it's a bureaucracy. my files are no doubt in there somewhere, filed under the wrong name or date of birth or something. finding them is probably not going to happen...

..and more than half of the files that do exist in my file seem to be for the wrong person.

hey, if my PERMANENT RECORD is fucked, yours very well may be, too. i just hope nobody's basing any decisions on this...

yeah. i'm not going to hear anything back from that psychiatrist. i've been working on a mix that has taken longer than i expected; when it's done, i'm going to have to make some calls.

i may have to fast forward my reaction a little, depending on what i hear when i call to ask for an extension.

i've been sort of contemplating just giving up and getting a job. see, the problem is that my perspective on labour is going to be very disappointing to people. it may be suggested that it's defeatist, but anybody reacting that way is missing the point. see, as i'd be working because i'm forced to, my desire would be to minimize the amount of effort i have to put into it, rather than maximize what i can get out of it. i already know that i can't get anything at all out of it - or at least nothing that i want. i can't make enough money fast enough to retire in a reasonable time frame, so what's the point? that's not a defeatist perspective, it's simply the reality of it. it doesn't really matter what the nature of the job is or how big the pay check is, it's all the same waste of time to me.

this isn't something new. i figured this out around 2006-2008ish. i had a few jobs over the period that required a larger amount of responsibility, which meant i had to spend more time on them. that meant i had less time to do the things i was actually interested in, which meant i was very unhappy. i ended up quitting these jobs to take lower paying jobs that were closer to where i lived. it might seem strange to quit a full time job at microsoft to take a survey job at half the pay, but it meant i had twice the time. i was much happier with less responsibility, and the lower pay check didn't affect me.

the crux is that you can't just put pressure on an anarchist to act like a capitalist and expect it to happen. this is actually a key point worked into the system. they call it "incentives", but.....they're not universal in their effectiveness, at least. i'm simply not driven by profit motives. i'm not interested in climbing a hierarchy. helping people doesn't excite me. when i say that i think labour in this society is a waste of time, i'm not just saying that. i really believe that, and my actions are going to reflect it.

so, i'd rather work a job with the lowest amount of responsibilities possible. i'm not going to apply for the kinds of jobs that my education prepared me for because i don't want the responsibilities attached to them; if i'm going to be forced to work, my preference would be to work part time in the service industry. i can pay my bills with about 20 hours a week at minimum wage, and i consequently wouldn't want to work more than that. of course, if i can work at a higher wage rate, it means i'd have to work less...

what that means is i'm taking hours away from somebody that has a family to feed or wants to build a resume to get somewhere. it's certainly not beneficial to me. it's not really beneficial to society, either.

my worker keeps telling me that she doesn't understand why i don't want to live up to my potential. but, i *do* want to live up to my potential. i just don't see any goals that i can accomplish in the workforce. and i work very hard on what i do.

the reality is that i haven't had a job since 2008. it's going to be a culture shock if it comes down to it, and i'm going to have to be very careful that i don't take a job with too much structure - because i won't last. if i don't quit, i'll get fired. because i don't want to be there.

as mentioned, i may have to fast forward the reaction. i'm going to do everything humanly possible to stay on odsp. it may get messy. i'll keep this space updated.

when i compare a job at statscan v. a job at mcdonalds, i don't look at the pay rate, i look at the responsibility level required.

if i'm working at mcdonalds, i can just go home at the end of the day and not worry about it - meaning what i've lost is the amount of time working, and that only.

but, working at statscan means i have assignments i need to take home, staff parties and all kinds of other things - meaning i'm going to lose far more time working there.

i'd consequently rather work at mcdonalds. and, there's plenty of logic in the decision. it just puts value on minimizing time lost working, rather than maximizing time converted into money.

again, the most rational thing to do is just to let me off the hook on this. we have a surplus of labour. and i'm producing a product with real value, even if the market isn't reacting to it. if it requires three or four suicide attempts, so be it.

i think i've mentioned this before...

i was hoping to see a psychiatrist over december, and either have the forms filled out by the person or take the information to have them filled out by camh at the beginning of january. i was going to determine if i needed an extension or not over the course of december.

but, the psychiatrist is not calling back.

so, i now need to call and ask for an extension. when i'm done this mix and can shower and stuff...

one of two things will happen.

1) if i get the extension,  i will wait until january before i react.

2) if i do not get the extension, i will need to have the forms filled out before january and will have to take extraordinary steps to have that happen. my plan is to go immediately to camh and demand to see a doctor. i will give them one hour to accommodate this. should they choose to not allow me to see a doctor, i will start popping aspirin in the foyer. i will make the condition known. hopefully, that will be enough to get the diagnosis. if it is not, i will repeat the same thing over and over again (go to camh, give them an hour, start popping aspirin) until i am able to get the forms filled out.

this is a recurrence problem, in terms of diagnosis, and i'm aware of it. i just need to be careful that i don't give them an excuse to put me in jail rather than fill out the forms.

it's not a question of if i belong on odsp. i do. anybody that knows me knows this. it's a question of demonstrating the fact.

the first time, they're probably going to tell me that i'm trying to get a reaction and am behaving rationally, and i'm going to agree with them - and suggest it's pathological behaviour. if they agree, that's the end of it. if they don't, then repeated occurrences have no end point but eventual diagnosis with some sort of personality disorder.

after the third or fourth time, they're going to have no option. i have no intention of hiding the fact that i'm being aggressive about this; to the contrary, i think it's the key point in the diagnosis.

could anybody do this? in theory, sure. but i think you'd by definition need to be crazy in order to actually go through with it.

in the end, this can be done the easy way or the hard way. and i have every intention of making the hard way very, very, very hard for camh....

in the end, i may end up in jail. on purpose. my concept of freedom aligns fairly well with free meals and infinite library access; certainly, it's closer to my idea of freedom than being forced to find a job. but, i'm not done my discography yet...

my plan after i finish my unfinished works is to lose myself in the books. and, when it comes down to it, jail might be the preferable option to do that.

i don't want to hurt anybody though. i'll have to study the legal code. i might pretend to rob a bank or something...

yeah, i'd want to be separated from the general population, i think. but the general condition doesn't really frighten me. if i decide to go to jail, i'll do the research in figuring out how to get to the condition i want to be in. that's not going to be for a few years.....

i run into this story every now again and i just think it's important to point out that the experiment was flawed to begin with, and it neither would have demonstrated what it claimed to demonstrate if it were successful nor does it disprove the point by failing.

the idea is that if you raise a genetic male as a girl, the child will grow up to identify the way it was raised. but, let's think carefully about this. if that were true then, surely, it would follow that if you raise a genetic boy as a boy it will grow up that way. then, transgendered people should not exist. that is, if the experiment were successful in the way it were phrased it would suggest that transgendered people can't exist at all, not that it's a purely social question.

nor does it have anything to say anything about genetics. david was not given a vaginoplasty and did not undergo hormone treatment (during or after puberty). there's not any reason to think he grew up to identify as a male because he didn't have a transgendered gene. there's just too many factors to get to that end point; he did not have female genitalia and did not receive female hormones, both of which are important in determining identity. the only thing that can be concluded is that people do not necessarily identify with the gender identity that is thrust upon them, but that is the condition of gender dysphoria in the first place.

a lot of commentators have looked to the case and suggested it's a good thing that he never received the vaginoplasty or underwent hormone treatment, but i think this is a complicated point that they're over-simplifying. it's impossible to know how the experiment would have turned out had he had a vaginoplasty and received hormones, but it's reasonable to suggest it would have had some effect. as it is, david was never given the opportunity to become secure in any specific identity. he was only given a very confusing contradiction to try and work through.

i think there's plenty of research that suggests that girls with brothers that are close to their age demonstrate more masculine traits, and vice versa. his brother wasn't really a control, as he was one of the most important influences in his upbringing.

the takeaway to the experiment is consequently neither about conditioning nor genetics, but simply that you can't enforce gender identities on people. you have to give them agency in determining it on their own.

my understanding is that the "bad words" issue initially largely had to do with class, some of it ethnic-based. the etymology of the term "vulgar" has to do with the language spoken by the common people, as opposed to the language spoken by the elites. britain has historically had an english-speaking upper class with a specific dialect, with commoners that speak a melting pot of celtic and germanic languages in a wide variety of dialects, many of them coming out of quasi-pidgins: mixes of english, gaelic, welsh and norse. this has of course been twisted around through various filters. but the idea is really simply that the upper classes should not use the language of the lower classes.

when it comes to dick v pussy, i think it's interesting to reflect on penis v vagina. if you were to have this discussion ten-fifteen years ago, the feminist perspective would be to demand that you use biological terms. it's a vulva. it's a clitoris. it's a vagina. let's be scientific about this, alright? but, i don't think this discussion has ever really seriously been had with male genitalia. think about this: when was the last time you heard somebody other than a doctor use the word "penis"? it doesn't happen. take your pick of slang, but it's really ubiquitous.

i think part of this is that men actually desire the association of their bodily parts with dirty and violent concepts. dudes want to think of their genitalia as these blunt instruments, rather than as something physiological. penis is consequently somewhat emasculating. but, i'm not sure the opposite argument holds as well.

if i were to pick, i'd rather hear people use penis in place of dick more regularly than use pussy in place of vagina more regularly. but, if the crux of the argument is that there's a double standard, it's accurate.

i mean, there's a continuum of thought in trying to disarm the pejorative. but i think that arguing for liberalization of the term "pussy" is more likely to enforce the idea that women's bodies are dirty (as the various slang for penis enforces the idea of men's bodies as a violent tool of control) than to somehow take it away as an insult. sure, a lot of this has to do with context. but, once again, i'm not really comfortable with laci's rather unusual brand of feminism. it seems to be patriarchal thinking in disguise....

deathtokoalas
yeah, they give more than a few ships...

.....to totalitarian dictators, who use them to repress their own populations.

the army does that too, though.

Doug Magill
http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/watch-out-we-got-a-badass-over-here-meme.png

Penguinpimp95
When did the US Navy ever give a ship to a totalitarian dictator...? Sounds like someone is a little butthurt over something

deathtokoalas
whenever propping up a dictator furthers it's own interests...

egypt is the prime example, but it's not the only one.

for those that are unaware, egypt is the second largest recipient of american military "aid", which essentially means that we give them money to buy equipment from us. it's a legal loophole, basically. the only country that receives more "aid" from us than egypt is israel, and the things are related - in return for this "aid", egypt maintains it's peace treaty with israel.

it's billions of dollars, annually. that's a lot of ships.

yeah, this is no good, and it's frustrating because the agent provocateur is a tactic the state uses (it was something bismarck's secret service first used against socialist revolts in germany) and stuff like this has the effect of discrediting the suggestion when it's actually legit. the balance of probability is that the cops are using similar tactics in the area, but be careful what you post, please....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT0uaZ5Ymeo

don't misunderstand me; i'm no fan of cnn. however, if you're interested in broadcasting serious news and analysis, then cutting him out when he starts talking about the devil causing the riots in ferguson is actually the correct and proper thing to do from a journalistic perspective. at that point, dude becomes a crazy person. cnn has standards it has to upkeep. frankly, the fact that this is an issue at all is what's disturbing. has fox lowered our journalistic standards to such absurd depths?

you should really be applauding cnn for showing a little bit of integrity in cutting him off. it's a rare display, which is why it's so important to positively reinforce it.

instead, we get a viral video by christians clamoring for the end times. america is a scary place. the reaction to this video is the perfect demonstration of why the rest of the world fears it. and it's going to collapse in a self-fulfilling prophecy if it doesn't wake itself up from religion. soon...

latzobear
i agree with your primarily, I even up voted your comment. in-fact I'm an atheist, however I think this type of censorship is wrong :( even if it's stupid, let him say it

deathtokoalas
no. as a news organization, cnn has a responsibility to ensure that it's commentary fits into a relevant and intelligent discourse. they often fail to do this, but when they do take steps to do so they should be applauded for it. they neither have a constitutional nor a moral obligation to provide a forum for ridiculous perspectives. to the contrary, they have a journalistic responsibility to screen this kind of stupidity out.

cnn is quite obviously not the most respected name in news. but, if it has any real aspiration to such a title, it cannot be providing forums for people blaming the devil for social unrest.

latzobear
i agree with you, but the thing is, if they're gonna call someone to speak, let them. if they don't want to have to cut people off, then try to cal only the right people to speak

deathtokoalas
but, you can't know what the guy is going to say. it was clearly an error to put him on the air. i don't see why they have any responsibility to eat that error, rather than react to it when it's realized.

deathtokoalas
i haven't been to a dinner like this in years. when i moved out, i made it a point to avoid going home for christmas, thanksgiving, etc. for the last few years that i was at home, i'd avoid the family by sitting in my room and then wait for leftovers; a part of the problem was that holidays were the only really free time i had, and i didn't want to waste it with family. my parents would have preferred me to eat with the family and stuff, but they were sympathetic to my introversion, my preference to avoid children and the inevitability of every family get together devolving into a political argument due to the vast levels of divergence in basic thought. it doesn't really make sense to take people that are polar opposites and more or less hate each other 360 days of the year and expect them to get along for a few hours out of the sake of some stale convention.

but there was a brief period when i was about twelve-fifteen when this kind of thing was relevant. that's the most unrealistic part of this: the fact that this guy is in his 20s. by his age, his character and religious beliefs should be well understood and the family should have already made the decision to quietly accept or quietly condemn. if he was fourteen or something, but this should have been dealt with years ago...

that being said, i don't think he's really overreacting. i wasn't pushed very hard on the point. in fact, i believe my parents simply matter of factly explained it to people in order to prevent it from being a conflict; "she's an atheist, so don't expect her to take part in the prayers.". for my part, i just sat quietly and waited for it to be done. well, i may have eaten through a few prayers but it would have been out of honestly forgetting the convention, rather than an act of rebellion...

if my dad were to push me like this? i could see myself reacting similarly, and justifying it. overturning the second table was a bit much, but i think dad deserved a bit of pie in his face on this.

Molineux88
Why post something that long, this isn't war and peace volume 2.

deathtokoalas
i want you to paste that into a word document, note how long it actually is and then laugh at yourself.