you know, this is an area that the americans have wanted to place ballistic missiles in for many years - ground sites in poland, aegis systems in the black sea and the baltic, space based weapons....

to protect the area from iran. supposedly.

as i said before: i didn't initially give this a second thought. i assumed it was an accident. but, what was that (alleged) american satellite doing flying over there?

eminem has always been near the top of the list of rappers with the potential to take it to the next level and break through that ceiling that rap and hip-hop have always had, separating it into an inherent folk form. every other 20th century form has broken through that barrier, and it's kind of puzzling why rap can't/won't. this is some kind of industrial music, but it's slow and repetitive. if he could get the music running at the same kind of syncopation as the vocals this would be very compelling; i'm talking 240 bpm bass beats intersecting with busy basslines and off the wall synths. a collaboration with flying lotus. he can keep his blunt aesthetic, it may even be an asset in driving the aggression.

my hypothesis has been that rap tends to reject this because it wants to make space for the vocals. but, it's long past time for somebody to move into this space. eminem, specifically, has matured enough that i think he can find a way to get his vocals to not just co-exist with a more developed musical approach, but help it transcend.

as it is, i'm walking away from this with the same feeling that i've been walking away from every hip-hop record that i've heard since 1991 - it's just not reaching it's potential.

this is the correct analysis, and you don't hear it often - which is why i'm always posting it. the crux of israeli policy is the separation of gaza from the west bank. and, this kind of solidarity is exactly what israel was trying to prevent, in breaking up the unity government. at the end of the day, israel simply does not care about gaza. but, it has every intent of controlling and annexing the west bank.

see, i agree that it's clearly in rather poor taste for the guy to walk around with that flag, if he does. i dunno what he's doing. appealing to a southern, rural fan base or something. but, that's marketing. i mean, c'mon al. the only hierarchy that kid rock is at the top of is the "talentless morons from detroit" hierarchy. no, really. he's at the top of the pyramid. icp is the next ring down. and etc. obama's policies have done more harm to brown people than kid rock ever will.

you don't have to agree with him to realize this is a waste of energy, and he's just going to milk it for publicity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NzfI7Ath7s

this is an important speech that should be thought about very carefully.

cognitively speaking, the eye covering is very interesting.

and, then, when you're done your lunch break, you can go back to your pointless bullshit life.

that is why this is garbage. not because it doesn't have some poetic value, if you drop the mesolithic basis of it; it does. no. it's because it's a coping mechanism, designed to clear you out and send you back into the fire.

if you actually live your life by these kinds of principles, you don't need to spend twenty minutes a day dreaming that you do.

no longer confused

initially written in 1997. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed july 5, 2015. remixed july 12, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/no-longer-confused

i still don't fully understand this.

initially written in 1996. recreated in april, 1998. reclaimed july 5, 2015. remixed july 12, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/i-still-dont-fully-understand-this

i think it's a very dangerous error to assume that israel doesn't have a long war. and, the logic of the circumstance actually comes out of understanding their long term strategy.

i've been through this a few times. israel is willing to allow for a palestnian state in gaza; in fact, it would like to rid itself of it. it would prefer for egypt to take the lead. but the idea of gaza as palestinian land is not contentious on the israeli right. this is the land of the philistines, and not a part of historical israel.  however, israel is not willing to allow for a palestinian state in the west bank - it intends to fully colonize and eventually annex the region.

it follows that having the governments split is in their interests. since the election of hamas, the west bank has functionally been an israeli province; fatah has no legitimacy, and very little control. hamas, of course, is not a serious threat. but, should a government develop then that will force the israelis to go back to talking about a "two-state solution" - which is a dead idea on the ground, but still talked about widely in ivory towers.

israeli plans for a future palestinian state are limited to gaza and do not include the west bank. that's the logic.

cockroach experiment proposal

To: rjfull@berkeley.edu

hi.

i have a proposal for a very cheap but very interesting experiment. i could probably do it myself, but i don't really have the knowledge to seriously control it. and i know that roaches are attracted to each other.

i've got a few roaches hanging around somewhere outside my apartment; they appear to be under the foundation. they don't seem to want to move in, they just scatter in from time to time; i kill a handful of seemingly lost ones every year. they're the oriental ones.

the thing is that there's no food source in here. now, i know they can eat just about anything with a carbon molecule in it - which is impressive. but, even so, about the only option they seem to have as a *plentiful* food source is each other. so, i'm curious.

i understand that it's known that they eat each other. what i'm curious about is just how long a roach colony could survive in controlled conditions with absolutely no source of food but themselves. they'd need water. and the right temperature to breed. but, besides that, nothing.

i suspect that they could survive long enough to breed, but, then, who eats what? do the nymphs eat the old adults and carry on to the next generation, or do the adults eat the nymphs and kill the colony? if the nymphs eat the adults, it may be proposed that a cockroach colony is a fully self-sustaining entity. i can't articulate a way that this breaks any kind of energy conservation laws, as it's also known that they eat their own excretions.

this is cheap. you just need an aquarium, some roaches and some time. a good project for a grad student; or even a high school project, really. but, the results could be very important in understanding how to control them.

j

fyi: ants

hi.

hope you're well.

i think i have a responsibility to let you know that i'm noticing some significant ant infiltration in that side area, with the door and the windows (under the steps). now, i want to be clear. i'm not talking about loose ants. i've seen a few here and there - nothing alarming. what i'm talking about are actual ant hills along the window sill. they seem to be burrowing through the wood, as evidenced by these mounds of what look like shaved wood chips. all i've ever seen are a few patrolling the entrance, but it suggests that they want to move right in.

i noticed this a while back, but i thought it was just loose dirt. i cleaned the room up at the beginning of july. tonight, the wood mounds are back. this time, i sprayed them.

there seems to be a large network of them in the front yard. i've seen swarms of hundreds out around the sewer grate, where i smoke. they seem to have two entrances, there. what that suggests to me is significant tunnelling under the front yard.

i don't have any suggestions. i've sprayed the area. but i don't go in there very often. i guess what i'd be more concerned about is the question of whether what they're doing is structurally damaging. as mentioned - they seem to be eating right through the windows. that can't be good...

j

see, this is what i mean about matt being cia. the idea that the americans wanted to put pressure on israel to create a ceasefire is fantasy; all evidence is that the administration has no interest in a ceasefire, and that kerry is there for political reasons. maybe they could cut the military handout down a tad? if the situation weren't so grim, it would be hilarious.

the travel warning existed when kerry was in the country. it was to keep reporters out. that's as clear as day. and as i mentioned in the other video, it seems like the press in the room seemed to actually realize that.

so, matt wastes a good dozen questions on pushing what is obviously propaganda, meant to distract from the facts underlying the situation. it yells cia.

the only other option is that he's an idiot. a useful one.

wow. this is particularly terrible.

1) socrates asked a lot of questions, but he didn't lay much shit down. the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing.
2) nietschze was obsessed with "oriental knowledge". he was all about zoroastrianism.
3) voltaire despised basically everything. he had little more than contempt for western civilization.

you should replace the three westerners with glaucon, hegel and liebniz.

the caricature of chinese civilization is even worse. in fact, confucius is widely regarded as the ideological force behind china's return to capitalism. the hierarchical thinking is really just feudalism, and that existed in the west as well (although we never called it philosophy).

you know, i didn't really give mh-17 a second thought. malysian airlines foolishly sent a civilian plane through a warzone, and it accidentally got shot down. take away? don't fly through a war zone. and, maybe it's worth pointing out that an integrated system would be useful to everybody; it's the kind of thing that seems crazy to run on a national level. and, we're moving on to more important matters...

....but the fact that the state department is going to such lengths to assert it's narrative is curious to me. the idea that the russians shot it down out of cold blood is ludicrous. and, if there's bombers flying overhead (and in fact attacking infrastructure), the civilians in the region have a right to defend themselves - marie would agree with that. at the least, they're taking advantage of it to try and spread russophobia. at worst, it fuels the conspiracy theories.

an innocent, professional state department would have noted that the air space was not secure, sent it's condolences and deflected further questions to the relevant bodies.

i've spent a lot of time at that site (globalresearch) over the years, and i might classify it using the term "caveat lector". but i truly mean reader beware. on the one hand, it seems to be strongly aligned with russian intelligence. i've caught it posting flat out lies more than once. on the other hand, it is sometimes a source of valuable information that is difficult to find elsewhere and seems to be entirely accurate. i've long taken the position that you can neither write that site off nor take it at face value, you have to treat is a generator of hypotheses that require further verification.

robert parry is a more trustworthy source, but his article is very speculative and does not come anywhere near to authoritatively blaming the ukrainian military, nor concluding it had to do with a plane; rather, it suggests that it may have been shot down by missiles on the ukrainian side. so, this is actually a good example of globalresearch acting in it's role as a front for russian propaganda, rather than in it's role as a valuable source of rare information.

i do not have the expertise required to analyze a plane crash and conclude what caused it to fall.

however, the russian story (in this case) does not strike me as more rational than the american story. sometimes it does. not here. i can fathom no realistic motive as to why the ukrainians would shoot down a civilian airliner, let alone target a plane with putin in it. these suggestions are as outrageous and ridiculous as anything coming out of the washington propaganda complex.

it may seem broadly consistent with historical american attempts to start wars, from blowing up their own ships in havana to shooting at whales in the gulf of tonkin. but, this plane was not american, and had no americans on board. the logic doesn't really assert itself. nor is it reasonable to think that they would think they could trick europe into launching a war against russia on this basis; europe is not that stupid, and america knows that europe is not that stupid.

if we can establish it was a missile - and i think the preponderance of evidence and experts across the spectrum acknowledge this as true - then we're left with three realistic scenarios:

1) the rebels accidentally shot it down.
2) the ukrainians accidentally shot it down
3) it was targeted by american missile defense testing, as a "live test" to catch a "live missile".

i wouldn't expect either government to promote this third hypothesis, as it is in nobody's interest to have that known. the american response is rather odd and draws attention to itself, but this in itself does not prove the russian propaganda or provide it with any heightened legitimacy; when analyzed on it's own terms, it becomes equally dubious and it becomes clear that a third explanation is required. i have no evidence to provide, even as i look at both official narratives with skepticism. but, my intuition is likely to remain with the third hypothesis until evidence appears that can thoroughly reject it. of the three, it strikes me as the most likely - even if it has the least direct evidence.

his concept of infinity is disappointing. no human can construct infinitely many combinations, but that's just the point - we use a finite number of word combinations in our lives, not an infinite number. it's his conceptualization that is impossible as anything beyond a conceptualization; it's important to understand it in the abstract, but there's no such thing as an infinite collection of words. i don't know how he can be confused on that point. and, peano had no problem deriving the set of natural numbers from 0 and 1 - it's in fact the only way to do it. i don't really want to argue about induction; it works fine if you use it right, and is less convincing if you don't.

if you're curious, i think his theory is kind of unavoidable in a broad sense, but it's not wise to jump to too many conclusions about how important it really is. the dna gives us a stomach. but we decide what to eat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VyteV_7sxI

also: your brain is a quantum computer. not in some quasi-mystical sense, but in terms of the reactions it's utilizing. i think he has the right idea about minimizing resources. but, the idea that it's a turing machine is a little outdated. it's solving np problems on a second-by-second basis - fueled by nothing but sugar.

i think maybe a more interesting question is whether other animals have this "i language", or, really, just exactly how something like a dog actually thinks. 'cause it's pretty clearly thinking. as a human, i couldn't understand any other way to think. that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to think. i mean, babies are obviously thinking; i suppose none of us remember our thought processes from before we could speak. you'd have to guess it's at least the beginning of such a thing, even if it's not fully formed.

i remember reading arguments that this leap had something to do with a mutation regarding vocal chords. it's not just that a monkey can't talk to you. it's that a monkey is physically incapable of forming words. we can't know what's going on in there. and, if there's some truth to that, a broad idea of internal language may be more widespread than we realize. such a leap would be less of a mental one and more of a physical one; in a sense, almost a technological one.

but there's no jump to infinity. infinity is unattainable. it's just a theoretical abstraction. the math he's using is very widely used in computer science (the chomsky hierarchy is an unfortunate use of language....); i've studied quite a bit of it, and it's really just a mathematical formality. linguistics would lose nothing from modelling itself in the finite realm, it may even gain a little levity, but the math that exists is all infinite, so that hubris moved into linguistics with it. that's just getting lost in the model.

===

this is a long video, and i watch lectures like this when i eat, meaning i'm on the third (and probably last) segment of it. i see somebody drew attention to the larynx issue.

i don't think the question is really in the realm of questions that have answers. but, we have a lot of neanderthal dna in our genome, and that is a pretty good reason to suggest that they were at least able to learn languages that we taught them. i guess that goes back to the question of how advanced an "i language" really is - or whether it is broadly present in various degrees across the mammalian spectrum (at least).

either option is kind of disastrous for this genetic basis of the great leap. either it's ancestral, or it could be taught. i'd lean towards the latter.

it's maybe easy to jump to "language was selected". but, i have a hard time believing the idea that a fluent sapiens would intermingle with neanderthals that could not speak. a few, maybe. outcasts. rape, even. but not at the level that the interbreeding happened.

i guess that the other option - if we wish to maintain the dogmatic position that language is innately human, because it's convenient for us - is that language must be a lot younger than we've hypothesized. i get the great leap hypothesis, that all this sophistication happened and it must have been connected to language. but, due to the interbreeding with neanderthals, that kind of logic necessitates taking the development back to well before all those things happened.

i think the closest thing to actual evidence that we have for the origin of language is in constructing proto-languages and tying it to archaeological evidence, and that suggests that the language that most of the world speaks (indo-european) is barely 10,000 years old in origin. how or if the other major language groups are related to this is just speculation, but the time frame for proposed nostratic theories is barely 20,000 years ago. it seems like a fairly great leap in itself to argue that language is 100,000-75,000 years old.

if language is only 25-30,000 years old, then you can maintain this separation wall and maybe even argue it was evolutionarily relevant. but it means it happened after the great leap, and after the interbreeding.

except that it seems convenient that you can connect click, tonal and "nostratic" languages to the l1/2/3 genetic split, meaning the common basis had to be pre-migration, and that you're left with almost no option but to conclude that neanderthals must have at least had the capability to learn language.

===

i spend a lot of time walking. it's good exercise. saves gas money, saves gym membership costs; it's a more holistic way to live. it's also good for thinking.

if you look at a map, something curious jumps out - l3 is non-tonal in precisely the same places that neanderthals lived, and areas that hybrids moved into during the interglacial. there is certainly a geographic correlation. l3 is tonal in areas outside of the neanderthal range.

might neanderthals have actually played a role in the development of non-tonal languages? that is, "nostratic" languages? the instantly apparent hypothesis from looking at the map is that l3 would have been dispersed out of africa by speakers of tonal languages, who continue to exist in a continuum that exists on the eastern side of a line that slices across eastern asia from india to korea (and includes sino-tibetan and austronesian languages). it also includes some native american languages. however, in the places where interaction with neanderthals occurred, that tonality would have been lost. whether this created a pidgin, or was even primarily neanderthal in structure, would be very hard for me to speculate on, as a non-expert in the topic. but, if neanderthal language developed without clicks and tones, some cultural assimilation may have resulted in losing it.

the timeline is also consistent.

listen. if we cohabited and interbred with neanderthals, then it is obvious that we are culturally indebted to them in some capacity or another. we could not have integrated with them culturally without adopting some of their culture.

it's at least a curiosity.

could the neanderthals have been unable to understand tonal language? might we have adjusted for their benefit?

if you have an alphabet with n letters and a maximum word size of m, then there are n^m possibilities for words - in fact less than that, as many will be unpronounceable. you can then sum that over a maximum sentence size, and again over a maximum "book size", where a book is meant to represent a life's worth of thought. there are finite restrictions because we have finite lifespans. if you drop the grammatical formalities, we could express a maximum word size determined by enunciating a syllable for every second over a hundred and fifty year lifespan. such a limit would be well beyond the realm of possibility, and remain finite in scope.

the limits are perhaps not arbitrary. if we could calculate a maximum word and sentence size, we could understand the complexity our brain actually works at.

===

i looked into this a little further and i can't say if "infinite expression possibilities" was meant to be poetic rather than literal. but, it has to be. the idea that we have infinite abilities to express ourselves is mathematically false. and, that's the answer to this conundrum on not being able to jump from finite expression to infinite expression.

peano provided a construction of the natural numbers, and it remains true that infinity means counting forever - which is of course impossible. that means infinite thought is also impossible.

there's no paradox. it's just a misunderstanding of the infinite. there is a difference between arbitrarily large (which is still finite) and infinite. but, we can't even say our possibilities are arbitrarily large, because our lives are finite.

in some cases, it may be convenient to model certain things as infinite. but, that does not translate to any kind of reality.

you could then even calculate the probability that two people would express the exact same sequence of words - which could be used to prosecute students for plagiarism.

so, if you're talking about an actual language - like english - you should be utilizing a finite subset of the kleene star. that is, instead of taking the infinite union, you should be taking a union up to m, where m is the maximum word size. for mathematical purposes, you might get a stronger result if you take the infinite union, and mathematicians would like that - and not care what m is. but, a language like english doesn't have 5000 letter words; the longest (non-imaginary) word is a mere 29 letters, so all those extra strings (while harmless) are just hubris, and introduce theoretical confusion.

all the operations will work as they would otherwise. it doesn't affect how any of the theories actually work.

a computer can work forever or halt. we're not going to do that. if somebody starts talking to us in 5000 letter words, we're going to shrug and walk away - and we probably don't have enough usable "ram" to remember the syllables at the beginning of the word, anyways. we can choose to terminate the operation as a result of a buffer overflow, or something. so, it's a meaningful distinction when you're talking about how our brains actually work.

again: i think these are probably meaningful limits. and they may be experimentally determined, even. i'm not sure how. non-expert, again. but if they could be, that limit will be useful in determining what kind of language we can actually process and what kind of language we can't.

the way you want to think of our brains is probably that it's an absurdly fast processor, with basically no ram. so, we're working with registers. machine code. we just didn't evolve ram. we seem to have a hard drive, but no ram. so, we're restricted by the size of the register - and because we can't dump everything to disk (at least not consciously), we just toss stuff out of the register when we get a stream of information like a 5000 letter word. that's beyond what we can process.

so, again, from a formal mathematical perspective, you can speak of language as this infinite thing. but that makes no sense to us, as humans. it's a model of theoretical language, but it's not a valid description of actual language, or a way to understand how our brains work.

fwiw, i wouldn't be opposed to the idea of punctuated equilibrium, in principle. i just tend to resolve the gould-dawkins debate with hybridization. and, conveniently, that appears as though it might be consistent, here.

living in the 'hood, here, i'm constantly engaging with parents yelling at their kids.

"stop doing the thing i told you to stop doing!"

the kid keeps doing it. and, the more the parent yells, the more the kids continue. in fact, they seem to take pleasure in it. the more abusive the yelling gets, the less the kid listens.

because children are trolls. epic trolls. it's maybe the condition that defines being a child.

a lot of anarchists will argue that parenting is the sole exception to authoritarianism. but it's really just symptomatic of our collective inability to get out of these shackles. based on my own observations, i'd say it's one of the clearest demonstrations of the failure of authoritarianism.

the kid will eventually realize that when you play with fire, you get burned - but if you yell at them, you just increase the probability that they have to learn it the hard way.

so, i'm constantly tempted to intervene and actually *explain* why you shouldn't do the thing that they're being yelled at not to do. but, i know if i were to do that, i'd just get yelled at, too.

the fact that kissinger is so often quoted as a voice of sanity nowadays reflects very badly on the nature of the neo-con policies that have taken over. but, the fact that he's less crazy is not much of an endorsement. look: he was constantly wrong when he had actual influence. now that he's irrelevant, he's not magically right.

it's admittedly hard to understand the policy - because it's completely fucking insane. but, it's not hard to figure it out, if you can suspend your disbelief that it's actually happening. the information is out there, it just seems fantastical. this is beyond containment, it's the next phase of the pnac. the neo-cons are playing for keeps. ultimately, they're pissed off about lingering russian influence in the middle east; this is punishment for syria. but, the long game is total and absolute dismantlement.

it seems as though it's not in america's interests to have this unstable state in ukraine, but the missing context is that it's a staging ground into russia. the goal here is the kremlin: the decapitation of the russian state. and, when you get your head around this - when you come to terms with it - it becomes an entirely rational front to get to that end. in some sense, it sets events in motion in a way that can't effectively be undone. and, the russians are consequently actually under reacting.

i agree that this is likely intentional. it's some kind of frightening stew of fundamentalist christian retribution and nazi testing. ultimately, it's military testing - and these drugs are weapons. makes you wonder if they're even concocting various antidotes, ala neuromancer.

is it not rather patriarchal to suggest that passing men have the responsibility to step in, rather than that women have the responsibility/choice to take control of the situation themselves?

if i present them with a shrubbery, will they stop saying "nae"?

amy goodman breaks it down, again.

"most americans are fucking idiots. you need to show them a commercial to teach them how to brush their teeth."

again: we have to get it through our heads that they target the kids, and the women, to stop them from breeding. these statements are all over the place; they don't hide this. but, we're afraid to put it together. it's a slow-motion genocide...

in general, i'm no fan of hippies, but neil still slays. damn.

yup. i still fuck the dead.

recorded in jan, 1998. reclaimed july 5, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/yup-i-still-fuck-the-dead

i still don't fully understand this. (initial upload)

initially written in 1996. recreated in april, 1998. reclaimed july 5, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/i-still-dont-fully-understand-this

no longer confused (initial upload)

initially written in 1997. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed july 5, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/no-longer-confused

just say no to mood altering prescription drugs

recorded in april, 1998. reclaimed july 4, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/just-say-no-to-mood-altering-prescription-drugs

some people don't read much outside their own culture.

"a new national poll reveals that 42 percent of Americans wrongly attribute Marx’s famous communist slogan, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” to one of the country’s Founding documents. Nearly one in five Americans believe this phrase can be found in the Bill of Rights, of all places. You can take some solace in knowing that among young adults, only six percent made this mistake, though 30 percent of them believe Marx’s statement can be found in either the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution."

while this reflects poorly on the education level of americans (blame that asshole reagan, he did this on purpose), it reflects positively on their political viewpoints.

well, see, here's the thing: she's right about the bible. that really is what the bible says. and that's really how you're supposed to react if you're a christian. god only changed it's nature once, in the switch from judaism to christianity. well, and maybe a third time in the jump to islam, but christians shouldn't concern themselves with that. besides that one change in nature, god's nature doesn't change. those prohibitions are like diamonds; they're forever. it's all written there. christians can't pick and choose like that, and the ones that try really aren't being good christians. she's right on point. she gets it. most self-identified christians seem not to grasp this as well as she does.

she's wrong about the constitution, though. deists and atheists, the lot of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLUwNUg4rTA

"the fate of easter island awaits us all."

pause

"no chowder! no chowder!"

i wish they would have panned out to the audience, to expose a sea of blank, stony faces.

hedges has been uncharacteristically rational as of late. here's a good reminder that he's somebody that you want to take with a large grain, and keep your intellectual distance from - even when you agree with him.

he's just a tad unstable, as we can see here.

God
In all seriousness, folks. I don't really give a shit who you love. Love is love. I would know. I Am Love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLUwNUg4rTA

deathtokoalas
+God actually, you do. you're a delusional asshole for it, but you've made it clear in multiple passages that you're in exclusive support of heteropatriarchy. you can't walk that back; i'm going to hold you to what you said. and, i'm not you, so i don't go for perpetual forgiveness, either.

God
+deathtokoalas I'm too busy putting images of my son on pieces of toast to give a shit about what two men do in their bedrooms.

deathtokoalas
+God no. you're not walking this back like this. it's in that damned book of yours. repeatedly. you need to own that. you said it, and you meant it.

watching these briefings can at times be surreal.

it's pretty clear to me that most of the room realizes that the travel ban is to keep out reporters. but, despite knowing that, nobody states as much or challenges the spokesperson on it; instead, the discussion turns to press freedom, which produces the usual meaningless verbiage from the spokesperson, as she's announcing a policy meant to restrict press access. it's a conspiracy of silence, but a means of pressure nonetheless. they won't address the issue, but they'll coerce her into making a fool of herself.

what i'm unclear on is whether it's really seriously meant to be pressure, or just a cynical form of self-amusement.

it's typical rock star baddassery - the kind of thing you'd see in some macho 80s rock video, or something. an old cliche. and fox is playing the role of the offended conservative. in the end, it's all image - and it sells because of the reaction fox gave it.

there's no coherent messaging. no worthwhile analysis. the establishment has nothing to fear from this. but, it takes a hefty cut.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziuCl9ZbXbw

excellent production. but the machismo, misogyny & generally trite vocal content is hardly serving anything but his bank account.

disaster capitalism.

"what erdogan is saying is offensive and wrong"

...and absolutely factually accurate, with a plethora of scholarly literature to support it - much of it drawn from direct statements from israeli leaders. it's actually refreshing to hear somebody with political influence stand up and say it. and, it needs to be said and understood in order to make any real progress on dealing with it.

it's not an anti-terror operation. it's not even apartheid. it's systemic, intentional and planned genocide.

from a us geo-strategic perspective, though, this is concerning. turkey is a nato ally. blah blah blah. what is pushing them to speak like this? it's a little too wavering from the narrative to be purely internal, although that's no doubt part of it.

i've been posting about turkey for a while. they're isolated, and they don't like it. the eu doesn't want them and, frankly, if i was turkey, i wouldn't want them, either. the saudis are more interested in competing with them. their military alliances are leaving them in an economic limbo. turkey needs to be integrated into a stable economic partnership. they're not big enough to go it alone. otherwise, "turkey is a nato ally. blah blah blah" is not going to be true much longer. this needs to be a focus by us foreign policy. this relationship needs mending; turkey is not getting much out of it, and that needs to be resolved.

they're increasingly being forced to economically integrate with russia and iran, which are traditional enemies. but, given that europe sees them as foreigners and the saudis see them as rivals, this is what is left - central asia and eastern europe, which is some kind of stew of their historical homeland and their byzantine roots.

everybody knows how important turkey is to nato. but, nato is not working out for turkey. if that's not addressed, turkey is going to bolt for the cementing asian alliance. and, nato will only have itself to blame.

sample used without permission (initial upload)

initially written in 1996. recreated in jan, 1998. reclaimed july 2, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/sample-used-without-permission

marriage was really the last thing that needed to be broken apart to complete the separation of church and state and move into a fully secular society. it's at the end of something that's been going on since 1776. there's still the thatcherite idea of the church being responsible for social services, but that's on a different level than this. so, you have to expect this kind of response, as it's the final end of the christian order.

this is not how i'd preferred to have seen it happen. i'd prefer to have seen marriage abolished, and financial aspects of relationships dealt with on an issue-by-issue basis. the contract about the house shouldn't be the same as the contract about the kids; these are different things. but, it's overdue.

you shouldn't doubt or trivialize the trauma associated with this. it's a real thing. it's a collapse of a worldview.

rather, you should look at it like an epiphany in understanding that they're missing. there is still a flat earth society.

in fact, the earth revolves around the sun. evolution is a fact. and homosexuality is entirely natural and normal.

they may be upset and confused right now. they need empathy. but, they also need to understand that their viewpoints are wrong and change their perspectives accordingly.

Hearowsify
+deathtokoalas I totally get what you're saying here. It's almost uncomfortable to watch a group of people recognizing their worldview is moving into the past.

americans seem to have difficulty following the plot.

so, back in 1945, north america and europe entered into an alliance to prevent russian expansion into western europe. whether that was ever a serious threat, and how much of a driver it really was under the alliance, and whether it was ever what europe really wanted, are open questions, but that isn't the point; the basis of the alliance was to militarily protect western europe from communism, be it for altruistic reasons or to protect an export market.

somewhere along the way, the threat resolved and europe and russia interlinked economically.

now, we hear americans grumbling that europe is not "doing as much as we'd like". what does that mean? what is the basis for this expectation? it's as though the alliance was always offensive. that it's irresolvable. or - let's be real - that europe is an insolent province.

nato was not designed as a staging ground for an invasion of russia. or, at least, we're told it wasn't. america has no right to expect that europe will facilitate this; rather, it ought to expect the opposite, given the nature of american aggression.

a true spiritual successor to nato would be an alliance across europe (including russia) to minimize american influence.

ali is his own worst enemy.

i didn't want to be running around tomorrow, at least, so i walked to the second furthest store and got some soy milk. laundry will need to wait until tomorrow, and that will slow me down a little, but at least i'm locked here in the cabin for about ten days.

i was planning on ramping down today and hermiting for the next two weeks, but everything's been pushed back a day due to the fact that i can't find any soy milk. that means i'll be doing laundry tomorrow, instead, and could conceivably have something up by the end of the night. on the other hand, if there's no soy milk at the grocery store tomorrow then i'm in for a long day looking for it. it's the central part of my diet. i get almost everything i need from my daily smoothie (1 banana, 5 strawberries, two scoops of cherry ice cream and roughly 300 ml of vanilla soy milk). they had the plain soy milk, but it was for a higher price than i'd normally pay for the vanilla and, like....the vanilla is essential to the smoothie. i may crack tomorrow and get it, but i'm not going to be happy about it. i also can't get the light stuff, because it's my primary source of fat.

note to world: fat from milk is good. if you want to lose weight, eat less big macs, don't cut the healthy fat out.

i'm done all of the tracks that i specifically wanted to *remove* the vocals from. there's still a few that i'm not sure about yet; i'll have to mix them with vocals, and then decide what i want to use. i'm leaning heavily towards a full instrumental, and just dropping the vocal remixes on to the aleph disc. i've already decided that i'm not swapping anything into the main records, largely because these aren't exact replicas - pretty much everything is missing a fill or an overdub that i added at the productions stage and have no way to recreate. that needs to stand as it is.

half of me would like to work it into the second inricycled, which is now becoming superfluous. the idea was to put together some ideas that stripped the vocals out. now, i'm stripping the vocals out altogether. i may decided to retain it as a shorter mix tape (the mix tape portion is only about 30 minutes) and strip the full tracks out. i'll figure this out when i get it all in front of me. but, if i decide to backtrack on the singles, after all, it could get me through this without renumbering.

in some neighbourhoods, the boogeyman is slightly more than an imaginary monster

initially written in 1993. first full recording in 1996. recreated in dec, 1997 and again in jan, 1999. reclaimed on july 2, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/in-some-neighbourhoods-the-boogeyman-is-slightly-more-than-an-imaginary-monster

use value is somewhat difficult to define in the human propensity towards artistic expression

recorded in jan, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015. remixed july 2, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/use-value-is-somewhat-difficult-to-define-in-the-human-propensity-towards-artistic-expression-2

skaters (electronics only mix) (initial upload)

initially written in 1997. recreated in jan, 1998. reclaimed july 1, 2015.

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

thug culture is enforced by the media from the top down

initially written in 1997. recreated in jan, 1998. reclaimed july 1, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/thug-culture-is-enforced-by-the-media-from-the-top-down

use value is somewhat difficult to define in the human propensity towards artistic expression (initial upload)

recorded in jan, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/use-value-is-somewhat-difficult-to-define-in-the-human-propensity-towards-artistic-expression

reaction to canada day

parade outside my door. not this kind of parade. wish it was...

hey god (electronics only mix) (initial upload)

initially programmed in 1997. digitally modified in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/hey-god-electronics-only

i can't believe that bernie sanders is the guy the bank is running to beat clinton. the establishment candidate hasn't appeared, yet.

an interview with cornel west

he's consistently so great to listen to. that part at the end made my day.

it's a nice sentiment and everything, but the issue isn't really base racism. racism is almost always a consequence of economic conditions. a hundred years ago, this was widely understood; unfortunately, we've been led astray by a century of economic liberalism that has glossed over hard questions with feel good slogans.

donald trump doesn't care where you're from or what colour you are or what language you speak. he's a ruthless, financial tyrant. if you check his business transactions, you'll no doubt see that people of all colours and nationalities are good enough to carry out deals with him.

what he's really doing is playing to a political agenda, and while it's something that gets whipped up by the rupert murdochs of the world as a distraction, the base he's playing to is actually poor whites with low levels of education and limited economic options. rather than blame that on people like donald trump, they blame it on "immigrants" - because that's what rupert murdoch and his cronies teach them.

the difficult part of the situation, though, is the reality that, on some level, they're actually right. you could look at the situation with seasonal farm workers in california, as one example. they make a lot of food, and it feeds a lot of people. even way up here in canada, most of the strawberries come to us from california for most of the year. and, the labour that picks these strawberries (and does most of the other work) is, in fact, mostly undocumented immigrant labour. the producers prefer this because it allows them to pay less than the minimum wage, and the politicians and law enforcement look the other way due to bribery. they won't hire year-round residents in these areas because of fear that they'll unionize, and because labour laws demand that they pay them a minimum salary. it goes well beyond that, though, with "temporary foreign worker" programs that reduce to renting slaves for a while and then sending them back.

the reality is that, in conjunction with outsourcing and mechanization, this actually has reached a level where you've got year-round residents (mostly white) that really can't find jobs, while the big producers are bringing in workers from outside of the country and paying them a fraction of what they're entitled to. and, when the media stands up and points the finger, it's easy to fall into the wrong narrative.

so, there is a pretty real problem that's a consequence of corruption and free trade. but, what's necessary, here, is to get the whole story across to people, so that they're blaming donald trump rather than migrant workers. and, while these slogans may make you feel nice, they don't really get anybody closer to understanding anything.

she gets points for the surreal, at least.

rap news 33

the papacy nowadays is a kind of a supreme court of the church, rather than an executive or legislative branch. what it does is codify perspectives that are already in practice. he's saying this now because followers of the catholic faith - and let's not forget that catholicism is a minority religion in the heart of the empire, which is based on protestant values - have already come to this conclusion. it's leading from behind. preaching to the choir...

likewise, if he ever comes out in favour of restricting oppression to homosexuality, it will be because it's already established.

infallibility? decrees of god's will? hardly. it's just a reaction to the grassroots. you could even call it a type of crude democracy.

the effect will be minimal.

i mean, the moonseed perspective is exaggerated here, but the broad view amongst american christians remains that the pope is an agent of satan. that's hardcoded into virtually all of the protestant denominations. american christianity is and always has been a violent reaction to catholicism. the more the pope speaks like this, the more the dominant narrative is upheld, about climate change being a globalist/satanist plot - because the pope is their guy.

conversely, insofar as this is relevant in latin america and africa, what the church provides is a place for organizing movements, rather than any guiding principle. and, if it starts meddling too much into something that is happening independent of it's control, it's more likely to act as a co-opting and dispersive force.

in order to be effective, this movement needs to be secular. that doesn't mean rejecting religious people. it just means keeping religion out of it.

it maybe exposes a cynical truth, though: perhaps all we have left is prayer. perhaps we're at that base level of hopelessness.

ZYX
+deathtokoalas It is a good set of Commandments to live by for humanity. For those of either secular & religious persuasion. I salute Pope Francis for reminding us

I am an atheist , but believe we should take heed these words, regardless of the source. The Pope has over a billion followers. We cannot divest them of their religious beliefs, nor why we would want to.This message is so clearly a universal force for good, not dependant on religious persuasion.

deathtokoalas
+ZYX well, i think there's a lot of reasons to want to, but it's not the point. the church is approaching this from a "bait and capture" approach. you want to think of it as a type of "green capitalism".

not quite what i thought from the headline; this phenomenon is generally explained by dirt on the lense.

but, i'm actually entirely down with alien contact as a naturalistic explanation for a large proportion of the bible. stuff like elijah flying to heaven in a chariot, for example. really, this whole sky god thing altogether.

i've seen footage of humans in helicopters approaching herds of elephants, descending and performing medical care on them and then flying off. elephants are very, very smart animals. they perform rituals around their burials, which only humans (and neanderthals) are known to do. really, they may not be that far from where we were when we came up with religion. and, it's very interesting to me to wonder what they're thinking as they're experiencing this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wySFvmvr6Mg

the bathroom scare mongering is particularly ridiculous for the reason that the vast majority of us take androgen reducers that leave us chemically castrated. it's kind of the point. i'll volunteer some information: i haven't had an erection in five years. i couldn't assault somebody if i wanted to [and, of course i don't, but....].

that said, this is a subtle issue and you'll find less uniformity on it than you might think. i'm going to share my logic, because it's sort of ironic.

public washrooms are inherently gross places that most women prefer to avoid. squatting in public is just a "yuck" thing. so, if you ask around, you'll hear a common opinion amongst women: when forced to deal with public washrooms, i wish i could stand to urinate. now, as it happens to be, i have the ability to stand to urinate. no woman would ignore this, when faced with the obstacle of a public toilet.

but, i consider it rather disrespectful to walk into a woman's washroom and urinate standing up. this question of "passing" is sort of silly; if somebody is looking at me closely, they're going to pull out the adam's apple, at the least. it's not a function of my projection so much as it is a function of others' perception. i can't control that. i can fix a percentage, a likelihood. but, it's inevitable that some percentage of cis women are going to notice, and consequently inevitable that i'm going to be "outed". to me, the more important question is that i'm following conventions when i'm in there, out of respect for the security and comfort of others. that means no peeing standing up in the women's washroom, or, put another way, that i will squat when i decide to use the female facilities.

often, though, the idea is not appealing. i've walked into the women's washroom, got a good look at it and walked out into the men's room. but, this is something any woman would do if they only could! and, i generally default to the men's room, even if i'm wearing a skirt, as a result of it.

that's a different logic. don't generalize this and apply it. rather, the point is we're individuals and generalizing is dangerous.

as others have pointed out, my preferred solution would be one bathroom stalls.

ironically, again, i'm more likely to bite my tongue and squat when i'm in a more conservative setting, and don't want to confuse people or get into an argument.

ok, i get it - this is a self-reflection, and he's asking where his talent is, when he needs it. deep.

weird. i don't remember this part of grease. either that, or travolta seems to have had a lot of surgery, and lost a lot of weight.

there should be a rule in the music industry that men are not allowed to write lyrics for little girls to sing. what a terrible song...

it's maybe a gruesome analysis, but gaza needs to take a closer look at it's tactics. the narrative is often defined by this idea of targeting innocent civilians, and as much as it is true, it's only half true. worse, this iron dome system has rendered the rockets useless. any logic of resistance is no longer logic, but entirely irrational.

these tactics would be more useful in the west bank, where there is active colonization. but, gaza is not being colonized, and all evidence suggests that israel does not wish to colonize it.

the best thing thing that palestine can do at this point is neutralize the israeli excuse. and, it is an excuse. but it holds sway.

i'm not going to condemn the resistance. i understand why it seems necessary, but the situation on the ground has rendered it illogical and counter-productive. and i know that muslim palestinian culture is not comparable to hindu indian pacifism. but, their best tactic at this point is non-violent resistance.

and, israel is correct in stating that they will be slaughtered until they come to terms with that.

that may mean sitting on their hands while israel blows up hospitals. a hard pill to swallow. but the rockets are worse than useless - they fuck up the narrative.

there is definitely something wrong with ironic hipster homophobia

initially written in 1997. recreated in jan, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/there-is-definitely-something-wrong-with-ironic-hipster-homophobia

if god somehow does exist, it is sadistic and should be destroyed

initially written in 1996. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/if-god-somehow-does-exist-it-is-sadistic-and-should-be-destroyed

hey god (absolutely backwards mix)

initially written in 1996. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/hey-god-absolutely-backwards-mix

hey god (straight forwards mix)

initially written in 1996. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/hey-god-straight-forwards

aliens are more likely than god (initial upload)

initially written in 1996. recreated in march, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/aliens-are-more-likely-than-god

i agree, y'all should clear right out. i suggest mars.

if we could actually get rid of all the fucking idiot christians, i might actually praise the lord, and sing hallelujah! talk about a dream come true...

last night, i had a dream that my dead dog could talk. she told me she wished i fed her less corn. i agreed it was a shitty deal, but it's just the reality of being a dog.

Layna87
+deathtokoalas - YOU, MY DEAR, ARE IN A VERY SAD CONDITION - SELF-DELUSION AND DEMONIC POSSESSION IS NOT A 'FUN PLACE' TO BE...THAT'S YOU...WE WILL PRAY FOR YOUR DELIVERANCE - FOR YOU NEED IT...Mocking Christians is not a wise endeavour...when you mock and curse Christians - you are mocking GOD...and He hears everything and will bring you to a place of, either, brokenness in Him or being crushed to powder by the weight of your ill decision...Selah...L.

deathtokoalas
+Layna8 the demons keep me company; it would be very insensitive of you to take them away.

MrGodsking
+deathtokoalas demons destroy lives i have never seen one person claiming to be happy when living with demons soon the demonic world will burn for eternity God's word

deathtokoalas
+MrGodsking funny. i've never seen a happy christian; they're always looking forward to the apocalypse, due to how miserable they are. but, i think i get to decide whether i like the demons or not. personal autonomy and whatnot. and your religion is actually big on personal choice, whether you understand that or not.

see, this is the kind of thing you have to do collectively. the reason solar has failed to break through up to this point is that it's being marketed as an individualistic solution to "get off the grid". if you look at countries like germany, where it's working, the reason it's working is because the state is heavily subsidizing it and integrating it into the existing systems. it's maybe unrealistic to think americans will ever understand that the reason electricity costs are so high is that they're privatized on a market, but they're going to have to at least get over the hurdle in realizing that storage costs for the lifestyles we live are only really realistically paid for collectively.

the reality is that solar is not an alternative to the grid. the reality is that solar is the future of the grid.

the open question, in my mind, is whether it's proximity to our living spaces will generate a broader concept of collective ownership.

www.greentechmedia.com/articles/featured/Storage-Is-the-New-Solar-Will-Batteries-and-PV-Create-an-Unstoppable-Hybri

werso smidits (initial upload)

originally written in 1996. recorded in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 28, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/werso-smidits

the threat of terrorism is used to restrict civil liberties (initial upload)

initially written in 1996. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 28, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-threat-of-terrorism-is-used-to-restrict-civil-liberties

ok, now that this is dealt with, can we get back to focusing on real issues? like the several unnecessary wars that we're fighting, and the historical (and rising) income inequality?

i'm actually in favour of abolishing marriage. all marriage. but whatever. it's done. let's move on now, please.

"we like to get as much out as possible, but sometimes we can't. really. it's not just a fun thing to say. sometimes, we really can't.

...because, sometimes, what we're referencing doesn't actually exist."

videos, johnny? from where? satellites?

while marie harf is clearly more knowledgeable than jen psaki on the topic of policy, she is just as obviously not a marketing expert. she seems to want to argue via reductio ad bitchy-face, which relies on the presumption that bitching out your opponent will force them to concede the point. it's a shame, because it makes the administration look like it's hiding something.

re: egypt. israel would like to rid itself of gaza altogether, and sees it's annexation by egypt as the logical endpoint. some reporters see the area as an independent state; this is misunderstanding the motives of virtually everybody involved. this is why israel insists on talking with egypt.

in fact, the likelihood of homosexuality increases with each older brother; a male born into a family with 3 brothers is more likely to be gay than a male born into a family with 2, and so forth as n approaches...well, it's not approaching infinity.

if i was freud, i'd think this is a call to write a complex!

but, given that this doesn't happen in women (who have different social conditioning when it comes to hugging and generally touching each other, and different arousal mechanisms), it strikes me as almost impossible that this is biological. if it was some kind of reaction, we'd expect the same thing for women born into families with many sisters.

what's interesting is that it seems to be agreed that birth order has a stronger correlation than any known genetic factor - meaning this is the strongest evidence we have as of yet.

and, it seems to me to be something based on conditioning. it suggests that the more time a young boy spends in intimate relationships with multiple male family members, the more likely they are to normalize, internalize and then crave it. there's the freudian complex, for you.

now, suppose you generalize this. i think you're getting closer to the right answer.

i would like to see a study that asks the question of if gay men are attracted to people that are similar to their older brothers.

human sexuality is not innate. it's not even fixed; it's fluid, and can change repeatedly over the course of a lifetime. the entire concept of "sexual orientation" is less than two hundred years old. for most of human history, this separation didn't exist - which is the reason why feudal institutions like the church spent so much time trying to convince people that attraction to the same gender was "wrong". you don't get more serfs that way, so it's not productive behaviour, from their perspective. if it were really true that 90% of people are innately heterosexual, you wouldn't need that kind of enforcement. you could just write the gays off and send them to war, like the spartans did.

what that means is that you're all bisexual, you're just pushed into one category or another through the power of social conditioning. it's a pretty complicated thing, but it's also a pretty simple thing.

if you're conditioned strongly enough, you can be attracted to anything. trees. rocks. imipolex g. it's all about pavlov; nothing to do with mendel.

package sent. now, i wait.

i should be able to get enough of a start on this project tonight to be able to get a feel as to how it's going to work itself out.

Sure There’s a Catch…

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. 

This is an interesting issue for me to approach, because the reality is somewhat circular. I’ve presented myself to several professionals looking for a longer term diagnosis (which is truly what I was seeking as I embarked on this path; please see the attached document, with my first write-up), and they’ve been unable to determine any symptoms. I’m left with no option but to agree that I am not demonstrating symptoms. However, there’s a catch – I am not demonstrating symptoms because ODSP has left me stable and happy, by allowing me to immerse myself in my art. If I’m not demonstrating symptoms, I should not qualify for ODSP; but if I lose the ODSP, I will again begin to demonstrate symptoms, and need to go back on ODSP.

See, the truth is that I truly am unstable – a glance at my unwritten biography would demonstrate that clearly. I have been without an address several times, and am prone to absurd behaviour when placed under stress. I’ve been fired repeatedly, and unable to find a job for many years. I really should be grounded. Yet, my concern for my safety appears rational to the professional observer. Hence, requests for diagnosis are misunderstood as evidence of stability.

Rather than try and obfuscate, I believe I should be honest: I am not just currently stable and happy. I am actually currently more stable and happier than I’ve ever been in my life. My prerogative to argue for stasis is consequently not merely a desire to prevent the inevitable collapse I will face should I be denied ODSP, but to actively argue for it as the best case scenario for me. It’s almost an appeal for benevolence.

I think that, when discussing an individual’s qualification for disability, there are three perspectives to analyze. The first is whether the applicant is able to work. The second is whether the applicant is able to find work. The third is whether the applicant desires work. I believe that these issues are not disconnected, but are very interrelated and that the causal forces acting between them can be very complex.

One way to see that this is true is to look at the results of my cra application in 2008. I wrote several tests for this application and did very well on the ones that were “competency” related. My GCT2 mark was actually exceedingly high; I earned a mark of 80/90 on this test, in a competition where the minimum pass was 51/90. When I went in to the interview, they told me it was the highest mark they’ve ever seen on that test. This would appear to indicate not just competence but possible excellence. Yet, my grade on the situational judgement test (a workplace behaviour test) was so poor that I was removed from the competition. I failed that test twice more over the next few years. Together, that indicates that I would have likely been capable of performing the task asked of me, and perhaps even of excelling at it, but that I would not have been able to adjust to the workplace environment – and consequently could not be hired. In fact, I actually agree with the combined results, as it fits my experience of frequent firings and infrequent attendance at school, even while my performance was strong and my grades were high. While other employers may be less rigorous in their hiring, they seem to be able to intuitively understand this about me and avoid me as a result of it. It does then follow that my anxiety is a block; when I’ve been forced to try and get around it because I have no other choice but to get around it in order to pay rent and bills it nonetheless continues to flag me as a problem and either make me an unviable candidate or a swiftly terminated employee. I consequently can’t work because I can’t find work because of the condition.

The gender dysphoria is not insignificant in piecing this together, as it is one of the dominant causes of the anxiety. This works on two levels – both on the level of unrealistic expectations and on the level of a self-consciousness that manifests itself as a lack of confidence, which is devastating in context. Even when I was living as a male, it was something that was easily “figured out”, which created some pretty bad attitudes and behind-the-back murmurings. I don’t feel there’s an answer to this. My gender/body combination remains at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

I claim I am happy and stable on ODSP, but did I ever seek labour? I have teenager memories of being excited about saving money up to get certain things. My first major purchase was a cd burner in 1998, back when such things were still novel. I worked two or three jobs at a time over the summers of 2002 and 2003, and while it was hectic I was happy to contribute to my education. I worked for Microsoft over 2006 and legitimately enjoyed it; I was able to take that money to get my own apartment and buy some recording gear. Employment provided me with financial independence and control over my means of production. So, the answer is an unambiguous yes: I have actively sought and enjoyed labour in the past.

However, in time, prejudicial attitudes began to sink in – and it’s a contribution to the anxiety. My interests have converged to things that are outside any kind of concept of wage labour. For many years, I’ve looked at employment very cynically, with the understanding that I’m wasting my time somewhere doing something I don’t care about with people that don’t respect me. Over 2007 and 2008 (the last time I was employed), I called in sick repeatedly – often because I just couldn’t get up to go in due to anxiety and depression. I would also leave work early due to depression, which tended to manifest itself in powerful headaches and short tempers. I have not experienced any of these problems over the last two years; I have been stable and happy. Alas, that catch-22…

Yet, do I not want to work, to contribute? Well, let’s reverse the question around. I think there are two reasons why people might want to work. The first is for the benefit of society - altruism. The second is for personal gain - individualism. But what is personal gain? A stock broker may argue that it is about capital accumulation, whereas an athlete may argue it’s about being the best. As an artist, I find these things actually overlap more than they contradict – the art is made both for me and for everybody else. Expression for the sake of expression is the most valuable form of personal gain, and asking challenging questions is the thing I’m most suited to do in society. If the goal is to maximize personal gain through contributing to society, I don’t think that work is the way to do that; I think that art is the way to do that.

Yet, how did I get there? How did I decide that expression is personal gain? Why not competition, or accumulation, or material wealth? Well, in all of these cases the root cause is the same: its sexual dominance. The use value of a car is hardly worth its price; nowadays I walk most places, but I’ve never had a ¬need for such a thing, between bicycles and city busses.  If anything, it puts the car owner into an impossible loop: they need to go to work to pay for a car that they only use to go to work. It’s running on a treadmill; except, it isn’t, because a car is a status symbol, and that status symbol is a tool to compete with peers for the sexual interests of others. Competition, accumulation and materialism are often blamed for the violence we experience in our society, but they are merely masking the sexual motives underlying their fetishization. As an individual who has undergone voluntary chemical castration, these motives are not valid to me. Rather, my motives for personal gain are largely intellectual – and no labour, at any salary, can appeal to me on this level. Nor can I hide this reality from interviewers – it is a part of the visible anxiety that sets in. So, I cannot work because I can’t find work because I don’t want to work because of the condition.

I believe that humans are malleable creatures and that I could no doubt be conditioned out of this, but to what end? Is it worth the state’s time and energy to put a hopelessly apathetic personality type through therapy so that it can flip burgers for minimum wage? Excuse me for being jaded by the prospect…

So, what happens if I get this renewed? Well, I have a lot of art to work on, and would continue to apply myself to it over thirty hour work days of happy, strenuous and productive labour. Its value is perhaps unclear, but I think I can make a bigger difference to society through my opinions than I ever can through wage labour, and I’m certain I’ll be happier and more stable that way. What happens if this is denied? It is exceedingly unlikely that I will be able to find employment, and if I do I will no doubt be very unhappy. I will likely become very depressed and completely unstable; a suicide attempt is not unlikely, which will generate further documents which will get me back on odsp - until I’m stable again, no doubt.

Rather than forcing me to continue to rebuild these sandcastles on the beach after every tide, I propose that you allow me to rebuild further from shore by granting me the longest disability term that you can. For me, this is really the only workable solution to my problems, and removing the solution will accomplish nothing but bring them all back again.

wow, look at that botfly infect that human! like a boss!

can we stop with this "like a boss" bullshit? absolute class hierarchical nonsense. bosses don't actually do things, they just sit in air-conditioned offices and steal your money - and they usually get their status from their personal connections (like being born into a family of bosses), rather than any kind of merit. how about "like a trained professional." ?

(deleted)

not in areas where there are large predatory felids, we're not. this is a misunderstanding that i think it's very important to get our heads around. in africa and india, we're just a different type of monkey - felids are apex predators. some theories suggest that escaping lion (or proto-lion) predation is even a part of the reason we ended up so smart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNUY-EheK8Q

the footage seems sped up at points, and the rabbit seems pretty distracted in the way it hops out and then back. i know rabbits aren't normally known as vicious predators, despite having big, sharp, pointy teeth, and they may not really have the instincts to fight rationally, but it still seems to me like this is spliced together footage.

i have to say, though, that that's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent i've ever set my eyes on!

i don't want to come off as an apologist for the bank, i'm really not, but it's frustrating to see the left pick up right-wing populism. i've been trying to get these points across for years....

the government loaned the financial sector a lot of money, and it was spent in ways that could conceivably upset people. however, it was generally a relatively safe - and in fact profitable - investment for the state. the ones that were determined unsafe were shut down or merged into other companies. in the end, the state got back everything they lent out and made a very hefty profit on top of it - profit that could have been applied to setting up single payer, and perhaps might have been with a better president.

so, it's easy to see why that doesn't apply to homeowners. if the state were to step in, they'd merely be taking over a loan, at what would may, in the end, turn out to be a loss.

i don't like any of this. but, it's the actual truth of the situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2RX2kC5Keg

it's maybe a little ironic, given the content of the speech - because the lender of last resort was another new deal provision, designed to prevent the collapse of assets held in the bank.

let's say you have a modest nest egg of $20,000 in the bank. the bank defaults. that $20,000 is gone. up in air. and you don't get it back. ever.

that's why we need a lender of last resort. it's designed to prevent things like predatory institutions coming in and stealing your house.

gotta love the look on the reporter's face when he ran off that nonsense about anonymous sources.

"it is my opinion that you ought to ask informers to identify themselves, to increase their credibility - and also so we know who they are, and can go beat them over the head with a stick. you shalt identify the informers amongst you due to the bandages on their skulls."

'cause, you know. politicians speaking in official capacities are trustworthy. they don't spin things. and they never bluntly lie to your face. those anonymous sources are not in line with the official narrative, so they shouldn't be trusted as much as those who state the narrative.

that's just josh' opinion, of course. it's not a subtle threat, or anything.

right. so you've gotta understand that the israelis are perfectly willing - and in some sense eager - to recognize gaza as a palestinian state, or otherwise get rid of it, because it's outside of historical israel - it's the homeland of the philistines, who are israel's biblical enemies.

the west bank, on the other hand, is considered to be "judaea and samaria", which is actually at the core of historical israel. hence the colonization through settlers. so long as israel is a "jewish state", it will never cede it's claim to the west bank.

it follows that they can't accept a unity government, because they fully intend to exterminate the palestinians from the west bank (perhaps by deporting many of them to gaza...), whereas they really don't want sovereignty over gaza. to israel, these are separate areas with very different futures, and they will do whatever they can to keep it that way.

it follows that they were probably less concerned about fatah influencing hamas and more concerned about hamas influencing fatah. despite the western rhetoric, the israeli perspective is that the government in gaza is legitimate and the government in ramallah is not. they consequently can't have what they see as sovereign leaders in gaza integrating with what they see as a province in the west bank, as it would give gaza rights to a territory that israel thinks it has no rights to.

the western propaganda is designed for internal consumption. it rarely has any remote connection to reality.

Sydney K
is there a reason they're not married?

Jay Pathak
It's quite simple to avoid "DIVORCE SETTLEMENT MONEY"

deathtokoalas
if that's the reason, it's not thought through well - common law sets in after a few years, and comes with the same liabilities as marriage. if there's a desire to get married, and concern on that level, it would be better to do it and sign a pre-nub.

in fact, i'd expect she'd have a very strong claim for unjust enrichment, considering she's an integral part of these videos. i've read cases where common law "wives" get large settlements just for taking care of the kids - which is fair, in some way, but isn't directly related to the income source. from what i've seen, she's very well entitled to at least a third of the profits he's getting from the videos. at this point, a pre-nub might not even make sense, as she's surely entitled to a portion of it, anyways.

man, i just got holla'd at by what looked to me to be 12 year-old boys. had to repress the urge to weggie and dunk them...

well, what else do you do? little brats.

it's distressing, though. maybe i ought to be thinking about weggying and dunking their fathers.