it would be a lot easier for scientists to become amateur journalists than for journalists to become amateur scientists.

we live in the era of free publishing; i would encourage more scientists to take control of their means of production, and control their own messaging.

as jello biafra often said: don't hate the media, become the media.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/why-canadian-scientists-are-worried-about-being-victims-of-fake-news-1.4345432

and, the weather's really still just horrific...

i'm going to sit still and hibernate for a few more days. i sent the review by email almost immediately, so if they want to play games i'll just file in divisional court. it could very well be late april before spring hits this year in southern ontario. ugh. fucking sun...

i need to get to the court house to get the disposition, but i don't want to cross until i understand what's up with the prints, so i can wait a few days on that, too.

i don't handle stress well, and have had enough this week. next week.

right now, it's bed time, but i should get through a chunk of summer, 2013 by the time i wake up and be back to work on the alter-reality by the beginning of next week.

filing is done, relaunch is imminent.

and, as mentioned, i decided that i couldn't avoid this any longer.

as i retrace through the rebuild, i'll be reconstructing the music review blog, as well, which is now here:

https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/

that makes the rebuild & alter-reality comprehensive, so i won't have to go back again later to retrace - this is final.

Mr. Dulles believed “moderate” Nazis might “be useful” to America, records show. 

surreal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html

"moderate nazis".

i mean, you'll hear people say things like "stalinism and nazism were religions", and it's certainly valid to draw comparisons, but i'm actually more likely to make the argument that islam and (modern) christianity are actually political ideologies, and that joining a church is really just the same thing as joining a political party.

"but, i have nazi friends. they're good people. they love their kids. they pay taxes."

i'm really in no way interested in what the shooter thought, and what he thought really has nothing to do with anything i've said about it, or will say about it. it's just not an important part of the story.

think of it like this: if a group of klansmen opened fire on a nazi rally, would it be that different to you than if a crazy loner did it? would you have more or less compassion for the nazis if it was a crazy loner? would you condemn the tactics more or less depending on who carried them out?

now, you might be aghast that i'm comparing "peaceful worshippers" to nazis, but you can make all of the same arguments. as i pointed out the other day, nazis and muslims are actually astonishingly similar in their belief systems. the comparison is not ghastly; it is in fact both apt and quite astute. arguments have in fact been made for years that nazi marches should be permitted because they aren't actually harming anyone, and if you look at these arguments from nazi apologists and muslim apologists you see the same basic components - it's free speech, it's diversity of thought, etc.

but, we have this kind of mental block around it. for some reason, we very clearly understand the threat that nazis pose to us and immediately react, but we don't seem to understand the threat that muslims pose to us - despite the belief systems sharing the same basic oppressive foundations.

i take things a step further, as i so often do, and i recognize that it may be as a consequence of experience. as i was largely raised as an atheist, and have almost no experience with personal religion, i fundamentally don't understand this argument for personal worship. muslims famously don't accept a separation of church and state, and i actually agree with them on this point; i've never swallowed this line of personal faith, but have always seen religion as a political activity. it follows that attending a mosque is fundamentally the same thing as attending a political rally and the attempt to categorize them as different types of activities should be discarded entirely.

and, if you consequently view a muslim religious gathering as a political rally where hateful statements are being read from the mic, minorities are being targeted, etc - as is the norm - then the difference becomes almost solely linguistic. it follows that i have a hard time victimizing muslims for the same reason that i have a hard time victimizing nazis.

i'm not justifying the shooting; as mentioned, i reject the tactic as counter-productive. further, circumstance can be cruel - there may have been atheists or children caught up in the massacre, who may have been more legitimate innocents. i don't know these things.

but, my initial reaction was something like "let the fuckers kill each other off", and the motives and factors for the shooting aren't a meaningful factor in revising that.

fwiw, i haven't read the new zealand shooter's manifesto, and i'm not going to, and i don't care. his actual opinions about the world, whatever they are/were, don't change the content of my analysis, or my refusal to rush to the aid of a system of thought that cannot be justified for any reason or under any set of circumstances. that's my actual point, here - that i'm rejecting the mass reflex, that i'm not rallying around this.

i took the media at face value; maybe that was wrong, but it doesn't matter, and i'm not looking for nuance, here.

closer to relaunch. yeah, i know - i've crashed on relaunch more often than apollo.

their kids are probably dead.

here's what has survived from my summer, 2013 playlist, which is first up:

to be clear: that's just what made it from that point to the current point.

i got some sleep today, which was overdue. but, i don't have an answer on my prints, yet. they've agreed to waive the processing fee, which is welcome, and i suppose a consolation on the wait - although i'd rather the process was already dealt with.

i'll need to make some calls in the morning....

i could finish filing tonight.

she would make a good drama teacher.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-mp-caesar-chavannes-caucus-1.5064544

the scandisk finally finished this evening. i have one big copy operation left, and the rest should be pretty quick...

i got a response back on the prints, and they're telling me that they're willing to start the process, now. that is, a process i started in november - and i'm not happy about it.

i will need to find a way to figure out how to react over the next day or two. as it is, the forecast just changed, so i'm back to not wanting to go anywhere for the foreseeable future...

the thing is that i still don't know if the border cops can see the prints or not, and i am not volunteering my prints to them if i don't have to. if i convince a judge in the end that my prints were taken illegally, that ruling has no jurisdiction in the united states, and i can't get them back. this could cause me all kinds of problems. one would think this would be a simple problem to solve, but the access to information request came back as useless.

i may have to actually call the cbsa tomorrow to figure out how to do this.

so, i'll need to make some more calls tomorrow...

for the night, i'm going to try to get over that hump with the filing.

to be clear: if the senate were representative, the electoral college would be, too. so, senate reform would fix the electoral college....

reforming the electoral college so that it is more representative may be a better idea than abolishing it. but, i'd make the same argument about the senate...

you can easily put together the narrative.....

trudeau won in 2015 by getting a lot of young people out to vote for the first time, and out of some combination of a desire to change the world and to get high without breaking the law, in whatever order.  he then broke every one of his promises to left-leaning voters, but kept his promise to let people get high. so, this mass of young voters is abandoning him for something else.

if he wants to repeat, he'll need to find some way to regain the attention of the kids that voted for him last time and find some way to tap into the next group of kids coming up. but, given his total abandonment of almost everything he ran on, this is going to be a hard sell on both counts.

and, he actually seems to realize that, opting instead to try and win over conservative voters by pushing a harperesque free market messaging and pandering to religious groups, thereby abandoning his own base, which he may have decided he doesn't really like, after all. but, this is a recipe for disaster - one we've seen too many times, already.

trudeau will almost certainly fail at convincing right of centre votes to switch to him. but, he's already committed to it.

in the mean time, the question of how badly they lose reduces to how much of their base they can keep from wandering - and whether they even realize how much trouble they're actually in.

i want a liberal minority, followed by a caucus revolt and leadership review. but, a conservative majority is not impossible if his base, which he has abandoned, just stays home.

nanos clearly has the best data. but, it's also widely misunderstood - and i've been over this before, but let's do it again. this has everything that is useful in the tracking poll, and it actually says that there's really been minimal movement lately.

you'll note the little blurb there, explaining that this is a rolling sample. the gigo models want you to believe that you're better off average everything out, which is actually just going to produce middling data; the best predictor of an election is to look at a snapshot poll conducted as close to the date of the election as is possible, as it prevents old and out of date data from corrupting the sample.

what nanos does is the exact opposite of that, and it's not some kind of accident, but he does it this way because he's not trying to predict an election but rather trying to measure party branding, which is going to fluctuate a little week over week. nik is basically trying to smooth the data out, which is arguably more useful in determining the effects of a scandal on a party brand, as intended, but isn't going to tell you who is going to win the election tomorrow. and, there isn't an election tomorrow. but, we have to understand what we're actually looking at, here.

if you look at the line for the liberals across the top, you can see that they're down by some amount, pretty much across the board. so, the liberals have lost some support, clearly.

but, if you look at the results for the conservatives and the ndp, you see a different story.

the conservatives went down a little over the course of the week, but this is just noise relative to the margin of error, which is actually pretty big. the conservatives are in fact down from the year's highs, but mostly moving sideways. there is no evidence here of the conservatives taking advantage of the decrease in liberal support, at all.

the ndp are up over the week, but that is also just noise in the long count. while the trendline is moving in one direction recently, it would be wrong to conclude meaningful movement, relative to the margin and they, too, are down from their year high. there is not any convincing evidence that they are taking advantage of this, either.

so, where is the support from the liberal party actually going?

i previously surmised that maybe the greens were picking something up, but they don't appear to be, either. nor is the bloc.

so, this is very strange - how can the liberals be down if nobody else is up? and, the answer must be that people are disengaging.

we saw this in 2011, when liberals neither wanted to vote for ignatieff nor for his opponents, and the conservatives won a majority by accident.

it's way too early to make predictions, but if the apathy sets in long term, trudeau's primary opponent may end up being reheated pizza, easy access to pot and still-stupid reruns of friends.

"i was going to get up and vote, but then i got high."

what is my record on recent election predictions?

- my prediction in 2015 was a large liberal minority - that they would almost get a majority, but not quite. this was considerably better than any of the aggregate sites, which i criticized very heavily. the reason i was off was that i traced the ndp collapse to an increase in bloc support, and it ultimately ended up helping the liberals more than the bloc. with four way splits and small sample sizes, the polling in quebec was vague and messy, and nobody saw what happened coming; i at least got the right idea. the reason i was able to make a very good prediction here is that it was a long election and that there was a lot of data. my writing exists on this page, but the basic takeaway is to take aggregate sites with a grain of salt because they utilize too much flawed data; it's largely garbage in, garbage out.

- after the field stabilized a little, it became clear to me that trump would win because he was the most moderate candidate in the republican field, and i do believe that this is the truth of the matter, regardless of the narrative around it. had the party picked a moderate, they could have beat him; instead, people ended up voting for trump because he just wasn't nearly as bad as rubio or cruz.

- i paid more attention to the democratic side, and found myself having to learn the demographics of a foreign country in order to keep up. i figured out very early on that the polling companies were skewing the data on purpose, and i made some good predictions - i predicted sanders winning michigan, for example. i also predicted clinton winning kentucky, which surprised a lot of people. when i made errors, and i did, it was mostly due to a misunderstanding of those demographics, or a lack of clarity as to the process. for example, i assumed that the large black population of dc would transfer over to northern virginia, and it did not - stuff like that happened over and over. i also come face to face with the reality of voter suppression in the democratic primary system, and the difficulty in trying to analyse polling in a system that isn't actually fair. i stand by the focus of my analysis, and by my critique of the media narrative around race as such a defining issue in a race between two older white folks. i largely corrected myself as i went through, and would defer to my own writing. in the end, my record was mixed but at least as good as anybody else's, even if the larger takeaway was a learning experience about the process.

- my prediction in the 2016 election - and this is still sitting in those files - was that the shadow government would rig the election for trump. that doesn't sound very scientific, granted, but it's what allowed me to avoid the error that everybody else made. i guess that silver came closest with his gigo-model, but he was simply less wrong. the fact is that the data clearly projected a clinton victory, and i realized that, but i also realized the election was rigged. so, when the narrative switched to the russians rigging the election, i just rolled my eyes - it was an inside job, and i saw it coming. there's two ways to talk about this, after the fact. the first is that you can reference vague, shadowy bodies without any real evidence, which is both obvious and sketchy at the same time; call it a vast, right-wing conspiracy if you must, but realize that it is the obvious truth. the second is to point to more concrete concerns about voter suppression, the civil rights act, etc.

- my analysis of the 2018 ontario conservative leadership convention was nearly spotless, if cynical and distant.

-  the 2018 ontario election might seem like a spot on my record at first glance, but i disagree with that. there are two things i tried to make clear, here. the first is that the polling was really not detailed enough to be predictive - we had tons of online research, but almost no actual polling, and the little bit of polling we had was not focused enough on regional variation. the gigo models actually drastically underestimated conservative numbers, so to suggest they were accurate is to hit a very large target - the conservative numbers were mostly well outside the margin of error in the polling. so, i tried to make that point clear - i didn't have enough data to work with. the second point i tried to make is that ford was repeating all of the same warning signals we heard from trump around the fairness of the election, specifically these projections that the vote isn't fair. i also became suspicious of these online panels, and what they were really up to. i stopped short of explicitly predicting a stolen election and instead suggested an ndp minority is most likely (with very low confidence due to a deficit of data), but i am extremely skeptical of the numbers i saw come in and have called for an investigation. so, i don't have a lot of confidence in my analysis of this election, but i don't trust the results, either; and, if some process of stuffing ballots is shown to be true in the end, i think my analysis gets upheld.

- i did not pay attention to the 2018 midterms in the united states, but pointed out the importance of the democrats finding a way to win white voters.

i don't expect to be as interested in either of the upcoming cycles, but how well i do in any of these elections will depend on whether i can get enough data to identify flaws in the gigo models and whether or not the elections are fair in the first place.

so, here's the fun twist of it - maduro's days are probably still numbered, and perhaps more so than ever. but, it's the kremlin that is taking control of the venezuelan command, and the russians that get to pick his successor.

aaaaah haaa haaa haaa haaa.

they'll probably run an election, in the end.

and, the phony consulate in washington can enjoy the furniture.

if venezuela exits the us market, it's actually good for canada, but we know that freeland doesn't get along with the kremlin, and this is essentially an accident. go-go gadget nose.

i guess somebody needs to call up vlad and explain that america has a manifest destiny to control the hemisphere, due to the monroe doctrine.

he doesn't seem to understand.

so, the russians get free oil to pay off the debt, and will then resell it on the market at a higher price.

the dominant narrative is going to be that the trump administration tried to isolate venezuela and it backfired, and this is clearly true, but it's missing the point: america is an empire, and it needs to be able to control resources in order to survive. that's not going to stop me from criticizing it, but my criticism of empire can hardly be taken seriously by the empire itself.

the actual problem here is that they fucked around for weeks, trying to employ a series of hare-brained schemes to avoid the use of hard power. and, the lesson that the americans ought to learn from this - and they should have in fact learned this years ago, when the sanctions against iran failed - is that the era of soft power is over.

soft power required american hegemony; it rested on the assumption of total american military dominance, and the absence of any serious competitor. but, as the russians have regained their space as the second-tier power, and china has become increasingly assertive, those assumptions no longer hold.

all that soft power did here was give the russians time to move in.

they should have physically blockaded the country like i told them to; but, here we have it - they fucked around like a bunch of doddering old men and they've lost venezuela to the russians.

bravo.

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Venezuela-Halts-Oil-Exports-To-India.html

you're going to see him in a fucking sweater-vest before the votes are counted, too.

guaranteed.

this just in...

pm trudeau is set to announce an economic action plan to create jobs for the middle class, and speculation is rife as to whether it's a four year plan or a five year plan.

he is, however, expected to announce that we will require Strong Leadership (tm) to see the plan through.

"In 2015, you elected a government that was going to invest in the middle class, grow the economy, and make a real difference for you and your family."

actually, that was what we tried - and apparently failed - to get rid of.

what canadians elected in 2015 was a government that was going to transition the economy away from carbon extraction, change the way elections are conducted, re-establish canada as a champion of multilateralism on the world stage and strategically carry through with a continuing liberalization of society.

the people that voted for family values and the middle class are members of the other party.

ultimately, we voted to send stephen harper directly to hell and to tear all his legislation up into tiny little pieces.

it seems like justin's just a little bit confused; it seems like he thinks we wanted more harper and has just kept things moving according to plan.

yeah.

i didn't miss anything because there wasn't anything to miss. well, ok - i would have gone out a couple of times, maybe. weather permitting...

sllllooooow year in detroit.

there's a few things coming up, but, again, it's the same bands i've been seeing for the last couple of years.

i pointed this out about this time last year - i may spend more time exploring the artier fringes this year, as a consequence of age. i may end up at the dso a few times. there's lots of shows happening, but rock music has really turned over to a point of macho stupidity that i never liked. the artsy fringe of rock that i always existed within has largely evaporated, or at least isn't appearing in detroit. it may be lost to history at this point. the aesthetic i'm looking for will inevitably appear in some combination of hip-hop and techno, but it's not really presenting itself to me at this point; what i'm seeing is mostly the same kind of toxic masculinity, which has long been the norm in hip-hop, and appears to have become the norm over the last few years in techno.

so long as i can find something to do a few times a month, i'm not going to be obsessing over sorting through much of this stuff. but, i'm going to have to survey bits of it....

we're in a down period, musically. 

the go-to spot in mexicantown appears to have shifted directions. that was apparent from the start, but the turnover is at this point apparently mostly complete. oddly, though, some of these shows are showing back up at the magic stick, or at least at the theatre downstairs. the venue in mexicantown was really simply too small to be detroit's go to rock bar; maybe everybody just finally came to terms with it. some of them have been moved back out to the suburbs, which is where they were when i first got here. it's going to be a trek out to la dispute.

there appear to be a few new venues. ufo is re-opened....

detroit is known for this. you have to pay attention, or things start disappearing in front of you and you don't know where they end up. ottawa, on the other hand, has had the same five bars for fifty years; they just change names once in a while.

anyways, i should get out to see something in a few days. for now, i'm going to nap and try to call about the fingerprints again in the afternoon.

i'm defending my views on this by pointing to liberalism, but i will acknowledge that my liberalism is on the far anti-authoritarian extreme of the spectrum, and i have made no secret of the fact that i identify as an anarchist.

you can't call yourself an anarchist and then go walking around apologizing for islam. there's no such thing as an anarcho-muslim. it's a contradiction in terms.

and, as an anarchist, my fundamental concern is with the abolition of the illegitimate use of power, which means two things:

1) i am simply not going to stand with a group of people that define themselves by a system of brutal oppression, and muslims are exactly that. my political vision necessitates abolishing their religion; co-existence isn't actually possible.
2) nor will i offer blanket condemnation for any group fighting against a system of hierarchy, no matter how misguided their approach may be. so, i will not offer blanket condemnation towards palestinians fighting the occupation, and i will not offer blanket condemnation towards anybody fighting against the spread of islam in the west - even if i don't like their tactics, one bit.

in a sense, i'm refusing to take a side in a debate between white supremacists and muslims because i actually view them as essentially interchangeable, and the truth is they largely are - they both hate jews, they both hate queers (if anything, nazis are less anti-queer than muslims), they both hate africans, they both believe in slavery, they're both hyper-capitalistic, etc. i'm not sure that the differences between the modern saudi state and the historical nazi state are very substantive; there's terrible people on both sides, here.

but, i'm also sincere in my belief that this is not something that ought to be fully condemned, because there is a basis of resistance underlying it.

discourse is always preferable, granted. but, if we can't win this argument, there may come a time when violence is actually rational.

is that an acceptable diversity in opinion?

see, in justin trudeau's warped and shrunken pre-adolescent benetton faux liberal pea brain, when a muslim stands on a pulpit and attacks jews and queers and calls for the annihilation of infidels and the subjugation of women and the enslavement of blacks, that is a diversity of opinion - which underlies our strength, as a nation.

however, when a jew or a queer or a woman or a person of colour pushes back against their hateful tirades, that is toxic and deplorable and should be censured.

in the end, we end up supporting hate speech in the name of suppressing it, and advancing hate in the name of reducing it. this is indeed the era of orwell....

but, as i've pointed out repeatedly, and the evidence seems to be mounting in favour of, the reality is that this analysis is giving the man far too much credit. the actual truth of it is no doubt that this guy simply lacks the cognitive ability to work through this kind of contradiction, and is resorting to the doublethink out of a feeble deficit of intellect rather than a downwards enforcement of brainwashing. this is no doubt less some kind of elaborate psy op and more just a completely naive, total idiot.

if he were to wake up one day and see a group of muslims stringing a bunch of people up a tree on his front lawn, he'd no doubt just conclude they don't understand each other well enough and require more face time together. the problem isn't an ideology rooted in hate, it's just a lack of community and fraternity. they just need to sit down and worship together.

as i've said repeatedly: the only difference between a muslim and a klansman is the colour of their hoods, and they need to be treated the same way.

i mean, if the prime minister wants to hold to the position that perpetuating a medieval system of violence designed to advance slavery and war is acceptable, while fighting against it is toxic, then i suppose he is entitled to his backwards opinion, but such is not an opinion that many observers would associate with descriptions like "progressive" or "liberal", but rather a pretty extreme form of far-right conservatism.

i don't think that his mishandling of the lavalin farce says much about his opinions on gender. these were poorly performing ministers that got demoted due to their clear incompetence; the media's insistence on making it about gender was vacuous.

but, his strange affinity with this violently anti-woman philosophy actually reveals a lot about where his head is about gender, and it's pretty damaging.

you can't be an apologist for islam and a feminist at the same time. this is a specific instantiation of the religion's broader incompatibility with the left, but it's one that cuts to the core of his astounding array of contradictions. and, if you ask me, his head isn't really with equality, but more with religion.

we don't need two conservative parties in canada; we already have one, and their track record at governing isn't very good.

black muslims and gay republicans ought to hold an outreach party together in colorado somewhere...

the ignorance required to be muslim and black at the same time is really astounding, isn't it?

black muslims, for example.

what a bunch of fucking idiots...

again: the prime minster's so-called moral relativism is in truth an absolute moral depravity, and his comments about new zealand are contemptible.

the most toxic, hateful people in the world today are muslims - and it is standing up for islam (a religion that would enslave 70% of the population and kill 15% of it if allowed to) that is by far the most toxic thing a politician can do, in the current environment.

if one is to condemn hate in any meaningful way, the strongest condemnation must be directed at the most hateful people, and the most hateful people are muslims. this is an empirical question. i'm not interested in the doublethink and intellectual dishonesty that would suggest otherwise, this depraved idea that it is acceptable to uphold the hate inherent in the core of islamic teaching and yet somehow unacceptable to condemn it, and that would hold muslims to a double standard.

the cliche is that we don't need to tolerate islamic hate, but i'm interested in liberalism, and not in tolerance.

i agree that simply killing them is not going to work.

but, mr. trudeau's comments reveal a fundamental incompatibility with liberalism. and, if he insists on aligning ideologically with an ideological system that insists on extremist conservative values then i might suggest he cross the floor to the conservative party, as that is where he truly belongs.

no, honestly - this is a responsible approach, and is more evidence that we're looking at an internal reclamation by the liberal party intelligentsia rather than a coup from the fringe.

no matter how you frame it, it's clearly a step in the right direction.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/anne-mclellan-justice-lavalin-wilson-raybould-1.5061475.

landslide annie is a legit fixer, and she should hopefully find a way to get the pm out of this toxic relationship.

the weather is finally turning today, it seems for good. sort of. it's still clearly spring.

despite the air outside being bad, the smoke really, really doesn't seem to be coming in through the window, so i'm back to being 90% sure that the smoke is coming from upstairs and bracing myself for another legal battle. i don't know how to prove this, but i have no interest in hacking and wheezing all of the time. i'll have to figure something out. and, i'm just confused as to how and why this is happening. who signs a non-smoking lease and then smokes inside? what the fuck...

i don't remotely get it. but, if this is some kind of joke, it's going to backfire. hard.

this should be coming up on a full ten months entirely straight edge, but it's been ruined by whatever is happening upstairs, and i'm just tired and drained and sick all of the time as a result of it. sore throat. dizziness. it's like i never quit.

i crashed for a few hours yesterday afternoon and was nearly done filing when the kernel crashed; i overloaded the processor, and this board has been on the skits for a while. there's not a lot i can do with this machine due to the broken screen, so i'd might as well ride it out until the end. but, i may need to figure something else out for an internet gateway in the near term. the chrome book can work in a pinch, but it's not what i got it for, and i simply can't handle the lack of ad block for long periods.

i'm trying to file a folder with 75,000 html files in it, and it's just not liking it. i don't think it had started copying yet, so i don't think anything blew up, but i wanted to run a chkdsk to make sure. that 2 tb drive is a long scan - 12 hours in was only at around 5%. i had to cancel it to make some calls this morning...

so, the day, which is ending, was largely wasted, but i managed to get a few ideas cleared up and a few calls in. it's still cold for the day, so i guess we'll wait until tomorrow to get things going.

first, i had to figure out what i need to do about the border issue, now that the report came back unsubstantiated. it turns out i should have gone to detroit immediately. as it is, i need to get the disposition from the court house and bring it to the detroit side of the ambassador bridge, pretty much asap. so, i'll need to plan a day into detroit soon....and we'll see if my bicycle is still there while we're at it....maybe i can drop off some recycle, etc...

the person on the phone indicated that a dropped charge will probably not affect my status. we'll see what happens....

there is no statutory time frame on an appeal to divisional court, but i'll want to have it dealt with 30 days after i get the response on the review. documents were email saturday morning; i'll mail them to toronto tomorrow, unless i get a response today.

i was able to get a hold of somebody about the prints today as well and am expecting a response as to the status of them before the end of the day.

finally, the request to the privacy commissioner is in process, and i'm advised to sit tight and wait.

so, tomorrow is a running around day....

....and, what's going on in detroit this week? what did i miss this year?

there is a deep, fundamental contradiction between islam and liberalism that needs to be more thoroughly examined, as so-called liberal parties rush towards increasing muslim demographics in an attempt to pander for votes.

liberals are making a dangerous, faustian bargain, here - and we're already seeing some consequences of it.

in the end, liberalism will defeat islam - this is clear enough from history. so, i am less concerned about liberalism being defeated by islam in the long run, i don't think this is a fair fight, than i am about being forced to fight battles that have already been won.

it is easy for a cis white male that is born into privilege to talk about tolerance for differing views, as he is under no threat of harm from anybody at all. but, essentially all of the most vulnerable groups in society are in immediate threat of harm from increasing muslim political power, and we cannot accept this kind of depraved apologism for a system that would kill us on the spot, if it only could.

https://centerforinquiry.org/blog/is-islam-compatible-with-democracy-and-human-rights/

the religion of islam - like all other religions - is a violent system of hetero-patriarchal dominance that needs to be resisted at every opportunity, and ultimately abolished; it belongs in the dung heap of history, along with all of the other failed totalitarian attempts at tyrannical social control.

i do not and will never stand with muslims, and insist that fearing them is not merely rational but intellectually necessary.

that said, killing people at a mosque - and they are not innocent if they are attending a religious service - is a terrible way to address the violence of religious intolerance, as it merely sinks the shooter to their own level of depravity. we must be better than them, not become them.

i will always support any rational or effective tactic to annihilate religion; this isn't one of them.

so, am i going to support this government or not?

this government wants to present itself as representative of the younger generation; it wants to be the millennial-focused government, the future of the country. but, in doing so, it is modelling itself on the obama administration, which was anything but the future of the united states. rather, what we have before us is a government rooted in the values of generation jones.

this is a government that is solely about appearances, and how it looks compared to those around it. they're all about keeping up with the jones'.

but, what i'm jonesing for is some substantive policy fixes, not a caretaker government that is essentially an extension of the previous one. in the long run, we may find ourselves talking about the harper-trudeau years - as we talk about the bush-obama years, or even the reagan-clinton years.

i may insist on distinguishing myself from young people by adopting a gen x identity, but this is not what young people voted for. at all.

the conservatives are hardly a solution, and the ndp haven't addressed any of the reasons why i've tended to prefer the liberals in the first place; if anything, they're less appealing today than they were four years ago. i am not likely to vote for either party.

i would like to vote for the liberals, and i may wade in from time to time to support them on some issue that they've historically taken the right position on, but i want a change of leadership and direction in the party, and will probably abstain from voting at all in this election, unless the green candidate convinces me to actually go out and cast, even if it's merely in protest.

that is the choice in front of me at this point: greens or bust.

i will not be voting for a trudeau-led liberal party; i want him to step down.

i'm never going to suppress this reflex to just take him home and make him some soup.

it's surreal, but it's late capitalism.

i'm glad those stitches didn't mess up his hair.

i can still write an essay on sunday night, it seems.

Are the Officer’s Words Credible?

When a witness makes a demonstrably false claim, their credibility is generally called into question. I have clearly demonstrated that the officer lied about the time of the call, positioning it at 6:08 PM, when the timestamp on the audio file is 3:56 AM. I was also able to pull out an incorrect address in the report on the neighbour. If the officer is going to lie about the time of the call, why would you believe anything else that he says? Further, if the department is going to uphold a lie in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, in an apparent attempt at a cover-up, why would you believe anything else that the department says?

I can resend the file, if it’s been lost. For now, here is a screenshot of the voicemail, indicating the time of reception.

Regarding the Question of Intimidation and Harassment By The Officer

I documented three occurrences of harassing behaviour by the officer, leading up to a series of legally incoherent threats and an eventual illegal arrest and arbitrary detention. However, the report did not make any attempt to put the situation into context. Given the clear illegality of the arrest, and apparent cluelessness of the department in general, I must insist that these accusations be properly investigated.

Regarding the Question of Transphobic Bias

A key part of my complaint was a feeling that the officer was behaving out of a transphobic bias. By referring to me using masculine pronouns, despite my clear indication that I have a female identity, the report perpetuates the bias that I requested be examined, leaving me more concerned about a bias than I was to begin with. While an explanation for this does appear in the report, it hardly seems credible; it is rather quite readily apparent that the insistence on masculine pronouns is intended to insult and degrade me. There is really no other way to explain it.

For the record, I have been on high potency hormones for nearly ten years. I am not at the start of a transition, but functionally through it. My appearance is unambiguously female, and the continued claims to the contrary are not grounded in empirical reasoning but simply in a continued insistence on prejudicial bias. I’m a girl, and it is clear to all who have eyes.

The report really just confirms my suspicion, so I must insist that this question be more thoroughly examined.

Regarding the Question of The Foot in The Door

My recollection of the situation is clearly rather different than the officer’s, but the officer nonetheless clearly acknowledges placing a foot in the door; rather than deny the encounter, he has made up an excuse to justify it, one that doesn’t even contradict the accusation. I will deny that I yelled through the door and rather insist upon my recollection of events, which was that I asked him to move his foot multiple times (reminding him that he did not have a warrant) and was unable to close the door until he left. Why, exactly, would I file a false complaint, in context? Given that the officer’s credibility is in question, his recollection of events should be taken with a grain of salt. I must insist that these claims have been substantiated by the officer’s own statements - that he acknowledges preventing me from closing the door, whatever his excuse, and should be held accountable for it.

Regarding the Question Of The Badge Number

The reasoning utilized in the report that I must have been provided with a badge number because I heard part of it is facile to say the least. Again - what would the purpose of filing a false report of this nature be? If I had the badge number, would I not have provided it? To suggest this is unsubstantiated is disingenuous; the fact that i got a few of the numbers correct actually substantiates the claim pretty strongly. I must insist this be rethought.

About The Phone

I initially responded to the voice message on the morning of Sept 12 (when i woke up), and received the following response at 9:48, and fairly quickly iirc. If the phone was a loaner, that would mean that it was returned to the office and lent back out again between the hours of 4:00 AM and 9:48 AM - a stretch, if you ask me. I must insist that this question be revisited.

and, you will note my clock is military - 09:48 is 9:48 am.

About The Officer’s Understanding Of The Law

My statements were clear - I asked the officer to define what harassment is, under a clear concern that he hadn’t the slightest actual clue, and he specifically referred to the idea of being “annoying”, which is simply objectively false. This was a few weeks after he tried to tell me that nuisance does not exist under the criminal code. While I understand that the officer is neither a lawyer nor an encyclopedia, one would expect that he would at least look up a law before he tries to make an arrest, or get a warrant if he’s not sure, and at least take it to heart when somebody tries to explain something to him, which I did rather clearly. The cliché is that there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity; we are all ignorant of many things, it is a natural condition of existence, but we are only stupid when we refuse to acknowledge our ignorance. This would not have happened had he simply listened to me, and made an attempt to understand me. The report attempts to frame the issue around the officer’s obligations to explain the law to a civilian, which is just a red herring - the issue at hand is not whether I understand the law, but whether the officer does; this is an officer that aggressively pursued a completely ridiculous interpretation of the statute, with no interest in the truth of the matter. Such an officer is a clear and present danger to civilians, as he operates on ideology rather than on evidence or reason. I think I explained this point clearly enough at the top of the page, and would insist that the issue be revisited - does this officer understand the law well enough to continue being an officer? Is he capable of learning it? This is the important question here, not whether he tried his best to explain a statute to somebody with a math degree and three years worth of law credits, and that understands it better than he does.

The Emails

I will attach the emails that I have in a separate file. Nobody ever asked me for them.

Conclusion

While the report is unreasonable, it is also incorrect and it is the correctness basis of review that I wish to draw a stricter attention to.

1) The main issue at hand, in hindsight, is the question of whether the arrest was legal, and this was not dealt with correctly.

2) There was no attempt to determine whether the officer’s behaviour constituted intimidation or harassment.

3) I believe that Count #1 remains unclear and requires further investigation, although the tone of the report further substantiates it.

4) I believe that the report substantiates count #2.

5) I believe that the report substantiates count #3.

On the Question of The Arrest

So, let us begin with the basics, and I am not sorry for being matronizing, as none of this should have happened at all.

There are three types of offences in the Canadian Criminal Code:

1) Summary Offences

2) Hybrid Offences

3) Indictable Offences.

The nature of the charge in R v. Storrey, namely aggravated assault, is very important, as it is purely an indictable offence. The nature of the offence is, indeed, what the case is actually about. We can quote directly, just a little bit:

At trial it was contended that the arrest and detention of the appellant contravened the right guaranteed to him by s. 9 of the Charter.  That section provides that: "Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned".  The trial judge then conducted a voir dire to determine whether there had been a breach of s. 9 of the Charter.  Unfortunately, the reasons he gave at the conclusion of the proceeding indicate some confusion on his part.  The appellant was arrested without a warrant on a charge of aggravated assault.  Therefore, the basis for his arrest is to be found within s. 450(1) (now s. 495(1)) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1970, c. C-34.  That section provides that a peace officer may arrest without a warrant a person who has committed an indictable offence or who, on reasonable and probable grounds, he believes has committed or is about to commit an indictable offence.  Nevertheless, the trial judge stated that the arrest was unlawful because it did not comply with the requirements of s. 450(2) of the Criminal Code.  That section was inapplicable in this case.  It only applies to an offence which is either a summary conviction offence, a hybrid offence or an indictable offence listed in s. 483 (now s. 553) of the Code, which list does not include aggravated assault. 

Well, if we’re to make a simple deduction from this case, it would be that the Supreme Court would agree that the arrest would have been unlawful (and the accused would have had his s. 9 rights infringed upon) if the charge was a hybrid offence, like criminal harassment. Oops?

Let us revise the language so that it is applicable to the situation at hand:

On review it was concluded that the arrest and detention of the appellant did not contravene the right guaranteed to her by s. 9 of the Charter.  That section provides that: "Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned".  Unfortunately, the reasons he gave at the conclusion of the review indicate some confusion on his part.  The appellant was arrested without a warrant on a charge of criminal harassment.  Therefore, the basis for her arrest is to be found within s. 450(2) (now s. 495(2)) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1970, c. C-34.  That section provides that a peace officer may not arrest without a warrant a person who has committed a hybrid offence, in any case where he believes on reasonable grounds that the public interest, having regard to all the circumstances may be satisfied without so arresting the person, and he has no reasonable grounds to believe that, if he does not so arrest the person, the person will fail to attend court in order to be dealt with according to law. Nevertheless, the investigator stated that the arrest was lawful because it complied with the requirements of s. 450(1) of the Criminal Code.  That section was inapplicable in this case.  It only applies to an offence which is an indictable offence, which does not include criminal harassment. 

What does this actually mean, though? Well, this is the entirety of 495(2), which is clearly meant to restrict the arresting authority of police, and which has my emphasis added:

Limitation
(2) A peace officer shall not arrest a person without warrant for

(a) an indictable offence mentioned in section 553,

(b) an offence for which the person may be prosecuted by indictment or for which he is punishable on summary conviction, or

(c) an offence punishable on summary conviction,

in any case where

(d) he believes on reasonable grounds that the public interest, having regard to all the circumstances including the need to

(i) establish the identity of the person,

(ii) secure or preserve evidence of or relating to the offence, or

(iii) prevent the continuation or repetition of the offence or the commission of another offence,

may be satisfied without so arresting the person, and

(e) he has no reasonable grounds to believe that, if he does not so arrest the person, the person will fail to attend court in order to be dealt with according to law.

One will note the importance of the logic operator, and. I have some academic background in law, but my actual degree is in mathematics, so I can be pretty oppressive in my enforcement of logic. Any statement in the form (A and B) is true if and only if both A is true and B is true. What that means is that the statute reduces to the necessity of the officer to prove I was a flight risk, which means producing positive evidence to suggest as much, and which was never even contemplated - the discussion is merely of “reasonable grounds”, which is never coherently defined, but clearly assumed to be in the inapplicable context of an indictable offence.

If this discussion comes as a shock to you then I am sorry, but it simply demonstrates your incompetence - and perhaps demonstrates the lawlessness defining standard arrest procedures both in windsor and throughout the country. The reality is that this is what the law actually says about the matter, whatever day-to-day policing actually is.

What that means is that the officer had two lawful choices in how to approach the situation:

1) he could have issued a summons for me to appear in court or

2) if he insisted on arresting me on a hybrid offence, and could not demonstrate a flight risk, he’d need to get a warrant first.

Simply claiming “reasonable grounds” to make an arrest on a hybrid offence is in fact unlawful in this country, whether it happens frequently or not.

Now, I have attempted to find some actual relevant jurisprudence around s. 495(2) and have not found much at canlii; it seems to be that the issue doesn’t come up much, hopefully because canada is a free society, so people don’t get arrested on bullshit charges or arbitrarily detained very often. My faith in the system is shaken, but not broken; I am going to hope that the lack of precedence around 495(2) is a positive signal that Canada is indeed still a free country, after all.

Nonetheless, I did find the following statement produced in passing within R. v. Boudreault 2018 SCC 58, in an entirely unrelated context, which upholds the logic operator; this emphasis is the court’s:

Assuming (without deciding) that warrantless arrest can properly be used as a means to compel attendance in these circumstances, I note that this can occur only if the peace officer has reasonable grounds to believe that it is in the public interest to arrest the person and that the person will fail to attend court (in accordance with s. 495(2)).  In determining whether arrest is in the public interest, the peace officer must consider whether arrest is necessary to establish the identity of the person, to secure or preserve evidence, or to prevent the continuation of the offence or the commission of future offences. 

There is simply absolutely no indication that anybody involved in the arrest had any understanding of any of this; all evidence suggests that they were relying on a completely inapplicable precedent intended for strictly indictable offences, and perhaps do so on a day-to-day basis. This is actually quite startling.

But, what of these “reasonable grounds”, anyways?

I am rather baffled by what appears in the report. The investigator made the argument that the arrest was based on reasonable grounds that I was communicating with the property owner - which is clear enough, and really not in dispute. The emails exist, and I’ve never denied sending them. So, there are clearly reasonable grounds to conclude that I sent a bunch of emails to the complainant. Ok.

However, that's a gross misinterpretation of the statute. Reasonable grounds, in context, if they were relevant, would not be related to the fact of communication, but to the question as to whether there was any basis for fear. So, the officer would need to demonstrate that he thought there was a convincing reason I might harm this woman, and there clearly was no such thing.

Again, let me point you to the statute:

264 (1) No person shall, without lawful authority and knowing that another person is harassed or recklessly as to whether the other person is harassed, engage in conduct referred to in subsection (2) that causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.

So, the thing that's against the law is to scare somebody - not to communicate with them. As we live in a free society, there's no law in canada against repeatedly communicating with people when they've asked you not to, nor is the request to ask you to stop in any way meaningful or relevant, if the communication does not reasonably invoke fear. That is essentially the definition of free speech.

Subsection (2) is a list of ways you can scare somebody, but these behaviours are not criminalized, themselves, outside of the context of being scary.

So, repeatedly communicating with somebody with the intent of scaring them is indeed harassment, under the law; repeatedly communicating with somebody with the intent to sue them, or the intent to annoy them, or the intent to rent property from them is not, and hopefully never will be.

Reasonable grounds consequently consists of evidence that i'm scary, not evidence of communication. It is blatantly clear that no such evidence existed; at no point did i communicate any sort of threat of harm, and i have no criminal record. It is rather clear that no such reasonable grounds existed at all. Worse, to suggest that the arrest was justified on reasonable grounds due solely to evidence of unwanted communication is both disingenuous and grossly incompetent; this is exactly why warrants exist, and exactly why the statute demands them before making an arrest of this nature.

So much for “reasonable grounds”. Pfft.

"but he was trying to prevent me from the continuation of the offence".

what offence?

communication?

the part of the code that should have been explored is as follows:

Limitation
(2) A peace officer shall not arrest a person without warrant for

(a) an indictable offence mentioned in section 553,

(b) an offence for which the person may be prosecuted by indictment or for which he is punishable on summary conviction, or

(c) an offence punishable on summary conviction,

in any case where

(d) he believes on reasonable grounds that the public interest, having regard to all the circumstances including the need to

(i) establish the identity of the person,

(ii) secure or preserve evidence of or relating to the offence, or

(iii) prevent the continuation or repetition of the offence or the commission of another offence,

may be satisfied without so arresting the person, and

(e) he has no reasonable grounds to believe that, if he does not so arrest the person, the person will fail to attend court in order to be dealt with according to law.

=====

what that says in english is that an officer should not arrest somebody under a hybrid offence unless they think the person is a threat to re-offend or poses a flight risk, neither of which were true in this case.

the officer had two options available to him:

1) seek an arrest warrant,
2) give me a summons.

arresting me and holding me was neither appropriate nor legal, by statutory clarity; we should not be talking about "reasonable cause" here at all.

the investigator made the argument that there was reasonable grounds to conclude i was communicating with the property owner - which is clear enough, and really not in dispute.

but, that's a gross misinterpretation of the statute. reasonable grounds, in context, is not related to the fact of communication, but to the question as to whether there was any basis for fear. so, the officer would need to demonstrate that he thought there was a convincing reason i might harm this woman, and there clearly was no such thing.

the law states the following:

264 (1) No person shall, without lawful authority and knowing that another person is harassed or recklessly as to whether the other person is harassed, engage in conduct referred to in subsection (2) that causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.

so, the thing that's against the law is to scare somebody - not to communicate with them. as we live in a free society, there's no law in canada against repeatedly communicating with people when they've asked you not to.

subsection (2) is a list of ways you can scare somebody, but these behaviours are not criminalized, themselves, outside of the context of being scary.

so, repeatedly communicating with somebody with the intent of scaring them is indeed harassment, under the law; repeatedly communicating with somebody with the intent to sue them, or the intent to annoy them, or the intent to rent property from them is not.

reasonable grounds consequently consists of evidence that i'm scary, not evidence of communication. but, i posted the emails. there is no threat of harm, and i have no criminal record; it is clear that no reasonable grounds existed at all. worse, to suggest that the arrest was justified on reasonable grounds due solely to evidence of communication is both disingenuous and grossly incompetent.

regardless, that's not the right question, because reasonable grounds refers to a crime in process, or a crime that has occurred. it's hard to actually even define reasonable grounds in this context, but one would think it would need to be in the form of a clear and persistent threat - i would have had to state clearly that i intended to harm this woman.

as i've stated repeatedly, this is a crystal clear example of why cops need to get warrants. the cop had no idea what he was talking about; he simply didn't understand what the law said.

and, i'm not surprised by the content of the report...

so, what does this mean?

well, if i get the report in on monday, the director has a time frame to make a decision. and, i'll have to decide if i want to file the discrimination lawsuit before or after the report, given the existing time frames.

despite the finding of "unsubstantiated", there may be enough information in the report to move forward on some further actions.

so, i got my report - and it's bullshit, as expected.

i won't post this here, as i don't know the legality of doing so. but, i'll have the formal review ready by monday morning.

this is my short response.

------

this is exactly the waste of time from the windsor police department
that i expected it to be, and late at that.

to begin with, let us note the absurdity underlying the persistent
misgendering. i am making a complaint about transphobic bias in the
force, and in response the force appears to be purposefully
misgendering me as male throughout the report in an act of purposeful
disrespect. i have presented myself as female-identifying at every
opportunity. i can only hope that the judicial review takes note of
this, if the director does not. and, one will further note the
incompetence underlying this, as it provides me with a clear basis to
request a review - and was entirely unnecessary. the attempt to state
otherwise notwithstanding, this is simply disrespectful, and sets the
tone for the report.

further note that the officer freely admits all three claims of
misconduct in the text of the report, but then tries to make bullshit
excuses about it. while the windsor police department unsurprisingly
accepts his bullshit excuses, i adamantly and categorically do not.

i consequently reject that the investigation has found the allegations
unsubstantiated, and rather insist that the investigation has clearly
substantiated them, and insist that charges be laid against the
officer based on the strength of his own words.

further, a voicemail dated to sept 12th at 3:56 am was presented as
evidence. this is not heresay, but clear and direct evidence that
contradicts the officer's statement that the call was made at 6:08 pm
- that is, it is clear proof that the officer lied in his report.
despite this clear evidence of lying, the officer's statements are
taken at face value throughout the report, and the report itself
upholds the time of the call as 6:08 pm. this is strongly indicative
of a cover-up on behalf of the department, and an unwillingness to
actually look at the evidence.

there is no attempt to explore the fact that i had previous contacts
with this officer, or to take my allegations of intimidation and
harassment at all seriously. my complaints are neither upheld nor
dismissed but simply ignored.

while i agree that an officer is not and need not be legally trained,
that is in fact the crux of my complaint, in the broader context -
that before an arrest of this sort is to be made, an officer needs to
seek a warrant, which was not done. the officer's ignorance of the law
cannot be an excuse because the system has a process to correct for
it, which was not followed. nor is it appropriate for an investigative
officer to offer an opinion about the existence of reasonable cause,
as that is strictly a judicial role. i made this point repeatedly in
the documents that i filed. reasonable cause (whether it is even
present or not) is not the right concept to employ here, as the
officer was not witness to any sort of crime. this decision must be
made by a judge, not an officer; the substantive part of the complaint
here is in the officer's vigilantism, and no attempt was made to
censure or correct this, or even discuss it. in the end, the case was
dropped due to a poverty of evidence upholding the claim; this is why
officers are required to seek a warrant, to prevent arrests such as
this where no evidence of a crime actually exists, and to protect
innocent people from the consequences of unjustified arrest and
arbitrary detention. as such, i feel the report sidestepped the entire
issue at hand (the officer's refusal to get a warrant) in favour of an
irrelevant discussion about the investigator's irrelevant opinion
about the existence of reasonable cause.

a formal request for review - on the basis of correctness - will be
sent on or before monday morning.

j

bernie sanders is giving the american left and the left in general an opportunity that it has not had in many decades.

and, he will be mercilessly ripped apart from every direction. friends will turn on him; he will be betrayed by those he loves.

and, it could get scary to stand with his ideas.

but, remember the following words:

the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

nobody knows how this turns out. but, we can't resort to cowardice - we have to take advantage of this.

i also favour public ownership of utilities, banks and most major industries, and would encourage stimulating a broader discussion along those lines, to generate broader support for these ideas.

this is not the time to shy away from a discourse about what socialism is, it's a time to seize upon and advance it.

and, likewise, i'm going to ignore the framing around this recent polling and just look at the data, however scant it may be. here's our trend line from campaign research, which is conducting "online research" around voting intentions in the next election:

the immediate response would be "not much movement outside the margin". however, as this "online research" does not utilize random sampling, there is no margin of error to consult.

how have the conservatives changed? well, they're down a point since february, but really pretty much flat since december - and no doubt for months before that. i'm not even sure that the second coming of christ would move the conservative numbers, at this point. their base is rock solid, entirely unreachable, but they're continuing to fail at generating interest outside of it. the data really perfectly represents the stereotype of the conservative supporter as an ideologue that you simply can't argue with it, and the party as having little appeal to much of anybody else in the 21st century.

the ndp are similarly flat. but, the liberals are trending mildly downwards.

so, if the ndp and conservatives are flat and the liberals are trending down, where are the votes going?

to their discredit, campaign did not post a trend line for the other parties, but you can at least find a snapshot of the recent "online research".

looking at this, we don't know if the undecided or the greens or the bloc went up, but the greens are performing fairly well in this poll, and the undecideds are actually fairly low compared to where they were at this point last time around.

it's easy to make a conclusion then - if this "online research" is uncovering anything, it is that people are a little bit cynical about the liberals right now, but don't like the other options. you really didn't need to conduct online research to figure that out....

comparing this to the ridiculous media framing is instructive, as it demonstrates the purpose of what the firm is doing. the headline is that the liberals are in trouble; the data suggests no such thing. but, who reads the data? people read the headline. this "online research" is not meant to measure public opinion, but to create it. so, there is a gramscian caveat to my analysis: while the issue doesn't appear to have harmed the liberals at this point, if the media continues to push the point that it has then it very well may in the end.

the liberals should be more concerned about the companies doing the research than they are in the results of the research.

the substantive point that policy makers should take away from my posts on this topic is that global governing institutions are necessarily going to have a different analysis than local governments, on this topic - which isn't to suggest that self-interest should be dominant, but to necessitate that the issue has to be framed in both contexts to understand it properly, and weigh it out.

so, the ipcc might say something like "the effects of a solar minimum will not alter the trend towards increasing average temperatures, because the effects will be localized in the northern hemisphere". and, if you live in india or something, you might have little reason to think that's important.

but, if you live in the regions that are to be most affected - namely canada and northern europe - then that caveat about the northern hemisphere is not just an unimportant addendum to the global trend, but the actual primary point of concern. in canada, we might say "the continuing trend towards global warming will not overpower the localized effect of solar minima".

but, northerners should neither get disinterested or complacent, because there's no certainty here. a strong cycle 25 or 26 would completely turn the issue on it's head, and lead us to a discussion about how the two factors are all of a sudden amplifying each other. we could easily get fed up by the cold winters and decide this doesn't matter, only to wake up to an irreversible tipping point, and all kinds of feedbacks, within a year or two.

i seek only to balance the narrative. empiricism can never be overruled by ideology, and we must fight teleology and fantasy at every turn. science must remain science; we must always seek the truth, as best we can, however convenient or inconvenient it may be.

but, listen: i don't really care if you understand what i'm saying or not. and, chances are, you probably never will, because you don't have the education to do so - you just want to buy into political narratives around science that are pushed by the fake liberal press, to push an agenda, to fight the bad guys. whatever.

but, at some point you have to look at the actual data, and my analysis - as though it's my analysis, rather than a careful survey of the existing literature - has been accurate up to this point.

to begin with, don't believe people that are trying to predict the upcoming cycle. there is currently absolutely no predictive science around the strength of sunspot cycles whatsoever. the "experts", in context, are little more than clairvoyants, trying to crudely extrapolate a pattern and move it forwards on a whim. and, you can make arguments either way.

so, some people will look at it and say "the cycle has been getting weaker for decades, so we should expect it to continue to get weaker". i've challenged this by pointing out that we have no reason to assume linear dependence, and if the output is actually random (as good a guess as any other at this point), the fact that we have a long streak of decreasing outputs means we're due for a shift - a probabilistically tricky argument that many will reject when articulated that way, but which is correct nonetheless, given that we can't actually count to infinity. it would be more correct to state that the output will eventually reverse, given infinitely many experiments. i'm impatient; sorry. and, while you can't quantify randomness, we're due nonetheless.

which argument is better? that there's a trend, or that the streak is due to break? absent a mechanism, they're both shit shots. the truth is that we have no fucking idea, and don't believe anybody that tells you we do.

so, given that we don't know what the upcoming cycle is going to be like, it would be foolish to try and make a prediction around it's effects on the climate.

what we can say is that we're exiting a local minima, so we should expect some kind of local warming trend - in the northern hemisphere - within a couple of years.

this article is responding to the strawman argument that the clear historical correlation between solar output and temperature - which is extremely robust, and has nothing to do with the maunder minimum - is a consequence of tsi, which is something that no solar scientist has ever suggested. and, in fact, the science around climate change takes this as a given; the purpose of the ipcc reports is to separate anthropogenic signals from the sun, and the ultimate argument in the end is that the warming can't be caused by the sun because it is dimming.

rather, it is well understood - and i've posted dozens of articles to this site - that the mechanism underlying the correlation has to do with ultraviolet radiation, not with tsi. it is essentially a magnetic phenomenon that alters the jet stream by messing with the atmosphere.

so, you don't want to think about it like you're turning the heat down or something. rather, you want to think about it like you're moving magnets around on a sphere, with iron filings inside of it. as you change the way the magnets are oriented, you change the way the filings are arranged, and this is what we're seeing with the jet steam in the northern latitudes. but, this is something that you need a basic understanding in physics to understand - it is not intuitive and not easily explained to scientific illiterates.

as i've stated here repeatedly, this will probably not change the overall average warming trend. we can't really state for sure, but it's a question of rates - we don't think the sun is slowing down fast enough to overturn the accelerating rates of global warming. it could, though. science operates in a realm of probability and uncertainty, not in a realm of absolute knowledge or dominant fact.

but, if the sun maintains it's current trajectory, and you live in the northern hemisphere, what is being called "global warming" could turn out to be rather disappointing, as we enter a period of extended minima that frequently pushes the jet stream to the south.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/the-sun-is-quieter-than-normal-but-dont-panic

that's absolutely outrageous.

she should at least be refunded for the cost of the flight.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2019/03/13/she-wore-crop-top-her-flight-islands-airline-told-her-cover-up-or-get-off/

so, i've carefully filed this properly, backwards, to may, 2003, which is the point where things get messy, as everything for the two-three years previously dates to those burns from before i left. i will need to go through the may folder - which includes thousands of genealogical records - and pull out as much stuff from before it as possible.

i stopped to run a scandisk on the drive, just in case. it's a 2 tb drive; that's going to take the rest of the night.

i've also decided that i'm going to create that music blog after all. i think i really don't have another option at this point, as i'm going to need to cross-reference too much data, and it's the only remaining piece.

in terms of how to do this, i'm also going to move in terms of semesters, anchored by the alter-reality. if i try to do this day-by-day or even week-by-week, it will get impossible. so, i'll start with the second half of 2013, then go back and do the second half of 1993. that just extends the journal launch date that much more, but not by much - this is already done, i'm really just double-checking it. with the music blog - reviews, comments - it should become comprehensive. and, i know that's what people actually want...

my robot book should be here in the morning.

still 403s on the tripod site :(

and, i'm otherwise going to nap.

sending trudeau home from spring break is suggestive of something pretty intense.

even an announcement could have waited; a resignation, an early election....all of it could have waited until monday...

the one thing i can think of it that would require immediate attention is a revolt.

i've been clear that i think the issue driving this is trivial. i've also been clear that i'd like to see him hit the slopes, and fade in with the locals. so, i'm neither going to go along, nor push back.

and, i'm a little concerned that the medicine might be worse than the disease.

i guess that if he storms in with the grenadiers then we'll never know what happened. but, if he's too late, an announcement is likely in short order.

and, again: i am neither a jew nor a catholic. the only time in my life that i've attended services on a regular basis was in early grade school - grades 4-5 - and it was actually as a methodist, with my step-father, who was raised as a lebanese maronite. i have been strictly atheist since about the age of 10.

my mother was raised as an anglican, but never expressed any sort of religious conviction to me, and i don't think she ever had any. in the years i knew her - and i'll point out that we've barely spoke in 25 years - i don't think she attended a church service on her own initiative even once.

my father had near eastern ancestry, and i've been told it was hebrew in origin. however, both he and his father were raised as francophone roman catholics. my father would sometimes make vague references to a kind of vague deism, but i think the actual truth is that he never really thought about religion much. religion is an abstract thing; he was very concrete, very practical. i remember his third marriage, which was a civil ceremony in a community centre...so i was going to say he only went to church for weddings and funerals, but even that much isn't true. i was much closer to my father, and i never saw him go to church even once in the thirty odd years that i knew him.

i have never been to a synagogue or been through any jewish rituals. i was not even aware of any jewish ancestry until my 30s; the first story about the family's tanned skin was that we were part native american.

i was not baptized as an infant. so, i was not christened. my mom's side is very anti-catholic, and she vetoed it. however, i was baptized as a toddler, when i was 3.5. i was baptized solely in order to send me to a catholic school, not out of any actual religious conviction, and in fact only due to the differences in the catholic and public school systems. the catholic school system started kids off at the age of 4, whereas the public school system started kids off at the age of 5. by baptizing me, i was able to go to kindergarten a year earlier. i actually vaguely remember it still; i remember being afraid of the priest, and i remember my mom's cynicism around it.

i attended a catholic school until the end of grade 13, but i did not participate in the other rituals. i did not receive the second or third sacraments. as such, the catholic church would not recognize me as one of their own; the disinterest would be mutual.

atheism is a perfectly satisfying world view; it is the way of the future, and i would recommend it to all.