can bloomberg hurt biden in the south?

no.

you know who could, though, is al gore. and, what side is al on these days, anyways?

it's a hard task. they're loyal. they vote in blocs, because they know they have to. and, they're conservative as fuck.

so, if it crossed your mind? no. good tactic, wrong player.

what i should do is try to boot a linux distro from a usb stick, just to see how it picks up the battery.

if i can confirm that the charging issue is specific to the chromium os, the next step will be to wipe the thing down completely and put a lightweight linux distro on it instead.

This Chromebook comes with a dual-core Intel Celeron 1007u processor clocks in at 1.5 GHz, 4GB of RAM, a 16GB SSD, and a 720p camera. Despite a relatively low price of $244, the 4GB of RAM and 720p camera are very surprising but welcome additions. Usually, Chromebooks include a lower resolution webcam of 640 x 480 and rarely come with more than 2GB of RAM. These upgrades definitely turn the ThinkPad X131e into more of a workhorse, allowing you to run more tabs for improved productivity and higher-resolution video conferences. So far, everything looks great on paper.

i should be able to find a linux distro that can install itself with a few simple office tools on a 16 gb ssd partition, you'd think.

this machine just needs to be a glorified phone, remember - a phone i can actually type on.

i needed to crash, clearly.

and, i need to actually catch-up and get what i'm doing finished, now.

but, i'm not thinking that expending a lot of time trying to fix the chrome os on this chromebook is worthwhile. frankly, i don't actually like the os - i don't like the unnecessary focus on security (forcing you to type in a long pass key every time you want to use it), and i don't like the limitations on installing software. it was useful for what it was while it worked, but i want more control over it.

so, i would rather just install windows, anyways.

but, if i can get a normal linux install, instead, that's a step forwards, and one i can probably compromise with.

and, i wonder if i can actually install a normal hard drive in it, or not - i have a few around.

that's in a few days. first, i want to get done what i was doing, it's more important.

ok, so i got distracted again.

i was a little hungover this morning, and not entirely at full strength, but i'd like to stretch the day out as far as i can, here. so, i'm going to make some coffee and finally get a move on the reassemble.

in the mean time, i'll have no choice but to reduce usage in order to minimize costs.

if my primary concern is that they're changing the system so that poor people lose their rebates, and, again, they were targeted because they need it the most, what's the solution?

you boost the oesp amount by the amount that you expect the average price to increase by.

so, if $45 was the average value of x+f, and you're increasing x by 55%, then you make the following adjustment:

1) x + 27 = 45 <-----> x=18
2) 18*1.55 = 27.9
3) 27.90 + 27 = 54.90

so, if they increased the amount from 45 to 55, as the data will instruct them to do within a few months, then they can alleviate the issue where it's most important.

the validity of this argument is in realizing that $45 was not chosen arbitrarily. it is the average price. if you increase the rates, the average price shifts with it, and the oesp amount should change to reflect it. otherwise, you're just taking money away from poor people, and giving it to utility companies.

as was the case with the carbon tax oversight, this is just bad governance. they should have done this. it should have been obvious.

for me, that would mean that if my x is 19 and it goes up by 55%, then my new price before taxes is:

19*1.55 + 27 = 56.45.

subtracting out the $55 would leave me with a bill for $1.45 - which, after accounting for rounding errors on a small number, is close enough to a 55% increase.

1.13*1.45 - .318*1.13*1.45 = $1.11.

that's a $0.03 increase - which is roughly in line with inflation.

....and, expect the government to do a song and dance about the rebate, because it thinks you're too stupid to figure it out. that's the bait and switch - look the other way at the billions of dollars being thrown at ford's buddies in the industry, because you get a nice 32% rebate (after they jacked the price up by 55% on the backs of the poor).

well.

maybe you are, though.

i mean, you voted for them, right?

i'm not a fiscal conservative. but, your kids will pay for this blunder.

what was the point of doing this, exactly?

apparently, the government wants you to "know the true price of electricity"?

what? why? who cares?

if you're curious, this "true price" is set by the ontario electricity board, which is an industry captured regulatory body, and is something like five times the price as it is in competing jurisdictions. so, even if there was some value to knowing the "true price", it's pretty clear that this isn't actually it. it hardly seems worth the effort, does it?

i guess that they might think that there's some kind of propaganda value in adding a giant rebate to the bill - and you will now see a 32% rebate on every bill - but that's hardly going to be effective if the people that care most about electrical costs are going to have their rates increased by 800-1000%.

rather, what they're doing is a hand-out to the industry, and they're doing it on the backs of poor people.

first, who is affected, and how?

1) poor people that qualify and receive their rebates will have the effectiveness of their rebates reversed - rebates that were targeted to them because they need it the most. the rebates are not being cancelled. but, if a million of us have to pay an extra $10 a month, that's a $120 million dollar cut in welfare for people that need it.
2) people that don't qualify for the rebates, and that still use small amounts of electricity (meaning bourgeois liberals, essentially) will actually get a small rate cut. if you don't qualify for the rebates, you won't care about a $4 cut. but, if there's 3 million people that save $4 a month, that's a 144 million dollar tax cut for people that don't need it. so, you see what they did here?
3) if you use a lot of electricity, you're going to get reamed by a 10%+ rate hike. enjoy your $7, though.

and, what is the actual effect of the changes?

1) the amount that producers can charge is going up by 55%. so, they're going to get much higher profits.
2) the amount that the government is subsidizing is going up from 8% to 32%. that's a four fold increase. so, the amount of money that taxpayers are giving the producers is going to increase dramatically, thereby increasing their profits even more.

together, that's called corporate welfare.

and, that's the baffling thing about it - if there was ever any reason to criticize the system that existed, it was that it was siphoning out public money into the hands of private corporations. the liberals can be awful, it is true. but, they're not so blatantly corrupt as this....

so,

1) you're looking at a cash transfer from students and disabled people to toronto condo owners.
2) you're looking at huge amounts of money being shoveled out of public coffers and into private industry, which is going to contribute to the deficit, while ford and his cronies laugh about it all the way to the bank.

this is what they do when they win. every time.

personally, it puts me into a confusing state, and i'll have to see what the bill looks like.

if the line order in the calculation remains the same, my previous calculation is correct, and my bill will go from $1.00 to $8.00. this is because they take the $45 credit out before they add the tax or the rebate. so, i have to eat the rate increase, but then i don't get the rebate to offset it.

my calculation is this:

1.13*(x*1.55 + f  - 45) - .318(1.13*x*1.55 + 1.13f - 1.13*45) =     (f=27)
1.13*(1.55x -18) - .318(1.7515x -20.34) =
1.194523x -13.87188

that seems better at first, except that my old bill was:

1.13*((x + f) - 45) - 0.08(1.13*(x+f-45)) =       (f=27)
1.13*(x-18) - 0.0904(x-18) =
1.0396(x-18) =
1.0396x - 18.7128.

subtracting out, i get the 15.5% increase, but am now adding an extra $4.84. static. and, that doesn't change with usage.

that means if my x is $19, my increase in cost only seems to be $2.94, but then i have to increase that by $4.84 rather than subtract it by $7.26.

how can i reverse that and get back to saving credits?

x*1.55 + 27 <  45 <----> x*1.55 < 18 <----> x < $11.60.

when i first moved in here, before i had the fan running all of the time, i was actually able to get my usage to less than $10. so, i know i can do it, if i can get the air quality in here cleared out enough that i can get the fans off.

in the mean time, as mentioned, i'm going to have to start turning off the modem when i'm not using it, and essentially completely disconnect everything during the day.

so, i had to fix that. sorry. honest.

but, they're still lying.

i'm going to correct the math slightly.

i multiplied the f by 155% thinking it would come out in the wash, but i actually dropped a factor. see, for me, i have a rebate, so it does come out in the wash - for my bill, specifically, i was right. but, more generally, that added term is important.

so, lets say your cost is x + f, where f is the fixed rate. the increase in cost will be 1.55x + f. then, you add tax: 1.13*(1.55x + f) = 1.7515x + 1.13f. then, you can subtract the 31.8%

1.7515x + 1.13f - 0.318*(1.7515x + 1.13f) =
x*(1.7515 - 0.318*1.7515) + f*(1.13-.318*1.13) =
1.194523x + 0.77066f.

that's your new price, where x is the previous cost of electricity minus the fixed rate and f is the fixed rate.

your previous price was:

(x +f)*1.13 - (x+f)*1.13*0.08 =
(x + f)(1.0396).

so, the difference in price is then still +0.154923x (albeit f less than the previous x), but it's also -0.26894f. the reason for this is that the fixed price did not go up by 55%, but will go down by 32%. that's the term i dropped.

here, f is about $27. so, you're still looking at that 15.5% increase (on an x that is f less), but then minus a fixed amount of $7.26. that's my error. i apologize.

so, if your electrical bill was $127 last month before taxes and adjustments, then x is $100 and f is $27, so your new bill will be 15.5% higher in electrical costs (applied to the $100, not the $127), but then $7.26 less. that $7.26 is a fixed amount and will not increase or decrease with usage. so, your bill will then go from $132 to $140, rather than from $132 to $152. it's still not $2 - it's just $7.26 less than the 15.5% i previously calculated.

so, your bills will go up by 15.5%, still.

it's just that then they go down by another $7.26. and, i'll let you calculate whether that's in your interest or not.

but, x*1.155 - 7.26 < (x + 2.00) <----> x*.155<9.26 <----> x<$59.74.

so, if your bill is usually $83 or higher you're going to be paying more than $2 more, and the amount will increase as you use. if your bill is actually often in the $300 range (assume x=300, f=27), you're looking at a $39 increase, which is more than 11%. that number will approach 15.5% as costs increase, but never exceed it.

so, that's another way to look at it - that 15.5% is a limit. a maximum amount. that's what you get by dropping the "error term".

sorry.

15.5%.

how low would your electrical bill have to be to have the difference be $2?

x*0.154923 < $2.00   <------->  x < $12.90.

i thought, maybe, they were just excluding the delivery charges, which would be dishonest but deconstructible. no.

there's no way to make sense of the email i got from enwin; it's just a terrible, horrible lie.

expect your bills to go up by 15%.

and, the idea that the price is going to only go up by 2% is just wrong.

let's say your current electrical cost is x. the price is going up 155%, so your new price is 1.55x. then, they'll charge you tax, so that's another 0.13*1.55x, so your new price is 1.7515x. they'll then reduce that by 31.8%, so that's

1.7515x - 0.318*1.7515x = 1.194523x.

previously, they would have charged you tax (1.13x) and then reduced it by 8% (1.13x - 0.08*1.13x = 1.0396x).

1.194523x - 1.0396x = 0.154923x. that's a 15% percent increase.

and, indeed, if your normal electrical price is $150 (how?), you're going to go from $155.94 to $179.18. that's not $2.

if you're actually one of these poor suckers that uses $300 of electricity, per month (including delivery)? your bill will go from $312 to....$358.36.

you know doug. he's in it for you.

so, it's that much more important that i get the battery fixed in the chromebook.

and, i'm going to start disconnecting from the internet and going into battery mode between 7:00-19:00.

my sleeping schedule for the winter is also now fixed...

this is going to have a gigantic shift on my behaviour and habits, because i'm not giving these fuckers a dime.

i'm looking at an electrical bill that is going to be ten times as high as it was.

what has the government done, here?

1) it's increased the price of electricity, by 53-55%.
2) it's then increased the rebates from 8% to 32%, which is 24%.

so, let's say your bill was $45. well, that's my bill. why is yours so much?

this is my bill from last month:

on peak - $3.77
mid peak - $2.69
off peak - $7.62
total:  $14.08
 
i then have to pay enwin $31.95 in "delivery charges". so, it was $46.03.

i have a $45 oesp credit, so that left me with a bill for $1.03. they then charged me $0.13 hst, so it's $1.16 with tax. then, they gave me my 8% rebate...which was $0.08.

my bill is going to go up 55%, now. so, instead of being $14.08, it's going to be $21.82. further, the "delivery charges" will go up by some amount, and i'm not working it out. so, my bill will now be around $55 instead of $46.

they'll then take the $45 credit out, so it will be $11.

then they'll charge me tax, which is 13%.  so, i'm looking at $12-13. after they apply their increased rebate, i'm going to be looking at $8.00-9.00 for electricity.

per month.

....for a service that should be owned and operated by the people of this province on a non-profit basis.

so, i'm outraged - this is just an obvious cash grab by ford and his private sector cronies, and everybody with a brain saw it coming a million miles away. it's exactly what happened under mike harris - they promised lower electrical rates, and their privatization schemes instead pushed the price through the roof.

we need public ownership of these utilities, and nobody is willing to run on it.

personally? i'm not going to pay for this. i'll cut my usage down, until it's next to nothing. i'll go type in the coffee shop, if i have to.

i can't believe how stupid the sitting government is. and, i can't believe how stupid the province is for voting for them.

this is a catastrophe.

i'm essentially going to have to turn all electricity in the unit off between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm, now.

============

Dear Valued ENWIN Customer,
We wanted to make you aware of two important changes that may impact your bill:

Winter Time of Use Hours Now In Effect

We would like to remind you Winter Time-of-Use hours are now in effect starting November 1, 2019. Remember, electricity rates are lower during off-peak hours. For the lowest possible bill, adjust your consumption accordingly.

Ontario Energy Board Sets New Electricity Prices

The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) has also set new Time-of-Use electricity prices for households and small businesses, effective November 1^st, under the Regulated Price Plan (RPP).
Prior to November 1^st, 2019, time-of-use electricity rates included a built in rebate, which artificially reduced the cost of power. Your bill also included an additional 8% provincial rebate.
Starting November 1^st, 2019, Ontario is making your electricity bill more transparent by moving the built in rebate included in the electricity rates and identifying the full rebate amount separately on your bill. With this change, the 8% provincial rebate will be replaced by a much larger 31.8% Ontario Energy Rebate (OER). This increased rebate will largely offset the rate changes.

Time-of-Use Price Period / Rebate	Prior to November 1, 2019	Starting November 1, 2019
Off-Peak Rate	6.5¢/kWh	10.1¢/kWh
Mid-Peak Rate	9.4¢/kWh	14.4¢/kWh
On-Peak Rate	13.4¢/kWh	20.8¢/kWh
Rebate (subtracted from your bill)	8% Provincial Rebate	31.8% Ontario Energy Rebate

The total bill for a typical residential customer who uses 700 kWh per month will increase by about $1.99 or 1.8% with this change, which is in line with the rate of inflation.
For additional information on this rate change including a sample bill, please click the link below:
https://www.oeb.ca/newsroom/2019/ontario-energy-board-sets-new-electricity-prices-households-and-small-businesses


Customer Service: 519-255-2727
Business Hours are 8:00 am - 4:30 pm Monday to Friday
Email: info@enwin.com

the premise that alzheimer's is a hereditary genetic condition is just not well thought through. so, it's one of those things that you can throw data at me regarding, and i'm just going to search for holes in it - i will never take the idea seriously, because it's incoherent on it's face. rather, i'm confident that i'll find the flaw in your study.

can we be born with genes that cognitively impair us from birth? yes. we have down's syndrome as an example. evolution can sometimes make mistakes.

and, can our dna get damaged as it goes to copy itself? sure. that happens all of the time. that's how some types of cancer function, and can both happen as a consequence of exposure to toxins or radiation, or just from the process fucking up.

but, does the idea of a gene that is programmed to eat our brains out from the inside when we reach a certain age actually make any sense? no. that's ridiculous.

it's caused by pollution. deal with it.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/brain-pollution-evidence-builds-dirty-air-causes-alzheimer-s-dementia

Advances in molecular genetics now allow the opportunity for international studies such as ours to explore etiological hypotheses involving specific genes rather than simple comparisons between races or ethnic groups. One of the most consistent findings in AD research has been the association of the possession of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) ∊4 allele to increased susceptibility for AD.³⁸ In contrast to reports from other populations, we have found only a marginally significant association between possession of the ∊4 allele and AD in the African American population³⁹ similar to other study reports.⁴⁰ In the Yoruba, we have found no significant association between the possession of the ∊4 allele and dementia or AD in either the heterozygous or homozygous states.⁴¹ As the frequencies of the 3 major APOE alleles are almost identical in the 2 populations, this variation in the strength of the association between ∊4 and AD may account for some of the differences in incidence rates between the populations, although it is not likely to explain all of it. It also raises the possibility that some other genetic or environmental factor affects the association of the ∊4 allele to AD and reduces incidence rates for dementia and AD in Yoruba.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/193548

there's an interesting list of references at the end of this article.

https://www.brainblogger.com/2017/09/15/environmental-factors-in-development-of-alzheimers-disease/

that was easier than i thought. i just had to delete the tokens.dat file and let the system rebuild the database. it's actually better now than it was before, because i'm not getting those annoying prompts...

i got a little distracted yesterday morning by my chromebook, which has developed some kind of corruption in the firmware. the battery appears to work according to the diagnostics, but the operating system doesn't seem to want to read it. i was hoping i could fix it easily by flipping a bit, but it looks like it's a more serious project. there's an entire component of the operating system that appears to be damaged...

it just means i need to keep it plugged in to use it, and that i have to use it in guest mode because it won't let me default to the pin. so, it's not catastrophic. but i want to fix it. i was hoping i could do it quickly in the morning, then take a nap before i went out, but i just learned it's going to be a project. so, i'm going to put that aside for a few days, although i'd like to get a handle on it before i go to toronto.

last night didn't work out as intended, but i'm glad i figured it out before i got stuck. i went to buy some tickets from the terminal, and they told me the tunnel was closing for the night. so, my plan to hit the concerto and the noise rock show was foiled; i stayed in windsor, instead. i'll do up a review in a bit, but it's going to be sort of short and not that exciting.

i was home late, ate, showered and slept all day....

how is the smell in here? i did try to turn the fan off this morning, but i've got it back on tonight. it's a smoky kind of smell, and i might be tempted to conclude somebody was smoking, but i've learned that it might be remnant complications from the sewer gas. i don't know, really. i know that i had to turn the fan back on, and i'll try again in a few more days. i can't smell the sewer in the closet, but the heat has been on, and i know that resolves it, regardless. the smell coming out of the fixtures has been getting better but hasn't resolved itself.

so, i need to spend the night doing what i intended to do yesterday morning, which is reassembling this week's rambling. and, then, i intend to get back to those liner notes, and get them done with by the end of the weekend.

we'll talk soon. i want to figure this out once and for all, first.

the key activates. it's fine. i got it from school, i think. but, my haphazard workaround has created some kind of access request error - system files still belong to the removed account.

i don't want to just take ownership of the whole drive. i want to figure out the precise concern.

for now, this is priceless. stupid windows...

yup. back on the laptop.

didn't even lose a tab...

might even be a bit snappier. and, the "your windows is fake" screen hasn't come up yet, when it should. score.

i need to go through and fix typos and rearrange all the posts made since sunday night, put an entry into the star log and get back to focusing on those liner notes, which i probably won't get much of a start on by the end of the night, but we'll see.

it's an interesting reflection of what it means to grow up in canada, though.

my dad is french on his father's side and italian on his mother's side, and i'm more interested in greek than latin.

i feel more greek than latin.

but, i'm not greek. at all.

i think this article is missing the point.

when you live in ottawa, you pretty much only have one economic opportunity, and that's working for the government. if you want a job in the government, you'd better be bilingual. so, what's happening is that the economic realities of the region are creating a pretty strong push factor to get kids into immersion - because people know that if their kids can't speak french, then they have no future in the city.

they don't need an education campaign to promote the benefits of the english system; so long as the only serious employment opportunities in the city are in government, you're going to see this continue. i don't want to "blame" it on the federal government's bilingual policy, but if the region can't diversify it's economy away from government then it's the truth of it - you'll never get a decent job if you're not fluent in french.

i didn't go to immersion, and in fact i thought learning french was a waste of time - something i actually don't regret. that doesn't have a lot to do with why i moved. my french is rusty, but it's workable. i could pass a test. i legitimately just didn't want a government job. i didn't want the 9-5, the responsibility, the social obligations...

and, i don't actually think the language issue was at the heart of the barriers i faced in employment. stated tersely, they didn't seem to want me there any more than i wanted to be there; i didn't understand the culture, i didn't have the experience, i didn't fit in and they knew it.

my parents got into a hugely nasty fight about this, though. my father is fluently bilingual, and expected his children would be. my mother was born in saskatchewan, and wanted me to grow up with an english identity (despite not having any actual english ancestry, to my knowledge - she's norse and finnish and irish and welsh and scottish, but not actually english). in the end, she got to make the choice, but he deeply resented her for it, and i never really developed enough of a french identity to take an independent interest. i was growing up in the onset of globalization. why can't we all speak one language? why do we need to have dozens of them?

my perspective hasn't meaningfully changed. i still don't want to work in the government. and, if i were to learn a new language today, french wouldn't be the one i'd be most interested in. i think i'd rather learn greek, or maybe russian. 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-french-immersion-causes-two-tier-school-system-data-show/

so, i'm still on the chromebook. but, the laptop booted...and everything seems to be where it was....

i have some loose ends to work out before i close this machine back down, but i should be able to spend most of the night on the other machine, catching up on things from the last few days, after i stop to get something quick to eat.

this was not as serious of an issue as the last time this happened, which was after i tried to pop my access to information disc in the machine. all i did to fix this was the following:

1) take the hard drive out of the laptop

2) install the hard drive into the pc in an open slot

3) put a windows 7 disc into the pc

4) boot to windows pe and run a chkdsk /b.

5) boot into windows xp on the pc. yeah. it's fast.

6) copy everything off of the laptop's hard drive onto the pc's hard drive

7) turn the pc off and unplug all of the hard drives in the pc except the laptop's drive.

8) reboot to dvd and install windows 7 to the laptop's hard drive. this rebuilds the boot sector from scratch.

9) once you're up in windows 7, turn the machine off.

10) plug the other hard drives back in, and boot back into windows xp.

11) delete all of the data off of the laptop's install partition, except the registry. save that, just in case. do not format the install partition. do not touch the boot partition.

12) copy the data back on to the hard drive, putting the fresh registry somewhere safe for troubleshooting.

13) it should now boot back to your previous install, on the pc. if there are registry issues, you can fix them via trial and error. this time, there actually weren't any - it just booted up clean.
14) put the hard drive back in the laptop.

i legit lost sunday night, but i was going to spend monday making calls anyways, and i had to do show research for the trip, and i had to get some sleep. so, didn't really lose monday or tuesday. i guess i also lost tonight. so, that's only like ten hours. i've wasted more time on a new york times article.

let's get things in order by early morning, so i can hit the show tomorrow night.

it's curious.

i'm searching through my registry files, and the logs all have to do with remote desktop. mstc.exe. dialer.exe. phone calls....

but, it booted cleanly. so, it seems to have been strictly a boot sector issue. let's hope it boots back up on the laptop without further problems.

so, i mean...

if you could completely control the environment in every possible way, including perfectly understanding the "machine learning" in your brain, could you create your uber mensch, after all?

probably. yeah.

but good luck with that.

but, to be clear - am i picking nurture over nature? no. i'm redefining the debate, and not in the usual "it's a complicated mix" sort of cop-out way.

the debate is usually between whether you're born a certain way and can't change it, or whether you're subject to gramscian conditioning and can be completely defined by your masters.

i don't think either of those things are true. what i think is that the premise that you can control the laboratory conditions in this experiment is horribly naive! so, it's almost like a heisenbergian reanalysis of the basic question: how well can we control the environment, in the first place? how much of this is subject to randomness in ways that are not inherent, but that no amount of nurture can possibly overturn? are there paradoxical and ultraparadoxical phases linked to the nurture argument, and how much of this is triggered in ways that can't be controlled for, either?

so, i don't want a nature v nurture argument - i think this is deprecated. biological determinism is absurd. rather, what i want is a nurture v error argument, a controlled v uncontrolled debate, and then i'll argue that error is the evolution of nature in the equation.

and, then we can talk about how it's complicated.

so, what causes all of these things like asexuality and transexuality?

it's randomness. chance. error.

accepting that what our dna does is turn us into smart machines that can be more efficiently programmed by the environment essentially puts us at the whim of the universe, itself. as individuals, we're just the sum of our experiences.

so, there isn't a normal sexuality or a normal gender expression, relative to our dna. this arises solely and exclusively through the "machine learning" we go through as we actually exist. if heterosexuality is more common than homosexuality, it is only as a reflection of the dominant society. if we decided that homosexuality was normal, then we'd all be programmed that way by society, and we'd all grow up gay.

so, i'm essentially taking a tabula rasa position on this. 

and, what it means is that things like historical statistics are kind of meaningless, because the assumption should be variation rather than stasis.

humans are indeed basically computers. but, we're not like the simple computers that we created when we first started messing around with programs.

to begin with, we're quantum computers. second, we're capable of machine learning - we're a complicated ai, not a linear code, or a recursive functional program.

so, when i talk about pavlovian conditioning, that doesn't exactly bring in a concept of free choice. we're still being programmed, but we're being programmed by the universe as it exists, in real time, rather than sprouting from some detailed instructions.

dna codes for proteins, which means it determines how the mechanics of our biology operates. and, it fucks this up. all of the time. look at all the diabetics. and, what is evolution? it's a function of errors in transcription. if you're imagining dna as this perfect set of instructions, that's completely flawed - it's haphazard and error-prone.

and, it simply doesn't code for actual behaviour - it just produces the conditions to allow for the universe to actually program us, as a reaction to stimuli in real-time.

and, as we evolve, it will be to become more reactive, more adaptive, not less so.

my perspectives on this are not in the mainstream of science at the moment, although as more evidence debunks the genetic basis of sexual orientation there is going to be a need to look at different approaches, but the easy deduction from her life experiences is that she essentially wasn't taught to be sexual, whereas the other kids around her were.

reducing it to a choice - like what you're going to eat for breakfast - is a little overly simplistic. but, i think that if you were to look at her life experiences that much more carefully, you'd pull some things out. for example, i'd bet she watched less tv and was broadly less exposed to specific types of media than the kids around her. further, i'd suspect that her mother was less sexual than the mothers of some of these other kids. they probably never really had that old talk. if you want to reduce it to a single, specific factor, it could very well simply be that her role models were not sexual, so she grew up into a non-sexual identity. yes, there is some concept of choice here, but it's hopelessly intertwined with the inputs defining the choice, meaning you're looking more at a type of pavlovian conditioning.

the basic point that i think so many people get wrong here is that they assume that this is all programmed, all hard-wired. the evidence is slowly overturning this perception. but, the remnants of social norms are still kind of lingering around. 

my position is that all of these things that we assume are inherent have to be taught, and if you don't teach them then they just don't happen. i'm convinced, personally, that one of the reasons that i ended up identifying as female is that nobody ever really taught me how to be a male. it's not that simple. the mere absence of instruction is not enough to imply a specific outcome. i could have decided to pursue that path on my own, and sought different role models. but, being born xy doesn't necessarily imply you'll grow into a man - you have to be taught, somehow, one way or the other. it doesn't just happen. it's not innate, not automatic, not inherent.

likewise, sexual attraction is not something innate. it doesn't just appear out of our genome. mammals need to be taught almost everything by their parents, and sexuality is really no different. if you don't teach your kids about sex, they won't necessarily learn about it on their own - they might decide they'd rather do something else, or they might build up walls and barriers and stigmas. they may even take solace in their isolation, and elevate it to a part of their identity.

she could probably change her mind if she wanted to, but the older you are, the harder it gets. and, she can't get back the life experiences that she didn't have when she was younger.

is asexuality essentially just another way to say you're sexually immature, then? by definition, perhaps. but, accepting diversity and autonomy and agency means it's ok to be immature and ok to accept that immaturity as an identity - that there isn't a correct path to follow in life.

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a9088917/womankind-asexual-woman-sexual-attraction/

to make the point clear. i have to do this every little while.

...although it really should be obvious.....

...but i don't actually have sex, ever, with anybody, at all. i have had a single sexual partner in my life over 2002-2006, and what i learned is that it's not worth it. it took me a few years to realize it and make a conscious choice on the matter, but i've been consciously celibate by desire since roughly 2009. i have had essentially no interest in sex, at all, with anybody, in well over ten years.

i take a large amount of testosterone suppressors that make it physically impossible for me to get an erection. i couldn't fuck you if you begged me to. and, i wouldn't want to. i take these drugs because this is what i want. i find male sexuality, in pretty much any context, to be completely revolting.

i have never hit on or made sexual advances towards anybody of any gender, wanted or unwanted. there have been situations where i've realized that an advance has been wanted, and i've avoided making it. there have been situations where i've had to reject or avoid passive advances. there have also been situations where i've had to aggressively reject aggressive advances, and in fact from women more often than men. i even think i was raped once. but, i don't make sexual advances towards anybody, ever, at all, of any gender, under any circumstance, because i actually honestly seriously don't want to. anybody of any gender that is convinced i was hitting on them is just misinterpreting the situation....

so, i don't know what else to tell you.

i'm asexual; i don't seek sex, because i don't want it. and, you're just confused, if you're convinced otherwise.

so, i crashed around 7:00 and wasn't up until after 15:00. that was actually the longest that i've slept in a good while, though. 

that just means i slept off the wait. but, i got lazy last night and i need to make sure the laptop is, in fact, booting by the end of the night.

how was alessandro cortini, though?

he mostly did social network style stuff, which was predictable, but maybe not what i was expecting. he was on late and finished late. and, then, i was essentially stuck there listening to dubstep (which i can't stand) until the buses started running again.

when the works shut down, it seems to have opened up a void that is still kind of settling. but, it freed the scene up and gave rise to marble, which is a bar that has both a crowd and a stylistic focus that i greatly prefer over the works. like most of detroit, i actually hated the works - i hated the atmosphere, i hated the djs and i hated the scene. it was a gross, disgusting place full of gross, disgusting people - and very, very bad music. but, on some nights, it was the only party in town, and people seemed to not want to put on other parties because everybody was going there, anyways.

i've noticed recently that the dubstep kids are migrating to marble, and i'm hoping they don't settle in there. marble was great precisely because it wasn't full of the old works crowd of dubstep people. it was an older and less shallow audience, over all. it might be too late, though, and if they settle in, and the management embraces them, i might find myself needing to look somewhere else. for now, i've got plaid coming up at the start of the month and we'll see what happens next year...

personally, i think that the leland club is a better spot for the dubstep kids. those goth nights are always dead, and they've been upstaged by small's, anyways. they could save their bar by becoming the new works, and that would be fine with me, if it means protecting marble from the wubbz invasion, and everything that means. 

however the dust settles, i'm just hoping there's a consistent way to avoid dubstep on a weekly basis. for a while, there wasn't, and i ended up hanging out in a place that i didn't actually really want to be in - and, as it turns out, didn't really want me there, either.

i mean, what they told me was that i was "making people uncomfortable". not a specific person, but "people", in general.

i asked for them to be more specific, and they declined. i was not able to properly decode the statement, and i've never been able to build the full context.

my perception of myself is that the only people that i tend to make uncomfortable are homophobic men - and i know that's a real thing. so, when somebody comes up to me and says "you have to leave because you're making people feel uncomfortable", and then declines to elaborate, i can't draw any other real deduction - i must have been thrown out for upsetting the men in the bar.

and, the bar was almost entirely full of men at that point, as well, which is probably why i became the focus of attention - there were all these guys looking around for girls, and i was what was there. if there were more women in the bar, i probably would have escaped notice.

as mentioned - that's the only example i have, because i don't actually like to go to upper class type places, anyways.

but, i'm not going to put a shirt on. i'll go somewhere else, instead. sorry.

the reality is that i don't think it's ever actually come up, because i don't tend to be drawn to those kinds of places, anyways. i don't recall ever being turned away anywhere. but, i don't have any memories of actually going anywhere that would make it an issue or want to turn me away, either. 98% of the time that i'm in a bar, it's to see a concert and, for the other 2% of the time, i would naturally avoid a place like that out of reflex, and seek out the dive bar down the street, instead. i've never had a group of friends that would say "let's go to this bar with a dress code", either - i've always preferred social groups that consist of anarchists, punks and nerds that would rather hang out in dive bars, in the first place.

that night that i got thrown out of the works probably had a lot do with what i was wearing, but it was a gender expression thing. i never really got a straight answer, but i appear to have upset some guys at the bar via a combination of turning on their girlfriends and confusing them about what my gender was. i was there on that night to see allessandro cortini, and he seems to have attracted a lot of heteronormative meatheads to what is generally a sleazy dance bar. so, yes - they probably threw me out for what i was wearing, but it was more of a gender thing than a class thing, and all i can do is point out that it reflects exceedingly poorly on the bar owners and management. the bar has since closed.

i have no other examples.

and, my only request to the new detroit is that they tell me before hand so i can avoid anywhere that wants to put one down.

actually, my perspective on dress codes is to request that you publish them ahead of time so i know to avoid your party or establishment. obviously, nobody likes meeting a bouncer that is going to refuse you entry based on your clothing. it's a frustrating and embarrassing situation for everybody. but, i'm not the kind of person that is going to change my appearance to fit it, or want to spend time in a place that enforces rules on what you can or can't wear. further, i fully reject all kinds of hierarchy - i'm an anarchist. so, i'm not going to like the people there any more than they're going to like me. the disinterest is mutual. i do not want to be at a party with a dress code.

if you publish it ahead of time, you can save everybody the hassle - i'll go somewhere else. and, i can launch into an argument about property rights, but it's ultimately inconsequential, in context. the best outcome is that we avoid each other.

i'd just request that communication around the issue be upfront and clear, well ahead of time.

just to update the status on the drive.

it boots. it's not broken. i'm copying everything over.

it was probably the registry, and it's probably going to take a while to figure it out. i got distracted this morning...it's not going to be until tomorrow, now.

so, i got distracted and was slow to get going, but i'm reinstalling now.

(edit - this post seems truncated, but i have no recollection of anything else i might have put into it)

with a stalemate like this, and an inevitable outcome that most people don't want, i think the situation is ripe for a consensus candidate to appear out of nowhere and run on hope and unicorns. they wouldn't even need to have good policies, they'd just have to float above the fray. they'd just have to give people a way out of the trenches.

again: i'm not actually a voter in the united states, but what i want to see is somebody run on a positive socialist vision, without all the populist fear mongering and scapegoating. i want less blaming and more analysis. and, i want a zero tolerance policy on social conservatism.

this ought to be the status quo, but there is no candidate right now that is just a basic, textbook leftist - they all have some asterisk of some sort.

it shouldn't be hard to find a candidate that both supports universal health care and isn't opposed to technological determinism.

the deep democratic south is where northern white liberals go to die.

he should have just bought a house down there and retired.

so, i'm listening to minibeast (i'm not going, but i'm going to formulate a review) and waiting for the clock to get to 19:00. and, i'm going to post a polling analysis update.

as mentioned previously, i've withdrawn my support for bernie sanders under concerns that he's aligning with social conservatives around issues of religious identity and a general perception that he's basically a fraud. he's made it clear enough to me that he's just looking to demonize whomever it is that he thinks will help him, in the end - that he's essentially the worst kind of cynical politician, and that he fully intends to run a campaign of scapegoating and bigotry based on fear and identity politics. he wants to run on hate. so, he's really not that different from trump, and you should even expect him to use a lot of the same tactics. he's not running a meaningful socialist campaign, he's running a populist campaign that seeks to demonize a class of minorities that includes bankers, tech sector workers and queer people. frankly, i have more in common with tech sector workers and queer people than i do with mexicans or muslims, but the point i'm making is that he's using the same tactic, he's just changing the target. then, he calls other people bigots when they stand up against his own bigotry. it's a perverse farce.

so, he's a cynical reactionary, and i'm done with him. but, i'm not supporting another candidate in his place - i'm not sure what the best third party option is right now, but you can expect me to put my support behind the communist party or the green party. bernie's a fraud....

so, any sporadic polling analysis i do is going to be from a distance.

and, i have to remind everybody that there is still no real evidence that biden is fading. there is, however, some evidence that warren has peaked.

in poll after poll of state after state, there are only two people that end up on top - warren and biden. but, biden's support is stable. he has a base. warren's is wobbly and perhaps fleeting, and she's already seen her numbers start to come down quite a lot.

at this point in time, i don't see any reason to think that biden will not win the south, and i'm putting it in those terms on purpose. warren's spike has not registered south of the mason-dixon line, sanders is at best running a strong second and harris has completely caved. if he sweeps these states, he's got a clear path. we've learned this over the last several cycles.

warren and buttigieg's support are both spiking in the north, but the real story is that sanders does not appear to be winning anywhere at all. the fact that the numbers are floating around while avoiding him suggests that he's not even really a serious candidate in places like new hampshire - he has his 20% and that's it. if somebody emerges as a clear winner in the end, it won't be him. and, if the vote splits three or four ways, as it appears that it is going to, that hands biden the win.

as i mentioned months ago, the way to beat biden was to run strong in the north and overpower his southern strategy with sheer numbers. i know that people didn't like the racial implications of it, but it was the damned truth, and it is still the damned truth, today - all that sanders' attempt to outreach to blacks in the south has done is lose him support in the north, making a split more likely and a biden win more plausible. somebody still has to win the north by huge margins, and right now that seems to be impossible.

so, biden remains the clear favourite.

how can that change? the answer is that the north needs to pick a single candidate and run with it.

warren seems to have peaked, given the current field. it seems like she'll need somebody to drop to grow further. on the other hand, if she completely crashes, that will open up a space for somebody else, but the only serious alternative left is buttigieg, and that's not a rational swing. if i understand the situation correctly, those voters may prefer klobuchar, gabbard or harris over buttigieg, sanders or biden; i think what's coming out is that there is clearly a preferable female identity candidate. but, that means that her numbers may be stubborn. if she's neither likely to grow or fall, we could be in for a long and frustrating run.

buttigieg is basically running as a log cabin republican, so if his support crashes then about the only place it's going to go is to sanders, but he may have put his foot in his mouth on that point. i mentioned previously that his spike is probably a solidarity vote, but it's also potentially a frustration vote. these kinds of things are unpredictable. so, he can kill sanders by existing, but he can't win unless biden drops as that's his only source of serious new voters. i expect the numbers to scatter, eventually.

and, sanders is just flat, and is doing his best to keep himself that way, running like he's taking on the world, attacking potential allies, aligning with questionable groups, etc. the numbers are clear enough that he has little potential for growth. the question is how many people he can alienate with his bumbling incompetence, and where they end up going - which is also likely going to scatter. as mentioned, i'm likely to look outside the party altogether....

so, of the three candidates that are splitting the vote in the north, none of them seems to have potential for growth, and there's reasons to think two of them could completely collapse.

nor is there a potential consensus candidate sitting in the margins. o'rourke just dropped. yang isn't serious. etc.

so, it's hard to see what could happen that would prevent the split, short of candidates giving up and walking out. further, it's not clear that it is in the interests of a warren or a buttigieg to prevent the split - they might both be better off blocking sanders and running for vp.

so, despite all kinds of movement over the last few months, the basic picture remains the same - biden is going to sweep the south and then win on the split in the north.

i'm basically stuck for the day.

i didn't get the reinstall started last night, but it's ready to go after 19:00, which is not so far into the future, anymore. i fully expect to be booting back into the os by the morning.

for the afternoon, i'd like to be writing reviews, but i can't get into the machine, so i'm going to type a few things up here and move them over to the other blog later.

read some marx, neil.

or the history of the catholic church.

you present this as some kind of aberration. but, it's what christianity has been since the day that constantine saw jesus in the sky, and used it as inspiration to  slaughter his enemies with.

this is all that christianity has ever been - you need to see yourself in the mirror here, neil, and come to terms with it, not look away in disgust.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-neil-macdonald-trump-white-evangelicals-1.5346659

it's not clear, in the end, if people are going to interpret her as a force that built a movement or as a force that slowed one down. her numbers in the most recent election were not that different than the ones in 2008.

she did, however, get into parliament. and, her party has elected two more representatives, since.

i may have been more likely to vote green in this election if it meant voting for a different leader. but, a vote for the greens in this riding wouldn't have helped anybody much, except the ndp, who won anyway.

this opens up a struggle for the future of the party, and it's one i may find myself rather interested in - my vote is that the party moves in a direction of secular liberalism/humanism and really stresses the importance of science as a policy making tool, thereby distancing itself from the "progressive", aka the religious, left.

if the greens are to set up a clear division between themselves and the ndp, that should be the point. yes, the greens are actually serious about the climate, and the ndp aren't. but, that stems from a fundamentally different epistemology. the ndp are a part of the religious left, with historical ties in the prairie gospel and a fundamentalist sikh at the helm, today - that is their identity, it is who they are. i want an actual socialist party that roots itself in the enlightenment and the revolutions in france and spain (both failed.), and belongs strictly to the secular left, and if i have a hand in building something, that's what i'll want to be building - not a party with "progressive" values that comes out of the traditions of the christian left.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/elizabeth-may-green-party-2019-election-1.5346737

so, the copying process appears to be done, and i've made a lot of process in scratching out potential november shows.

as mentioned, the weather makes it unlikely that i'm going much of anywhere, but we'll see how i feel as time unfolds.

the next thing to do is wipe the partition out and reinstall....

it's copying....it'll take a while....but i have lots of space on that machine....

yeah, it's just hung.

so, i'm going to log into xp (with the laptop hard drive as a secondary drive), copy every piece of data off of it, wipe the partition table, reinstall and then copy it all back folder by folder.

it should probably be bootable by the morning. we'll see.

so, again - if it's the partition table, what is this?

it's a virus. this has happened before.

and, the primary suspect is the police.

it's actually not hard to fix, but it's very annoying and takes time to get through. 

naw. it's going straight to a black screen - not even a cursor, can't even get a list of boot options. 

the chkdsk indicated that the partition table was corrupted.

so, i'm going to do a startup repair. but the fact is that i know that these things don't actually work. scanning the boot database, whatever it is called, doesn't work. you have to rebuild it, and the only way to rebuild it is to reinstall it.

so, that's that next step - to copy the data off, reinstall to the drive (to fix the partition table) and then copy everything back.

there may end up being lingering registry issues if i do that (that's my experience in the past), but if i can at least get it to tell me where it's hanging, i should be able to go in and find it and fix it.

with a blank screen like that, my options are really minimal.

facebook is really substantively faster on the chromebook.

the scandisk has successfully completed, so let's try to reboot right into it....

so, i've got my tickets purchased. i'm going to be a little coy about when i'm leaving and coming back, other than to point out what needs to be done that day in toronto.

i need to serve the cops before i go, and i know how to do that, now, although i'll drop a hard copy off while i'm at it. when i get to toronto, i'll need to serve both the attorney general and the board. and, then i'll need to file.

i'll also need to go to the special library in toronto to get a corporate report to give me the identity of the person that arrested me. this is all quite absurd, but so be it - because i'm going to be there anyways.

this will push two of the cases forward. i may decide at the last minute to appeal the access to information, but i'm putting the human rights case aside.

i will need to serve both the board and the respondent with the appeal, as well - and the judge may very well put thing on hold, afterwards.

i was able to mitigate the lost funds by choosing a cheaper concert option and a very cheap greyhound option. it's less that november is a weak month, and more that there's not anything happening there that isn't also happening here, or at least as far as i can tell, anyways. obviously, the best option would be to pick a toronto-only show, but nothing jumped out at me right away. so, i instead picked the cheapest ticket i could find, and paired it to a show at a dive bar (that is also happening in detroit the next night). the bus ticket was $45 (both ways. $20 to get to toronto is really not bad.), the lowest option possible, and the show will be around $10, just for tickets. so, that's $95 of the $100 card - it's gone. kaput. see, i was expected bus tickets to be pushing $60 (they were $70 last time, and i *did* buy early), the search to be around $10 and the show tickets to be $20-30, and at a respectable venue. it just didn't line up that way. so, what i lost with the business search (which i was willing to pay for when i thought it was evidence that the company isn't registered) i made up with the $15 less that i spent on the greyhound and the $10-$20 i made up on the show ticket. i still want the money back, dammit. but, if i wanted to get these three things accomplished with the $100 card then i'm pretty close, actually. i didn't spend more than intended, in the end - i'm just not able to enjoy the cheap tickets.

there are a few shows here that look interesting, but the long range here is terrible, and i could very well be in for the month. i'm hoping that the temperature swings back a little for the end of the month, and especially for the first week of december (i don't want to miss plaid in a blizzard). i'm comfortable launching facebook on this machine. so, i've got the scandisk running again, and i can focus on scratching out concert listings for the rest of the month. no reviews from this machine, though...

i will need to run through everything very carefully and do a big printing run before i leave. i want the day to be very carefully planned out so that i don't forget anything. but, given the weather, and given the laptop co-operates, if this is actually my only venture outside at all this month then i should get the boost of productivity i'm craving for.

let's hope tonight is a good night. and everything works itself out well.

i've got the fax out for the refund request. hey, that's $40.

so, what did i learn here?

1) that a corporation and a company and a business are three different things, in ontario. i would essentially use those words interchangeably as virtual synonyms, and wouldn't have a lot of patience for somebody trying to correct me. even as i'm typing this, i don't actually know what the difference in these words actually is, and i'm not going to stop using them interchangeably as synonyms.

2) that you consequently can't search for a corporation in the "enhanced business search" because it's not actually a business, it's only a corporation. ?. this is despite the corporation coming up in the federal business registry....indicating that the feds think it's a business, but the province thinks it's merely a corporation. the language is not just confusing, but it's not consistent.

3) that if you want to search for a corporation, you have to either pay some lawyers an unnecessary, exorbitant fee or go to toronto and do it yourself.

as we know, i intend to go to toronto soon.

so, that's the resolution on this - i'll need to get to toronto to figure this out and send the forms off when i get home. i have 30 days from the 29th, so i'd better get there by the end of the month.

and, i'll need to send an update to the tribunal.

so, i actually called them back and asked for a refund, and they're telling me to fax them something.

so be it.

ok, so they're telling me that the search shouldn't work because i would need the name of the company, and i'll need to send a check to toronto for $12 or hire a private company to do it.

i am ideologically opposed to hiring a private company to do something that government can do. so, it may make more sense to pick it up when i'm in toronto.

but, they told me to add two zeroes to the front of it so i'm going to do some extra searching.

i mean...

if i go to one site and it tells me that the company exists, and i go to another one and fork our $40 for a bunch of different searches, and they all tell me it doesn't, and it turns out it does, i have grounds to ask for that money back, right?

ok.

so...

when i go to the ontario website, it tells me there's nothing under the name.

when i go to the canada website, it tells me that the corporation is registered, and i need to go to the ontario site to find details - indicating that i'm either doing something wrong, or the corporation was recently deregistered.

that's not going to work. the judge was clear that the cops will need to fork it over.

but, i'm going to call the service ontario office and see what they say.

ok. 

in order for me to get the form typed back up again, i'll need to get into the virtual machine on the laptop.

i have to get this up and running. but, at least it's clear that the business name doesn't exist.

and, yes, i do think that i'm owed the $32 because it's an expense i wouldn't have had to incur had they just given me the information like i asked for in the first place.

there's no business registered under either the names provided to me. and, it cost me $32 to prove it.

the plot thickens...

i'm going to have to go back to the cops.

and, i want them to give me my $32 back, too.

and, for the record.

i don't have a phone. well, i do now, but i don't use it. actually, could i load instagram onto a chromebook?

the point i'm making in this post is that, because i don't use a phone, i have never used apps like snapchat or instagram, either.

everything that i actually use is on the side. really. and, if i don't link to it from this blog, be very skeptical of it.

but, regarding that kid in new york.

is it annoying? frustrating? yes, it's all of those things. i don't seem to have much in common with this person, and i don't know why they can't come up with their own handle. he doesn't seem like he wants to be associated with a communist from canada, so i'm not sure what his angle on it actually is.

but, i'm ultimately not invested enough in the issue to really be overly concerned about it.

if you think that searching for somebody on google and finding a twitter account with a name that matches - however exotic the name - constitutes doing substantive research, then you're a sucker and you're going to fall for all kinds of nonsense, aren't you? i really can't be bothered to get myself worked up over the analysis of people with such a deficit of critical thinking skills. if that's the best you can do, i don't care what you think.

rather, i'd take the position that it is obvious that that account does not belong to me. as mentioned, i make it fairly clear that i'm from canada, so i'm obviously not from brooklyn. i identify pretty aggressively as gen x, so i'm obviously not in my late teens or early twenties. and, i've even run a vlog where i'm stumbling through the detroit/windsor area. if you think that twitter account belongs to me, you obviously haven't really read anything i've written, have you? so, why would i be concerned about your opinion of me?

again: it is annoying. there doesn't seem to be a point to it. and, i wish he'd just change his handle to something he can call his own.

but, i can't actually do anything about it.

and, nobody with basic critical thinking skills - or an opinion that matters - is going to get confused by it; it's obviously not me.

also - i can't edit posts from here, so i apologize for typos and misstatements.

obviously, the numbered company got me arrested. it didn't sue me. i'll have to wait until i'm able to log in to the laptop before i can fix that.

the whole point of using this machine is to avoid exposing my passwords, so i won't be logging into anything from here except for the dummy accounts i've set up to log into.

i guess that if i absolutely have to log in somewhere to send emails, i can use the 90s laptop.

so, the chkdsk froze twice last night. i turned it off this morning, and won't be back to it until tonight after 19:00, for reasons of electrical cost.

so, i wanted to update some liner notes last night, but my computer won't boot. what can i say? 

as mentioned, this chromebook is simply not useful as an actual office tool because the software is too primitive. it's use it's strictly as a "personal computer" for simple media-based internet applications. nor do i think the processor in it can handle splicing through documents of this size. it's really just a glorified phone. i'll have to wait.

i'm going to need to get the drive through a chkdsk at some point before i move forwards, but if it doesn't get through it tonight then that's all the time i'm giving it - i'll have to clone it, wipe it and copy it back.

i don't yet know what the exact problem is. the last time this happened, the registry was set to load a driver on startup that didn't exist, so i had to go in and turn that off.

is this a coincidence? i don't know. it could be microsoft shutting me down, it could be the cops thinking that they're going to slow me down (they're not. the document is already typed and stopping one laptop from booting isn't going to set me back much.) or it could just be legitimate corruption. we'll see what the actual problem turns out to be, and what it makes the most sense to assign it to.

for today, my laptop is inoperable; i'm on the chromebook, and i can't do any actual work on it. if this lingers on, i'll have to load up the music pc so i can launch word. but, i don't see any reason to think that is going to happen.

i need to put it aside for a few days anyway; i wanted to finish the liner notes last night, but i'd have had to stop for a few days if i only got half done, anyways. i need to prioritize the trip to toronto.

the first thing i need to do this morning is figure out how to run a corporate search on the numbered company that arrested me, to determine who owns it and what their address is.

ok, but let's think this through for a minute.

the difference is i*h-bar. h-bar is h/2*pi.

h is considered to be the smallest possible unit of measurement, and then you're dividing the smallest possible unit of measurement by 2*pi to make it that much smaller. you're then pulling this out in the direction of i.

so, the difference is

1) in the direction of the imaginary plane.

2) a factor of 2*pi smaller than the smallest thing that can be measured.

i'm not arguing with the  math as it exists, it's just that this is so small as to be indiscernible from error, which is what the physics really says - you're disturbing the system by measuring it.

and, i will hear an army of math-physics nerds yell at me "no. it's a proof. can't you see?"

a proof by a factor of h/2*pi in the imaginary plane. right. and, you call that "observable". what a farce! it would be a talented lab technician indeed that could reduce error to hbar in the imaginary direction. you'd give that technician a nobel prize....

rather, i need to ask the question - how fast is space expanding, anyways? surely fast enough that you could never get it right, to a plank length. and, what is the proper correction for the curvature of space, given that we're modeling everything in euclidean vector spaces and we know that is totally wrong?

that's something we can calculate, right?

we know that px - xp, if calculated in a euclidean vector space, should have a correction term, because the space that the particle is moving in is actually curved. that euclidean calculation should be wrong. so, what is the error term, there?

and, without bringing in string theory, what is this modulation in the i direction anyways? if space is expanding constantly in every direction, just how close can we get those measurements without having the rug pulled out from underneath us, as we're doing it? a plank length? probably not much more than it, anyways.

i know that somebody will tell me i'm grasping at straws, but we should at least have the good sense not to be building modern physics on euclidean space. we know that's a bad model. we know that's going to created warped results.

as far as i know and can tell, that kid in new york just stole my name because he thought i was cool. i'm probably his biggest hero. i have confronted him about it, but he's refused to change his handle.

i supported bernie sanders in the 2016 primary and very tentatively endorsed hillary clinton in the general, although i'm not sure, in hindsight, if that was the right choice.

i don't know anything about the imposter at all.

while i guess he's probably not in high school anymore, if he was in grade 11 in 2016 then he'd have been in grade 2 when i created the account. 

all social media accounts are on the side

ok, there are a few things that aren't there.

i have a reddit account, for example. but, i don't post there very often...

i'm not banksy. i want you to know who i am, i want you to buy my music, dammit.

specifically, i have this sneaking suspicion that people think i'm a gamer in high school from new york, despite being crystal clear that i'm a 40 year-old musician from canada.

1) i don't play video games. ever.

2) i've actually never been to new york.

3) i have only ever opened one twitter account, and it's the parody on the side panel. 

i have a reputation for typing long, rambling emails; it is easy enough to understand why i don't like twitter, and why i'd even consider the premise of it to be comical. it's something i have no use for and want nothing to do with. 

but, that doesn't stop people from getting confused.

i cannot actually vote in the united states - i do not live there, i do not have citizenship status there and i only ever go to detroit to party.

i'm from ottawa, which is where i lived from 1981-2013. death.to.koalas@gmail.com was initially created as a joke when i was working for microsoft in 2007 as a way to transfer dump files back and forth from work.

for right now, the music pc is running a chkdsk on the laptop's hard drive, and this chromebook is useless as anything besides a glorified phone.

so, i'm going to get something to eat, watch some stanford lectures and get back to it afterwards.

i wish i wasn't wide awake :\

i'm actually *not* going to be reinstalling on the drive any time soon. there's reasons for it.

i'll literally copy everything off, reformat it, and copy it back.

and, the chkdsk is picking some things up, but that's not a smoking gun.

so, seconds after i finished my last post to this blog, the computer shut off and the os wouldn't boot. what to say about that, exactly?

in the past, what's often happened is that the machine gets stuck at this stupid prompt that says "your machine didn't shut down properly last time". all you actually have to do is press enter, but i can't see that because i don't get any video until it's done booting. so, all i have to do is boot it into the music pc, shut it down properly and reboot the laptop. right now, it won't boot into the music pc, either. 

i'm running a chkdsk.....

i don't keep anything of value on the install partition, so i should be able to wipe it if i have to. and, i have several extra laptop hard drives kicking around. this won't set me back more than a few days, max.

but, it looks like i'm going to lose the night, and maybe a day or two. 

so, i'm posting from the stupid chromebook, that i actually hate because the software is terrible. i'm never going to want to use this shitty google freeware for anything. and, i don't even want to log into the thing, i'm just using it as a guest. it's better than a phone, at least.

if the chkdsk fixes the problem, i'll be back up in a few hours. if not, i'll have to launch it as an external from an xp install, clear the data off, format it and put it back on.

why is this happening, though?

well, the drive is indeed a little bit old.

but, i actually suspect that windows thinks i'm pirating the software - and i'm not. it might have shut itself off. i have a lot of corporate volume licenses of old software, and a lot of stuff i got for free from school, but i don't actually use pirated windows software.

i could switch to linux if you really want, though, bill - if you really want to get stupid about it. i mean, those are the choices. i'm not buying a vista key for a 15 year old laptop that was designed for vista and can barely even run 7 at all. if microsoft insists on shutting me down, i'm not buying a new key (i have a key!) and i'm not buying a new laptop, either. i'm going to linux.

that's not paranoid - they will actually shut you down. but, they're wrong, here. i just don't have the resources to run their "genuine checker" all of the time and turn it off when i'm not using it - because it's an old machine, and every cycle is worth saving. yet, every time they prompt me, i just turn the service on and that's that.

i don't know that that's actually the case, for sure. it might just be an old drive. and, it's a pretty old drive, too.

whatever. let's hope the chkdsk works and go from there...

so, i'm making a conscious attempt to refocus. i've been stuck in a rut and want to get back to work. so, i want to make a few notes on the condition of the various sites i have running, here, before i shift gears rather dramatically.

i think it's clear at this point that i can't do all of these things at once, that i need to do one or two at a time. attempts to do everything all at once have merely left me unable to finish anything at all. so, what am i going to be focusing on?

my focus for quite some time now has been rebuilding blogs. first, it was the politics blog and the music journal, which i had running recurrently. i spent a large amount of 2016-2017 pulling data down from the internet into a set of word documents, and almost all of 2018 rebuilding these two blogs from those word documents. these would grow to take in the vlog and other things that developed over the last few years, creating a narrative of my musical output from 2013-2017 (as well as some cursory and largely unimportant political rambling). then, i expanded these to include a review site and a travel blog, so that i was rebuilding four blogs instead of two. as an addendum to this, there were two alter-reality blogs put aside - one that would end in mid-1996 and one that would start in mid-1996. but, the actual focus - the actual thing i was doing - was building liner notes for the music site. all of the 6 blogs i have running are essentially intended as commentary for the music. they have no meaningful context, otherwise, and mean nothing to me when separated from it.

i wanted this all to converge into a period disc that i would release at the end of 2019 (on the 20 year anniversary of the end of inri, 1996-1999) and that would include final versions of my first 37 releases, the corresponding sections of each of the six blogs (but mostly the music journal + the two alter-reality blogs) and vlogs that were relevant to the construction, interspersed. this would be repeated for period 3 (the next 39 releases), to be released in mid-2023. this would be intended as a comprehensive historical document, in the form of an electronic journal. don't call it a memoir - i'm not important enough for that. but, remember - as an artist, i basically die at 30. everything since that age has been documentation. there has been and will be no new original recordings past the year 2011. so, don't call it a memoir....but call it one if you really want. i'm not upset about not having a meaningful existence past the age of 30, because i never wanted to live past 30, anyways; most people get exceedingly lame in their 30s, and downright awful in their 40s, so i'm happy enough to avoid becoming that.

unfortunately, a series of necessary legal issues around the security of my housing that have largely been outside of my control have slowed me down dramatically, and forced me to extend the release date of the period disc by an extra ten years. i do not currently have a clear resolution as to how to get over this and get back to a stable recording situation, but i'll have to get by with what i can. i really see little recourse but to try and extend the legal battles to my eventual advantage. this will allow me the space to build the alter-reality from 1989-1996 in real time, and then let me click back into what has already been written for mid-2027. so, the period one disc is now scheduled for release at the end of 2029, the period two disc is scheduled for release at the end of 2033, the period three disc will be scheduled for release sometime in mid 2037 and the period four disc will be scheduled for release around 2041. if i make it there, i'll be 60 years old. and, no - i don't plan on actually doing much concrete over the next twenty years, except finishing the documentation of the work (and the work itself...) that i created over the first thirty.

i want to publish two more journals - 12/2013 and 01/2014 - and am hoping to have this completed by dec 1, 2019 at the latest. this will bring me to the end of the "first reconstruction period", which will produce an eventual aleph (to be unnamed and unpublished until the material from 07/2003-07/2013 is fully completed).

at that point, i will be focusing on two primary projects:

1) the alter-reality, starting in late 1989. i will have to get a journal for christmas, it seems, for me to write in, and then spend the next six years typing out. this journal will include reflections of events that i experienced over the ages of 8-15, including book reports and music reviews. all attempts will be made to be as honest as i can. but, i obviously can't revert to that state (if i ever grew past it...), and i don't want to get neurotic about it. i'm going to get neurotic about it...but i have to finally start with this.

2) i'm going to get back to work on period 3, which is going to mostly involve republishing a lot of already existing records from 2003-2007. there will, however, also be some major projects worked on - a lost symphony from 2003, a matlab project from 2004, an imaginary straight-up rock record from 2005, a groundbreaking mix of electronic noise and jazz guitar from early 2006 and some foundational new demos for early 2007, to move into period 4. i do not want to plan past the completion of period 3, at this point, which is defined as the period of time between when i got back from bc in mid-2003 and when i moved into a new apartment on bronson ave in early 2007.

period 1 is from 05/96-12/99 (3.5 years), period 2 is from 01/00-05/03 (3.5 years) and period 3 is from 08/03-02/07 (3.5 years). period 4 will run until the middle of 2011, but it is not like the first three, as there were long spaces with no recording activity at all. i was 27 in january, 2008; to an extent, period 4 is a period of slow death, even if it has some major works in it. i will be approaching the narrative from this perspective, as it occurs. and, given that my maximum expected lifespan is around 60, i may be nearing my actual death, as i get there. there was no meaningful musical activity from the middle of 2011 until the middle of 2013; i was struggling badly with existing living arrangements, as i was trying to figure out how to rebuild my studio.

so, i have the rest of my life planned out, anyways. and, these are the two things i'll be focusing on - getting the alter-realty rolling and finishing period 3. if i get back to publishing the journals from 2014 forwards, it will be in spurts, and because i'm sick or some other such thing. well, until i get close in 2025-2026, anyways. i'm actually fully confident that i'll be done period 3 by then, at least.

i don't feel the time has been wasted. i've figured out a lot of things, and i've got a process in order. this needed to eventually be done, and i'll need to eventually get back to it. the time i've wasted has been wasted fighting court battles, and that's going to continue until i can find a safe, smoke-free living arrangement. this isn't it, either.

what about all these other sites?

1) as mentioned, the bandcamp site should see the most activity in the next little while; that is my primary site, and always has been.

2) the noise trade site will see decreasing levels of activity, and that activity will be mostly related to the alter-reality, for the next long while. expect journals from 1990-1996 to be the primary uploads for the next several years. i hope they allow me to reorganize the front page, soon.

3) the patreon site is still there. if you want me to stop wasting time in court and get more productive in my art, that's the way to do it. i have yet to receive a single donation over patreon.

4) the music journal will pick up with increased activity at the bandcamp site.

5) j's journal will be the primary journal site, and will start in late 1989.

6) the alter-reality will stay dormant until mid-2027, when i pick up where i left off.

7) i'm still vlogging. i haven't stopped. i have video to edit going back to mid-2017, and will need to get to it to buiild the aleph discs. but, the focus of the vlogs was to act as a set of ads for the bandcamp site, which i drew attention to through trolling, and that didn't work out (because they shadow-banned me for being an anti-american communist). i never had any interest in vlogging for the sake of vlogging, it was always meant as a gateway. my focus on the vlogs, moving forwards, is going to be for the aleph discs, rather than for youtube. yes, things will get uploaded eventually, but probably in large chunks, and it could be a very, very long time. i wouldn't expect anything to get uploaded here until i'm done period 3, at least - it could be after 2025.

8) the koala central command will continue to try to bring their fugitive to justice, but it's not clear exactly what that means. there will be music related uploads here, as they become meaningful.

9) i don't expect to spend a lot of time on music or book reviews in the near future, and may never get to it at all. my focus on reviews is mostly a 2011-2013 thing, when i had no studio to work in. so, this is at the bottom of the list, in terms of priorities. but, review information will come up in the alter-realty.

10) the travel blog was mostly a joke to start with, and it's utilization will depend on how often i'm actually posting from a distance. anything posted to this blog will end up somewhere else, in time.

11) i'm sure i'll continue to find reasons to rant.

12) my facebook pages will continue to be useful as update lists, but little else.

13) the appspot site is not dead, but it's sleeping.

14) the viability of the soundcloud site depends on whether i can get people to let me spin or not.

15) i don't and have never used twitter. i'm not going to start.

and, let's try to get the liner notes up by the end of the day.

i had to crash this morning, but i did get the facebook stuff synced properly. so, all i have left to do is the liner notes for 000, 001, 003, 016, 027, 028 and 030.

but, it hit me last night - what am i even doing?

i tend to get stuck in things and lose track of reality. where am i going with this? what are my actual goals, here?

i wanted to get this done by 2020 because the aleph disc was closing. but, now i've put the aleph disc off to 2030 - and the first demo until 2026. so, there's no longer any hurry at all...

so, what's the point of spending the winter rebuilding these blogs, if i'm not up against a deadline (that i'll never meet)?

i just feel like i'm wasting time. i feel like i'm running out of time. if it was faster, great, but it's just taking forever. i'm lost in my own world, and spinning in circles within it.

let me get through the first reconstruction phase, which is two more months. and, then i think i'm going to want to put this aside completely, for a good while. i've got the data put aside for later. there's no rush. let me get back to real work.

which means...

1) alter-reality, starting in late 1989 or early 1990. that's 30 years ago. that will be my writing project. and, i can get this journal process moving in that direction, instead.
2) period 3. let's get to it.

i have legal stuff to do this week, first. november was slow, when i wanted it to be fast, but let's hope i can pivot and get through the last two months for december 1st. these could both end up being ~50 page music archives.

what about the smell? it's better since i woke up, but i noticed it was bad on the other side of the apartment, last night. i'm starting to think that what capping the line has done is push the gas back up through the lines in the bathroom and kitchen, and i'm wondering if that's going to balance itself out. like, does it need to find a new equilibrium point, now?

is there an issue with the fixtures in the bathroom?

but, why is the gas pulling up in the first place? i think it's crystal clear that the lines need to be snaked. and, that's probably going to be what the court date ends up being about. we'll see if it betters itself or not....

right now, it seems like i'm waiting for the system to rebalance, and i'll have to go from there. no, i don't know - i'm trying to figure this out. but, that's my deduction based on what i've observed.

when can i get back to this rebuilding process, then?

why don't i get through period 3 and see. 2025, maybe?

or, maybe i'll chip away at it here and there.

but, i need to pivot out of this. i need to do something more constructive.

right now, i need to finish these liner notes and get to the legal stuff for a few more days. so, expect reposts for the 2013 releases up this afternoon.

so, the noise trade links are all up and the bandcamp site is updated, except for the liner notes.

i have to cross-reference with the music facebook timeline, which means scrolling back to the end of 2013. and, i want to get this all in at once...i want to get the data for december out, too.

i have to update some local files.

and, i'll be on to the liner notes, soon.

this last step shouldn't be lengthy. but, the scroll - which i have to do first - could take until sunrise or later. so, i'm going to stop to eat.

how about the smell? the cap has not worked, but it's increasingly clear that the actual problem is that the heater is off - i'm going to have to run the hot water.