brief polling update - with warren and sanders continuing to fall, buttigieg flattening out and biden holding steady, it would appear at this point that biden is actually likely to run the table.

i repeat: it is not clear at this point which states biden would be likely to lose in.

it's getting too late to say it's early, but there is nonetheless too much time to make predictions. the trends seem pretty clear, though.

your reality check is that, right now, biden actually looks set to win every single state.

how can that change?

well, sanders has continued to demonstrate absolutely no growth at all, whatsoever, and he's continuously the least liked and most hated candidate on the ballot. his only chance is a massive split, and that's easing up as warren's vote fades back into biden's. if warren completely collapses, biden's margin just comes up.

if buttigieg clean splits the vote with biden, sanders might be able to run up the middle, but it's not even clear that he has enough support to do that. if he's only running at 30%, and biden and buttigieg both get 35%, he still finishes in third. those numbers aren't great, but you get the point - he might not even be running high enough that he can even split. this is what happened to andrew scheer in canada a few weeks ago - he couldn't even come up the middle, in most of ontario. instead, the liberals won both tory and ndp strongholds, while actually seeing their vote decline.

so, buttigieg is going to have to beat biden straight up with his own voters.

and, that seems exceedingly unlikely.

my odds right now would be:

biden - 2:1
buttigieg - 50:1
sanders - 100:1
warren - 1000:1

but, again, understand what i'm saying - biden's going to run the table.

ok.

so, i got a response on the second human rights order as well, and what they're going to do is plow the thing forwards - what they're saying is that if she doesn't want to update her address, she's doing so at her "own peril".

that means essentially that they'll allow the case to go forwards without her defending herself.

but, i'm going to eventually subpoena this woman. so, it's kind of not good enough. i need the address, and the cops remain the only way to get it.

i guess that the next step is that she has the opportunity to provide her address, if she decides to. but, they're otherwise going to actually send documents to this woman and have it rts.

what i need to do now - and i need to do it overnight - is familiarize myself with the timelines that i have to follow in order to ensure that everything is in order on my side. so, i need to provide a lot of documents, now, for example. but, when?

one of the things i'll need to serve everybody with almost immediately is information about the divisional court case.

i'm going to actually eat another meal, first. i'm sick. i can't be starving myself right now. but, i'll need to get to this tonight before i can get to the liner notes....

https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onlrb/doc/2015/2015canlii1359/2015canlii1359.html

when i woke up on sunday night around 22:00-ish, i immediately realized that there was something wrong, but i'd been reacting negatively to the salami at that point for a while and had decided to switch brands when i ran out - i realized i was a little hungover, maybe partly from the pot, but i actually thought it was mostly food poisoning. so, yes, i was sweaty and clammy from the time i woke up on sunday night, but i didn't think much of it at first and assumed i'd be fine by tuesday.

sunday night was spent burning electronic copies of the court material and generally getting everything in order. i was planning on printing on monday morning at the library, with the hopes of taking advantage of the cheaper rates there, and i was in the end able to print my 300 pages for $0.07/each, cutting printing costs down rather dramatically. it was when i was walking into the library in a dirty sweat that i first started to realize i was actually sick.

it was actually relatively warm on monday night, though, so it was a pleasant walk back and forth from the library, which i'd never been in before. i just haven't really had any reason to go to this campus. but, now that i know that the printing costs are so much less...

i forced myself to sleep for a few hours in the evening when i got back, so that i'd be ready to go in the morning. it didn't really "take", but i nonetheless ended up at the bus stop for a little before 8:00 with my mass of papers, a laptop and some more appropriate winter clothing. i napped for a bit from guelph to mississaugua, but was otherwise alert for the whole way, and i'm starting to get a better concept of the distance, and the landmarks that occur in between, along with their ordering. i'm used to coming into toronto from the other direction, remember, having grown up in ottawa. the bus was a little bit late, but it wasn't bad; i was there around 1:30, which gave me plenty of time to get to the courthouse to file.

were there some problems? well, i seem to have missed s. 4 of the rules of civil procedure, altogether. s. 4 has rules for presentation - things like book binding, regulations on font size, etc. i just didn't even see it, or see it mentioned anywhere by anybody. so, they wouldn't initially take it - i had to argue with them to accept it via a deficiency, and if the court decides to reject it on the basis that the font is too small, given that i gave them a digital copy, i'm willing to appeal that to the next court up, on principle. i saved hundreds of pieces of paper by filing it the way that i did. i'll defend that decision to whatever court i need to; bring it on.

besides these trivialities regarding the presentation of the documents, it was otherwise fine, and they did otherwise accept the perfection of the case. i will now need to wait for the oiprd to file their own documents in the same court, and send me the links. they've given me a time frame of before the 20th. i'm expecting them to miss this, but i won't start getting pissy until after christmas...

and, then it was something like 15:30 and i had some time to blow before the bus came to take me home at 1:00 in the morning. i was hungry, and it was bmt day at subway, so i had to stop to eat. i then went directly across the street to get some pot, and came out with two grams of 10% thc for under $20.

the bottom line is that i don't smoke a lot of drugs. so, if i found the brand that i bought last month, which was closer to 20% concentration, to be a little heavy, then the next step is to try something a little lighter. i found that the 10% was more along the lines of what i wanted, even if it was itself a tad light. so, we're getting closer. you don't have these discussions with friends or acquaintances, you just use adjectives like "good" and "potent", so quantifying it is going to take some experimenting, and that's alright. like, i didn't walk into the beer store at 18 and know what i could and couldn't handle, it took me some time to figure it out. likewise, i could be at this for a few tries before i get it right.

but, the 10% was about right for the night, even if it faded on me a little too fast when i got home. so, next time, i might try something closer to 15%. i'll have this down to a regular order, eventually.

i got out of the store and basically walked into the first bar to roll, when i inquired about the price of beer on the way out. $5 for a tall can? well, that's not too bad, and it seemed like there was cheap food there, too. i've never spent much time in toronto, and it will take me some time to get to know it. i had a few hours to blow, as it was, so i sat and had a few tall cans, before moving on to the show.

the initial thought process behind going down on this night was that the tickets were cheapest and i'd get to see the joy formidable. but, the joy formidable turned out to be a pricey show. i know they're coming in from wales and everything, but they just priced themselves out of my range. you were looking at $40 after services fees; i'll rarely pay more than $20, and decided against it on this night.

instead, i hit a local experimental jazz show at a kind of community centre on burnswick nearly all the way to bloor. i actually hope i don't end up spending too much time in toronto, but this is maybe the kind of thing i'd be more likely to sneak into, on a random night. these were local musicians, playing their own work in an old bar, for what seemed like a mostly local if largely bourgeois crowd. it was pay what you can, and the beer was reasonably priced. let's hope i can get to more spots like this...

the main act called itself tyrannick love this week but was mostly improv and played two sets. it was anchored by the juxtaposition of a busier sax player with a more ambient, experimental guitarist that had a lot of floor pedals and wasn't afraid to use them. maybe it's because i was in toronto, but it had a distinct dmst feel at points that was pretty real; overall, though, the major aesthetic was a swirling, effects driven ambience that sidelined both the sax and drum players for long periods, as the bassist went motorik over some feedback and loops. it was an enjoyable cave for the space i was in, absolutely.

i can't find a video of this exact lineup, but the guitarist & sax player appear to have a lot of material online under a lot of different names, one of them being patrick reilly's wire circus, which is not entirely dissimilar to what i saw:

the third set was purposefully experimental to the point of being kind of a spectacle, and i consequently found myself more trying to figure out the physics behind what he was doing than actually listening to it. he seems to have essentially created a number of homemade speakers and more or less broken them in real time, although he surprised me in some of his answers when i questioned him - claiming, for example, that his chattering magnets were being driven by instructions on an sd card, like a chiptune piece, rather than being driven by the radio, which i thought was obvious. i actually initially thought he was setting up a theremin.

it was a sound installation, a demonstration, an experiment, rather than the presentation of any kind of actual composition. i'd consequently rather direct you directly to his page, which is here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/CMigone/videos

but, here is a video of something to separate the section:

there was a fourth set by what i believe to have been a local interpretive dance artist named "alicia grant", but details are scant, and the name appears to be in use by several (diverse) artists in the general area. i was actually rolling a joint through much of her set. so, she spent some time writhing on the ground, and repeating distressed statements into the microphone. listen: i grasp that specific subsets of arts students get off on the expression and rawness of something like this, but i largely found it sort of pointless. my tendency is to interpret something like this from a pretty far intellectual distance, and kind of shudder at the situation, but otherwise kind of emotionally avoid it. i just don't see the point in it, other than to point at the spectacle, and i'm actually too polite to even do that.

so, there's no link.

in all, i was there around 19:00 and gone around 00:00, with the necessity to catch the bus at 1:00, and that worked out just fine, in the end. if i get the opportunity to see something specific in toronto that i can't catch here the next time i go down, i'm sure i'll jump at the opportunity to see it. if not, i think i'd be just as happy or happier to check out the local scene, actually. so, that's the broader takeaway - i should be happy to catch a local jazz or psych show, and actually spend some time being in toronto rather than get obsessed with finding something from out of town; the local talent there is worth checking out, too.

i fell asleep almost as soon as i got on the bus and slept pretty much all the way back to windsor, but also first noticed myself seriously wheezing on the ride back in and thinking i was reacting to the exhaust - and maybe i was, or maybe it was as much about the dry air from the heaters on the bus as it was anything else. i was hacking though, and it's more or less still going.

the walk back home was cold in a really legitimate sense, too, requiring a serious bundle up. it's frustrating when you happen to have no choice but to go out in the one or two cold days of the year, but that's how it's unfortunately worked itself out, so far, hopefully, i should be able to avoid the cold for most of the rest of the year by just staying inside. we'll see....

i got some nachos on the way back, was done eating them by around 7:00, and in the end slept most of the day.

so, i'm sick and am dealing with it.

i went to sleep around midnight, got up around 6:00, ate some fruit (and noticed an immediate soothing effect on my throat), did some dishes and went back to sleep. i've been up for a few minutes.

i still need to take another shower, but at this point i should probably wait until tuesday evening, after i've got my recycle back in. and, i'll need to do one more load of laundry.

but, all of the cleaning and stuff is otherwise done for the week.

there's one more review, and let's hope i can stay awake long enough to get it done and move on.

and, is my testosterone reduction permanent? if i went off the testosterone suppressors, would the testosterone come back?

there's some debate on the point.

what i want to do is to actually remove the testicles from my body, but it's taking a very long time to get done. then, the answer will be no - i'll never get the testosterone production back.

in the mean time, is there a window of reversal? they used to say 'no', but now they're saying 'it depends', i guess because they found some counterexamples.

i'm getting mixed signals from my biology. i think that my testosterone levels were probably low to begin with, which is probably genetic or epigenetic, and that this probably has a lot to do with the issue in the first place. as such, i'd suspect that i'm probably the type that has lost a fair amount of testicular function.

but, the reason i want them out is because i do think that my levels fluctuate, and i want that to stop - i just want perpetual zero testosterone.

so, what would happen if i started lifting weights?

the answer is actually not much.

i mean, it would have some effect, surely. but, due to the almost total absence of testosterone, i would be unable to build chest or arm muscle in any seriously substantive way. rather, i would end up carrying through with more of a "toning" process, where i might firm up existing fat but not actually gain any weight.

i'm not interested in doing that experiment. but, i'm pretty confident that it would have a minimal effect.

no, let's have this talk.

we've had it before.

i get my testosterone tested every year, and do you know what it says and has said every year since about 2010?

testosterone: trace amounts

i have less testosterone than most cis-women, actually. the amount of testosterone suppression that i take is so powerful that it's essentially just down to food. my testicles are still in there (although i've been trying to get rid of them for a while...), but i've essentially turned them off, entirely - they're just a cancer risk at this point, really. they haven't produced any testosterone since obama's first term in office.

a person that has essentially zero testosterone production is essentially unable to build muscle.

further, do you know how much estrogen i take everyday? the answer is 8 mg. now, only a small amount of that actually gets into the bloodstream, but it's also constant for me, that is that i don't have a cycle. so, the amount of estrogen in my blood is also going to be consistently substantively higher than the amount in your average ciswoman.

i'll repeat: i have less testosterone and more estrogen in my chemistry than almost any ciswoman you'll meet on the street.

so, am i more female then? well, that would be a strange definition of female, granted. but, in the sense that gender is genetic, it is only up to hormones.

the difference between an xx and an xy embryo is actually which hormones are coded for. in the xx child, the gonads are converted into ovaries because of the presence of estrogen; in the xy embryo, the testes descend only in the presence of testosterone. so, that is what the chromosomal difference actually is - which hormones are coded for. so, if you take an xx embryo and flush it in testosterone, the gonads actually turn into testicles, because it's the hormone that actually determines the sex. likewise, an xy embryo will develop ovaries in the presence of estrogen.

humans can't currently undo our gonad specification, but some species can. and, the premise of converting testicles back into gonads and then into ovaries (and vice versa) doesn't strike me as outside of the realm of future science, even if doing so may not be so useful, in the absence of a more specialized biology.

the point is that it's the hormones that are fundamental in determining sex, not the chromosomes; all the sex chromosomes do is flip a bit on the hormone that develops the embryo, and then the hormone does all of the work.

so, if a person has zero testosterone and above normal levels of estrogen than that person is chemically female in very profound ways that transcend which organs are present and need to be understood. for example, that person will have fat and muscle deposition patterns that are more likely to straddle female averages than male averages, because they're being directed by female rather than male hormones. and, over time, even the bone structure would be expected to change, in the near absence of testosterone, and the overabundance of estrogen.

and, what that means is that a transwoman is going to have upper body strength that falls into normal female variability, rather than normal male variability.

that's the actual science.

don't listen to people that want to tell you otherwise.

and, i need to repeat the point: if i had not been able to squeeze out of that pit, i would have been crushed in it.

i would not have been able to withstand the pressure of multiple grown men pushing against me in close quarters like that. i would have been hurt.

these guys usually know how to act, they usually know who to hit and who to avoid, and i'm not usually a target. i don't actually know why i got misinterpreted all of a sudden on this night, other than some specific people with some poorly worked through thought processes. like, i'm just concluding that there was a stupid person there, basically, and hoping that the point gets across to that person and they smarten up in the future.

the point is that you can't treat me like a guy in these scenarios - that's a recipe for disaster, an algorithm for harm. if you take a run at me, i'll just fall over. if you squeeze me, you'll just crush me. i have no upper body strength at all. i'm biochemically a skinny female, and need to be treated that way.

if i would have participated in that mosh pit, i would have ended up seriously hurt.

i was wearing a bright red overcoat (in a sea of black) and heavy makeup. i stood out as pretty obviously queer.

i was standing on the edge of the pit, which is where i often stand - about as close as i can get without getting plowed. sometimes, i misjudge and have to get out when people fall on me or otherwise start going. but, i rarely get run at like that, or expected to help start a pit that it should have been obvious that i didn't want to be in at all. the grown men that were creating and instigating this pit should have interpreted me properly as a 130 pound effeminate female and pushed me out, not misinterpreted me as a dominant male and tried to pull me in.

there's no logic in what happened.

maybe i could have stood a few feet further back. it's hard to figure that out before hand; if i knew what the boundaries of the pit were going to be beforehand, i would have stood a bit further back.

but, there was nonetheless a blatantly absurd error in judgement that i have a right to call out and be irked about, and to stress some changes for in the future - don't bodyslam the transwomen!

if i had been able to save my drink, i probably would have stayed, and i would have probably gotten into a shouting match with the person that bodyslammed me. i was not happy about it.

so, it's maybe better that i left.

but, the actual reason that i left was that i had nothing left to drink and thought i could catch the bus.

and, to be clear: the trumbullplex is actually a pretty queer-friendly venue. they actually have a "bros stand back" policy that is usually in force. it's not somewhere where you'd expect to have somebody take a run at you, like that. and, the other people there were beyond friendly and accepting.

but, apparently, the pa got demoed that night, too; there were some hooligans there, on that night, that don't really reflect the venue well.

i was not hurt. i'm ok. and, i don't think anybody wanted to hurt me - i think somebody thought i really wanted to get into a pushing match with them, and was actually disappointed when i fell over and spilled my drink, and essentially ran off, instead. my jordan peterson citation is not ironic, it's probably realistic. and, this is an example of the kinds of problems that that kind of literature creates - i essentially got pushed around by somebody that's been taught that i'm really a man, after all.

and, i just need to stress the point as clearly as i can: the premise that i'd want to get into a fight or slam dance or mosh is moronic. the idea that anything else than what happened would have happened is stupid. and, if somebody thought that i was going to actually mosh, all 130 pounds of me, then they were just being idiotic about it.

they should have expected me to fall over, and they should have expected me to bruise.

and, they need to adjust their behaviour so that they're not bodyslamming transwomen, and expecting them to react like men - what they've been taught via ignorance needs to be undone via evidence.

do i think somebody was trying to hurt me?

no.

i think that a very immature boy decided he'd try to prove i was tough enough to take a hit - and instead proved the exact opposite, as he knocked me and my drink over, and left a bruise on my thigh. so much for your jordan peterson, dipshit.

it should be obvious that you don't bodyslam the transgirls and, if it isn't, let's state it explicitly: don't bodyslam the transgirls.

i spent a little time on friday morning wondering about attending the no rest fest, concluding before i slept that it seemed like a worthwhile spectacle, and was even toying with the idea of hanging out somewhere all morning and dropping by the trumbullplex in the afternoon. i decided in the morning that i'd end up spending $10 on food and whatever else by staying in detroit anyways, so i'd might as well go home and get some rest, then make the choice in the afternoon. and, i initially had decided against it. but, i really felt the urge to experience this, for the hell of it.

i was also hoping that i might stumble into a drummer, as the band is known for high-end guest drummer spots.

this time, i went right to the station to get tickets, and i caught the bus relatively easily. i stayed on the bus to rosa parks, a rare detour, and got off to find a liquor store on the way to the trumbullplex. the other attraction of this night is it's low price tag - $5 cover, in a byob space. so, that's a $10 night. yeah.

i was there around 10:00-10:30-ish and the place was really in mayhem from the getgo. i had to get in immediate line for the washroom, which took me the length of somebody's set to get into, and then spent a little time stumbling around outside, and i'm not entirely sure what i missed. i think it was initially a female singer, but that would probably mean that solemn judgement played earlier than is listed.

regardless, this is the list that was posted. i was simply not paying attention, initially. i think i saw reverend leave in a distressed huff when i came in, so that would be consistent with coming in between 10:00 and 10:30.

i think the band i caught on the way out of the washroom was shock narcotic, which is actually kind of a local supergroup, with members of child bite, dillinger escape plan and black dahlia murders. i didn't get much out of this...

 
i then went out for a smoke and, after having a brief talk about genghis tron (are they still going?)

and ministry (al's lost it.)

in reference to the previous act, was handed a multiple gram pre-roll that may at part be to blame for the sickness i experienced over the next few days. this was a philly, by any other name, but it was rolled more like a cocoon, and you may have been forgiven for thinking that's what it was. but, we're talking something that's a good inch in diameter, and three or four long. call it a stubby, even. but, it was a big joint, and i smoked through about three quarters of it before i handed it off.

the person that gave it to me was impressed, even, by how much of it that i managed to smoke. and, i think i felt it a few days later...

how did i get this joint? i don't know, exactly. well, i know how - it was handed to me. the why isn't totally clear. according to the person that gave it to me, he rolled up a total of seven of these huge joints and gave them to people he recognized and thought were cool. i got the seventh and final seal:

¹ And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
² And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.
³ And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer [it] with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
⁴ And the smoke of the incense, [which came] with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand.
⁵ And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast [it] into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.
⁶ And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.
Revelation 16:1

hey, if jesus wants a toke he's welcome to get in on this....

sarah would tell them not to encourage me in my jesus freak delusions. but, hey. i got the seventh seal. incense, pot, whatever. you don't think that's a coincidence, do you? so, check your potato chips for signs of the return. maybe it's been set in motion.

all absurdities aside, i didn't entirely prod about the reasons for the seven joints, i just accepted my good fortune and sparked it up. we had previously had a discussion about colin marston, which is the root determination of his decision that i was cool - i had just pulled that colin marston reference out of my ass, randomly, in mid-conversation, and it was impressive enough to land me a free philly months later. score.

behold...

anyways, was there some jesus freak symbolism going on? i don't know. i doubt he knew the can of worms he was opening, if there was.

i do know that the gift got me pretty stoned, though, and that i went in to catch something that was playing midset, after having a chat around the fire on the side. the drumming kind of pulled me in. i think this was snafu, which is not the 90s skate punk band of the same name but a more recent act from detroit. they were better from a distance. this is a from a few years ago:

i was then out for another smoke and back in to use the washroom, thinking it was close to midnight.

when i got out of the washroom, one of the first things i remember hearing was "we're strange magic, and if you didn't know it then now you fucking know". so, there's my reference point, and this is where the night starts to take a bit of a turn.

first, watch this video of the strange magic set:

do you see where he says to pass that vcr around? i must have been in the bathroom at that point. when i came out, the vcr was still going around, and eventually ended up passed towards me from behind; as i was oblivious to the circumstances, and didn't see it coming from behind me, it landed directly on my head.

i had no idea what happened at this point, other than that i'd been attacked by or with some kind of electronic equipment. my first reaction was to try to determine if somebody was trying to hurt me, and i was pretty quickly able to determine that it didn't appear to be malicious - people were just being silly (perhaps irresponsible, but just silly.) and i ended up in the middle of it by accident. so, i kind of had little choice but to play along with it.

"wait. what was that?"
"i think it was like a computer or something"
"like, a pc tower?"
"yeah."
"what? so, i just got attacked by somebody's computer?"
"apparently."
"wait. no. i want to determine the identity of the technology that just assaulted me. somebody tell me what that was."
"it was a vcr."
"a vcr?"
"yeah."
"in 2019?"
"yeah."
"a vcr?"
"YEAH!"
"so, i was just randomly assaulted by 80s technology, then"
"it was early 90s, tops."
"fuck."

so, what else do you do? i went for a smoke. and, i asked around - is there a bruise on my head?

(i discovered in the morning that there was actually a bruise on my head)

and, then it appeared, outside - the vcr, on the ramp into the trumbullplex. well, you know it was payback time, after that. it got a good stomping on, and it deserved it. fucker. until...

"hey! that's my vcr!"

i caught most of tart's set. this is a subset of a recent style of female-fronted punk that is written for a male audience, and intends to make that male audience feel uncomfortable. that's the intended experience: to writhe uncomfortably at what's occurring in front of you. and, my general reaction to this is that it doesn't really serve much of a purpose. i'm going to tend to want to look past it and try and see what else they're doing; this particular act was a little on the poppy side. there's a sample here:

the last thing up was the armed, and remember that these are fifteen minute sets, so it wasn't much of a show. unfortunately, i stood in the wrong part of the audience.

i'll state this flat out: i don't understand why people think i want to mosh. i'm an openly transgendered person that introduces myself as jessica and wears women's clothing when i'm out. i modulate between 120-140 pounds, none of it muscle. i'm 5 ' 8". it should be obvious what's going to happen if you take a run at me: i'm going to get knocked over like the petite, effeminate woman that i am.

so, that's what happened - somebody took a run at me, and i almost fell over and had the drink knocked out of my hand in the process, as should have been the obvious outcome to anybody that wasn't stupid. no, i'm not going to be able to withstand a body check by a grown man, and you're a moron if that's what you thought would happen. the person that slammed me may want to know that he also bruised my thigh; he should really be very proud of himself for leaving a mark on a girl. idiot.....

so, that was what i experienced - a sudden mosh pit that i spent the next ten minutes trying to get out of. and, while that isn't the first time that i found myself trying to get out of a pit that materialized out of nowhere, the crowded nature of the space made it a little harder to get out than normal, and the short nature of the set meant that there wasn't much time to readjust. it really wasn't very much fun, and i really didn't get a chance to listen to much of anything, as i was just trying to get out of the pit. and, then it was done, and the only substantive thing that had happened was that i'd lost my drink.

i actually was hoping to hang out there for a while, but it didn't make sense to stay there anymore, once i'd lost my drink. i checked the time - 12:45. if that was right, i could conceivably catch the bus; i'd made that walk in a shorter amount of time. so, i was out...

if i still had my drink, i would have stayed. but, i think i was actually a little miffed at getting slammed and didn't really want to sit around to talk to the person that hit me. i think i wanted to avoid a confrontation; i think i wanted to cut my losses and get out. while i'm going to ask that person to think twice about it the next time they decide it's a good idea to hit a girl, i'm going to put the issue aside and forget about it.

i did legitimately intend to get to the bus station on time, and walked at quite the pace to get there, but when i stopped in at the leland club to check the time, i realized it was too late - 1:15. i'm sure i've done that walk in 10 minutes. i was not planning on ending up there that night; i had $7, meaning if i paid cover, i'd lose the ability to buy a drink. so, if i couldn't talk my way past the door girl, i'd have to go somewhere else.

but, the door girl was not working that night, which may have worked out in my favour. i was indeed able to walk right past the door guy, and buy a few more drinks before last call.

the goth club is dying, and has been dying for a long time. they actually had the ballroom closed off, because there aren't enough people there to justify opening it. that cut the space down into kind of a more normal bar, with people actually sitting in the seated area in between.

but, that's where i ended up for the night. do i regret it? i regret losing my drink. i was planning on staying at the trumbullplex for most of the night, and i guess i don't know how that turned out or how it would have turned out. and, i might have found my way back there by the end of the night if they had stonewalled me at the goth club. but, i guess i was both cool enough to get the seventh seal and cool enough (or uncool enough) to avoid cover at leland, on this night. the bottom line is that i can't be hanging out somewhere without anything to drink...

i ended up hanging out at the actual hotel until around 6:00, then moved over to rosa parks until around 8:00, before i went back to the tunnel. i got some nachos on the way home, took a shower and slept until sunday night, when i woke up feeling something awful.

i spent the morning cleaning, and i ended up taking another nap.

i am hacking and wheezing like i have pneumonia, still. there were other symptoms - i was dealing with cold sweats on sunday and monday and remember smelling the virus on monday - but they've been gone for a while. i went through a box of kleenex midweek, but what's left is this heavy, oppressive cough that won't break. it hurts to breathe, even.

what's the air quality like in here? there's an odour around my bed, but i'm not sure what it is and suspect it's, in some combination, the result of remnant sewer gas, the rusted-over heater and pollution of various sorts from the neighbourhood. my own body odour may be a minor factor, as i have been sick and sweaty and the air in the room is somewhat stagnant. it does not, at this time, smell explicitly like tobacco or marijuana smoke. it smells like something is burning, but that burning smells more like sage or wood or even plastic. i'm going to need to wait for my sense of smell to come back over the next few days before i can really react, but i don't think it's currently a dominant factor in the coughing.

what might be contributing more to the coughing is the excessively dry air down here, and i'm going to need to try to counteract that by showering a bit more. and, i'm starting to wonder more seriously if i might be allergic to something. there's a dog upstairs.

but, the laundry is done, minus one load of towels that i'll do tonight after i shower. that means that i washed my smokey sweaters and jackets, with the expectation that they'll be away from that for the next few months, as well as my sheets and a few random pieces of clothing. i did most of a backlog of dishes that i'll need to finish this evening as well, before i shower.  i cleared out all of the smoking paraphernalia (again: i go for a walk around the corner to actually smoke. i don't smoke inside, ever.) and snotty kleenexes and other loose garbage hanging around. i cleaned the bathroom, a little. and, i ate not once but several times in an attempt to get it done with for the week - meals from now until friday should be exclusively fruit-based.

i'm going to finish these reviews, finally. then i'm going to do the dishes, eat some fruit, take a shower, make some coffee, put the last load of laundry in and plan to sit and type for the next week. i have to get some work done this week....

if this government wants to do something substantive on this file, it needs to find a way to break out of this ban/repeal/ban/repeal cycle and move on to focusing on refunding services.

we're currently in a kind of a loop, where the liberals pass gun control laws to appease their base and then the conservatives undo them to appease their own. so, the focus is just on whether we're going to have these laws or not, and the issue is reduced to a fundraising cash cow, and a way to rev up the base.

meanwhile, nobody's even talking about restoring funding to services, which have been systemically cut by both liberals and conservatives, incrementally, since the 80s.

so, the issue is just getting worse.

and, it's just going to keep getting worse until people change their approach and realize what the answer actually is.

again: i'm not likely to oppose much of any kind of an assault-rifle ban. i don't really accept the premise of gun rights, in a reality where the government has tanks and attack helicopters and motorized drones. your militia is just going to get wiped out.

the fact is that i don't like guns, anyways.

but, i am likely to point out from time to time, as the details firm up, that passing laws against assault rifles isn't likely to actually reduce gun violence.

a socialist policy position understands the complexities of getting to the root causes of gun violence, and rejects symbolic bans and false dichotomies as pointless and simple-minded. marx was actually an advocate of the kind of gun laws that existed in switzerland.

but, what that means is that i see the policy announcements as largely irrelevant. whether they go through with a gun ban or not doesn't change the need to look at more serious approaches. so, if they need to pass a ban for political reasons, whatever. i don't care. what i want to see is more substantive social policy in addition to the ban and in the form of funding for things like programs for at-risk youth. we actually know how to reduce gun crime through social spending, we just stopped doing it because we elected too many conservatives and got too lazy about the role of the state in society.

if they just pass a ban, nothing will change, and they'll be back here in a few years with a failed strategy. maybe, by then, we'll have a revitalized ndp with a new leader that can take the government to task for creating and contributing to the problem by refusing to properly fund the appropriate services, and instead wasting all of it's time and political capital on a pointless ban.

but, if they pass the ban for the cameras, and actually do something worthwhile in the background, maybe they can turn things around enough in a few years to get some better stats out. in the end, the media may assign the better stats to the ban, and it would be be wrong, and i'll be sitting here pointing to studies and fixing their errors, but that's just what happens every day, anyways - i can't be holding my breath, waiting for the media to get it right.

what's important is to get the stats down.

so, appease the idiots and pass the ban, then. fine. whatever. but, don't just leave it at that - follow up on it, and make sure you're actually implementing policies that will actually work in reducing gun violence. we have the science. we know how to do this. we just have to do it...

but, i want to make a brief comment on cenk uygur running for office.

i think i've been clear that i think that cenk uygur is an unintelligent oaf. he's just not a very smart person, and if you value intelligence in your public officials, he's just really not your guy. but, he's also in this group of conservatives that have spent most of their lives as republicans, before switching to the democrats after having the epiphany that the republicans were phonies. with cenk, i think his career ambitions aligned with pretending to be a democrat as well, but the basic point to realize is that he didn't swing left so much as he just sought an escape route from what he was at least smart enough to realize is really a cult.

so, the party is going to try and nail him on some comments he made about women, which is likely to fail. that is a losing strategy, at every level. nobody actually cares, or, worse, a lot of people might agree with him. but, i want you to listen to this carefully. he's going to tell you he changed, and those comments reflect an old person that doesn't exist anymore, but that is utter bullshit and he knows that. what he actually thinks is that you're a dumb libtard that will believe any stupid thing he tells you, which is the premise underlying his entire business model.

he hasn't changed. he's still a conservative, and it's still obvious. those misogynistic comments are pretty standard conservative statements, coming from a conservative worldview. it's all very consistent. it's who he is. and, if you challenge him, he'll just lie to you to get what he wants, because that's what he's spent his whole career doing. this is somebody that has no interest in truth, whatsoever.

but, nobody really cares what a random congressman from california thinks about women.

i would be more concerned about his financial perspectives, which appear to align on the right-libertarian side of the spectrum, and do not appear to have evolved much from his roots as an alex jones light style rush limbaugh wannabe. he seems to think that america is in debt to the chinese. he doesn't seem to understand what a sovereign debt is. i've heard him explicitly compare a government's finances to household finances. it's the same kind of fundamental financial misunderstanding that you hear from people like ron paul, or from people like ben shapiro.

i'm hoping that his campaign follows the same trajectory that elizabeth warren's has, and ultimately tanks once people get a good look at him and realize he's actually, sort of kind of a right-wing blowhard.

but, that's the thing i'd be most concerned about with him in this particular position - as a corollary of his generally conservative worldview, he appears to have a very right-wing concept of money, and you consequently don't want him sitting at the table when you start talking about debt.

i had to sleep this afternoon. it's a thing that happens.

the drugs are gone. i've got laundry going. and, i'm probably shut down and locked in until march - but no promises. that means straight edge for the winter, as has become the norm for me.

did i smoke my last cigarette ever this week? it's plausible. the pot stores just need to hurry up and open. once i have a legal, stable source of marijuana, i don't see any reason why i'd need to smoke cigarettes when i'm out, anymore. we'll see what the facts are in the spring.

i thought i was hungover on sunday, but i now think i picked up a virus on the weekend. it's either that or i'm terribly allergic to something in here (or am reacting to second hand smoke that i haven't been able to smell this week - i'll be able to smell it in a day or two, so we'll see how that works out, too). the amount of sneezing and nose blowing, not to mention the headaches, indicates that my body is fighting something off, anyways.

so, i'm a little behind schedule, but i'm cleaning myself up and once i get these reviews in, i'll be back at it.

plaid was a show that i was looking forward to, and had planned around, so the weather was a necessary peril, and i had to just deal with it. i was hoping to get in a little early and maybe find some legal marijuana, as well as set up a bank account with a driver's license that i don't have yet, but that wasn't available, yet. so, instead, i ended up dragging myself through the cold for a still pretty early entry, around 22:30. that meant that i missed most of dave shettler's set.

i actually like ambient music, and i've enjoyed his sets before; i think maybe what i missed was very similar to something i had caught while on edibles during plug, based on the similarities at the end. i intended to catch the set, i was just late through a cold walk.

i would have caught the 8:30 bus if i would have just gone to the bus station to get tickets, but i was apprehensive about my payment method and the only store i was sure took the prepaid mastercard and sold tickets was shoppers. so, i took a mild detour to the shopper's around the corner, only to find out that they don't sell tunnel bus tickets - surprisingly. so, i went down to the shopper's at ouellette, another detour around the greyhound station, only to find out that they closed at 20:00! it was around 20:40. so, i checked the convenience stores and asked around and was left with the only remaining option being the station itself, which was thankfully open. so, i started off by touring around in the cold for an extra half hour, and was already pretty cold by the time i got over the border.

and, then i walked to marble, which was a colder and lengthier walk than i remembered it being. see, i've been on my bicycle through detroit for months, and it's not far on a bike up to trumbull & grand. it's a hefty walk, though. it was just too cold to bike and end up anywhere, presentable. but, i still haven't fixed my tube, yet.

it took roughly an hour, an hour spent consuming a lemonish liquid while juggling cigarettes, and with neither hat nor gloves, through -15 C windchills, although the ambient temperature itself was merely hovering around zero. it was like a blizzard without any actual snow. i knew i was getting in somewhere, but that could have been a dangerous night to get stuck out in.

i was happy to find a heater to warm up beside when i got in, found some pot, and found the set ending right when i was about to start listening. as mentioned, it sounded familiar to me, so it was no doubt part of the set he played there behind plug.

the next thing up was daedalus, who i knew nothing about other than that they were on ninja tune, and that that's a label that i have some healthy respect for - they tend to release interesting music. there was a discussion about how to classify it, but i didn't find it that daunting - it was a kind of dubstep/idm. i found it moderately interesting, and might check out some more of it if the opportunity arises.

this is a few years old, but it's not dissimilar:

plaid was kind of really plaid, it's almost like they were more plaid than plaid. if i could imagine what a plaid show would be like, it would be pretty much that. an interesting quirk to the show was that they had a live violin player playing segments of sound that were then cut up and manipulated into loops, in real time. so, what you were actually experiencing was often this group of like sound engineers messing with live sound. sonically, it was kind of very plaid - a mix of lush atmospheric ambience with jittery and sometimes plodding beats, along with some strategic melodic programming. if you always wanted to experience plaid, that was exactly what the show was.

a plaid fan youtube site seems to have a recent set from istanbul that appears to be very similar to the detroit set:

however, this is the only footage that i could find of the live violin player:

there was a dj afterwards that allowed for some dancing.

this bar is hit and miss in terms of closing times. they're sometimes open until the afternoon, and sometimes closed at 3:00. i was hoping to stretch this night out a little so that i could just go straight to the tunnel, but they were shutting the place down by 3:01. so, i had to find somewhere to eat.

first, i had to get to my jacket, which i left outside the bar and required a small journey outside to retrieve. this time spent outside in a tshirt should not have been particularly damaging to me, given that the temperature was still hovering around freezing, but with the windchill the cold was flat out dangerous, so i actually had to stop there for a few minutes and warm-up before i carried on. i ended up with a small amount of frostbite on my left thumb, but i can't tie it directly to that moment.

it was still only 3:30 at that point, roughly two hours earlier than i wanted it to be, so i had to make a choice to go to the diner, with the hopes that they'd allow me to eat there. it's a funny thing, actually - the diner was an entirely different experience, all of a sudden. rather than handing everything out via takeout, they actually had two servers that were taking orders, like an actual restaurant. i ordered some bacon & eggs, got a refill on the coffee, and paid the bill without experiencing any negativity at all. i hope that this is indicative of future experiences at the diner.

hey, i don't recall ever starting any trouble at this place, and all i ever wanted out of it was some breakfast, and maybe a place to sip coffee and/or doze off at while i'm waiting for a bus or a show. the premise of my reaction was that i was taken aback by the hostility and ultimately didn't understand it; the preferred outcome is to annihilate the hostility as counter-productive to everybody's interests, but first to understand the causes of it, and try to determine if they're rooted in factual perceptions or not. for example, if somebody thought i was a prostitute, that would be false. we haven't got there yet, and maybe we never will, but if the issue just evaporates, that's fine, too.

by the time i'd finished the refill on the coffee, i'd actually missed the early bus. but, i caught the second bus back in, and had to stop for timmy's on the way back - i just needed some warmth for my hands. and, i had no choice but to shower almost immediately, to counteract the onset of hypothermia - a shower that it took me some time to warm up in, despite the scalding temperatures.

after warming up, i actually slept nicely until late in the afternoon.

i know that people are kind of upset that the quebec court could rule that the law is oppressing people, and then not invalidate it. but, that's a peculiar part of the canadian system in itself.

i've been clear that i think this law can withstand a legal challenge, and that the quebec government should have made better use of the expertise of the judiciary as a reference source, rather than try to cut it out of the process. i've pointed to bans on political activities by civil servants as a precedent for a valid restriction on expression, within the confines of the dress code. but, the government doesn't want the debate.

what people are forgetting is that a court in canada can, and often does, rule that a law is unconstitutional, but then save it via something called the oakes test. that is, we're allowed to have unconstitutional laws, in canada, if the balance is in the public good. and, if the quebec government won't argue the case in the way that i'm proposing, it's brandishing of the notwithstanding clause as a trump card, and somewhat frivolously given that a legal argument exists, could very well lead to exactly that decision, which it seems to be perfectly ok with. they're happy to make a mockery of the law.

but, this is a point that outside observers need to understand about our court system. in canada, it's not enough to show that a law infringes on somebody's rights, that's just the first step in the process. after you've shown that a right has been infringed upon, you have to run it through an oakes test, which questions whether the law can still be justified, despite infringing on some people's rights. and, it's not hard to come up with uncontroversial examples of laws that infringe the rights of some for the greater good; that's not that controversial of an idea at all. our legal framework explicitly forces the jurisprudence to consider the question; a judge must place the individual's rights in a social context, and must rule the individual's rights subservient to the social good, if the evidence compels it to. that is how canadian law interprets this kind of thing.

this is in contrast to american law, which has no real legal counterargument to individual rights, and which liberally grants injunctions when constitutional rights issues are raised. in the end, canadian judges wield a large amount of power to declare legislation void, but the precedent is set at a high bar in meeting the grounds of the oakes test, first.

so, in context, the democratic will is a valid argument in canada to overturn constitutionally-protected rights, in ways that wouldn't be raised in the american courts. and, americans that are following this case may find the language used by the canadian courts to be galling to the point of shocking. but, we'll see what the outcome is.

if the quebec government refuses to present an actual legal case, the court may be forced to make some pretty brutal rulings.

so, i needed to sleep this evening.

i was back on wednesday morning, slept the day, then was about to get started on thursday afternoon, when the machine crashed with an 0x6b, which appears to have been caused by being unable to access specific files in the catroot directory as a part of the windows activation process. it took me until friday evening to figure that out and adjust to it. i now have what i think is a clean image to redeploy with. but, i had to sleep shortly afterwards, as the 0x6b had kept me up on thursday night. now, i'm moving on.

what i wanted to do on thursday evening was write reviews for the last week, stop to eat and then get to cleaning up and publishing the liner notes for the 2013 releases over the night. so, that's what i'm getting back to this morning, and let's hope there's some published material on it's way up by the end of the weekend.

so, the drive is backed up in as clean a state as i could imagine it, although that may fade as more is learned.

i think i should be back up soon.

meaning i lost a day.

yeah, i think that was much faster than i imagined it would be. everything just copied over neatly.

i'm going to leave the catroot files in place. i think they ought to be unnecessary, but i can't stop random processes like windows activation from happening. that's what i'm going with right now - the activation runs as an update locally, and causes internal havoc by running roughshod over the broken update files. so, the operating system goes looking for a file in the activation process, and it can't find it, and it bluescreens; i may claim that i wouldn't otherwise need to look for that file, but as i can't turn the activation off, i'm forced to leave the file in place.

i'm otherwise going to load the thing back up on the laptop, tweak it as best as i can and then clone it away somewhere. 

i'm not a slow learner - i understand that i need to get used to this. so, hopefully that image will be easy to clone and easy to reinsert, so that when i do need to do this again, it's a thoughtless process.

to be clear.

they ended chapter 11, which is in truth because the jurisdiction is better in the wto. what the end of chapter 11 means is that the wto is taking over that role.

but, they kept chapter 19, which the canadian side actually insisted on. 

so, yeah, i know they ended chapter 11. sort of. but, i actually meant 19.

let me clarify a point.

i'm not saying we should try to squirm our way out of nafta, or something. i fully grasp the importance of nafta to the economy, for better or worse. i grasp the imperative to not end nafta.

but, i think we could have waited this out, and i think our timing for ratification is based more around the personal ambitions of the actors than the actual interests of the country. this could have been an election issue, and might still be one. there may be a better deal at the end of this.

i mentioned before that, from what i can see of it, it's a wash - the focus on lifting mexican labour standards is long overdue, but the continued insistence on these investor-state dispute mechanisms, instead of courts, could threaten local sovereignty near the border(s), which are also disproportionately indigenous. you would have to do some complex modelling to try to balance these things, and the few studies i've seen essentially do balance them out - i think the general perception is that mexico will be a tad better off and canada a tad worse, but it's round-off error on both sides. so, you have to just kind of go along with it. as mentioned, the important thing is making sure the deal doesn't collapse.

i'm still in favour of moving slowly on ratification, and letting the process play out, fully.

so, boris johnson won a majority government and andrew scheer resigned in a money funneling scandal. hey, maybe he could use tax dollars to buy his kids spots in universities, when he's prime minister. i meant scheer, not johnson. 

the things you miss when you're under cyberattack. yikes.

listen, maybe i should put this down - i don't care that much about any of this shit. i don't post on brexit, and i don't care about the impeachment. the ongoing story for me is the democratic primary. and maybe nafta.

but, like, i can post from here.

you've stopped nothing.

so, i seem to have come up cleaner than i expected to.

the thing that i did immediately before the update, which i know happened after 14:00 due to the timestamp in the catroot directory, was clear the registry out of an rdp listener that was running at startup, and for who knows how long. it was just corporate microsoft listening software, for like a domain server, which goes together well with the general feeling that the laptop has been slaved to a domain, somehow. i cleared out the executable and a number of drivers with names that i didn't like, and i suspect in some subset and combination were being utilized by the executable. so, you could imagine that i thought that the registry was a likely cause. but, replacing the registry didn't recreate the bluescreen; it was only being recreated when i removed specific nt* files from the f-key in the catroot directory. 

so, i saved my registry, actually, and everything that was in it. that means this should hopefully be quicker to reconstruct. all the missing services are already gone, for instance. the firewall might even still be in place.

i'm also toying with a naturalistic explanation to that update process. the one thing that i do always run when i come up is the activation plugin, which insists on connecting to the internet via firefox, but it always errors out. if the activation process utilizes firefox as a download manager, and it is the default browser, then that could explain the traces of hex - and could explain why it's erroring out in the catroot, or what it's doing running an update at all. i was able to verify that the activation process does utilize files in the catroot folder.

that's not what these files in the catroot directory look like though, they look like server files. 

i'm going to try to put this back together as best as i can, then. hopefully, it's not too long.

should i even redeploy every morning, pre-emptively?

i do have to make this point clear though, don't i - what i'm saying must be worthwhile on some deeper level if they're going to such extremes to shut me down.

i've been fighting with this now for months.

and, i mean, it's not like it's hard to get back up.

it's just a constant annoyance.

what i should do for now is take a backup image of the drive before i go back online, and then have it ready for a quick deploy for the next time.

if i need to reinstall every other day until whoever's bothering me goes away, i can script the machine to make that easier.

it seems clear to me that i'm dealing with a cyberattack.

my best guess is that the cops think i'm some kind of spy, and i'm essentially being shut down by the military.

the fact of the matter is that i'm a disabled artist on welfare that's just trying to get some work done. and, this is your tax money at work, people - this is who they go after.

am i potentially being targeted by somebody else? again: i don't have anything to steal. and, if somebody is trying to knock me offline, all i can do is point out that it won't work.

but, i don't want to play this game. i want to get some work done. and, all i can do is make it clear - i'm not having fun, and i'm going to go out of my way to make this process unfun.

so, don't expect me to do anything. don't expect me to retaliate - i wouldn't know how to, even if i'd want to. expect me to take my time getting back online, and hope that the problem is fixed, this time.

or, i suppose, have to do it all over again.

and again.

and again...

*sigh*

so, i got up yesterday afternoon to roll a joint, with the intent to get to writing the reviews when i came in. but, the machine was stuck at a blue screen when i got back, one that i don't remember seeing before and didn't know how to fix.

as mentioned: i don't want to run generalized scans on my machine, i want to figure out what happened and undo it. so, the internet wanted to tell me to do things like run a sfc scan, which i'd throw the machine through a window before i actually did. i don't want to load the defaults and forget about it. thanks.

as i really hadn't the slightest idea what had happened when i was out, i decided that the only thing i could really do was to reinstall to the drive, then slowly copy over data from the broken partition until i found the culprit, which it turned out was in the catroot folder. 

and, i was able to figure out that there was indeed some kind of update process that happened when i was out smoking.

that took until early this morning, and i've been in a sort of a rage. see, what i'm stuck with now is the task of finding out how to undo this update that i went to such great lengths to stop from happening. why did it happen when i went for a walk?

i spent all night hoping i could salvage the install, but now that i'm sure that the blue screen was caused by something in the catroot folder, that is something update related, i feel like i have no choice but to start over again from where i was at last week, and try and do a little better with it this time.

so, i'm reformatting the drive and copying over the install from early november, again. i'll keep my tabs and a few other things in separate copy processes. then, i'll need to spend another day or two trying to lock the machine down better than i did before...

it seems to either be an error with windows update, or some kind of backdoor that wants me to think that's what it is. the installation files seem to have come in via firefox, and then evaporated. and, the error i'm getting is something along the lines of that the setup files are corrupted.

listen: windows update does not work on this machine. those kinds of errors are the inevitable outcome of trying to update this machine, and that's by design. it's broken on purpose. it's never going to work; stop pretending that it will.

if i can get the copy over by mid-morning, i could conceivably be back online tomorrow or the next day.

and, yes, i'm angry and frustrated but i have to just keep going.

what i will say is this, though.

i need to get the liner notes for the november sequence done, and i might decide that the answer to this problem is to keep the laptop offline until it's done. i need internet access on my main machine. but, if i'm going to be constantly targeted by the cops, or some idiot kids that act like cops, then i'm going to have to find a way to get out of the way.

again: i'm never leaving the internet. but, if i have to find some other way to post for a bit, so be it.

so, i found another pile of weird remote desktop stuff in the registry, and this time it allowed me to actually delete some device drivers, so hopefully that's another step in securing this thing.

all i can do is keep reacting...

i should get to the reviews this afternoon.

see, this is interesting.

i set the firewall to only grant access to firefox, and disabled as many of the updates tools as i could find. but, i had a hard reset this morning, and look what i found on the reboot:

those folders were created this morning; they're empty.

there would only be one way to download files, and there we have it. and, i have no idea what the "updates" were because they left no trace of themselves, which is maybe actually just evidence that they didn't happen. that is, if there was some update, it didn't update any of the system files directly in any obvious way. the update would have to be in the files that were running and saving anyways, like maybe in the registry. so, if this is a trace of anything, it's a trace of something that's been inserted into the running system, and has otherwise deleted itself. it seems to not want to get caught...

the shutdown itself seems to have been a kernel error of some sort.

i do suspect that trouble is coming, but i have no way to trace what happened, and so no way to know what to expect. i'll just have to keep an eye out for symptoms and react to them.

no, i'm glad that the great messianic christian president decided to spend advent attacking the media's construction of this joan of arc archetype, like the evil capitalist pig that he is.

a sadistic enjoyment of making fun of autistic little girls is exactly the kind of quality that you hope for in a good president.

but, the elite keeps over-valuing and over-estimating the importance of catholicism in understanding western behaviours. i'd guess that few people are even getting the reference.

our archetypes are more classical and more roman, even if the truth is that the romans wiped us out of history. the romans and celts were at least mirror images of each other, before christianity. europe resisted christianity so violently because it was so foreign to it....

so, i'll say more or less the same thing i said previously: it's a sad reflection, all around.

i was in at about 5:00 am and i'm going to spend a few days putting together loose ends before i pivot. i have a small amount of marijuana to smoke this week (away from the house.), but i'm otherwise expecting to be in for most of the next three-four months.

barring no unforeseen circumstances, i should hope to have a productive solstice period.

this article seems to imply a winner-take-all delegate outcome; the democratic primaries award delegates proportionally, so you don't "win california" so much as you split the delegates. so, what this polling is actually suggesting is that the split field will render california and texas meaningless to the top candidates - even as they strike a death blow to smaller ones, perhaps including buttigieg. buttigieg will need either warren or biden to drop, but the same could be said of warren or biden - they need other candidates to drop. it's currently a stalemate.

by the time march comes around, a lot of the smaller candidates will have no doubt dropped. but, that's really all that you get of value out of this polling - the obvious statement that you should expect that the smaller candidates will end up mathematically eliminated by this stage, or very close to it.

my own feeling is that texas is a loose cannon in the democratic party. it's such a conservative place, obviously. so, it's split between, on the one hand, this conservative and catholic latin-speaking minority, which is not dissimilar to other latin-speaking populations in the western hemisphere, and should probably lean republican in a sane reality, and, on the other hand, this geography-less young generation of hipster kids that is like urban kids everywhere else in the country, with the exception that it's actually substantially more wealthy. if the texas democratic party ends up dominated by the artist-driven politics that you see in places like austin, it could be an interesting laboratory to try out new theories in. if it ends up driven by the more conservative instincts of the latin-speaking population, it could revert to the kind of insular backwardsness that has marred the region since the waning years of the mexican empire. for right now, i don't see how a clear winner emerges out of this field in texas, or at least not in any way that isn't determined beforehand - none of these candidates will sweep either of these demographics, unless one or more of them drops. if somebody wins texas, they'll have already won, anyways.

likewise, i'd expect california to split. if the outcome of the 2016 primaries wasn't sobering enough to remind everybody of where the centre of california politics really is, i guess there's some people that'll just keep dreaming through anything. there's a lot of money in california, as well, and it knows what it's self-interests are. so, a candidate like biden will have a strong base in california that will not be interested in sanders or warren, and it is going to be strong enough to ensure that the vote splits. you should not hope for a big sanders or warren victory in california - that won't happen. however, the one candidate that may actually have a chance at winning california is buttigieg, if biden drops and buttigieg gets most of his support. buttigieg could conceivably convince cultural liberals to vote for him in a way that sanders could never succeed in doing to the bourgeoisie. but, i would consider this obscure - expect california to split

this is why areas with more homogeneous populations are targeted by campaigns - they are selected for by the rules. you'll never get 80% of the vote in california by dominating with a single demographic like you will in south carolina or minnesota.

if there was a place in the united states where the latin-speaking population truly dominated the primary, it would no doubt develop the same kind of strategic importance. however, it doesn't currently exist, and current trends in the southwest might actually lean towards asian culture being the longer term winner in terms of demography - so it's not clear that it will ever happen, either.

what we've seen in the primaries for a long time is the strategic importance of winning homogeneously black areas in the southeast. i'm suggesting - and trump proved it - that the only real strategic counterfoil to this is to win homogeneously white areas by similarly large margins. if there were enough states that had latin-speakers voting in similar proportions in the primaries, sweeping those states could conceivably act as a comparable counterfoil, sure. but, that doesn't exist. what exists are more diverse states that render themselves irrelevant by splitting the vote up within their diversity.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/11/politics/cnn-polls-california-texas/index.html

so, fearful that the brexit party might merely elect jeremy corbyn, brits appear to have retreated to the safety of the pitbull tory mother.

the bastard children of the ghost of ms. thatcher, i see.

there's just not enough votes against the tories there any more, are there?

but, listen, you old bastards - if you don't get the tories out soon, there's not going to be much left, is there?

you lib dems need to think it through. if there's a time to vote labour to remove an incompetent buffoon from power, it's now.

people vote for the democrats because they want them to pass bills that make their lives better. it's supposed to be the party of change, of activist government, of progress in legislation.

but, all anybody's seen under the pelosi dictatorship is a do-nothing congress that sits on it's hands, or plays political games with the time it should be using to govern with. how many bills have they passed? so, why the fuck would you keep voting for them?

i wouldn't be an "independent", exactly. i'd be a partisan green supporter that might consider voting democrat from time to time. but, i'll tell you - if i had voted democrat in 2018 and what i got from it was somebody to keep the chair warm while pelosi plays cynical political games to prevent herself from having to govern, i'd be back to the greens pretty fast in 2020.

again - while i would rather it didn't happen, trump has essentially left congress no choice but to impeach him.

this is a political loser, for the democrats. it distracts from policy issues, it distracts from the debates, it distracts from the primary and it makes them look small-minded and petty, all around.

but, they have to do it anyways.

i'll argue that it was obvious that this was a political loser, and the people arguing for it were either idiots (if they thought it would legitimately hurt trump) or actually trying to distract from governing (that is a more likely reason behind pelosi supporting it, imo - it means she doesn't have to be house leader in a substantive sense for a few months). but, if there was some thinking that the democrats would benefit from this, i hope that the data dispels with that ridiculous notion rather swiftly. it's hurting them. already. and badly.

so, please, house leadership - just get this through as quickly as you can before it sinks you in the general, unless that's what you actually want? well, if you're 55-65, and you want to run next time, you don't completely want to see a democrat win this cycle, do you?

and, please, stop listening to the idiots that talked you into doing this as a pr stunt.

again: they have to do it. but, it's a dry legal formality with little actual consequence that is going to give trump a lifeline when he doesn't deserve one, and they should push it through as fast as they can.

i've got a long day coming up and am kind of nursing a hangover, still. sleep is important just right now. but, it's time to get up soon, too.

i got the printing done. $0.07/page, actually. remember - it's $0.25/page at the public library. so, that's a third of the price, which means i got to print three for the price of one, if you want to imagine it like that.

and, i have the card there now if i need it....even if the fact that the public library is across the street often overpowers.

i'm going to try to wake up, but i'm not going to try too hard.

well, i called ahead and they're telling me i can buy the card for a $1 and it's $0.08/pg to print.

let's hope it works out.

so, i've got everything in order, including my three cd-rs, i just need to find a printer.

application record - 74 pages
book of authorities - 9 pages
factum - 6 pages
certificate - 1 page
========================
90 pages

90x3 = 270.

i'm realizing that the website i found that claimed pages were $0.08 is from 2013. it's on the library's main site, but is it current? let's hope so. if it is, i should be able to do this for less than $22. and, i'll need to print the bus tickets, too.

it would be almost $70 to print that at the public library, which is too expensive. if we have to do it like that, i'm going to end up doing one copy and feigning ignorance.

i do think it's silly to have to waste so much paper....

it's raining right now, and i'm going to have to wait it out, so i might do some reviews. i'm not going to be out until the afternoon. but, let's see if i can figure out what the costs are, first...

it's the point i was trying to make leading up to and during the election: the country is being run by a bunch of overgrown children.

listen...

what you saw in that video with trudeau & macron was not a hot mic, it was a planned stunt by a pmo that operates at the maturity level of a bunch of high school students. they basically thought it would be "cool" if they caught trudeau on film making fun of trump. the intent was to flog it for personal political gain.

this is a part of the reason i'm not bothering with this - i know better. this was a stunt, and it's in a long line of similar stunts.

does it reflect poorly on the prime minister? well, the guy's a complete idiot, and that's been obvious since he first opened his mouth. there's a point where you've done everything you can do to yourself, and you can't really defame yourself any further.

he thinks he's really cool, though. he really does.

but, whoever you are, and however you're approaching this, you have to understand the point - this wasn't an accident. he did this on purpose...

so, i hit plaid on friday night and the armed on saturday night, and the combination of things (it's been too cold to bicycle, so i walked in the cold) has knocked me on my ass. i left the armed show before 1:00, hoping i could get to the bus stop in time, but had to double back to the city club and wait for the 8:30 bus. i should have stayed at trumbullplex. *shrug*.

so, i need to do some cleaning in here, and get things ready for tuesday. if i have time, i'll do a review.

after tuesday, it is very likely that i'll be in for the rest of the year, and potentially until the spring.

i'm not the first person to point out that jagmeet singh does not appear to be very good at playing chess.

i'm going to give him a little advice.

being the leader of the ndp in a minority parliament is a hard job in any circumstance, and even harder given that they don't actually have the balance of power right now. if the ndp supports the government with too much enthusiasm, then what's the point of voting ndp? why not vote liberal, if you get a liberal anyway....or green if you want a real protest? on the other hand, if they're too aggressive, they do run the risk of being seen as running interference, of being perceived as disinterested in actually governing.

jack layton actually ran a lot of interference, and he was rewarded for it, but it's because he was up against not one but two prime ministers that had a lot of entrenched opposition on the left. more to the point for today, layton could vote against martin's budget because he was paul martin - somebody that the left side of the liberal party had spent years pushing back against. it's not clear that trudeau is going to generate that kind of backlash any time soon.

rather, the mood in the country, foolishly or not, seems to be to give him another chance and hope he does a better job, this time, which is a level of goodwill that probably originates with his father and is probably going to be more seriously tested before the next election.

the ndp are not getting anywhere by being pliable - they will need to stand up for their principles when they are challenged, or they will need to cede their position as the party of principles. after mulcair & notley, as well as darrell dexter and a few others, their reputation for being principled has been severely damaged.

but, if this is the best argument they have for voting against the speech, it's not very compelling.

blanchet is actually doing this right - you start off by broadcasting a desire for co-operation, by taking them at face value, by indicating a desire for compromise, and then you viciously attack them when they break their promises. that way, you can go to liberal voters and say "they promised us this and this and this, and then they betrayed all of us.".

the cynical analysis is that the ndp doesn't think it even has the strength to run against the liberals as the hypocrites that they are, that it's essentially trying to prevent itself from being a factor in the operation of parliament. but, if that's the case, then they should just disband. if they're not going to show up, they're wasting everybody's time, and it won't work out for them - not with the greens coming up behind them, like they are.

back at the beginning of the nafta negotiations, i tried to suggest in this space that the liberals should spend some time reading or watching some dawkins, as he's done a lot of important work on evolutionary strategies that is keenly relevant, in context. we then got completely embarrassed at the nafta negotiations, and signed a deal we really shouldn't have. i have to wonder if the outcome would have been a bit better if we had a better negotiation team in place, one that was more focused on game theory as an optimization tool.

i'm going to repeat the suggestion to mr. singh and the ndp. there's a gentle introduction in the form of a film called nice guys finish first.

as of right now, blanchet is following the correct strategy and singh is following an incorrect one.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/singh-says-bloc-won-t-push-government-after-supporting-throne-speech-1.4719205

the whiteness of the remaining primary candidates is getting a lot of media attention, which is mostly really just a shit shot by the corporate media.

listen - if there was some governing entity hovering over the process, arbitrarily deciding who can and can't talk, and they picked a bunch of white guys, then i could see some pushback on some structural racism.

but, what's happening is literally the result of actual polling. and, while i actually think that kamala harris made the right choice in pulling out of a race that she'd already lost quite some time ago, maybe there's some basis in giving her shit for stranding some identity voters without a candidate.

so, there is still time for some of that vote to reorganize itself, i guess. but, there's not much evidence that harris' withdraw is going to help a candidate like booker, who is just not polling above 2-3% at all, all that much.

and, it's maybe another example of the media spinning reality on it's head rather than accepting that it's analysis is so horrible. the media has been telling us for so long and for so often that the democrats are a majority-minority party, and there's basically no future for white people on the pseudo-left, that it can't grapple with what the actual evidence produces out of the actual process. what they want is a race war with the white republicans on one side and the brown democrats on the other, and all of their messaging promotes that, always. so, when the democrats pick a bunch of white people, the narrative implodes.

but, of course, this is the democratic process unfolding, and if the top five or six candidates all end up being white, then maybe that's reflective of the voting base, just a little bit? maybe the actual truth is that a more careful analysis of the demographics suggests that "liberal" white democrats are not just an important voting bloc, but still the dominant one. that would be a nice, easy explanation.

instead, we're told that the field isn't representative of voters, despite the fact that the voters chose them.

ok, so it took me a little longer to catch up on most of the things, but i think i have.

i simply don't have time to get to the printer today before plaid, and i hope i don't regret it. i'm sure they're open monday, actually. so, i'm going to need to put that stuff off until tomorrow or maybe sunday. i also have a few reviews left to finish in my tabs. and, i'll have to wait until after the 20th to get my g1.

the schedules being as they are, i simply have to take a nap before the show tonight.

but, i think i've put the loose ends in order, at least.

i just want to add a weather update.

i have not been to detroit since oct 4/5/6th. i nearly went a few times after that, but i was sick, or something else. i made it to the bus stop on nov 7th for black midi, but turned around, unprepared to weather the overnight. i was in toronto on nov 19th. plaid is tonight.

the first few weeks after i got back weren't so bad, but november was broadly terrible. the funny thing is, though, that, since the beginning of november, the calendar has largely caught up.

it has not been that bad the last few days, and the longterm is not very scary, right now. it's detroit in december, mind you - don't go out in a tshirt, or at least not for too long. it's going to hover around or dip below freezing, sure. but, it's not awful, and it's not even unseasonable; if you crunch the numbers, the averages may even turn out on the + side.

what's going on? well, it has to be all of that hot air in the ocean.

...even as the forecast is warning us that it's -40 in northern canada, right now.

i suggested that we'd have a cold start to the winter, and i was right. but, i pointed out that we're bottoming out, right now. it's going to get better. really. so, i held out hope for an early spring.

it's still too early. that vortex could still roll right through here like bernie sanders looking for a hot meal. but, the solstice is only two weeks away, now, and it's starting to look like it might not be so bad, once the days start getting longer again.

i noticed some strange logs, so i pulled the wireless card out of this thing after i ate.

without looking at it that much more carefully, i can't know for sure. it could have been loading the driver into memory without using it, and i do actually have a very low-bandwidth wireless keyboard running via usb, but the device otherwise has no actual use; it's disabled in device manager, disabled on the front panel and was disabled in the bios until i had to reset it.

more generally, the laptop needs an external monitor, so it's not very mobile.

and i can put it back in later if i really want to...

with the exception of the chromebook, and the infected chinese phone that i never use, that would actually be the last wireless card i have down here. i took the wireless out of the other laptop quite some time ago, and the 90s laptop didn't ship with one. i have three motherboards down here, none of which have wireless chips in them, which was a conscious choice. i simply wouldn't buy a motherboard with a wireless chip in it.

so, i've got a start on the reconstruction, and i'm feeling less overwhelmed.

i'm back to listening to schubert for the night.

and, i'm hoping i can get things in order by sunrise.

so, some time this morning, i stopped myself from pushing forward with the tweaks, put the thing back together and went to sleep. i was up about 17:30 and have been typing a little since. i'm going to stop, get something to eat, clean up the mess from the last few days and try to focus for tomorrow.

i just lost a week that i didn't want to lose. so be it.

what did i do to the machine?

- the firewall is locked down.
- i removed as much of the remote assistance software as i could. i'll have to keep an eye on that
- windows update, which was the direct recent problem, is uninstalled. the catroot is wiped. task scheduler is also uninstalled. i've uninstalled a large number of other services, as well.
- i've installed a detailed group policy that should block remote attackers, police or otherwise, from doing most things.
- i'm going to be running the process monitor essentially all of the time.

as a local admin, i can only take so much control over this machine. linux opens up a can of worms - i know i have a learning curve if i'm going to get into a fight. but, with windows, you don't know what the fuck the machine is actually doing. so, i need to be empirical about what's actually happening.

the procmon is the log i want, the log i was looking for. and, if there's anything going on, i'll find out.

for now, i think that this is enough and i'm willing to get back to work.