actually, i'd kind of rather them not have data, as they're not going to do anything positive with it.

let them fire shots in the dark. maybe they'll take a few of their own out.

more broadly speaking, this actually demonstrates how stupid the administration is. it's exactly the kind of thing that people are going to look at in five years and derive a blowback out of. when applied more generally and broadly, it's exactly the attitude that will either take the administration down, or take the country down with it.

as a queer person, my fears of government oppression are in the realm of eugenics. that requires data - big data. and, if the government doesn't have that data, it's going to be limited in what it can do to stomp us out.

again, though: i'm not celebrating this is as moderate. i'm just pointing out that their stupidity is likely to work in our favour and that, at the end of the day, the preferable outcome is for the government and the media to drop the issue altogether and just leave us alone.

http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2017/3/28/breaking-trump-administration-removes-lgbtq-people-2020-census

when i was between drug store hormones in the mid 00s, i experimented a lot with these "natural phytoestrogens". i was just intending to maintain a broad kind of girlishness until i could get back to the transition.

i eventually settled upon this concoction, and i actually kept taking it when i was on hormones, until they discontinued the product.

i was in the drug store looking for niacinamide and i started thinking about it. i'd like to find a replacement, i think. i kind of just forgot about it.

they didn't have the type of b3 i wanted. they had the cyclic version, which i wasn't expecting and didn't research. or they had b complexes, which i thought about and decided against.

i got some coal, though...

if i end up in a health food store again soon, i'm going to see if i can find something.

i always found that the herbs were useful less for secondary characteristics and more for skin & hair. the intent was to maintain a youthful girlishness, and i have to say it worked.

https://www.windmillvitamins.com/product/menoprim

so, i'm picking up today where i left off on the....18th? 22nd?

i needed a break on the 18th. and the budget was released on the 22nd. and i guess i got lost overnight, woke up on the afternoon of the 24th and then went to a concert on the night of the 24th. i didn't get home until the morning of the 25th, and then slept the day off. i finished reading the budget over the 26th and 27th, then spent the bulk of the day dealing with the air quality down here and researching the safety of vitamin b3 supplements.

we got a nasty cold snap some time last week, and the sudden drop in temperature in the basement flushed all the pollution from the smokers upstairs down to the bottom floor. it's really absolutely disgusting, and it's probably going to take weeks if not months to air out.

i didn't initially grasp how bad it is, and thought i could just push it out by cranking up the heat. i've turned the heat up and down, and i just can't have the heat down - the pollution just overwhelms every time i try it. so, i don't even know when i'll be able to turn the heat down, but probably not until the temperature turns over to summery weather. i'm not going to give it another chance, as it gets worse every time i do.

i guess i assumed that the pollution would lift on it's own, but it's not going to. i need to find a way to actually scrub it out, in addition to leaving the heat on to push it out.

i started with some vinegar last night, and am going to have to get some charcoal tomorrow. i need ways to actual capture the volatiles.

it's disgusting. truly. even when i smoked, i smoked outside. you have to be truly revolting to actually choose to smoke in an enclosed place. it's truly disgusting; there's no other way to describe it. the law should be forcing these people to change, not protecting their "rights" to poison me. but, this is the world we live in - the state exists to protect every kind of piece of shit you could imagine, and that's exactly what these people are and exactly what is happening.

the other part of the day was spent looking into the b3, and i posted a bit of it here. what i really need to go out and get today a few days before the end of the month is bananas, because the store didn't have good options when i was there last week. i honestly think this is worth playing with, but also that i'm probably too young to see any effects. still. let's see what they've got...

1) bananas.
2) vitamin b3.
3) charcoal.

and, i'm actually not going to get anything done at the moment. i'm going to go wash my face. i'll be back in a few hours.

A)  TOXICITY: A minimum toxic dose has not been established.
    1)  After ingesting 11,000 mg of niacin within a 12-hour
        period, a 56-year-old man developed severe, persistent
        hypotension (BP 58/40 mmHg) in the absence of cutaneous
        flushing. Following supportive therapy, he recovered
        completely.
    2)  A 16-year-old girl developed epigastric discomfort and
        rash after taking 330 mg of niacin daily (more than 25
        times the recommended daily allowance for a teenager).
        Symptoms resolved upon discontinuation of therapy.
    3)  Two teenagers developed hepatotoxicity and acidosis
        after ingestion of 5 and 6 g of sustained-release niacin
        over a 48-hour period.

i think that what is more concerning to me is that b3 is often used to reduce bad cholesterol, and my bad cholesterol is already kind of dangerously low. i know: this isn't even a first world problem, because the first world is so overwhelmingly obese. but, if i shut my ldl off altogether, i will literally melt into a puddle of goop in front of you. we need cell membranes.

while we're on this topic, when are we going to bioengineer ourselves a proper fucking cell wall, anyways? that's a wall i'd enslave a million mexicans for. no, this is typical - the republicans are always decades behind the curve.

i want a cell wall, dammit.

and, i want to photosynthesize, too. how's that for a plan to abolish capitalism? fuck your wage slavery - i have chloroplasts, now. you're fucked. freedom is inevitable.

anyways.

if i take it, i'll take it at reasonable doses with the intent of giving my cells a bit of a boost and not as a fiend trying to chase immortality and take myself back thirty years. but, it's nice to know that even 11 g of the shit probably won't kill you.

there's a suggested adult dose at the bottom:

 Initial: 500 mg orally once daily at bedtime for 4 weeks,
       then 1000 mg at bedtime for 4 weeks; titrate by
       tolerability and efficacy but no faster than 500 mg every
       4 weeks; usual maintenance dose, 1000 to 2000 mg once
       daily at bedtime; MAX 2000 mg/day. 

if there's a bottle at the store for a reasonable price, i'll probably grab it. what's the worst thing that could happen?

https://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+1237

i'm not going to start popping pills until i weight the risks. relax.

most of the studies i've seen suggest that b3 is protective against type I. and, this chinese research team placed the curious claim that we live in a world of over-nutrition in it's abstract. i've been told repeatedly that the food we eat sucks, and that we don't get enough vitamins. but, maybe the politburo rejects this.

i'm going to take this one skeptically. but, it's there.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091222105449.htm

i'm probably not old enough for it to make much of a difference, but what's the harm in taking extra b3?

right?

wait. careful...

you can overdose on some of these pathways. make sure you do enough research.

but, if you're trying to boost your NAD+, there's actually several ways to do it.

http://www.wikipathways.org/index.php/Pathway:WP2349

“The government should be run like a great American company."

it's hard to make sense of what this means.

if taken literally, he would mean that the purpose of government is to maximize profit. which means what, exactly? we know they don't like tax increases.

i suppose the shareholders of the government are the people that own the debt. so, is he saying that government should be operated in such a way that maximizes return on debt? is he working for the chinese?

i had this problem with harper. half of the time, i couldn't even criticize him, because i couldn't understand what the fuck he was even trying to say.

there is no way to make sense of that statement. governments are not like businesses.

let's try a few comparable statements:

"the army should be run like a broadway musical."

maybe you like broadway musicals. but, how do you run the army like a broadway musical? this is incoherent.

or, how about this:

"this popsicle stand should be run like a world class science lab."

what?

ok. i'm done with the budget. the rest of it is accounting bullshit.

like i say: it's a weird document. it's full of blatantly dishonest language, and appears designed to mobilize untraditional segments of liberal party support at the expense of it's traditional base.

but, i hope i've decoded bits of it.

the issue over the next year may come out of right-field as financial deregulation. this was not discussed by anybody in the last election. it wasn't even an issue at all. the conservatives will support deregulatory legislation, but they wouldn't touch it when in power. let's hope the ndp picks up on it and reacts to it.

yeah. that's deregulation.

keep an eye on this.

in fact, the stability of canada's banking system was cited far and wide. we had no bank failures.

this strikes me as typically orwellian language from this government. i would keep an eye on this, as i suspect they are planning on deregulating, and packaging it in an obfuscating way designed to confuse us.

this is some good news, and it follows after a bit of an uproar regarding following through with an arms deal to saudi arabia that was signed by the previous government.

it remains to be seen if we'll uphold the commitments. but at least we're signing it. that's a good thing.

more haitian slave-labour!

i guess this is what they mean when they say they want to help under-represented groups find low-wage jobs?

don't buy shit from haiti...

i'll admit i may be misunderstanding this, but it looks to me like they're budgeting millions of dollars to spy on potheads.

but, trust them. they're not planning a harsh crackdown. nooooo. that's not why they're budgeting millions to spy on potheads.

it's so they can legalize it afterwards.

obviously, right?

ugh.

wake up: they're trying to smoke you out so they can cuff you.

mr. feminist prime minister...

ask your mom how she knows she's bipolar. what is the diagnosis based upon?

did they give her a blood test and measure hormone levels?
were they able to identify an area in her brain that was behaving a specific way?

or was it based on the results of an opinion survey, and the intuition of the wise magician?

whatever it is, it's not science.

what we actually need is a crackdown on psychiatrists, and an insistence from the state that they base their diagnoses on biological determinants if they are to receive funding. we need greater regulation in the sector to ensure people aren't being taken in.

this is a fiasco on multiple levels.

why is he doing this? because his mom blames the obvious ramifications of being arranged to wed an old man on a mental illness. i would rather suggest that any other outcome would have been absurd, and margaret was likely of sound mental health the whole time. instead of blaming her behaviour on a mental illness, we may want to have a second look at the practice of betrothing teenagers to old men. the people trying to argue that she was suffering from an illness should be ashamed of themselves. where's mr. feminist when the topic is the patriarchy attacking his mother's character? i mean, what was she diagnosed with, anyways? hysteria?

my own experiences with "mental health" professionals is that they're a bunch of con artists. i've been over this in this space. they do not provide for objective tests. most of the so-called conditions that they diagnose can never be confirmed or falsified. broadly speaking, they're not even wrong.

psychology, as a science, is a useful thing to fund. it examines the effects of brain chemistry, and does experiments that use the scientific method. you get no such thing by funding "mental health". you get a bunch of magicians, many of whom are pushing dangerous drugs for personal profit.

rather than increase funds for "mental health", i'd rather see the system liberalized to better pursue the concepts of free will and individual choice. as a random example, i'm a transgendered person who will probably never get through the psychiatric component of the transition. but, i don't think i need better access to a psychiatrist; i think the requirements that i speak with a shrink should be waved.

worse, he's overstepping his bounds on this.

the provinces may think it's a good idea to shrug this off, but they're setting a terrible precedent. everything else aside, including how useful these funds would be if spent on something useful, the provinces need to send the message that the pmo doesn't allocate health monies.

even if i agreed with the allocation, i would reject the interference.

this is an abuse of power and should be called out as one.

the housing bit is probably the only real upside of this budget that i can see and i just want to put in a little context regarding the framing...

the most substantial pushback that the government got on the refugee resettlement was always that it didn't make sense to bring in and house refugees when you've got homeless people on the street and indigenous groups living in third world conditions. how do you explain to these homeless people on lists that the government is bringing in refugees, they're higher priority and you'll just have to wait? and, how can you expect that not to generate racialized resentment, and not just amongst the people that got passed over but also amongst observers, passive and not so?

it's good that they listened on this file.

but, will it actually happen?

wow. lol...

for the 800th time, i would never call myself a "progressive".

i'm a libertarian. true libertarianism is socialism. i'll pick liberals over progressives - who i consider to be conservatives - every time. i'd prefer a socialist, if i can get one....

so, if i ever vote for a "progressive", it's out of cynicism and a poor spectrum. as far as i'm concerned, progressives are just conservatives with a conscience - and i see no issue with using terms like "progressive" and "tory" interchangeably.

i'm certainly never going to go out and organize with them.

i want to expand on my "running for election in california" quip, because i've said this before but never really got into it.

trudeau is actually probably more popular in the united states than he is in canada right now. this is recent: his numbers have crashed over the last three months, to the point where he's running in the high 30s. now, canada has a multi-party system, so running in the 30s is not the catastrophe here that it is there. regardless, if you're looking at raw numbers? he's running at 36%, compared to trump's 37%.

so, i'd suspect trudeau is doing much better in california than he is in canada right now. there was really never the kind of coverage in canada that you saw on sites like vox. our press is overwhelmingly conservative, but, even in the small left press, it just didn't happen. there was just a lot of skepticism.

in fact, i might suspect that trudeau and his advisers pay more attention to vox or even daily kos than they do to canadian sites like rabble, partly for the reason that canada has a left and the left-press is more interested in that left than it is in the bourgeois liberal party and partly for the reason that being bourgeois in canada means you probably spend a lot of time in the united states.

the liberal party intelligentsia has a lot of these bourgeois canadians that have spent good portions of their lives in the united states, and are consequently more connected to american politics than they are to canadian politics. some of them went to school in the states. particularly awful is that some of them went to law school in the states, and learned about the wrong constitution and the wrong system of government. some of them sought careers in the states. they all came back different people than they were when they left. and, if you realize the nature of the problem, it's actually very easy to point it out.

there are a number of issues on the table right now where the liberals sound exactly like democrats, and are being applauded for it by democrats. but, as this is happening, they are being nailed in canada by liberals for exactly what they are being applauded for in america by democrats. and, it's not always clear that they even realize it, because they've spent most of their lives disinterested in domestic perspectives. they seem to get their validation from the democratic-leaning sources that they've always consulted, and then don't even realize that they're getting nailed at home.

the previous leader - michael ignatieff - was absolutely roasted by the previous government for basically this issue. he spent a lot of his life globetrotting. he was a talkshow host in britain and a professor at harvard. he came back with subtle arguments in favour of torture that would go over astoundingly well at the fucking brookings institute or something, and seemed unable to grapple with the premise of leading a party that voted against the war in iraq on the grounds that it was illegal under international law. he was in a culture shock. but, he put a lot of the party that trudeau inherited in place.

i'm not even trying to attack anybody the way that the conservatives did. i just think that it's imperative that the ruling party ground itself in it's country of origin, and take steps to ensure that it is being directed by people that understand the views of the people that live in the country.

so, when i say that trudeau and his team of advisers think they're running for re-election in california, this is more than poetic license. there is a starkly dangerous level of truth to it. the reality is that a lot of them would be more comfortable discussing american politics, and that a lot of them see canada from outside in rather than inside out, or ground their perspectives in absurdly misinformed premises like "canadians and americans are basically the same".

if this government wants to survive, it will need to change it's perspective on how it sees itself in the world by cleaning it's house of americans.

so, what have we learned here?

1) canadians don't like it when you use the state to persecute religious minorities.
2) canadians don't like it when you use the state to prevent the persecution of religious minorities.

it sounds like canadians want a separation of church and state.

i know: it's a bleeding edge concept. maybe we'll get there, one day.

Forum Research has found that only 14% of people support M-103, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid's anti-discrimination motion that singles out Islamophobia.

if you go back a few pages, you'll see me argue that supporting the motion without defining the term wasn't worth isolating voters over.

The federal Liberals are now the first choice of 36% of decided and leaning voters, down from 39% last month. Meanwhile, the Conservatives, who are in a leadership campaign, have the support of 38%, up from 35% at the end of February.

they're idiots.

they seem to think they're running for re-election in california, or something.

they should have thrown the bill and it's author under the bus.

even irwin fucking cotler said this was stupid and divisive.

also, what they're talking about is vitamin b3. all of those acronyms mask that.

if you have a healthy diet, you probably get quite a bit of it as it is. and, if you're old, you should probably be taking quite a bit of it, anyways.

the effects of gravity, alone, will kill you, eventually.

i came to somewhat of an epiphany in 2008: given the inevitability of death, the only task worth accomplishing is finding some way to achieve immortality. and, i could go through a history of this, from eating the hearts of your enemy to drinking the blood and eating the flesh of the god-man in the christian ritual (it's kind of the same thing) and beyond. we've always known this.

i did not merely come face-to-face with the futility of existence, i realized the only way past it was to conquer it. and, so i set myself upon a goal of finding a way to eliminate mortality.

the question of chemistry is something that arose, but in the end i rejected it in favour of a process of shape-shifting that i believe is beyond the computational limits of my life-time. it was around 2010 that i decided that this is a poor bet, and i'm better off enjoying the life i have than wasting it chasing something beyond it. but, it was always with the view that the cutoff is likely very close (somebody 5-10 years younger than me may live to see it...) and with the understanding that i could even be wrong.

but, i don't think that the chemical approach is likely to work. i understand that biological aging is a chemical process and that it follows that you just need to reverse the chemistry in order to reverse the aging. but, it places the issue in a kind of a vacuum. a treatment like this may keep people's organs alive indefinitely, but it wouldn't reverse skeletal damage and it probably won't reverse dementia. so, you can live to be a thousand years old in a wheelchair, and have no memory of the last 900 years.

so, you can talk about replacing skeletal tissue with metal and finding ways to stop your brain from decomposing. but, you're going to get to some point at the end where you just can't do it anymore.

if you're serious about this, you need to separate the mind from the body and allow it freedom to roam. and, we will not be able to do this with conventional computers due to the prevalence of np problems.

that doesn't mean i'm going to avoid the stuff. but, it's not the answer i sought - and it's not the answer you seek, either.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/03/harvard-scientists-pinpoint-critical-step-in-dna-repair-cellular-aging/

i'm not sure if i've been over this in this space...

why does putin keep winning elections? the western narrative is that he rigs them. but, this is a poor understanding of things, and only works if you're ignorant of what's happening there and has been happening there for the last several decades.

westerners are used to very narrow political spectrums. you can vote for the left bourgeois party or the right bourgeois party. there might be a fake socialist party, or maybe some puppets of capital pretending to be libertarians. but, it's all strictly in a tiny sphere of neo-liberalism.

russia has a massive political spectrum. the options are communists, capitalists and fascists. putin's party is neither liberal nor conservative in western terms, but a broad capitalist liberal-conservative front against the commies on their left and the fascists on their right.

the main opposition party in russia is still the communist party. no other party has overtaken it. there is a very small movement towards social democracy, but the force most likely to threaten putin at this moment is a right-wing nationalism led by the likes of navalny.

this is why putin and his party are unassailable: the other options are literally soviets and fascists. literally. and, if the vote ever split, the communists would almost certainly win.

alexi navalny is not a liberal, he's a hard-right white nationalist. whether you like putin or not, this man deserves to be under deep scrutiny, and any movements he's leading should be stamped out with force.

he's a nazi.

i actually don't doubt their honesty. they believe what they're saying.

but, you can't take them seriously, or entertain their delusions. and, in a few decades, this will be seen as a historical curiosity.

just end the prohibition already and get on with it.

there's an easy way to check if m-103 is a threat to your freedom of expression, or if you're being taken in by right-wing demagogues, and that is to test it out by insulting islam everywhere you can. i'll start:

mohammad was a hamster and smelt of elderberries.

let's try another one:

islam is mind control, and it's adherents are brainwashed idiots. 

and how about:

religion is at the core of all evil in the world, and islam is amongst the worst religions on the planet.

this is a good one:

fear of muslims is rational because their religion is completely batshit insane.

one more:

religion is the greatest active threat to freedom in the contemporary world and must somehow be abolished. islam must be abolished.

am i going to get a knock on the door? i doubt it.

try it. it's fun. 

but, let's take a step back on this.

we know that the koch brothers are not stupid people, at least. so, if we take them at face value - and let's keep in mind that these people are all about choices. as neil peart said, even if you haven't made a choice, you've still made a choice. my dad was a rush fan, and i made fun of him every day for it. - we're left to believe that they made the following choice:

instead of:

(a) incrementally repealing obamacare. i mean, maybe the ahca wasn't what they wanted but it was a step in the direction they wanted, right? they could come back for the kill, later.

they chose...

(b) vote against an incremental repeal, and instead do nothing.

maybe the thinking is that they're waiting for donald trump to create a fourth branch of government, so that they can dominate that in 2018.

considering that we know they're not stupid, we have to conclude their hearts weren't really into it - that they never intended to do this, and the whole thing was a ploy.

i saw this from a distance because i understand that the political system is all theatre. the system is designed to prevent any kind of real democracy by continually confusing and distracting people. and, they always get what they want.

they wanted obamacare, and they got it and now you're stuck with it.

as an aside, as a canadian, this was one of a small number of issues that actually affects me. if this is shutting down, it's going to remove a big part of my interest in american politics - or at least until the next cycle, when i throw my support behind a single-payer candidate.

people don't like salespeople because they're perceived of as liars.

people want to put in a day's worth of honest work.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sales-jobs-for-young-canadians-1.4039537

i'm actually a little bit shocked that the media is giving time to somebody that is arguing against laws that restrict driving under the influence of marijuana.

i present myself as an expert on all things, but of all of the things i'm an expert on, being stoned is one of the things i'm most qualified to talk about. when you're stoned, something that happens is that you experience a delay in reaction time. maybe you've seen this presented to you in movies - this kind of memetic joke of a burnout taking a few seconds to react (and then speaking slowly), or the ritual of waving to a space cadet to bring them back from staring at the wall. this is a realistic portrayal of the effects of marijuana.

the delay in reaction time that marijuana produces, combined with the fact that most people only require a puff to get stoned, should actually imply an almost zero-tolerance position. you should never drive when you're stoned.

marijuana is not a medicine, and i actually really hope that legalization negates all of the absurd talk that it is. i mean, people used to refer to alcohol as medicinal 100 years ago, too, as absurd as that seems, today. but, even a bottle of cough syrup tells you not to drive under the influence. this isn't singling them out.

marijuana advocates need to be aware of how absurd these arguments are to the general public (and how wrong they are, too) and distant themselves from them.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-marijuana-legislation-1.4039047

tomi lahren was obviously always a scripted actor.

no.

stop.

scripted.

i don't know what she thinks, or particularly care, either. i mean, maybe she was faking it in college and is truly a right-winger. maybe she's realizing her career is being restricted by holding certain opinions. i don't know; i don't care. but, i can tell you that she didn't write a word of what she said on her tv show - and anybody that is paying any attention at all can see that.

there's a reason she had difficulty answering questions in real-time and had to resort to yelling people down, and it's that her job was to just read shit off the teleprompter.

that said, she could even be secretly brilliant. who knows? i don't. and, i don't care...

but, i've posted about this previously. there was never any use in arguing with her, because she wasn't actually expressing her own views. if she was pissing you off, what you wanted to do was figure out who her script writer was and track (probably) him down and go after him.

but, again: i'm not brilliant. it was obvious. if you fell for it, you're an idiot.

i should also point out that i'm reacting matter-of-factly to the idea of being monitored because i've been aware of the reality of it for years.

i think i first became aware of being trailed around 1998 or so, as a result of the opinions i expressed in debates over usenet. there was a specific van that seemed to follow me all over the city of ottawa, for years. i was just a kid; i didn't think through the consequences of ranting on the internet.

i've lived most of my life with the understanding that i'm being followed. there are actually some upsides to it, if you think it through.

i don't think the guy at the bar last night was random, and i was cognizant of it as the discussion was ongoing.

it's not exactly clear to me what it is that some shady political establishment thinks it would accomplish by convincing me that a god exists. i mean, i can guess that they may possibly be thinking that it might make me more industrious - that's the anarchist deconstruction of religion in the first place, that it's a tool used by capital to maximize productivity and keep good order. i'm not really interested in being a criminal, so trying to convince me, specifically, would have to be with the aim of making me more industrious.

i don't pretend that the preachers and politicians and other "enforcers" have any real faith in anything. it's only the ignorant at the bottom of the chain that actually believe any of this stuff; the enforcers are behaving pragmatically in the interests of their benefactors, as they always are. so, where the real debate lies is not in the validity of religion, but in the value of it. will religion actually make people more industrious? what the atheist argues is that it will not make people more industrious, or more moral or more pliable and may actually even make them less productive, less moral and more rigid. i think the only point we agree on is that religion is essential for generating jingoism and promoting war - you can't successfully declare and wage and win a war without using religion to generate support for it and that is a truth that has demonstrated itself repeatedly over the centuries.

i'm trying to imagine what i'd actually be like if i legitimately, honestly, seriously believed in a god and i have to think i'd probably actually be some kind of jesus freak missionary. if you took away my fear of death, i'd be a lot more willing to take risk and my threshold for pain would be a lot higher. so, i'd probably end up as a full-time political activist. what would change is probably that i'd convert my cynicism into a sense of self-righteousness and find myself more actively engaged in protest. i could very well end up in jail. and, i might end up on people's shirts.

free jessica

i'd rather just be free, thanks.

somebody was pushing pascal's wager down pretty hard in the smoking section last night.

(i'm not sure if he knew it was pascal's wager)

it's logically sound, with the caveat of quantifying it. if you think that the chances that a god exists are 50/50, it is rational to take pascal's wager and accept religion. certainly, you'd have to acknowledge that rejecting religion is taking on substantial risk.

but, if you think that the chances that a god exists are better quantified at <1%, as i do, then pascal's wager breaks down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager

on the sixth day god got crunk,
and on the seventh day she rested.

the democratic party just stuck a knife in the back of the millions of activists that have spent years or decades campaigning for single-payer, and that make up a substantial core of their activist base.

that is what trump meant when he said the democrats now own obamacare.

trump's statement about the democrats owning obamacare is the correct analysis, on this: he's right. they own this. it's theirs.

personally, i would have hoped that at least a couple of democrats would have voted to tear obamacare down with the aim of campaigning on single payer. but, there wasn't the slightest bit of support for that position.

we are now left to conclude that the democrats do not support single payer. they support obamacare. this is the position of the democratic party, and there is no discernible opposition to it.

so, the republicans now get to stand back and watch the party tear itself up over it - because voters that reject obamacare, and insist on single payer, can no longer deceive themselves into thinking that this position is held by the democrats, or that voting for the democrats is going to lead to universal health care coverage as an outcome. you vote democrat, you get obamacare.

this is what i dreaded.

trump just tossed the potato into the democratic primaries. and, leftist democrats should now be making it a priority to target representatives that refused to stand up for single payer.

home alive/

actually, i want to be clear on the point that i think it's actually very important for transwomen to respect some boundaries regarding cis-spaces.

i'm never going to take up space in a debate about abortion, for example. i have a perspective, and you might not be surprised to find out that it's idiosyncratic. because i'm an atheist, i'm not necessarily going to uphold the sanctity of life, and if that's the way the argument is being framed, you might not like my response. but, for me to make my own argument in my own space is one thing, and for me to take over a floor is another. i'm good at arguing, sure. but, i don't have a uterus; this is not my concern.

there are other scenarios regarding gendered violence, where i'm going to be quiet. and, i'm not going to push myself into a space like that if i'm not wanted in it. it's just not the right place to make a stand.

these are specific situations and not general ones; unlike other scenarios, the arguments in these scenarios are actually grounded, and i think they should be contemplated very carefully.

the thing is that i've never actually seen an actual human with one of these things on.

meh. probably not as hot of an idea.

this is coming up because i've been considering buying a bicycle and just leaving it in detroit. i'd have to find a safe space for it - and i know it's a matter of time before it gets stolen. i have no history on a skateboard, but i've bicycled very long distances very regularly and could easily handle 20-30 km. i could bicycle to ann arbor, even.

it would truly open up my options tremendously.

i'd just rather have an option i can take home with me...i really don't want to leave anything in detroit on a regular basis...

i've never been on a skateboard in my life.

but, seeming as i can't get across customs with a bicycle...

what i should do is try to find one in a pawn shop and just experiment with groceries. if i get used to it, and find it useful, i should at least be able to take it back and forth across customs.

of course, i could never get into the bar with one. what do you do with your board when you take it to a concert? you probably just don't take your board to the concert.

considering the number of punk shows i've been to, it's actually odd that i've never noticed what people do with their boards. and somebody or other must be transiting with these things...

given that i'm talking about moving upwards of twenty-thirty km on one of these things, an electric one seems like a smarter choice, but they're like $1000.

the thing about trying to block gorsuch is that there are three more open seats coming - probably all of them in the next four years. you can't block all of them. and, if you lose the court, it's gone.

this is a lost battle.

the democrats should focus on an outcome they can actually alter.

and, the country should brace itself for a hard right supermajority on the court. it's inevitable.

i think that if you look at the costing on these items, you can see where the government's head is really at, regarding emissions.

i will at least acknowledge that we need to spend lavishly on mitigation.

so, what i'm going to say about the infrastructure bank is that municipalities and provinces should avoid it.

i mean, it's there. whatever. don't use it. push for direct funding, instead.

ok. this is a little bit more of what i wanted to see: direct spending. just fucking doing it. not "creating incentives". not "providing conditions". just putting the money down and fucking do it.

grossly quantifying projects doesn't say a lot about them, but at least it demonstrates that there's money flowing.

here's a surreal thought to work through: most "entrepreneurs" have no idea how to run a business for the simple reason that they've never been in one.

but, i mean, again: what else would you expect from the dauphin? or his hand-picked advisers, which are either right out of school or maybe had a stint in a previous government, but were right out of school at the time?

when i use the term "bourgeois parliament", i'm not exaggerating. most of these people - including the prime minister - have never had a real job in their lives. so, why wouldn't you expect them to grasp on to these ideas, as absurd as they may actually be? it fits their own life experiences: you just walk out of school, and then you save the world. who needs experience?

if things aren't working out immediately, the workers must need to be retrained. after all, the idea was brilliant, right? you saw it: it was brilliant, right? right? yeah...

btw - fwiw - i actually don't know what the job market is like in windsor, because i haven't applied for one since i moved here.

if i were to apply for a job in windsor, i would be looking at a part-time job in the service sector. at minimum wage, i'd need to work about 28 hours a week to make up what my odsp is, but i could take a substantial pay cut and be comfortable. i'd be looking for around 20-25 hours.

maybe a grocery store, or something.

anything else would require a commitment i don't want to make.

oh, good.

maybe they can finally invent an electric car.

it might upset alberta, though. we can't do that. so, it's probably better just to pretend you're serious by assigning minimal funds to "research" in the budget.

maybe, they can put some research aside into developing a smart phone, too. and, wouldn't it be cool to fly across the world?

the research phase has been done for a decade. they should be funding deployment and transition. obviously, they don't actually want to. but, it's foolish to drag feet on something that the rest of the world is already using - you can't suppress progress, you can just fall behind.

it's funny.

i can't seem to find a number for 2015, let alone 2016.

surely, the data should be in. why isn't it being published?

this document is dated to mid 2016. why doesn't it have data for 2015?

https://www.ec.gc.ca/indicateurs-indicators/?lang=en&n=FBF8455E-1

from what i can see, you should not just expect the government to fail to meet the conservatives' emission goals, but you should expect emissions to actually increase under this government.

again: this is not what they campaigned on, and not what i voted for.

this is what the conservatives were pushing for their entire mandate.

this is what i voted against.

providing capital for private companies is not a climate change plan. i voted for direct government involvement. when will the government drop the market fundamentalism and take a direct, hands-on approach that will actually work, rather than continue this failed approach of trying to incentivize market capitalism?  

this is admitting that they're not doing anything. they're even trying to change the topic. what does gender equality have to do with climate change?

the budget is full of references to women, and the reason is that that is what the government wanted the news cycle to focus on. but, it's clear throughout the document that it is a persistent attempt to distract from things they don't want you to notice, or to try and get you to change the topic altogether.

the platform promised direct government spending to transition the economy. what we're getting instead is a collection of tax incentives, greenwashing and corporate welfare.

the reality is that this could have been, and perhaps actually was, lifted directly from the conservative party platform.

it's not a lot of money. and i don't believe in money, anyways. but they've got a lot of nerve.

hey asshole albertans: why don't you sell to your own fucking country? and, yes we deserve a discount, too.

or would you rather stay unemployed?

if you thought the days of some despotic oil dictators in alberta running the government were over...

so, it seems like the so-called democrats in the corporate news media got a look at the tax break trump is throwing at them.

i really wish that clinton had picked franken as her running mate. this was spectacular.

so, green infrastructure means building subways and light rail through manufacturing areas? it's maybe not what i was hoping for.

it's easy to make the argument that increasing infrastructure in high employment regions is a good investment. but, the term "supercluster" would have described the auto industry around detroit and southern ontario 50 years ago, and no amount of infrastructure in the world could have kept it there.

i'm usually in favour of infrastructure. i'm not going to argue against building. but, if this is their attempt to fight offshoring, it's pathetic.

in the long run, i would expect a train or two to nowhere.

this is actually priceless, because you can tell it was written by some parasitic "venture capitalist" that knows how to talk the government into giving him money, but doesn't have the slightest fucking clue what to actually do with it.

that's what "entrepreneurs" are really good at, after all - swindling people. they can't actually do anything.

so, what this picture says is something like:

1. come up with some pothead scheme.
2. talk the government into giving me money.
3. ?????
4. profit!

i'm not exaggerating. that's what this says.

and, the government reacts by suggesting we need to train more workers, as though everything else in the chain of logic is perfectly sound. but, you would expect them to, because they're every bit as clueless and bourgeois as the entrepreneurs, right? they uphold each others' delusions. it's surreal.

maybe, we should stop giving money to "entrepreneurs" that have nothing but a barely concocted scheme that they haven't the slightest idea how to actualize without smart engineers, and just give money to the workers in the first place, instead.

fuck entrepreneurs. we need more co-ops.

but, i want to draw attention to this specifically.

nobody is talking about preventing "underrepresented groups" from competing and succeeding in "high wage" labour. in fact, our system is pretty focused on helping marginalized groups succeed. we have a different set of systemic biases, here.

but, the governing party sees it fit to specifically exclude "non-underrepresented groups"...which i guess means white people...from walking into the space opened up by pulling back on imported slave labour.

it is legitimately and specifically and explicitly insisting that low-wage work should be racialized.

in the budget...

i guess you're expecting me to be upset by the obvious exclusion of whites, but that's not actually what they're doing here. i mean, they are. but, it's not because they're secretly muslims or something. no. they're upholding a concept of white supremacism by stealth. they're assigning the low-wage labour as being below the white person. this is racializing low-wage labour, and placing it at the bottom of a hierarchy.

for all their attempts to appeal to a kind of plastic left through hollow appeals to diversity, they fuck up on this kind of thing every once in a while, and expose where their real biases are. so, when i periodically accuse them of being brutally racist by stealth, and pushing down the programs they do because they're racist rather than in spite of it, come back to this post to see what i mean.

and, i've argued in the past that this kind of thinking is actually widespread on the left, even (perhaps especially) amongst activists. what all of those anti-oppression workshops were really doing was inserting a racial hierarchy into your brain and normalizing it in ways you hadn't even previously thought of...

and, this should be abolished altogether as well.

look at the way they word it. they want to make it easier for the mcdonalds to hire mexicans and blacks from down the street, rather than have to import them from out of the country. throughout, the premise of low wage works remains racialized.

or, the bit on "seasonal industries". this is our own backdoor to agricultural slavery. they don't even get a minimum wage.

where is the legislation on introducing minimum wages for "seasonal workers" to go along with the bit about bringing in more slaves?

*crickets*

this program was not meant to be a backdoor for slavery, it was supposed to be a way for high tech firms to bring in skilled workers that were unavailable. but, we've had two successive governments abuse it.

the program should be permanently abolished. the government has proven that it can't handle temporary restrictions of immigration laws without importing slaves.

this is contemptible. forget about fees. i don't care about fees. they should ban the import of "foreign caregivers" (a euphemism for personal slaves) altogether. it's absolutely outrageous that this is not just allowed, but spoken of openly in the budget.

they should ban them altogether, and be willing to defend the legislation in court.

see, this is the kind of non-policy that every government has been pushing forever. they make it seem like the job market is healthy, and these unemployed workers are just too lazy and stupid to get a job. what they need is a better education!

meanwhile, they note elsewhere in the budget that young people coming out of school are facing unprecedented challenges.

we used to have the courage to call this what it is - supply-side economics - and reject it as ineffective.

but, the government is not allowed to create jobs anymore due to competition laws. so, what this is is actually a type of welfare. successive governments have refused to admit this because it puts the entire neo-liberal agenda into question. but, the way i see it is that they're just wasting resources. would it not be better to stop wasting money on retraining and instead use those monies to increase and lengthen the assistance?

the reality is that these people are not going to find new jobs. when is the government going to adjust to the new economy, admit the reality of things and find a way beyond it?

i'd rather cut and paste, but the site hosting the document won't allow it. and i don't believe in intellectual property rights anyways, but i think the budget should be public domain, no?

well, i don't give a fuck what you think, anyways.

they actually admit that it's just politics. "we asked you what you wanted, and we developed a document full of politicized language and empty buzz words in order to affirm your biases with.".

then, they pretend this is "democracy".

i wasn't expecting something different. it's just kind of surreal.

in canada, if you consider yourself a "progressive", you'd probably prefer the conservatives - and if you consider yourself a "libertarian", you'd probably prefer the liberals. we just haven't had these broad spectrum shifts. we kept the actual meaning of the words...

...or, at least, we did up until a year and a half ago.

they've been creeping me out for a while, this isn't news to me....

i've been over this a few times, but i need to clarify a point: the legacy of the "progressive movement" in canada did not end up on the left.

for most the twentieth century, the two major parties were the liberals (on the soft-left) and the progressive conservatives (on the soft-right). this is because the progressive party merged with the conservative party in 1942.

maybe the confusion people will have about this is in not understanding old toryism. but, the conservatives in canada were trade protectionists up until the 1970s and broadly supportive of the concept of christian charity. they were also socially conservative, but so were many progressives. it wasn't some frankencreature - the merger fit, and it created some stable governments.

the point i'm making is that there isn't a history of a progressive liberal caucus supporting sin taxes and prohibition like there is in the united states. there's not a dormant history, there. it's just weird.

i'm not even complaining; i don't drink a lot, and the couple of cents won't matter. but that's just my point. it only makes sense as an unexpected ideological shift to attract a nontraditional demographic. and, combined with a list of other things, liberal voters should be getting a little worried about shit.

it's a weird budget, from what i can tell.

one would think that the liberals should value the votes of young urban professionals. so, why are they doing away with a tax credit for people using public transit? why don't they throw away tax credits for rural farmers, instead?

worse, people that have been building a list of reasons that the liberals are hypocrites on climate change will correctly point to this as another point of hypocrisy.

nor is the government to be expected to save a significant amount of money by taking away the tax credit. it's a rather obvious ideological slap in the face for their own supporters.

but, i suppose you might hear a dim applause somewhere in calgary?

it's simply hard to make sense of the intent.

likewise, it's hard to see what the purpose of raising taxes on alcohol by a few cents a bottle is, other than to take the legislation to church with. it is neither raising any kind of income, nor is it acting as any kind of disincentive. it just seems like an ideological attempt to lure in right-wing voters with literal crumbs.

as an aside, i think that this is the last piece of evidence required to declare marijuana legalization permanently dead. they're purposefully targeting the religious right, with no discernible logic in fiscal or social policy.

the elimination of the canada savings bond is also obviously ideological. i'm old enough to remember my grandmother explaining to me why it was important to hold debt in the hands of private citizens, rather than let it accumulate in the hands of banks. i can't claim that i disagree with her, but i realize that nobody buys the things. still: why shut it down altogether? see, a part of the reason that the green infrastructure bank that existed in the platform was interesting to me was that it was about public rather than private financing. it seems that this part of the plan has been jettisoned, and that whatever infrastructure gets built is going to be done with a "private-public partnership", meaning it's going to function as a revenue stream to large institutions, many of them dominated by foreigners. shutting down the canada savings bonds is maybe symbolic at this point, but it is consistent with the government's move towards a neo-liberal model of infrastructure financing and indicative of this government's broader interests in working for it's high capital benefactors. we will regret this, in the long run. but, we'll regret not buying into the debt, too - this is the end of a process, not the start of one. regardless, it is another shift to the right.

they're also earmarking large amounts of money to give away to capitalists under various schemes, but one expects that, as it is the very purpose of a bourgeois parliament. but, i don't see anything in the budget that will lead to economic diversification, or open up new sectors.

likewise, this "child care" money is just corporate welfare. there's nothing in the budget about changing the way the system operates, there's just a lot of handouts to capital.

we'll have to see whether any of the money for social housing gets spent, or if it gets spent usefully. you'll excuse me for being cynical.

but, my takeaway is that this is a weird document, with confusing priorities. the very little that it actually does seems designed to piss off their own voters, and try and generate support from the religious right.

when you see these kinds of situations arise, they're usually being manufactured.

you can call me a conspiracy theorist if you'd like. but, it's a little weird that i told you this was going to happen, isn't it? did anybody else suggest this was plausible?

they don't want to appeal obamacare.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/politics/house-health-care-bill/

i want to add a caveat that the bit about race being fluid is a little bit cavalier, and should have probably come with some qualifiers. race is not necessarily fixed. race is potentially fluid. etc.

this is otherwise an excellent study.

but, you'll note that it isn't groundbreaking. the study itself points out that it's results are consistent with genetic testing and also with the anecdotal evidence that has come down to us orally.

http://aida.wss.yale.edu/~nq3/NANCYS_Yale_Website/resources/papers/NixQian_20150101.pdf

i remember studying this issue at school and concluding it was actually deregulation by stealth, amd would probably lead to exactly the opposite outcome of the one that advocates desire.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/essays/standingtrees.html 

that said, rivers in india are kind of a special case because of the centrality of them to the culture. i remain skeptical. but, it's perhaps the best possible test case, too; if it's going to work anywhere, it's most likely to work in a culture that views the river as sacred.

that said, look at how filthy the river is in the picture. it's the first thing that is obvious.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/03/21/india-court-grants-ganges-yamuna-rivers-same-rights-as-a-human.html

it's not like nobody predicted that we'd be in bad shape if oil prices came down, or like nobody criticized the harper government for focusing on a single industry at the expense of everything else. we have a historical record. the criticisms were pointed, and brutal - and are proving to be astute and forward thinking and correct, while the government's vision is demonstrating itself as narrow and delusional and just flat out wrong.

better ideas have existed the whole time. nobody expected the conservatives to listen. but, we expect better from the liberals.

this budget will save the government, or break it. let's hope it puts a serious focus on diversification, and isn't just full of buzzwords to drive the news cycle.

these articles are starting to pop up, but i haven't seen a single one draw the obvious conclusion that oil is obviously a shitty way to build an economy, isn't it?

maybe we should build our economy on something else?

marijuana? ethanol? solar? wind? hydro?

if you just read the news and take it at face value, we're fucked and can't do anything about it until the prices come back.

what if they don't come back?

and, how did our government become this overtly idiotic? i mean systemically. we've had changes in government in ottawa and edmonton, and yet they're pushing the same stupid line.

the petro-state is failing. do something about it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/oilpatch-ottawa-budget-morneau-1.4029620

i'm actually really not ashamed to make the point - i've made it before, and i'll make it again.

the reason so many transwomen end up in these aggressive, dominatrix or porn star type roles is that they're actually hyper-dominant, ultra-patriarchal dudes that see female sexuality as the ultimate means of control.

the truth is that the psychology of the thing is supposed to categorize this type of trans person as a crossdresser and try to talk them out of it. what defines a crossdresser is some kind of arousal from women's clothing, which can and often does take the form of empowerment. transgendered people, on the other hand, don't get aroused by crossdressing, they feel normalized by it.

it's just kind of complicated to even have this discussion right now, because you'll get accused of promoting conversion therapy. but, the truth is that there are two different phenomena here, and conflating them is going to lead to false diagnoses.

on the other hand, who's to tell a crossdresser not to do it if they really get that much of a power trip out of it? so long as they're not hurting anybody - and i should point out that this is the precise scenario where there is a nontrivial possibility that they might be hurting somebody - then who is to tell them what to do with their own body?

but, it's important to understand the difference, and analyze it carefully relative to what you see in front of you. one is essentially a compulsion disorder, and may often be associated with aspects of narcissism. applying hormones in this scenario may not be the best idea. the other is rooted in a feeling of social ostracism, and a desire to belong to a group that better fits existing personality traits.

but, yeah - the trans stereotype of projecting sexual power is what it is for the most obvious reason possible. it's so obvious, you probably missed it.

just look what meth does to you.

because what the world needs is more k-tards.

what the actual fuck?

they describe it as a "popular club drug". right. ahahahaha.....

k-tards, in fact, tend to hang out in backyards. they may intend to make it to the club, but never do because they can't figure out how to tie their shoelaces. they may from time to time have such a difficult time that they trip on the way there, and spend the rest of the night in the ditch.

on the rare occasions that they do make it to the club, they can usually be seen congregating in small groups of men (general attire: basketball shirts & backwards hats) and talking about video games.

the article should say "universally acknowledged drug for complete losers".

next, they'll be prescribing meth. because that's what the really, really cool kids are into: meth.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/20/520169959/ketamine-for-severe-depression-how-do-you-not-offer-this-drug-to-people

this is such utter stupidity.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/will-bill-morneau-save-13000-lives-with-a-levy-on-sugary-drinks/article34336836/

i don't think the government has any kind of social obligation to run seaports or airports. i've only been in a canadian airport twice (had to leave and come back), and i'll probably never be in one ever again. there's a large percentage of canadians that will never even take a flight at all.

but, insofar as this is a public resource, i would like to see any money raised from it invested, rather than used for "debt relief" which is just unnecessary. there's no reason to pay down the debt....

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/no-plans-for-airport-sales-in-liberals-federal-budget/article34358267/

looks like putin bought a crappy puppet, if you ask me.

everything i said would happen is happening. it's not my fault. it was just obvious...

i'm not brilliant; you're retarded.

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/8444/israel-warns-it-will-destroy-syrias-air-defenses-without-thinking-twice

the thing that bothers me most about this case is that she felt the need to flee to india in order to protect herself from her family in canada.

how have things managed to get so backwards?

they should be extradited.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/honour-killing-sidhu-extradition-india-1.4032318

i just want to explore the point, to kind of demonstrate the reality of things. i know this isn't a dating site. and, this isn't an ad - don't reply to it. but, what does my ideal partner actually look like?

i should address gender first, obviously. i'm what you call pansexual. i mean, i'm functionally asexual, but it's a consequence of basically hating everybody. my actual position on the matter is that it doesn't matter what your gender is, so much as it matters whether i like you: i want to fuck your personality, not your body. so, i'm not at all driven by hormones; i'm not at all excited by physical sex. you don't go more than ten years without even trying, unless you're just not that into it, right?

but, that doesn't mean i'm interested in both genders equally. i'm not bisexual, or not in the sense that i see boys and girls as equally attractive and things to enjoy in different ways. i'm going to lean overwhelmingly towards a kind of sexless femininity, and i want to be careful about how i describe this.

i consider madonna, for example, to be exceedingly masculine. the ideal of the strong, dominant sexually aggressive female is as unattractive to me as the ideal of the strong, dominant sexually aggressive male. when i say i'm attracted to a sexless femininity, i mean i'm attracted to very submissive people. i'm an anarchist: i reject hierarchy and i reject dominance. i want complete equality. not a pretension towards equality. not "equity". fucking equality.

so, it could be either gender, but it's certainly a non-aggressive, passive, low-key ultra-beta personality type.

attached to that, i would prefer a musician but i would insist on an artist, at least. i would want somebody that i can create with. that would, in fact, be the basis of the relationship - a shared interest in creating. i would even go so far as to say i would be bored with just about anything else.

while the person does not need to actually be unemployed, i would not want somebody that is attached to their career. i know i come off as an introvert, but that's partly due to shielding. i don't want to date. i don't want to be in a relationship where we each have our own lives and just meet up from time to time to get drunk and fuck. i have to be the center of attention at all times (and will reciprocate). so, there cannot be time for a career, because we'll be too busy focusing on creating things. there cannot be time for other friends. there cannot be time for family. we're going to shower and shit together, or i'm going to start to feel neglected. i am absurdly high maintenance. so, this person needs to either be unemployed and on disability or independently wealthy or living through some other arrangement that does not see them disappear for long periods to participate in some useless market bullshit.

i don't want kids. and, i don't want this person to have kids, either. not even if they're adults. obviously, this person has to not want kids.

this person is probably older than me.

perhaps the incompatibilities are more obvious at this point, now that i've told you more clearly about what i would actually want. but, perhaps you can also see some of the points of overlap that existed.

the arabs tried to invade italy repeatedly, but constructing racial arguments around it is anachronistic. the revisionism is not in rejecting the racial narrative, but in constructing it.

the empire was not a roman concept, it was a persian one. the king of kings was the persian emperor. the empire had a kind of feudal structure beneath, where rulers of client states like armenia could refer to themselves as kings, so long as they accepted the king of kings - the persian emperor. when alexander broke persian power, he left a series of weak states that ended up warring with each other. the seleucids often styled themselves king-of-kings but it was never in reality. as the hellenic period fell apart, random despots started using the title - much as random despots today use the term caliph (itself a conceptual descendant of the persian hegemony). a part of the reason that the romans were able to absorb the levant so easily is that they were looking for a stable overlord, and entrance in a stable empire. in half of the persian lands, the roman emperor became the king-of-kings - but the persians never liked this much, and they fought for a thousand years over who got to be the true hegemon.

but, all of this fighting between rome and persia for hegemony over the middle east just recreated the same problem that existed at the end of hellenism. the people wanted a stable empire to exist within, so that they could trade and drink wine and carry out their rituals. islam was maybe not what they asked for, but it was at least a unifying force. and, so, the caliph became the king of kings and the emperor must be forced to submit.

in fact, it is the emperor's refusal to submit that is unique in history. the greeks conquered the persians, and the romans conquered the greeks. the arabs were not able to fully conquer the romans. and, so, what was one civilization broke apart into two.

so, when the arabs were carrying out months or years long seiges on constantinople, and launching their thirteenth invasion of italy or whatever it was, they weren't seeing it as invading a foreign land. to them, they were completing their conquest of the single empire that had always existed.

and, likewise, the crusaders did not see themselves as stealing land from arabs, but as taking what was rightfully theirs - because there was no concept of christianity and islam as separate cultures, but only of a broader western culture seized by civil war.

the consensus amongst roman historians for the first century or so of islam was actually that it was what was called a heresy, which is a very technical term, in context. muslims weren't seen as a different religion, but merely as confused christians that had deviated from orthodoxy.

centuries later, the turkish sultan was still insisting on calling himself not just the caliph, but also the roman emperor and, still, the king-of-kings - as these were all one and the same thing. and, this idea of christians and muslims as culturally separate is really a consequence of the renaissance.

this is really what we need, here.

we could stop giving it away to new york...and potentially drop generators altogether...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5wqzsg1bQY

i'm going to take a different view on this.

"restricted mode" basically means "religious right mode". it's a service that is explicitly designed for a combination of ultra-conservative parents and grouchy old people. this is what they want, and i'm not exactly of the view that i need to cram myself down their throats.

but, conversely, why can't i get an anti-religion filter? and, don't think this isn't an issue.

i've actually installed a plugin called "hide unwanted results" because i got pissed off about "answers from genesis" showing up when i searched for evolution information, or climate denial bullshit clogging my results when i search for climate change info. and, searching for lesser known band names can produce horrific results. the plugin lets me block entire websites altogether, and it's truly a godsend.

i'm sorry, but there is simply no scenario at all when i want answers from genesis in my search results. never. ever. it's not in my hosts file or anything, i can access the site. but, i don't want the christian bullshit. ever....

so, i kind of see where they're coming from. there's shit i just don't want to see, too; i just wish they'd let me block the religious bullshit, which is what really pisses me off the worst. perhaps they could open up the filter to something user-customizable...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/20/lgbt-community-anger-over-youtube-restrictions-which-make-their-videos-invisible

sanger is right. but they should do it anyways.

i just don't find this idea of paying into things to be scary, but i guess i'm leaning more towards a revolutionary left. sanger is basically looking at the situation and saying "this is just corporate welfare". it's not that he's wrong, so much as that i'm willing to support capital investments in the short run, and then argue for nationalizing in the long run.

and, there's not a lot of ways out of this, either. if they gauge badly enough, we seize the assets. there's not another possibility, here - it's an inevitability.

yes: it would be better if we just nationalized it from the start. but, the focus needs to be on building at any cost. we can seize it later.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/federal-budget-expected-to-flesh-out-infrastructure-bank-plans/article34345704/

my actual opinion is that you should let them die.

i mean, there should be treatment centres. this is a health issue, not a legal issue. i support the clean injection sites because it reduces the cost of health care by giving addicts clean needles. if they get aids from sharing needles, it costs for more to treat them in the end, and they become that much more of a burden on the system.

but, this idea that we need to go out of our way to save drug addicts is, i think, wrong. let them overdose....

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/funding-opioid-substitution-1.4032400

"he was a stupid, disgusting, awful human being" - a friend and collaborator of lou reed's, describing him, post-mortem.

i'll show in numbers how truly stupid this is and why it's worth resisting.

suppose that this is the course marking breakdown:

final: 50%.
midterm: 20%
assignments: 10%
participation: 20%

if my marks are as follows:

final: 90%
midterm: 90%
assignments: 99% [for me, this is realistic]
participation: 0%

....then my grade is:

.5*.9 + .2*.9 + .1*.99 + .2*0=
.45 + .18 + .099 =
 0.729

so, you can get an A on the exam, an A on the midterm and ace the assignments....

...and end up with 73% in the class.

does that make sense to you?

it happened. over and over and over...

but, i'm still not going to participate. i'm just going to stand in the back and snicker at how stupid you all are.

a responsible professor would look at this outcome and change their grading strategy. they might think it's impossible, or something. when they see it in front of them, they should abandon it.

participation marks are often attacked as ways to inflate grades, but i don't think that's actually the intent. the intent is to punish students that are independent-minded. it's meant to push out those that are disagreeable more than it is to reward those that are malleable.

i'm introverted, sure. and i have been diagnosed with social anxiety, but modern psychiatry is just a lot of pseudo-science and bullshit - you can't define what it means, to begin with, and there's no objective test to determine it. it doesn't mean a fucking thing to say i have social anxiety. when different "doctors" will tell you different things based on their intuitive perception of you, you're not dealing with science. so, i'm not even going to say i don't have it - i'm going to deny that it's even a real thing (despite actually relying on the diagnosis for my income).

i wasn't afraid to speak in class. i just couldn't be bothered to go there and be forced to talk to the fucking idiots around me. there wasn't any psychological break that was preventing me from going to class and spending the whole time arguing with students - and with profs if they insisted. it just wasn't my idea of a good time. i preferred to avoid the conflict by just not bothering to show up.

and, i would have argued. vehemently. brutally. violently. i was hardly just going to sit there and nod in order to get along with everyone.

it wasn't a psychological difficulty in expressing myself, it was a refusal to sit there and suffer their idiocy. and, i got nailed for it - and i took it out of legitimate protest. you want to knock down a smart kid because she doesn't want to sit around and have tea with you and pretend she agrees with you? do it. i dare you.

they did it....

the system isn't designed to push along the mindless, so much as it's designed to knock people like me down a notch. it's designed to punish those that are disagreeable, that have independent thoughts, that will stand up against what the teacher is pushing.

i preferred to be confrontational in writing. my essays were always combative.

but, i'm not joking or exaggerating when i point out that my gpa was knocked down by at least a point by a conscious refusal to kowtow to the insistence on participation marks.

see, i've build my entire life around avoiding participating in markets. i maybe wasn't cognizant of it until my late 20s, but it was nonetheless the driving force from the start.

at school, i'd avoid participating, even to my own detriment. there were classes that i aced and yet ended up with Bs in because i blew off the 10% participation mark. and, i always felt it was a just protest, and the school could fuck off for trying to force me to participate against my will.

i've spent my whole life trying to avoid labour. i remember going to a job interview, once, where i told the hiring manager that i wasn't there to make friends, and she practically started crying, as though rejecting participation was some kind of crime against humanity. i've always chosen the path of least participation.

and, i've been single most of my life because it's just another game that i don't want to participate in.

so, if the tendency to uphold participation as paramount defines this generation, you really don't want to look to me as a representative. i'm the exact opposite of that. i'd sell my soul to never have to participate in society ever again.

it's really astounding how young people view relationships.

it's, like, the more relationships they have, the more successful they are.

so, the more often they fail, the higher up some stupid hierarchy, they climb.

....as though they think they should be validated on whether they participated in meaningless sex, rather than whether they actually succeeded in relationship-building.

to clarify context: i do not have kids. thank god. that should be clear.

but, the father of these kids (in everybody relevant's minds - don't delve - let it be) is about fifteen years older than her. they lived together for a long time and had two kids, a boy and a girl, without getting married. he may have had feelings for his ex.

she was young.

frankly, she needed somewhere to stay and that's partly my fault.

i'm just trying to put the right context in place; i had removed myself from the situation, and there is no direct comparison to be had.

if a comparison exists, it is to somebody that faded away years before the camera picked up.

they're reporting this over multiple sources like marijuana legalization is a divisive issue.

but, this is not a scientific poll. and, scientific polls put legalization closer to 80%, across age groups. consistently.

again: this reeks of policy reversal, and of the government trying to come up with excuses not to do it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/half-of-canadians-polled-support-marijuana-legalization-1.4025081

i'm legitimately not sure if this is purposeful scare-mongering or just absolute cluelessness.

it's not up to the government to run your business. i mean, maybe we can talk about that, but i wasn't expecting you to volunteer it.

here's the complicated, earth-shattering reality: hr departments are going to have to learn not to hire potheads, just like they don't currently hire drunks.

but, i mean, i say that like they don't know, right?

if you've never dealt with this before, here's a hint: when an applicant walks into the interview with slightly messy hair, red eyes and a sort of skunkish smell? don't hire that one.

can we get on with it now, already?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/marijuana-legalization-employers-safety-testing-impairment-medical-1.4017539