i've explained previously that liberal is a complicated word. but, i think it makes the most sense to define it relative to it's origins, and in contrast with it's opposite.
i think that this is the most basic definition, and all of the others follow.
conservative: somebody that thinks that human nature is fixed. ex: hobbes, burke. liberal: somebody that thinks that human nature is malleable, or does not exist at all. ex: rousseau, locke.
this is fundamental, and it derives anarchists and socialists from liberals, as they should be derived. if you argue carefully, you can get to almost every ideological split from this basic breakdown. if you haven't thought about this, try it: you'll no doubt be surprised by how effective it is - because it is historical. it was what conservatives and liberals were at one point explicitly arguing about.
science is not yet clear on this point, but it currently leans very strongly towards no fixed human nature. in the end, the debate will need to return to the answer and move forwards from there. once science has an answer, the people that want bipartisanship will have a model to move forwards with; the synthesis will become truly attainable. or, it will be if they accept the answer.
as silly as this is, i actually think it brings up a good point. in a world where national boundaries are falling and nation-states are giving way to regional associations, leave it to scotland to demand independence.
the thing is i can't figure out what they want out of this, besides some vapid emotional attachment to some long dead cultural identity. because the scots need to protect their catholic faith. or their language?
the historic context of the anglo-scot fighting is generally over-simplified, to the point that people don't really get it. scotland was generally used as a conduit for papal interests. scottish independence was never a real option; they had the ability to chose between being vassals of the english or vassals of the pope. the pope was constantly seeking to punish the english. the catholic forces attacked repeatedly from the north. but all we ever hear about is how the scots have been colonized by the dastardly english, severely warping the entire discourse. papal propaganda is very widespread and seems to really capitalize on a certain level of historical ignorance.
i really don't think this is at all different. the french are prying scotland away, yet again. this really isn't a referendum on scottish independence (ffs, it's 2014), it's a referendum on whether scotland should integrate directly with the british or european economic and financial systems. to leave britain is to enter europe in a way that the british elite will never agree to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6vDzf-wSbk
Stark Clark
Scotland isn't a catholic nation, the largest religion is the Church of Scotland which is Protestant.
jessica
+Stark Clark scotland has historically been a part of the catholic alliance, which was usually dominated by a french emperor that was a puppet of the papacy.
i was being facetious.
James Red
+deathtokoalas you can real off all your book knowledge about Scotland all you want but I who actually am Scottish and have lived here my entire life know that we are not a Catholic nation and that we do want independance to finally free us from the corrupt democracy that is Westminster! We make more money than the whole of the UK. We should be able to make our own decisions without requesting if its okay to English men way way down south.
jessica
+James Red do you really think it's the english that are stealing your money, rather than the bankers and shareholders not just in scotland but throughout the world? do you not think you might gain a thing or two in return for what you send out?
but, more to the point, how does taking the british out of the equation eliminate the corruption? why don't you realize the corruption is in the institution and will merely shift?
and has it crossed your mind that you may be better off working with the british to fight off the bankers and corporate managers than splitting yourselves in two, thereby making it easier to continue to beat you down?
(deleted response)
jessica
if that's your answer, you're being divided and conquered.
but the scots are quite good at being conquered, aren't they?
Stark Clark
+deathtokoalas The Scottish reformation was in 1560. The English reformation started in 1534, but was repealed in 1553 by queen Mary I, which caused a rockier road to reformation including the Rising of the Northern in 1569, which yes I realise was to put a Scottish catholic on the throne, but it was then her son who finally started to try finish reformation under the Stuarts in 1603 which led to the War of the Three Kingdoms and the English Civil War.
jessica
+Stark Clark the franco-scottish alliance was the scottish alliance that preceded the anglo-scottish alliance, and took on pro-catholic and anti-english traits at various points during it's history, most prominently during the tudor period.
Stark Clark
+deathtokoalas The Franco-Scottish alliance ended in 1560 with the reformation during the Tudor period. Then the Stuarts inherited the English throne and finally but brutally and bloodily caused reformation in full in England.
jessica
+Stark Clark right. that's the basis underlying the facetious nature of my comment.
i mean, what are you, an american or something? you seem to have no concept of irony or sarcasm.
Jordan Kay
I agree independence dosnt mean shit this day and age the global elite run it all.
Sept 12, 2014
so, the grocery store is getting propertarian about it's shopping carts. it's kind of hard to blame them, because people in the neighbourhood aren't being good anarchists.
i was thinking about it on the way home, and it's actually a great topic to use in an introductory discourse. there might be this misperception that it's unruly hooligan anarchists stealing the shopping carts. the actual reality is that it's the anarchists that bring them back, because they understand them as socially owned property. but, the fact that people take them in the first place indicates a level of intuition towards the idea of social ownership.
and isn't it obvious that people ought to be able to take the carts home? i'm just not quite sure why it isn't so obvious that they should bring them back. laziness only gets you so far, here. i mean, i've walked by houses with four or five on their yard, indicating they're not even bringing them back when they get more food.
i might suggest it lies in the perception of property. that intuition towards social ownership may be overpowered by the enforced hierarchical guilt that keeps propertarianism in place. that is, they may be "stealing" the carts because they figure they ought to be able to use them, but then they can't rationalize it, and figure once they've stolen it it becomes theirs. then they just "steal" more. there could even be fear of consequence regarding being caught "stealing" them when they bring them back. but i'm just making wild guesses, and i'd really like to get a better understanding of this.
me? i'm a good anarchist, so i always return the public property as soon as i'm done using it, so other people can use it. that's the basis of a system of social ownership.
there's been a few times where i've been halfway home, realized my neck was sore, pulled a cart off somebody's lawn and then brought it back to their lawn when i was done. that's taking temporary control of a public good and returning it how i found it.
there's also been a few times where somebody has asked me for the cart on the way back to the store and i've given it to them - although i make sure they promise to bring it back to the store. it wasn't even for groceries a few times. one woman had a broken stroller and used it to get her kid home. another guy had a bag of soil. that's the way this ought to work.
the thing is that the level of social responsibility to make it work doesn't seem to be absent. people are taking the carts home, indicating they get it. but what's suppressing the responsibility to bring them back?
the answer to this isn't locking carts down or whatever other silly approach the store might come up with, it's talking to people and trying to understand why they're not being good anarchists.
sept 9, 2014
it's a question of using proportional amounts of force. yeah, she was coming at him, but he's a running back and she's not. i doubt he meant to knock her out, but it's not the point. in a situation like that, the much stronger person needs to be aware of how much stronger he is and restrain the person that's coming at him until they calm down.
the nfl is sending a message, and it's a worthwhile message to send, but you can't help but feel a little bad for the guy. i don't know the context, but i don't get a one-sided pattern of domestic abuse out of the video. what i get is basically an accident of self-defense coming out of a dysfunctional relationship.
after doing a little googling, what i'm getting out of this fiasco is really just another example of out-of-control, sensationalist media.
and it didn't just ruin this guy's career - it fucked his wife's life up, too. the supposed victim, that is - who realizes it's the kind of accident that happens when adults play rough with each other.
aa
But if you closely in the beginning he hit her in the face and that's when she charged or walked towards him to hit him. But honestly I don't feel bad, no matter what you don't hit a women. He obviously knows his strength compare to hers.He has the option to walk away and leave.
jessica
she hit him before they got on the elevator, but i don't think there's any insight to be gained from figuring out who hit who first. what i would conclude from watching the video is that they have somewhat of a physical relationship and push each other around a little when they argue. that is not the same thing as assault or abuse.
generally, women that are battered demonstrate a healthy level of fear towards their partners. that's the point of the violence - to control. there's no indication of that in the video. she was entirely confident that she could lunge at him without serious harm, and probably would have escaped serious harm were it not for the enclosed space, where he doesn't have the option to back off that he might have normally taken.
i'm not suggesting he didn't overreact, but this isn't what the media is presenting it as.
ts
That is in no way self defense. One, he has a bunch of weight on her, he's an NFL star, and he's a grown man. If it were self defense the spitting would have been enough. He punched her twice. Not only that, she was not even physically bothering him once they stepped foot onto the elevator. Self defense is a bullshit excuse right now.
jessica
c'mon - she obviously lunged at him, and he knocked her when she was on the way there. what you're saying is true - i stated it myself - but i think the error in your reasoning is that it's logical. in a situation like that, humans don't have time to carefully weigh all of the options that are available to them and come to a rational conclusion. instead, they break down to instinct, which is "fight or flight" and react on an impulse as to which is better for survival. the thing is he's trapped in the corner of an elevator. she probably jumps him all the time, and he probably generally backs off or dodges her - he is, after all, a pretty good running back, so he's good at that. but, when flight isn't an option, all that's left is to fight and what takes over is that instinct and what drives the behaviour is the impulse.
now, he could have and should have tried to restrain her as his "fight" response. but, that he didn't react in the best way possible doesn't mean it's a "vicious attack".
(deleted reply)
jessica
meh. there's some logic to that, and it's applicable to most people you aren't building a family with, but relationships require a certain egalitarian basis to be effective. they can both - and no doubt did - realize the guy's superior strength. that doesn't mean she should be afraid of him, it means he's gotta be careful. on the other hand, she might be considerably more intelligent than him and they might both be aware of that. it doesn't mean she should talk down to him, it means she should be patient.
AfriSynergyNews
True, he should have restrained her. Jay Z
reacted in the best way with Beyonce's sister in the elevator. Ray
reacted badly. If one or both of them were drunk, this can elevate
latent behaviors.
jessica
i just watched that video and what jay z seems to demonstrate is the "freeze" response to fight-or-flight. beyonce's sister really scared the fuck out of him. ray wasn't nearly as frightened. also, it seems to have been the other people in the elevator that were responsible for restraining her, who weren't stuck in hormonal overdrive.
Isaiah From the Nati
If he a lot bigger DONT PICK THAT FIGHT. I'm 15 but u don't see me fighting big ass grown men then saying they should be punished cause I'm a minor
jessica
it's not a comparable situation though, isaiah. you're smart not to pick fights with bigger kids or adults, but in a relationship there's a basis of trust that has to transcend issues like physical strength. you'll understand that as you grow older.
sh
Jay Z was not "scared the f.." by Beyonce's sister and froze up, he was smart. Restraining someone often gets re-characterized as mutual combat, resulting in both parties getting arrested, or more often the case, just the guy. He was smart to simply take the blows, and let a third-party do the separating / restraining.
jessica
but, again, that is not how people react in situations of conflict. what happens is your autonomous nervous system kicks in, and you're driven by impulse to flee if you can, fight if you think you have a chance and freeze if there's no way out. there's a tremendous amount of ignorance about this in our legal culture that really needs to be aggressively addressed.
nb
When tobacco companies say, " Tobacco is bad for your health and can cause cancer", and you still smoke. The tobcacco company is no longer to blame! What people seem to forget is that a white cop hits a black lady and they promote the cop, but I get it cops don't break the law only people in the NFL and in MMA.
tp
what does this have to do with race?
jessica
i think the media coverage has a pretty strong racial context underlying it, even if it's not explicitly stated. the headlines seem to be barely a step down from
PRIMITIVE NEGRO SAVAGELY CANNIBALIZES WIFE
are your white daughters safe?
jj
Correct. A lot of the media outrage is fake. TMZ is out to make a quick buck at anybody's expense. She MARRIED him. Obviously she has forgiven and moved on. If she married him afterwards and admitted to instigating and contributed to the fight, then people outside the relationship need to stay out.
jessica
i think there's a place for friends and family members to react to warning signals. and i'd take it as one, no doubt. but we don't have any valid prerogative to sit here from a distance and make judgements on other people's value systems.
jm
In what way almost the same? As I see it, what you are doing is "fanning racial flame" without one iota of proof. That's not right unless you can back it up with something besides inflammatory remarks--just who said "primitive negro or even IMPLIED it--besides you just now?
jessica
well, this very video is full of racist comments, if you'd take the time to look.
the american media has found more sophisticated ways to be racist, which deal with certain code words and contexts. it's engineered to be difficult to deconstruct, but it's there when you really disassemble it.
nb
What happened to that white cop that groud-n-pounded that black lady? Did he get a promotion? Another medal from the mayor?
jessica
what i'm trying to get across is that, while it might be true that he didn't hit her hard and the rail technically knocked her out, he should have been more aware of the potential consequences. legally, the concept in tort law is called "duty of care". it means he has a responsibility to ensure that he carries out "reasonable foresight" in ensuring his actions don't cause harm. if it was a stranger, i'd agree he should be responsible for medical costs.
wp
I don't think his intention was to knock her out. I think he underestimated his own strength. His couple of swats (I don't think they were closed-fisted) were too much for her face. He didn't keep at it, or even seem angry; I think he was surprised when her feet fell out from under her. He got counseling, she forgave him, and they got married. I don't think it implies he's a serial woman-beater or that it will happen again. It has nothing to do with football, but I understand their money comes from fans, who have now seen the video. The media makes money at his expense, too, and that's the price of being famous. I don't condone what he did, but I feel sorry for him and wish the media would leave him alone.
jessica
the energy rush triggered in the fight response from the sns as a result of being cornered could very well have contributed to a slap that was much harder than intended. that's a lot of factors that neither of them had any grasp of as things were happening.
sept 8, 2014
the thing about kids that do pranks like this is that they want to get punished. it's a status issue. the more you punish them, the bigger their trophy and the more they can brag about it. getting retributive is something that's going to make you feel better about yourself, not something that's going to address the issue or otherwise correct their behaviour.
the ideal "punishment" would be for them to sit in the auditorium as student after student walks up to the microphone and verbally berates them for it, followed by loud audience applause. this would get the point across that the behaviour isn't "cool" and isn't going to help them make friends or get laid. so, ideally, this parade would include their friends, family members, people they have a crush on, etc.
....and, yes, they should get community service, too.
we wake up today to announce that justin trudeau has just been re-elected to his fifth consecutive majority government. he has long represented the world's last safe space for free trade and market economics. to celebrate this victory for globalism, the liberals have decided to renew the canada-canada free trade agreement (ccfta). let's see what justin has to say.
"we are proud that canadians have once again affirmed their support for global trade. we would like to celebrate with our trading partners. but, as we are the only country left that believes in free trade, we will instead renew our agreement with ourselves. after all of these years, the ccfta remains a pillar in solipsistic global trade relations."
do you still hold out hope for a return to nafta?
"did my father outlive laurier?"
president swift was on vacation in the bahamas and could not be reached for comment.
i think that the truth is that the prime minister and his foreign affairs minister are out of step with the party, and the way this has to end - soon - is that the party has to make that fact clear.
there is an excellent opportunity here for a caucus pushback. and, the timing to take it is right.
i really think the liberals should be offering to renegotiate nafta right now. and, if they paint themselves as these rigorous defenders of this failed global trade order, their support is going to collapse towards the ndp. they must be doing everything they possibly can to avoid the perception that they're the only thing standing between donald trump and the destruction of nafta.
it's going to be especially strange, because canadians do not expect the liberals to uncritically support these trade agreements. the reality in parliament is a little bit different, of course, but the canadian spectrum (in the minds of canadians...) is as follows:
conservatives: support the letter and the law of nafta. liberals: support the premise of free trade with the united states, but would like to renegotiate nafta. ndp: do not support free trade with the united states.
these are caricatures, but they are the positions that canadians expect the parties to take. so, if the liberals take the traditional conservative position, the spectrum will shift: liberal support will collapse - not due to the trade position, exactly, but because it signals an ideological change in the party that nobody really fully realized happened. this is potentially realigning. and, i don't think the party realizes it.
they absolutely need to indicate that they have reservations with this agreement and want the opportunity to open it up. this is imperative. they cannot just let this fiasco run through with the perception that they don't want to open the agreement in place...
even hillary clinton understood this. the problem is that nobody believed her. the liberals don't have this credibility problem - or at least they don't yet. they're about to develop it. and, it will be devastating.
if trudeau fucks this up by realigning the liberal party with the traditional conservative party position on nafta, the subsequent electoral collapse will be his legacy.
Friday, January 20, 2017
Sept 3, 2014
as was often the case, marx had it backwards. he analyzed the problem correctly - people focusing on an afterlife are going to endure large amounts of suffering to get there, and religions will continue to present this as a "virtue" in order to maintain the existing hierarchy of social inequality. this much is empirically obvious. however, you're never going to get the workers to revolt by having them abolish religion, you're just going to incite a xenophobic reaction and extreme cultural conservatism. we can see now that atheism is correlated with prosperity and can deduce that you're rather going to have to abolish poverty first, and then watch as people discard the mythology they don't need to numb the pain any further - even if they replace it with some other distraction.
it's difficult for the enlightenment thinker to accept that we can't all see through it so clearly. it drives me as nuts as the next egghead. but it is as it is...
rr
And how are you going to abolish poverty? While I guess we will have to turn ot Marx for the answer; communism. Poverty is the lack of. In the case of Capitalism it is the lack of the ability to produce food and shelter if you do not own the means of production.
You are in a constant state of poverty until you rent out your labour. but because the capitalist owns the means of production the worker has to rent out their labour at a discount. Thus another form of poverty is created. Meaning religious is still needed.
Besides where you get the idea that when teh workers revolt there is incitement for a xenophobic reaction and extreme cultural conservatism. Those sound like fascist tendencies which have nothing to do with the rise of the working class.
you seem to be mixing propaganda into your conclusions.
jessica
actually, marx would argue that the way to abolish poverty is by putting society through a process of converting the primitive capitalism we call liberalism into an advanced capitalism, which he called socialism. communism then follows only as a corollary. now, i happen to disagree with marx that this is really possible - i don't think capitalism is going to collapse under it's contradictions or evolve into some kind of utopia. any kind of vanguard will always be co-opted. however, the absolutely key aspect in his teleological argument is that capitalism is required to produce the productive capacities to abolish poverty, and communism can only follow after these capacities are socialized. on the point of capitalism reducing poverty, he was absolutely correct.
i need to be honest that i'm not really following the rest of your argument. what i was getting at is that if you incorporate the anti-religious bent into your revolutionary politics too strongly then the workers will inevitably choose not to follow your programme because they will interpret it as an attack on their culture. they may be confused about the difference between culture and oppression, but holding the mirror up isn't going to get them to understand it so much as it's going to create a backlash, and push them back into the arms of management. fwiw, this has been well understood for many decades, and various internationals have ultimately chosen not to place the abolition of religion as central to their politics as a result of it.
i'm not a marxist, i'm an anarchist. i don't have much hope in the working class to free themselves from their own chains. and, as an artist, the idea of a state run by workers actually scares the fucking shit out of me.
i will say this though: one of the things marx was wrong about was the social inclination of the working classes. we can get gramscian about it if we want, or blame it on a lack of education, but it's also been well understood for many decades that wage workers tend to be very right-wing, overall, in terms of their social beliefs and cultural associations. the kind of enlightened liberalism that some people want to assign to the working class is in reality a function of the advanced levels of education that are only available to the more wealthy members of society.
if you look at history, every social revolution has either begun on the right or ends up co-opted by the right almost immediately. conservatism just offers a value system that is more in line with what people actually want.
i'm very guilty of standing on the left and calling everybody morons, but i realize it's not exactly a productive means of engagement.
rr
I ome from atown that ws built by Unionists, aka the working lass.. We had no problems understand what was happening and being left winged.
yeah, I don;t hink Mar said that about Soialism. I think you are thinking of Lenon or later Marists.
Oupy Wall Street started on the right????
jessica
no, that was marx, alright. it's been argued that lenin tried to skip this process, and that was the ultimate failing point, but it's a subtle argument that i'm not going to get into. the real problem was the leninists were really badly co-opted by foreign capital. he was at once trying to convert russia from a feudal society to a capitalist society and from a capitalist society to a socialist society. i don't see a reason, in theory, why this ought to be impossible - even if lenin was explicit that they had to get to capitalism first. i do agree that russia wasn't the best place to try and build socialism, though, because it never went through a capitalist phase.
the best introduction to this is engels' socialism: utopian and scientific. it skips a lot of the theory (which really ought to be regarded mostly as nonsense, anyways) and just gets to the point in the proposed development of society from feudalism to capitalism to socialism to communism.
there were socialists that rejected this kind of teleological view of social evolution and argued for communism immediately, which is what you seem to want to assign to marx. they were called anarchists and developed through their own process, before disintegrating almost entirely between 1910 and 1950. i think history has proven the anarchists right, but marxists continue to reject them as not accepting various contrived marxist philosophical doctrines.
the occupy movement i was involved with was not very left-wing when you scratched the surface a little and talked to the participants. it attracted a lot of right-wing conspiracy theorists and right of centre libertarians (not to mention the odd nazi), but even if you throw these out as outliers the core of what was left really wasn't much further left on the spectrum than a fairly mild social democrat. the most significant thing that came out of it was the occupy sandy clean-up, which was no doubt beneficial to the people in the area, but was really operating on christian principles - and was, in fact, headquartered out of a church. it really ended up in the tradition of american liberalism, which tends to cluster around the center and lean a little right.
as for the topic, you'd be more likely to find occupy participants arguing for religious tolerance than the abolition of religion. that's a centre-right liberal/libertarian position.
something that's sort of been glossed over by history is that the anti-war movement in the 60s ultimately crested in electing nixon. there's a long history of this. part of the problem is that historians tend to have a leftward slant in their analysis, which blinds them to what is right in front of them. again: it's no depth of insight on my behalf to realize that the working class leans right. you can come up with gramscian excuses, you can take malatesta's line that unions are capitalist institutions that uphold the status quo rather than revolutionary institutions or you can swing pseudo-fascist like foucault does and more or less say "fuck 'em to their own misery, they're hopeless.". but you have to address it at some point. the evidence is just staggering.
even when we've seen some real organizing done and some real gains won, it's practically always been in the context of upholding the status quo - and much of the concessions have been produced with arguments that the demands are actually mutually beneficial. most of what was won was won in the context of fordism, rather than the context of revolutionary politics. union management and union rank and file have been more than eager to play along if they can just get a bit of spending income, which just keeps the system spinning at the expense of those outside the factories.
again: no insight on my behalf. this is well understood by people making decisions on both sides of the class war.
czg
I can not accept the argument that Lennin or Stalin are exceptions to the rule, Marxism generates totalitarianism by its process, after reviewing the man and his history I will even argue that he knew this and was the intent to marxisms design to usurp power from one group of alpha monkies to another group of previously beta monkies. Nothing beneviolet
jessica
i agree with you. marxism is an authoritarian, statist system. it's not possible to reach communism using marxist theory.
what marx outlined was an extremely exploitative form of capitalism. you're right that he was aware of it. and most of the socialists alive at the time were aware of it, too.
that's why they kicked marx out of the socialist movement.
and why the bolsheviks conquered russia with millions of dollars given to them from american banks.
it wasn't an accident. it wasn't a failure...
czg
You have my attention what do you suggest? Zietgiest is deception as well, from what I have learned. People are moral agents annd accountable to thier actions. When I was a victim and a part of my local zietgiest chapter I was poor and angry all the time. Then I took responsability for my actions and stoped doing things that made me suck as a person, now the community I live in and feed with my unique talents and gifts that only I and you can provide this world, now I am wealthy soon to reach 15 million a year in income, that can not be taken away unitl I die, not even communism can take my wealth as it is a part of my body where I go people thrive. Please join me in the light of truth and love.
I was a homeless person 12 years ago, so there are no excuses you need no money to start just a belief in your self and love for others.
jessica
lol. i'm in favour of socially mechanizing production and abolishing currency. that's what communism actually means.
sept 3, 2014
it's easy to understand why the israelis don't like this, but it doesn't have much to do with it - it's a deterrent against american intervention. and it's working. this is the reason the americans are funding mercenaries instead of launching air strikes.
there will be air strikes, but only on the condition that the rebels can disarm the air defenses. that's what their strategic objective is...
fwiw, i should clarify that i've always seen this record as a
disappointment, and every time i listen to it the point is reinforced.
it's not that it's a poor record, it's just kind of lacklustre. the high
points are great, but there's really only about an ep's worth of strong
material on it. it's about 75% filler.
the reality is that radiohead fell into a predictable consequence of a
long period of touring with the disc that is almost unavoidable. the
lesson for younger bands is that you can't come out of two or three
years worth of touring with the same passion for music - you're going to
get desensitized at some point. it's a consequence of the lifestyle.
deterministic. irreversible.
there's a thousand precursors,
and a thousand more will follow. you just can't make the jump
immediately. you need to recoup. if you don't, you fall into farce,
yourself.
they eventually took that time away, but only after they'd deadened
themselves to the process that much further by pushing through when they
should have stepped back. as a band, they never recovered from the kid a
tour.
i suppose that i am, to some extent, a kind of a culture jammer - although i'm not really thinking explicitly in those terms.
also, i don't care about yankee ceremonies for fake elections.
again: i think i've been clear that i'm not a vlogger in the for-profit contrived sense, that i never intended or wanted to be one and that if you're disappointed by the "content" (which i don't even like calling "content"...) then you're misunderstanding what i'm doing. i feel no responsibility or even any desire to entertain you.
the vlog channel was never intended to go viral, and was never intended to appeal to people outside of the music fan base. it was only ever intended to
1) act as historical documentation, for academics in the future and
2) direct people to the store at the bandcamp site.
my channel trailer asks you not to judge me by a standard that i'm not placing on myself. and, all that any kind of criticism is going to create is further pointers to the reality that i have no intention on living up to your contrived standards.
i've also been clear on why the recitations started, and why they've since stopped with the move back to a traditional blog.
i know that you hear capitalists deny a profit motive all of the time as a ploy to get you to think they're authentic. but, they don't deny that they're capitalists: they just look you in the eye and lie to you. i'm very openly critical of capitalism. this isn't a ploy. i'm really an anarchist-socialist. and, my behaviour is a reflection of it. if you're confused, you're confused by my disinterest in capitalism. or, perhaps you didn't take me seriously...
there will probably not be longer vlogs until the spring. and, this is the correct reflection of what my life is actually like. so, what would i be apologizing for? who would i be apologizing to? you're not my fucking audience. my audience is the future, and if i were to lie to them and be fake then i'd owe them an apology for being contrived. i don't owe you a fucking thing.
i think the third option is closest, but that it's a compound problem.
1) the decision was no doubt made in consultation with his advisers, which were trying to tap into a current of critical theory that sees quebec as a colonized population. this is absurd all the way through (quebec is a colonial state, not a colonized one), but it is an iteration of a type of thinking that is currently a kind of a fad amongst young people and would lead many to the conclusion that "reverse discrimination" is impossible. they really wouldn't acknowledge english minority rights as possible because of the system of systemic discrimination designed to oppress francophones. it is simply historical ignorance to try and look at francophone canadians the same way you'd look at african americans, or indigenous canadians, but what they're doing is blindly applying the theory over top of their ignorance of history for the reason that it is fashionable. this is exactly how his advisers think, and it is no doubt at the the actual root of the fiasco.
2) he didn't react. he should have realized that the particular question in front of him was an exception to the strategy. now, do you blame his advisers for not being rigorous, or do you blame him for being slow on his feet?
believe it or not, i am not a liberal partisan. i just don't usually find much of substance in the media criticisms. i don't think the media is understanding where this whole fiasco came from, and if it did it would likely be that much more appalled. but, part of it is actually a generation gap built on top of an education gap. believe it or not, most youngish, educated liberals would actually agree with the principle, even if they acknowledge the need for an exception in this scenario.
i'm reacting negatively to the entire premise, because it's a false equivalency built on top of a logical fallacy. but, i'm an anarchist; i don't like foucault. so, this is some ideological leftist infighting.....
i think that last post is actually quite important. and, i don't think anybody - including myself - is really cognizant of the obviousness of it.
justin trudeau has given the liberal party a tremendous gift. but, is he wise enough to realize that he is not intellectually capable of guiding the party in the long run, and needs to be focusing very strongly on his successor? is he aware that he's the opening act for an as-of-yet-undetermined headliner?
this seems counter-intuitive, given his age. but, he is not a visionary, and everybody knows it. he knows it.
how long is he even going to bother sitting around to get publicly attacked for triviality after triviality for? is this really what he wants?
his role is to facilitate a transfer of power. and, i don't know who he transfers power to, either.
aug 26, 2014
let's be honest...
if pet were alive, he'd be using exactly the same tactics as harper: he'd be pointing out that his son is intellectually unfit to run the country, calling him an empty suit and a bleeding heart and mercilessly making fun of his hair.
as much as i'd like to see a change in government in this country, the reason he'd be doing that is because it's true.
the liberal party has fallen a long way over the last twenty years. i'm not going to write another retrospective or post another eulogy. but there was a long period of time where, even if you didn't agree with them on every issue, you could count on them to run somebody with a head on their shoulders that wouldn't do anything stupid. those days seem to be over.
what i will say is this: there is no longer a default choice. if they get back in, it's not going to be another dynasty. and there's no clear answer as to how we can get back to that sort of passive comfort level of at least being pretty sure they're not going to fuck anything up.
the weird thing about it is that you know you're voting for the person that replaces trudeau, as odd as that sounds. it's weird how history cycles.
there's a lot of parallels between harper and diefenbaker. and while baby trudeau is no lester pearson, he may very well be a short term, transitional leader whose legacy is primarily connected to who he places in what position.
(yeah, i know that pearson did lots of stuff, just go with it)
call them hobbits if you want, but there seems to have been some insular dwarfism going on in the british isles a few thousand years ago...
i keep pointing out that all of the analysis on iran is done in a vacuum, as though they're not surrounded by russia, china and india - the three biggest powers outside of nato - and as though there aren't any mutual interests in terms of defense and trade.
he's getting the right point, i think, but he's avoiding the context. the realization that's being come to is that the harder they push iran, the more they're going to integrate with america's competitors. as a "regional power"? well, let's not sell out the saudis so quickly, now. how many billions was the last arms purchase? that's a big shift in alliance, and there's really no indication it's occurring.
see, the thing is that the sanctions are an act of war to begin with. the united states is already at war with iran. it's just a different type of war, aimed at trying to influence the government. it's not just empty barbarism. i think everybody knows this. but, if those sanctions are having an opposite effect of increased military co-operation with russia, and china and india circumventing the petrodollar to buy oil, it's no longer playing into american interests. the aim is to dominate them; if the effect is they're losing them, then they're not working.
when something's not working, you don't keep doing it - you recognize as much and adjust. the west pretends to be so concerned about iran developing a bomb, but the faster and easier way to get a deterrent is to rely on russian and/or chinese protection. if the americans keep it up, the russians could act out of principle. and the chinese simply need the oil.
but, iran wants sovereignty. it might be an exaggeration to suggest it wants to be one of the four biggest powers outside of nato, but it certainly wants to be in control of it's own interests. so, becoming a fief of russia or china is no answer. that gives the americans a bit of bargaining power.
which means that what is developing is the same situation that exists in north korea, where a crafty state is finding ways to play the powers off against each other.
the question that wasn't asked and makes all the difference in the world...
does the white house control the pentagon, or does the pentagon control the white house?
i know there's some rules on some old piece of paper nobody takes seriously, i'm talking about the actual fact of it. because it's easy to see that if the pentagon controls the whitehouse then the elections don't matter in terms of foreign policy direction. the civil service just keeps plugging from one administration to the next.
consider this: when was the last time a president truly altered foreign policy? through the course of my life time, at least, it's been one after the other with an identical set of policies on every important issue that exists.
so, how do you explain cuteness in animals as a biological reaction, anyways? forget the philosophy, that's oldskool. stop thinking like that. start thinking biologically.
like, let's say you see a squirrel bopping about with a nut. awwww. but, you should probably want to eat the thing, really. or should you? squirrels really aren't the safest thing to eat, in terms of carrying parasites. rodents, in general, carry a lot of diseases....
perhaps it's a type of quality reversal. you're allowed to think psychologically, you just have to recognize it's a result of the biology, rather than vice versa. if you ought to want to eat the thing, but the thing is gross, you really, really ought to NOT want to eat the thing. so, because you would want to eat the thing if it wasn't gross, it's actually rather important that your response to a squirrel bopping about is "i don't want to eat that because it could make me sick".
see, but you might be tempted, anyways. the next step up is "well, i can't eat the thing, look how cute it is.".
perhaps cuteness consequently derives from grossness.
aug 19, 2014
i'm really sick of the idea of "education failing our children". it was clever for about two seconds. now it's one of the worst cliches out there.
it's particularly annoying because it masks the root of the problem, which is a culture that places initiative in the wrong places and creates individuals with stupid priorities. the system can break you, but it can't make you. you have to do that shit yourself. every copy of that awful michelle pfeiffer movie should be tracked down and burned. it's not the answer...
it doesn't matter how bad the system is. in the end, if your kids can't count or read then they fail. you can talk about the kids not working hard enough, or not having the aptitude (in rare cases). you can talk about the youth culture downplaying it's importance and producing warped, cynical psychopaths. you can talk about the parents not raising their kids with good mindsets or at all (which is the real root of the problem in almost all circumstances). but you can't reasonably blame it on the education system, which merely presents information to interpret. i can't even get my head around how anybody could even make sense of shifting the responsibility for personal achievement in such a bizarre manner.
so, let's get it right. it's not as touchy feely. it requires a level of responsibility. but, the system doesn't fail your kids. your kids fail the system. and, if that happens, it's *your* fault.
aug 18, 2014
ok, i'm glad to see them doubt the idea that it's just the old and sick lions doing this. that's always been blatant lion apologism. but, i really don't think there's anything new about this, either, or that it has to do with habitat infringement or the weather or some other extraneous factor. that's really just further lion apologism.
i don't know why it's so hard for people to get their head around the idea that lions and tigers are apex predators in their environments and we're not. i think it's ultimately a religious thing. even humans that aren't religious have held on to this idea of humans as being outside of the food chain, but the evidence in front of our faces just simply does not uphold this. i mean, in the video they talk about animals and humans as though they're two entirely different things that don't naturally mix in nature. a moment's reflection should indicate how absurd this really is.
there's actually mounting evidence that humans evolved as prey species, and primarily for lions (or the ancestors of modern lions) in the african savannah. the predator-prey relationship that developed may even be the dominant factor in how we evolved intelligence, both culling the human population of those who were unable to escape and providing a selective factor for those that were able to figure out how to not get eaten, whether we're talking about individual or group behaviour alike.
it follows that what you're seeing here is ancient behaviour that goes back millions of years and defines what we are as a species, not something that's developed recently. there really couldn't be anything more natural than humans being eaten by lions. it just might require adjusting your understanding of humanity's place on our planet to get your head properly around it.
if a god actually did exist, could it even begin to understand our inherent irrationality?
or might we just perplex it to such an extreme point of confusion that it would just give up on us?
i'm kind of leaning towards the latter, really. i couldn't imagine any supremely rational being being able to get it's head around us. it would just be too much for it.
"they're pointing nuclear weapons at...don't they know what...da fuck...?"
then, we wonder why the bastard seems like such a vengeful asshole. well, shit, what other response is there?
you can only frustrate a supremely rational being so long before it gets to a breaking point and is just like "fuck it.".
and, see, the thing is you'd *expect* an irrational creature to build a social system centered around that creature's inherent rationality - as a consequence of that inherent irrationality, which would blind it to it's own nature. if such a creature were to have the capacity to come to terms with it's inherent irrationality, it wouldn't truly be irrational. that is to say, it would be an impossibility, rather than that it would state anything about the creature's nature. a rational creature may understand it's rationality, but an irrational creature could only confuse it's irrationality for rationality. and, i may have just proven what i have suspected all these years - that i am not a member of the species i ought to be a member of.
as i've stated previously, i'm content with sharing a genus with homo sapiens (sapiens) but i need a new species categorization for myself. sorry.
actually, they say that the person that discovers the species gets to name it, so i guess that's my responsibility.
this should surprise nobody that knows me: i am hereby homo j.
i'm half-considering putting the application in to the academy, just to see what happens.
Aug 17, 2014
yeah. you know, here's the thing: lions eat people, too. quite a few of them. not when their "natural diet" is low; humans are a component of a lion's "natural diet". some theories even suggest it's part of the reason why we humans got so s-m-r-t. they'll come right into the village, grab a human and start munching, alright? estimates are around a thousand human deaths a year due to lion predation. they're above us on the food chain in the regions they inhabit.
now, if you saw a lion munching on a human, would you say "ah, whatever, it's nature. lion's gotta eat."? well, you might if you're some twisted hobbesian psychopath. but, you're probably not. you'll probably react with a healthy amount of empathy and say "noooo! not the human!".
so, why is it different with an elephant?
i'm not denying the premise. it's true: a lion's gotta eat, and it's gonna eat what it can, including you, if you're around. but, there's no rule that says we need to have lions.
now, stop and mentally define the word monster. would you not agree that a lion perfectly fits the definition of a monster? they're horrific creatures, really.
elephants are very smart creatures that demonstrate a range of emotions and cognitive abilities that in some ways exceeds our own. as far as we know, an elephant can't find the root of a polynomial equation (or prove it can't be found using any brilliant methods developed or not developed by french revolutionaries dabbling in group theory), but most humans can't do that, either. we do know that elephants have far superior memory skills to our own. the reality is that the depth of their cognitive abilities is still being studied, and may yield some rather shocking (to some people) surprises.
in short, an elephant deserves your empathy just as much as a human does. at various phases in our existence, we've banded together to chase off predators that pose a threat to us. we've driven some of them to extinction - and that's natural. if it's them or us, and it generally is when we're talking about predators that eat us, i'd rather it be them.
so, i think it's worth asking whether or not it's worthwhile to stand in solidarity with the elephants to drive the lions to extinction. i'm not saying we should, exactly, i'm wondering if we should. do we have a moral case for it, considering elephant intelligence? and do we really need a world with monsters in it?
so, the thing is that you're wrong. if you were right, i'd probably uninstall adblock. for the record, what i'm trying to do right now is figure out why youtube is only counting about 30% of my hits (and i suspect it's the reason why). to me, that's a better argument.
the average adblock user simply isn't going to respond to the ads. they're not going to go buy the iggy azalea cd that's advertised on the radiohead video. they're not going to go watch the awful movie that is being mass marketed with no concept of demographics.
what people like this guy (and is that really his bedroom?) need to realize is that advertisers are going to eventually clue into this and abandon the format. making me watch a 30 second spot for something i'm never going to buy isn't going to resolve the underlying problem, which is that the advertising doesn't work.
if we want this internet thing to work outside of a model of corporate dominance, we need to come up with better ideas than advertising because, adblock or not, it's days are numbered.
so much of the internet is built on an advertising model - including google. but, google's search function is precisely what has made advertising obsolete. it doesn't really matter what you're advertising for anymore, you're not going to reach anybody under 40. rather, younger people will use google's search engine to actively research anything and everything they're going to buy, from a $5 pack of guitar picks to a $500,000 house. the advertising is just reduced to noise to work through in the research process. it's entirely worthless.
historically, advertising's primary purpose has been to convince us to act irrationally, but all advertising claims are now subject to immediate verification through internet search. it's basis of coercion through emotional manipulation can no longer be effective because it is too easy to rebut.
it might be more than ten years before this becomes understood, but it's happening, so we'd might as well start adjusting for it now, not when it happens.
the way i see it is that advertisers are going to have to shift from actively pursuing customers to being able to provide information. it's going to no longer be about attracting as much attention through volume and whatnot, and going to shift to being about trying to get sites listed at the top of search engines and then creating content on the company's own website that engages possible buyers. this is a really fundamental shift, as it shifts attention away from coercion and towards the actual product.
that reduces traditional advertising to bandying about search terms as buzzwords to try and get the rankings skewed in their favour. and it completely cuts out this clockwork orange style forced viewing that's been pushed so heavily, and is failing so badly.
simply put, the era of the passive consumer that responds to aggressive advertising is coming to a close with the coming irrelevancy of generation x, whom everybody always knew was going to get squeezed between two much larger demographic bulges and have a relatively shorter period of relevancy than the generations that preceded and followed them. what will follow is an era of the active consumer that independently seeks out information and must be advertised to interactively, in a way that responds to their requests for information.
companies that get on top of this will be successful, while companies that cling to obsolete models will fall apart.
SuperkenGaming
You clearly have never been to a school if you think advertisement doesn't work lol.
jessica
yeah. i think it may have worked some time in the early part of the last century, up til a bit past the middle of it. but, we're so saturated with ads now that we mostly ignore them. i think it might have something to do with an extrapolation of the idea of transmarginal inhibition. i think most of us have hit a sort of an ultra-paradoxical phase, where advertising merely produces a negative response.
it's not just youtube. i know where the billboards around my house are, and i walk by them multiple times in a week, but i don't know what they say because i completely block them out as soon as i realize they're ads.
i would consider the literature on it to be very out-of-date, and i'm not aware of anybody that's doing current research on it. that applies both to pro-advertising and anti-advertising literature.
SuperkenGaming
kids buy brand names to fit in... the brand name isnt on the shirt because its a cool name.. its wearable advertisement lol
jessica
i'm not convinced that's actually true. i never knew anybody growing up that thought like that.
the only brand names i ever had on my shirts were stuff my parents bought me because it was on sale, and i mostly avoided wearing them because i felt awkwardly conformist in them.
there was a phase in high school where i wore a lot of band shirts, but i was trying to advertise myself to people that may have had like interests because i didn't have a lot of friends. it's a bad comparison.
SuperkenGaming
you mustve not known many people :P
look at the iphone.. IOS is clearly the lesser OS, but the iphone is an accessory made popular by public and celebrity advertisement
jessica
the iphone's market share was the result of it producing the product first. as android/google and others have caught up, it's market share has actually decreased dramatically.
further, macs are still a novelty item and will almost certainly remain that way, no matter how much they spend on advertising.
now that the market has leveled, the primary factor for people buying a new phone actually seems to be price.
stockingandblossom1
i cam watch an old ad from the 90's like the pentium 3 ads over and over and never get tired of it. but i can't stand todays commercials it's too generic.
jessica
that's probably more your age talking. i'm not saying "you're old", so much as i'm saying "the advertising isn't directed at you anymore".
i think a bigger factor is the saturation. we're just bombarded, and if it doesn't produce that violently negative reaction almost out of reflex (that's what i tend to get) it just gets lost in the low signal to noise ratio.
stockingandblossom
that could be true, also if i have to watch ads and risk getting a virus i would like to be paid to do it. google should pay both sides of the coin if they want people to disable adblock.
jessica
i just want to clarify that he probably means companies tracking him, and it's not a trivial concern.
you can see the price determinant everywhere if you drop the idea of brand recognition, which is probably not accidentally pushed through various literature. there's two commodities i consume a large amount of: mayonnaise and soy milk (not blended together).
with the mayonnaise, the brand name is always stacked to it's highest point on the shelf, until they have to put it on sale. then it starts moving. it follows that the brand name mayonnaise is not marketable unless it's price is reduced to that of the no name mayonnaise. and, it often ends up hitting the store doubly, because they have to reduce the brand name to below the no name to get it to move (because consumers just automatically pick the no name, because they know it's cheaper), which causes the no name to back up, and then have to be reduced even further. they only seem to be able to resolve this by reducing orders.
the soy milk is even worse. the grocery store i go to has simply stopped stocking the no name chocolate soy, which is generally about a dollar cheaper than the brand name stuff. i actually went and tracked down the manager of the store, because i didn't want to pay the extra dollar. he explained to me that the brand name has actually put pressure on the chain (food basics) to stop stocking the no name, because the sales for the brand name were so low.
those are just two examples i can see and understand through direct experience. there's no doubt many others.
Eave
I'm not going to argue, you're selfish and inconsiderate. What if you got less money at your job? It would MASSIVELY cause your life to go on the decline. (provided you don't switch jobs in said situation) This would force the fun things which you pay a subscription to to be no longer available. You'd have no internet, TV, and barely any food. Having nothing but the necessities is a terrible life.
jessica
that's a market society, buddy. i don't like markets, either, but the solution isn't to sit around and complain that it isn't fair that nobody's propping up a failing business model.
one solution to try and get around the inequalities and anti-art biases that are inherent in market capitalism is to argue for a guaranteed minimum income.
aug 16, 2014
...but,
on a larger scale, i think the world needs to get ready for something:
the trolls will inherit the earth. in the last generation, it was the
nerds. everybody hated them and looked down on them, but they became the
most successful gen xers. in the future, expect the trolls to overcome....
aug 15, 2014
townies. ugh.
i expected those, though. it's a miracle it took this long, really. best to avoid them....
"you know, you should open up the advertising a little bit so people know the shows are going on."
"but it's a tight knit scene."
"that's why you should open up the advertising, so people outside the scene know what's going on."
"if you want to join the scene, you should come down. it's very tight knit."
"but, that's why you should open it up and make it less exclusive."
"but, it's a very tight-knit scene."
ugh...
fuck tight knit scenes, i want radical inclusion.
somebody shows up and offers suggestions on ways to open it, and all they get is a lot of attitude and an almost violent desire to maintain a small, incestual clique-y group. that's not something i want anything to do with. it's radical inclusion, or fuck off.
i mean, the bottom line is i haven't seen much of anything that's interesting in terms of local music over the year i've been here. it's all very generic and boring takes on different styles of punk, or equally boring folk music. my conclusion is that there's really not very much interesting music happening in the area at all.
but there's a specific bar that doesn't have a show calendar online. now, i really have little reason to think the bar is booking anything that's worth going to. i think the reverse logic is pretty applicable - if anybody worth watching was playing the bar, the bar would be updating it's listings. but, i'm the type of person that wants to know what's going on at all the bars i can get to, anyways, just in case there's that one rare act that seems interesting....
having idiosyncratic tastes requires this kind of meticulousness.
you wouldn't think a suggestion for a bar owner to update a web page would set off such a defensive reaction, but that it did says a lot about the area and the people that inhabit it. it demonstrates a very clique-y mentality that is suspicious of outsiders and wants to "vet" people before they're allowed to integrate.
going to a bar to watch a show doesn't imply a desire to join a club. and i definitely have zero desire to join a club....
this is why i prefer big cities to small towns. when i go out somewhere, i don't want to meet up with a group of people that i know, i want to fade into the crowd. i don't want everybody to know my name; i don't want *anybody* to know my name! i cherish that level of anonymity.
so, detroit's a good fit for me. windsor, less so...
in the end, if the local bands in the area just want to play to the same group of friends every show then that's their choice. i'll go hang out in detroit and watch some more interesting acts in the process...
it's probably too late for koko, but can't this kind of research be done in groups in the future? i mean, imagine being abducted by an advanced alien species, locked in a room and forced to communicate in code with them. no matter how well the aliens treat you, you're going to get lonely. you're going to feel various pressures to do the kinds of things that your dna demands that you do. and, you're a human, not a gorilla. chances are you're going to cope with it better because you have more advanced reasoning skills.
further, wouldn't the research even be superior if it was carried out in groups? if you tried to study a human under those circumstances, you'd no doubt be studying some kind of manic depressive psychopath, as the result of the conditions.
nearly every segment i've seen from this ape is trying to communicate immense grief. she's fucking miserable....
the thing about gorillas is that they're smart enough to understand they're being caged. you've seen at least one action movie, right? what happens when the aliens put an action hero in a cage, and the action hero gets the chance to escape? doesn't even need to be aliens, either, does it? could just be bad guys. and, it's carnage.
you consequently need to interpret the violent behaviour, when it happens, as a function of their captivity. you'd act no differently, yourself. it doesn't matter if the aliens or the bad guys "treat you well". you're still going to eat their faces if you get a way out.
but, it's different if you're integrated into the family. maybe there's a level of stockholm syndrome, but it's a different scenario than being locked in an enclosure.
what's going to define the nature of the beast is going to primarily be whether or not they interpret you as food. you're nuts to try and befriend a tiger. but gorillas are never going to interpret you that way.
of the other intelligent species? elephants aren't going to eat you, either.
i believe that the grooming is a gesture of friendship and the head honcho gorilla stormed off when it wasn't reciprocated. so, if you're ever in uganda, and some gorillas start grooming you, you really ought to groom back. it's rude not to, and might hurt their feelings. it's kind of like not accepting a local meal with the local customs..
again: when an elephant rubs your nose, it's expecting you to rub back. that's why it's standing there, within a foot of her nose, expecting reciprocation, and eventually walks off, confused and dejected.
basically, she "left the creature hanging". that trunk rub is a high five, or a hug. you gotta reciprocate or it's going to feel rejected...
(reply deleted)
jessica
+gps the apes that don't wear clothes have no trunks, either. i don't think it would find that confusing.
elephants learn almost everything from their parents and almost nothing from instinct - quite a bit like us. they wouldn't know an ape from a banana if they've never seen one before. that's not how the baby elephant is interpreting the human.
you've seen kids anthropomorphize animals. it's no doubt proboscidomorphizing her.
paramornal
+deathtokoalas Where did you learn that "when an elephant rubs your nose, its expecting you to rub back"? I am a veterinarian and my fiance is an animal caregiver and we never learned anything like that.
jessica
+paramornal well, it's an extrapolation. for example, you might see people hug their dogs. that's human behaviour, but sometimes we treat other species as though they're a member of ours, for the simple reason that it's how we think. now, humans are unusually smart animals - we can figure out how to communicate with some animals by mimicking their behaviour. elephants are also very smart, but this is a very young one.
when elephants rub their trunks against each other, it's a bonding thing. you'd expect family members or friends to do this. so, you'd expect an elephant to behave that way towards a human it wishes to bond with, because that's what an elephant would do - just as you might hug your dog. certainly, that's what the behaviour she's expressing is - a bonding rub.
it's kind of like when a chimp starts grooming you. that's not random behaviour, it's a bonding thing.
humans hug, chimps groom, elephants rub - and dogs lick. same idea. the fact that we're different species doesn't change the behaviour.
(reply deleted)
jessica
this isn't new behaviour, and i don't need a lecture. i may have coined the term, but there are many other observed instances of elephants treating humans as elephants. with elephants, especially - due to their extreme intelligence - it takes on a deeper dimension. i'm using examples with dogs and chimps to demonstrate behaviour they share with humans. in more generality, you can't interpret elephant behaviour the way you'd interpret dog behaviour - they're far too intelligent. they're not as smart as we are either, but you need to learn more in the direction of us than in the direction of our pets. with the trunk rubbing, this is a universal in elephant populations. humans may show a lot of variation in customs, but we also have some universals - and touching is one of them.
as another example of elephants treating humans as elephants, elephants have been known to bury sleeping humans under the misunderstanding that they're dead or dying. as astonishing as it sounds - and it is remarkable - elephants actually hold funerals for their dead friends and family members.
in fact, almost any mammal (excluding certain predators that interpret us as a natural prey source, which are mostly cats: lions and tigers) and a lot of more advanced non-mammals (this has been demonstrated in owls) will interpret us through their own filters and allow us to integrate into their social networks when they are existing. even when they're not existing, animals that co-habitate with us will work us into their own social understandings. i grew up with two or three dogs in the house at any given time, and i was entirely aware that i was as much a part of their pack as they were a part of the family - that we lived in a den as much as we lived in a house. the dog that protects their owner is demonstrating pack behaviour with the underlying understanding of the human as their dog kin. and, you've surely been licked by a dog that's trying to show affection and not really aware that we humans think it's a little gross. we do the same thing when we stand up for animals we interact with socially.
we have the ability to separate between species we consider "friends", but a moment's reflection will realize that this is an advanced cognitive ability. that the elephant sees an elephant in the human is not a sign of extreme intelligence, but a demonstration of their lack of full awareness. as great as elephant cognition may be in relative terms, it is a substantial abstraction to understand that different animals have different cultures and adjust behaviour to cater to each one. elephants understand elephant culture; due to our ability to understand that, we have the responsibility to adjust and respond accordingly.
====
yeah, i've seen enough to realize that the flowers are fake and the gorilla's articulation of sign language isn't. separating between the idea of "falsity" and "representation" may be a little abstract for her (although it might be something that could be taught), but she clearly understood that the picture of a flower was not actually a flower and felt the need to specify it. that is, she wasn't content with saying "that's a flower", she needed to find a way to express "that's a picture of a flower". that might not imply that she meets any technical definitions regarding the use of human language, but it does demonstrate that she understands what she's doing when she flops her fingers around. she is very clearly consciously doing so with the intent of expressing ideas that are her own.
i'm not sure it even makes sense to try and ask questions about grammar as they relate to sign language outside of the context of a spoken and written language, and i think it opens up a lot of questions regarding the circularity of it. i know there's different ideas about it, but i have a hard time separating grammar from written language. it seems to me that it's the writing that enforces the grammar, rather than the other way around. when you look at tribes that don't have written languages, the grammar may exist but is often rather basic - and they have thousands of years of linguistic evolution to get to the point, whereas koko only has her lifetime and a set of limited tools to express herself. i don't really have to hypothesize about taking europeans and putting them on a different planet without writing - you can look at how the language has broken down in areas of australia and north america, where the written component is not great. that is, you take the writing out and the grammar demonstrably starts to fracture. so, i just don't see how this experiment is able to produce any kind of meaningful conclusions on the question. to answer that question, you'd have to carry the experiment out over generations, teach them how to use written language and then construct something that gives the gorilla more ability to use grammar than signing.
but, i'm not falling for this idea that the gorilla is being conditioned. i've seen very little, of course - youtube videos. but the bit i've seen is just overwhelmingly in favour of an independent agent producing independent thought.
if the gorilla can understand over a thousand signs, it could conceivably understand just as many key combinations on a keyboard. that would eliminate a lot of ambiguity. perhaps using chinese style writing (or even something roughly comparable to hieroglyphs) may be a better way to start.
after all, humans didn't start with a complicated alphabet, either. we built it up over time. we started with pictorial representations that expressed ideas.
so, it's not really fair to grab a gorilla and expect it to grasp a modern roman alphabet with the complexity of a modern language right off the bat. i wouldn't even expect that a pre-neolithic member of our own species would be able to do that.
everything we know about plasticity and evolution nowadays suggests that whatever is inherent must have developed over the time we've been using language and grammar. so, if you want to do this and draw any meaningful results, you need to control for that by emulating the same kind of systems that early humans used, not the fully developed ones we use now.
i mean, we have no idea what ancient egyptians sounded like when they talked to each other. we can take some guesses. but there's not really any serious way to really understand how complex their grammar was, at the time.
chinese would be better for that reason, but it might be too complicated.
if tolkien can construct a new language, it can't be that hard to make one for some apes using a simple but "correct" grammar and then transliterate it with pictures constructed with combinations on an oversized keyboard.
and i'm suggesting this because i think the results will be shocking to certain people and put some questions to rest rather permanently.
====
see, this is rather pointless. yeah, she bashed the thing for a few seconds to get a peanut. but, what did you expect? the moonlight sonata? this is again a circular concern. i'm not aware of a culture that doesn't have music, but, if one did exist, i'm not convinced you'd get a different reaction from a human out of that culture.
and, probably roughly half the adult human population of the united states would react no differently....
"a keyboard. it makes sound. whatever. when do i get paid?"
i must have seen something somewhere recently about the centennial of wwI that bothered me in terms of the way it was framed, because the dream i had this morning was just off the wall, starting some time in about 1917 and ending in the mid 70s. i'm not going to go over it because it's a little blurry but it was some kind of episode of quantum leap. or sliders for the younger folk. or dr. who for the elderly, i suppose.
what i remember, though, is how insistent i was on a proper narration of events and how frustrated i was about people continuing to fall for propaganda that is now a hundred years old. it's made me wonder if this isn't a good time to review some basic historical misunderstandings of the last century.
i think historians will eventually think of one war rather than two.
1) the soviet experiment was not one in worker self-management, but something constructed by the vulgar marxism of the banking elite (new york, london) to determine if marx' ideas could really be used to reduce workers to compliant slaves and increase production and profit, as he claimed. if you're a member of the banking elite, you don't want to write off marxism without trying it out. it's pretty seductive, really. what you want to do is put them in competition with each other and see which is better at being oppressive. it turns out capitalism was the more oppressive system, and faking democracy is better at producing compliant people than faking socialism, so the bankers chose it and dismantled the soviet state. socialists, communists and anarchists of all types were mass executed in the process.
2) as is the tendency in russia, a nationalist appeared from nowhere and took over the state. it didn't null the experiment, but it did provide a problem for a few decades.
3) therefore, hitler, who was created to remove stalin - and nearly did.
4) hitler also backfired, but not as badly as stalin.
5) wwII was primarily a war between russia and germany. the american tactic through the war (sometimes misinterpreted as"isolationism") was non-interference, in the hope that the germans (who they supported) would remove stalin from power. however, once it was clear that stalin had the upper hand, it was determined that they must become involved to prevent soviet global dominance.
6) that is to say that the goal of the invasion of normandy was not to liberate france from germany (who had already lost the war on the eastern front and was merely waiting to be occupied by the soviets) but to occupy germany in order to prevent a soviet invasion of france, italy, the uk and spain.
7) likewise, the purpose of bombing japan with atomic weapons was not to end the war faster but to ensure that it would be occupied by american soldiers rather than russian ones. the russians were fast approaching. truman wanted leverage to get a direct peace treaty, and got it.
you have to meet the conspiracy theorists halfway. they're good at constructing evidence that demonstrates that whatever thing was a plot, and are often in the end proven right. what the theorists don't realize most of the time, though, is that they're uncovering a plan that ultimately *failed* and that the conclusion to draw from the evidence they put together is almost always one of mass incompetence, rather than diabolical genius.
everything up there is pretty standard history at this point, but the propaganda continues to define the narrative.
fwiw, i actually didn't vote for the liberals in 2011. i voted for the ndp that year.
2000 - liberal
2004 - ndp
2006 - ndp
2008 - liberal
2011 - ndp
2015 - liberal
i should also point out that i was not expecting a liberal majority and would have preferred to have them deal with the ndp on the budget. i would hope that the liberals are returned to a minority situation in 2019 that forces them to rely on ndp support.
canada doesn't have serious problems with voter suppression, or an electoral college, so trudeau would beat o'leary pretty soundly. remember: if the united states used the same electoral system as canada, and all other things remained equal, the results of the 2016 election would have likely given hillary clinton a solid majority government. the worst case scenario would have been a very weak minority for trump that would have likely fallen before the first budget.
so, these comparisons are foolish.
the actual truth is that it's probably actually exactly what the liberals want to see in terms of an opponent. trudeau would be able to smear him as an american.
it seems like the issue that is being coalesced around in canada right now is electoral reform, and it's really a no-win situation for the government. i just want to put a few things down here as a kind of brief memo, in order to explain the situation properly - because you're not likely to get a level-headed analysis from much of anywhere.
we need to begin by acknowledging that this was one of a couple of populist positions that drove trudeau's win, marijuana legalization being the other dominant factor. but, marijuana legalization is truly populist: it has support by upwards of three-quarters of the population, and across partisan lines and age divides. it really cuts the conservatives down to the most insular part of their base. i remember the media backlash when trudeau first announced this, and i couldn't understand. had they not seen the polls?
but, electoral reform is only populist on the left. liberals are split fairly cleanly, and conservatives do not support reform at all. so, yes: it was no doubt an important driver in getting left-leaning voters to choose the liberals over the ndp. in some ridings, it may have even been decisive. so, you can make an argument that it's why they won, and where their strongest mandate is. but, if you zoom out, you're only going to get around 40% support for the idea in general - and much less for any specific iteration of it.
worse is that the entire thing is built on a misunderstanding. unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on your perspective, these voters that swung from the ndp to the liberals and decided the election did not actually do their homework before casting their votes. while there was initially some ambiguity on the topic, it should be very clear (in hindsight) that they were in fact voting for proportional representation. however, trudeau has himself repeatedly rejected proportional representation in favour of the ranked ballot system. there was never any ambiguity projected, here. these mostly urban, left-leaning voters heard "electoral reform" and converted it into "proportional representation" without actually bothering to look into what he was actually saying. it's just another example of the left creating fantasy realities instead of looking at the evidence.
here is the reality: trudeau will bring in proportional representation the day after obama ends the war on terrorism. he never promised you this. you just made it up in your head.
but, the facts aren't going to pierce through the veil, here. these people are going to continue to agitate for a system that, in truth, almost nobody wants.
see, that 10% or so that wants pr is key in swinging elections. but, the potential for growth is extremely low. this has been put to a vote in the most progressive provinces in the country, and failed. the reason it keeps failing is because it's really not the system that canadians want. while reform is a key demand amongst the strong minority that wants it (that 40% or so), almost nobody wants to drop the idea of representation. nobody wants a system where it is not clear what population a member represents. even pr advocates have had to settle for awkward mmp schemes that nobody thinks can actually work - which is why they keep getting defeated.
my advice to electoral reform advocates is to drop the demand for pr. the liberals never advocated it; you misunderstood what they said, and need to accept that. and, if it's that important to you, you should have stuck with the ndp. but, maybe you might also want to listen to the arguments against pr. on closer analysis, perhaps you might find that a ranked ballot system may be in your advantage, after all.
but, you need to understand what the choices are between now and oct, 2019. you can choose between ranked ballots and first past the post. and, if you want something differently in the long run, your task is not to convince parliament to accept your scheme but to convince voters that your ideas are not flawed - which is a hefty task, because they are.
this is possibly the greatest simpsons episode ever.
i understand why it makes sense for some people to do this, but all i'm doing over youtube is marketing my music. i'm not aspiring to be a "youtube personality". i'm a composer that is documenting myself on youtube. it's not even secondary, it's tertiary. which is why i found myself so annoyed by the amount of time it was stealing from me....
increasing the subscriber count with people that aren't actually interested in the music just makes it harder for me to understand whether i'm getting through to anybody or not. this problem of disinterested subscribers is a big part of the reason that i took the deathtokoalas site down.
again: i get why people do it. it's the game they're playing. this is their purpose, their end goal, their total point. but, i'd actually publicly request that you don't subscribeunless you're legitimately interested in the music i'm documenting.
also, in the long run i'll need to keep an eye on my cholesterol. but, it's currently actually pretty outstanding.
i've been over this: my diet seems terrible, until you realize that i don't eat very much and i walk a lot.....
these numbers are real. and attainable. note: both of my parents have/had high cholesterol. my dad actually had several life-threatening cardiovascular episodes before brain cancer got him, and his father died of heart disease. if this were a purely genetic concern, i'd be in a lot of trouble. and yet look at these numbers....
chol: 3.69 mmol/L = 66.42 mg/dl. this is actually lower than the normal range (3.8-5.2). i also have low blood pressure....
tg: 0.88 mmol/L = 15.84 mg/dl. lower end of normal range (0.6-1.7).
hdl: 1.37 mmol/L = 24.66 mg/dl. this is pretty much in the middle of the normal range (1.00-1.80). higher hdl is preferable (apparently, above 1.6). but, i have to keep in mind that i'm low, overall. the way you measure a situation like this is to look at a ratio, and while it's not on the print-out, google confirms my logic. my ratio is 2.69; under 3.5 suggests i'm at low risk for heart disease.
ldl: 1.92 mmol/L = 34.56 mg/dl. this is also lower than normal (2.0-2.6), but again you have to keep in mind that the total is low. the important ratio here is ldl/hdl, which is 1.4. that again suggests very low risk - around half of the average risk, it turns out.
non-hdl chol: 2.32 mmol/L = 41.76 mg/dl. this measure is just a difference between total cholesterol and good cholesterol; it's the amount of cholesterol that is not good cholesterol. apparently, i want to keep the difference between non-hdl and ldl less than 30 mg/dl. well, i'm at 7.2.
i have to keep an eye on this because i should be at high risk. but, my lifestyle is very different than either of my parents, and the effects of that are showing pretty clearly.