Clinical trials prior to two years ago have shown little to no significant effects of cannabis in reducing seizures. These trials seem to be underpowered, with a sample size less than 15. In contrast, more recent studies that have included over 100 participants showed that CBD use resulted in a significant reduction in seizure frequency. Adverse effects of CBD overall appear to be benign, while more concerning adverse effects (e.g., elevated liver enzymes) improve with continued CBD use or dose reduction.

In most of the trials, CBD is used in adjunct with epilepsy medication, therefore it remains to be determined whether CBD is itself antiepileptic or a potentiator of traditional antiepileptic medications. Future trials may evaluate the efficacy of CBD in treating seizures due to specific etiologies (e.g., post-traumatic, post-stroke, idiopathic).

==========

in other words, they weren't able to find any evidence of this claim until they started using cbd together with the epilepsy medication.

right.

great trials, guys. really convincing. good job with that.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6235654/

even with the kids, it's like...

does it really cure epilepsy in kids? or does it cure the idea of epilepsy in the minds of their parents?

the claim is the efficacy fell over time, but i wonder if the efficacy wasn't exaggerated in the first place.

i don't have my blocklist on the chromebook, so i'd have to sort through thousands of pop science sites and piles of hippie bullshit to get to some actual, decent research. i'm not going to do that.

but, i would not endorse the claim that cbd reduces seizures in anybody, regardless of their age. sorry.

https://www.contemporarypediatrics.com/pediatrics/cbd-oils-effect-may-wane-managing-seizures

i am overwhelmingly skeptical, myself.

but, i support recreational legalization, anyways - i'd just like to see some bylaws around residential use.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cbd-product-boom-science-research-hemp-marijuana

"The relation between marijuana use and epileptic seizures is still controversial. "

that's a polite way to put it. 

i don't think i have late onset epilepsy, and i don't think it's being cause by marijuana abuse, which i've never had an issue with.

but, could pot cause seizures? the answer is that it does actually make sense, unlike the opposite argument, which really doesn't.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4121386/

but, i mean, the place could have also been empty because everybody left because the manager called the fucking cops, too.

i keep saying i'm getting up to eat.

so, it's one thing to call the cops on a green out at 11:00, when you're there until close to 3:00, that would be unnecessary, probably, and another to call them at 2:30, when you're trying to close the bar and go home.

the place was empty when i was talking to the cops....

...but that would mean i got drugged....

data. i need data.

and i need linguine.

when i called the pot smoker below me in a couple of years ago, it wasn't being done with the intent to have her arrested, or with the intent to serve or protect anybody. i was very intentionally attempting to create an occurrence for the purpose of a court process, and i actually told them that when they got there.

if there was some other way i could have proven in court that the person below me was smoking inside, i would have walked down that path, instead. but, the legal precedent is getting a police report, so i did that in order to win the court case.

as i had asked her to smoke somewhere else repeatedly, and she didn't care about my lungs or my sobriety, i decided i didn't care much about what happened to her, either. but i wasn't calling the cops for the sake of calling the cops, i was just doing what was required to get out of the lease. there wasn't another answer - that's what the court wants as proof, in that scenario. that's the sitting precedent....

it's a different kind of argument, and one i can maybe draw a parallel to on the issue of "i just want to go home". and, i guess that's where the generational gap is likely to assert itself - i would actually find it less upsetting to have a call in a situation where she's trying to close the bar and go home than i would in an overbearing situation where she's trying to, like, mother me and make sure i'm safe. i thought i was home at like 11:00, but i'm questioning that, now. is that actually true? it's kind of important.

ok, i'm going to eat.

i'm an anarchist - i don't buy into this idea of the police existing to serve or protect, unless you own property. so, i'm going to kneejerk pretty brutally against anybody calling the police.

but, the bartender drove me home.

and, even if i don't agree with what happened, i can maybe make a better attempt to understand the generational or income gap underlying it, if they really did find themselves with somebody unable to move, at or close to closing time, especially considering that i would have had to have been drugged - if i picked up that deduction right, it was correct, and the same one i'm presenting.

i may remain a little uneasy about it, i may continue to be apprehensive about the safety of entering the space for a while, but i can sort of adjust a little to it. it's like the introduction of a difference of scale, a kind of hierarchy of "noooooo".

the fact is that this is very blurry.

- i finished my second beer
- i went out for a smoke

- somebody handed me a joint and said "this is strong. careful.", and i smoked it anyways. i even said i was done and changed my mind and took more. i take some responsibility here, i'm just insisting on clarifying the agent.

- i asked for another beer, and was told i looked a little rough and to come back in an hour or two. i didn't totally agree, but i shrugged this off. note that i actually would have left at this point if i hadn't been given a free beer, because i had budgeted for two; i wasn't planning on staying much longer. so, the refusal didn't really bug me. as the karaoke was starting, i was thinking about going to the jazz bar down the street instead, anyways. but, i decided to sit down for a few minutes and think about what the best thing to do actually was.
- and, the next thing i remember is sitting a few feet away with somebody hovering over me, giving me juice.

i initially assumed that there was just a few moments in between these two events - that i had a seizure, and then i had people hovering over me right after. this is because this is how this happened before.

but, with the exceeding amounts of tiredness that have followed, and the recollection that i was having such a hard time getting up, i'm increasingly wondering:

1) how much time occurred between when i sat down and when people were giving me juice?
2) just how long was i sitting there struggling to get up for?

it's the time dilation that is messing with me, and, because i didn't check the time when i got in, i don't have the frame of reference. i'm going to need somebody to answer that question for me.

if i was just passed out for a few seconds like i initially thought, it would seem as though i had a very, very bad reaction to the pot.

but, if this process was actually more drawn out than i initially thought it was, if i was struggling with awakeness for a long while, then i basically had to have been drugged.

so, i guess i was up at close to 17:00 and i haven't been sure how awake i actually am. i got some fruit, warmed back up and spent some time ranting, to make sure i was actually awake. and, i think that i am.

my neck is unusually stiff, and i had some kind of migraine on monday morning. no significant bruising has developed. i never developed any sort of nausea. i've just been oppressively, overwhelmingly tired.

i haven't had any kind of hallucinations, if you're wondering about the stiff neck.

so, i don't know. i actually posted at the bar's facebook page, and i'm hoping to get some information about some time frames. i didn't actually check a clock. and, the more i kind of feel it through in my head, the more i'm wondering how long i was passed out for. was the bar even closed when i left? i don't have any recollection of the karaoke.

so, what if i was passed out in the bar for like 4 hours? at that point i guess maybe you either need to call the cops, or an ambulance, if the person can't move - you want to go home. but, in context, i would think that would make a roofie almost certain. i just didn't drink that much...

so, i think that, to an extent, my initial reaction, in a continued slightly confused state, should be taken with a grain of salt. i'm realizing that i maybe don't have a clear enough understanding of what happened to be able to make a choice.

it wasn't the alcohol; i either had a pot-related seizure, or i got drugged. let's hope i can get enough information by the end of the night to figure that out. and, i might undo the nasty review, if i was actually passed out for hours. because what do you do? and, there was some realization of the possibility of a drugging - she did tell me she was calling the cops because she didn't want me to get raped.

maybe, with a little better reflection, with better data, with better clarity, i can put these pieces together differently.

right now, i'm awake enough that i'm going to stop to eat.

that's not the messaging i'm getting, here.

the messaging i'm getting is that he thinks he has a higher purpose, and a special role to fulfill, and it's this special purpose and role that gives him the entitlement to act like a spoiled child.

and, that's scaring the hell out of me - that's how we walk down the path to dictatorship.

justin trudeau may think he's special.

he's not.

and, justin trudeau may think he's been chosen. he hasn't been.

what justin trudeau is is lucky. very, very, very lucky. 

and, his one opportunity to prove he has some intelligence is to demonstrate that he recognizes the importance of chance over destiny in how he got to the role that he's in.

if the rule of law in this country is to start anywhere, it must start in holding the prime minister accountable for his outrageous and unacceptable behaviour, today.

scheer may be saying crazy things that you cannot really take seriously in order to rouse up his base. that's what politicians do.

but, trudeau's behaviour is beyond the pale, and cannot be tolerated by the members of the house. he should be censured, in no uncertain terms.

i don't know if justin trudeau actually believes what he says when he stands up and presents all of this flowery language about democracy and the rule of law, or if he's just pulling your crank on purpose.

but, whether he's entirely delusional or completely dishonest, he's thoroughly full of shit, either way.

he's an authoritarian to the core, and a fascist dictator waiting to happen.

this guy is a dictator and he needs to be thrown out of power.

it's a historical constant - it's what happens when you put the pampered children of leaders into power, they grow up thinking they're intended for the role and start thinking they have some kind of inherent authority.

they don't. and, he doesn't. 

he's just a relatively uneducated person that's been given far more power than he's earned or deserves.

the irony here is, of course, that the government fully supports the pipeline. and, they will crack down on these protesters, eventually - trust me. it's just a question of doing so in a way that avoids the optics of the war measures act.

it was not very long ago when canada was one of the more libertarian western countries, in terms of the political spectrum. i'm not sure how we woke up with this current surreal debate, between two different strains of literal fascism. but, this is how the liberals co-opt and confuse you - they present themselves as a lesser evil, while continuing to shift the discourse to the hard right.

the prime minister has an obligation to listen to the opposition, whether he likes what they have to say or not. insisting otherwise is an egregious abuse of power and a step towards authoritarianism and must be denounced and resisted.

i would call on the other opposition parties to refuse to meet further with the prime minister until he drops his fascistic and, frankly, somewhat childish, strongarm tactics.

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/justin-trudeau-ejects-a-protester/

how about nevada?

i know i'm cherry-picking, but the only poll here without an obvious bias (and it doesn't help to verify the results if the polling is all funded by partisan actors) is this one:

Sanders 35%
Warren 16%
Buttigieg 15%
Biden 14%
Steyer 10%
Klobuchar 9%
Gabbard 2%

...and it's also the one that aligns best with the non-literal, intuitive regression model that i erected in my head (stated differently, this is the one that best reflects the direction of the trendlines).

those numbers are a little better for buttigieg, but it's still not clear that he'll end up viable, and i'm not ready to project that he will.

they're very good for sanders, though, who, once again, could nearly take the pot by splitting the field, if that was the actual outcome.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-d/nevada/

ok, so we're starting to see some shape with this.

the headlines are claiming sanders is in the lead, bloomberg is up & biden is down. they forgot to mention that buttigieg is up more than bloomberg. klobuchar's +2 is statistically a flat outcome.

so, biden is in free fall and the support appears to be splitting between buttigieg and bloomberg. if he falls another few points, buttigieg could maybe end up viable in some of these southern states, which is probably the best he can hope for. the rest of the field is roughly flat.

and, sanders? well, if the field stays the way it is, and he's the only guy that can clear 15%....

warren seems to be dragging a grudge around first and foremost, but biden is actually trying to win and will give up when it's clear that he can't, which might not be too far in the future. when that happens, some other candidate should emerge as a rising second, either bloomberg or buttigieg.

i don't understand who would vote for mike bloomberg, or why. i specifically can't imagine black voters staying with bloomberg, even if they refuse to vote for the jew or the gay. so, what do they do, exactly? i dunno. i will acknowledge that bloomberg is throwing a little bit of a wrench into my projections with this, but i think he has a relatively low ceiling. and, like biden, he will quit fairly quickly when his path is blocked. he won't drag this on, he will move on to something else. so, when you take them both off the ballot, who's next in line? steyer?

what's clear enough is that they're realigning against sanders rather than with him, and that sanders may have had this thing in the bag right now had he tried to organize around them rather than with them. instead, he's ceded a lot of ground to buttigieg & klobuchar & warren, while chasing outcomes that were never very likely.

he appears to be getting a bit of a break, though - he appears to be getting a bit of luck.

i told you months ago that sanders was going to have to split the black vote to win the nomination, then got frustrated with and eventually alienated by his refusal to face the facts on the matter, and instead contort his positions and destroy his legacy by chasing value systems that belong in the last century. now, here he is, observing his chances of winning the nomination increase dramatically by a developing split in the black vote that is developing as a consequence of his own negligence in consolidating white voters.

i also said months ago that he's going to have to heal the divisions after he splits the vote, if he wants to win the general. he might want to get to thinking about that by finding ways to reach out to these southern black groups that, frankly, simply don't like him.

he's done everything wrong, and it's not confidence-inducing. but, the incompetence and inability of his opponents to work together is opening up a gigantic hole for him to run through. and, they're running out of time to figure it out.

...if this isn't actually just theatre, anyways. of course.

the story is that biden's vote is splitting roughly evenly between buttigieg and bloomberg, both of whom may overtake him in the next round of polls. sanders, on the other hand, remains flat, but well ahead of the split field.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/18/nbcwsj-poll-sanders-leads-by-double-digits-as-biden-sinks-bloomberg-rises.html

after passing out hard for another 10+ hours over what was supposed to be a twenty minute nap, and feeling like i'm going to sleep another 10 hours, i'm left with the need to ask the question i should have asked in the first place.

there's no way at all that the totality of this is alcohol related - i'd have had to have drank at least twice as much as i did. and, while i've had some bad reactions to marijuana recently, this is starting to feel like something more than that, as well.

was i drugged on sunday night? did somebody put something in my drink when i was having a smoke?

there weren't a lot of people in the bar from 7:30-10:00 on sunday night. they have a weekly karaoke feature, and it was starting to pick up when i fell asleep. there were maybe five or six people in the bar, pretty much all male, with the exception of a bartender and a small group of females tucked away on the very far side of the bar, which i didn't make it over to, as it would have been out of the way.

of the guys in the bar, i actually think i've met most of them before and would consider essentially all of them to be exceedingly low risk. i would characterize this bar as a nerd hangout and pretty low risk, over all.

i did not purchase my second drink, though. it was bought for me after i had a conversation with somebody about the native african language they were speaking at the bar. they were impressed by my knowledge of the geography of eastern africa, and my usage of terms like "nilotic". and, i scored a drink out of it. i didn't think much of it.

now, though...

i shouldn't be experiencing this kind of overwhelming effect from a couple of drinks and a few tokes. this is an epic hangover, the kind of thing you get after a major bender. 

so, did somebody put something in my drink?

if not, what exactly was i handed?

i've been asleep since 3:00 this morning and i think i'm going back to it.

so, i have a tentative 72 page document done for inri023, but i appear to have flubbed the process the first time around (this is an lp, like inri015 or inri021, but i treated it like an ep, like inri022. i have to reverse that.) and will need to go through it very carefully to make sure i haven't missed anything.

unlike the last three updates, inri023 only has one html5 frontend in the package and will not include discarded remasters. that's something that was sort of unique to those specific recordings.

in fact, the html5 part of this should be pretty quick, i just have to actually get it done.

i think i'm going to take a nap just right now, though. i hope it's short...

i can measure how much alcohol i'm consuming by reading labels and via experience. that's something i have control over, and that i'm actually pretty good at figuring out. i actually don't tend to find myself very drunk very often, although it happens to everybody sometimes.

however, when somebody hands you a joint, you have no idea how potent it is, or if it's even really marijuana in the first place. 

so, if somebody hands you a potent joint and it knocks you out flat on your ass, did you do something irresponsible? or did you just get unlucky?

you could have controlled the situation by not smoking at all, granted. but, you didn't have control of the pot that was given to you, you were at the whim of somebody else. is it actually your fault, really?

imagine if it was alcohol. if somebody gives you a cup worth of beer, it probably won't do much to you; on the other hand, if somebody gives you a cup worth of vodka, and you swig it, it could knock you out right on the spot. the difference between a cbd joint rolled with mostly tobacco and a pure marijuana cigarette at 30% thc is just as profound. 

if somebody gave you a glass of beer, you'd drink it, if you trust them. you would know better than to drink a glass of vodka, though. with marijuana, you don't have the opportunity to make that discretion, and, if you have low tolerance like i do, you can find yourself passed right out relatively quickly, if you take too long a haul on too powerful of a joint. if you had the ability to understand what you're smoking in the first place, you might not make those mistakes.

the potency of marijuana has apparently come up a lot over the last few decades, and i guess my reactions to the drug are reflective of that. 

again, i don't want to come off as unappreciative or entitled.

but, this was a part of the argument for legalization in the first place, and it would be nice if they could get a move on it. this was supposed to have been dealt with quite a while ago, already.

turns out today was a holiday in ontario.

the more you know...

like, there's a difference between passing out and falling asleep.

i wasn't passed out. i was woken up every few minutes, and nobody had any difficulty getting me up. i was just overwhelmed by tiredness, knocked on my ass by strong pot, and had no option but to sleep it off.

there was one night where i was actually drunk, namely the night before beethoven's fifth, back in october.

the fact that i remember her fussing over me repeatedly is itself proof that i wasn't drunk - if i was drunk, i wouldn't remember struggling to wake up like that, it would just be ejected from memory altogether. greenouts will suck your life force out of you, turning you into a kind of vegetable until it passes. they're not pleasant; they suck. but, you don't wake up the next day and wonder what happened last night. that difference has been important in helping me understand what's been happening to me....

i mean, one of the reasons that i'm blaming this on marijuana instead of alcohol is that i didn't lose any time. there's no black out period.

ignoring the actual amount that i drank, and the obvious reality that it's not going to get anybody pass out drunk, being drunk means blacking out. if you don't black out, you're not that drunk...

there's no question that i was out of it for a small amount of time, i'm not denying that point - i was very, very stoned, so stoned i couldn't move. but, going instantly from full alertness and total recall to being unable to move is a marijuana thing, not an alcohol thing. so, if i had a seizure, or suffered a sudden drop in blood pressure, or whatever else, it didn't erase any of my actual memory - the time i lost is strictly reduced to the period that i was actually passed out. which isn't what happens with alcohol poisoning...

i did not vomit or feel sick, not even when i got home. i did have a headache, and woke up with a migraine.

even explaining it as a thc overdose, a greenout, is, i think, just putting off the point. the marijuana is triggering the events, and i hope it's dose-specific, but i suspect there's some underlying factor.

so, i have slept for most of the day, now. i just finally got out of the shower....

i'm less hungry than i should be. oddly.

i'm told that i fell off a chair, but i just remember sitting down in one place and being teleported to the other and a different bartender giving me juice; i'm going to guess there was no more than a few minutes of time in between. so, i'm guessing i just fell off the chair, maybe seized slightly on the ground, and either got up or was helped up in the closest chair. and, i then couldn't move for about 20-30 minutes until i got up and got in a car and was driven home.

as mentioned, this has happened to me before after smoking marijuana. the amount of alcohol i've drank doesn't seem to be a factor, it seems to be strictly about the pot. i'm guessing it's just too strong for me...

i don't remember falling over. so, i checked my body for bumps or scrapes. the last time i had a seizure like this was back in july, and i ended up with a couple of wounds. i did notice that my hair was a little bit matted, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but the closest thing i can find to signs of trauma is just a little bit of a bruise behind my ear. i can't see anything just quite right there without setting up a sequence of mirrors, which i don't really have in here. there's no other visible signs of trauma from falling...

i've got some final touches for inri022 to clean up, locally. and, i should hopefully have a rough draft of inri023 up by sunrise.

i thought i posted this earlier...

i kind of half want to argue that the court should reject the extension, and strike down the law, leaving assisted suicide unregulated - like abortion is.

on principle, decisions around when a person chooses to end their own life doesn't seem to me like something the government should really be very involved with. i would lean in the direction of as few restrictions as are possible.

but, i think there needs to be a requirement for a contract in law, at least - there has to be a way to actually prove that the individual seeks the end of their life. my own mother has said some eyebrow raising things to me about my grandmother, who owns a large amount of stocks. my mother, who is very poor, would benefit dramatically from my grandmother's death (or at least she thinks she would - i'm not sure she understands the law, there). as it is, my grandmother, who is 79 and suffering from dementia, would have probably written this into her will, if she had the option to, before she lost the ability to legally make decisions for herself. but, now that she doesn't have that ability, this decision surely can't be left to her daughters, who would drive her off the cliff themselves, if they could find a way to get away with it.

abortion doesn't have that dimension to it, it's more the opposite - people may abort because they can't afford to raise their kids, and that's something that's been accepted as a valid argument.

so, that's a false equivalency. there has to be a contract requirement, with this, it can't be left totally unregulated, even if the regulations ought to be as light as possible.

well, maybe if they didn't prorogue parliament after the election...

the incompetence, across the board on this, is staggering. they should have never passed such a restrictive law in the first place.

people are suffering. they need to stop globetrotting and get on with it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/medical-assistance-in-dying-quebec-1.5466556

i just want to remind the groups protesting in bc that the people the government is going to send, the carolyn bennetts and the bob raes, are known for being very sneaky in their discussions.

it's very important that you analyze their proposals very carefully, and you should expect them to be full of trick clauses and language that is worded in confusing ways that they can reactivate in future years.

they will tell you otherwise, and they may be very convincing, too, but you must realize that they are essentially no different than the colonial agents from 150 years ago.

i will acknowledge that the length of the green-out was perhaps concerning, but, the effects of marijuana overconsumption being what they are, the consequence of it should have been realized, as well. this is just what happens when you smoke too much - you fall asleep for a few minutes.

the bar manager is not trained to tell the difference between a green out and a blackout, and just kept coming back to me like an overprotective mother, fussing over my clothing and how it affected my safety, and telling me how "lovely" and "gorgeous" i look, making me wonder who the tranny in the room actually was.

i was actually wearing a heavy red overcoat.

like i say - i don't want to get mad at her, but i feel micromanaged. things would have been fine. it wasn't necessary. really.

how much did i have to drink last night? i avoided answering that question and don't think i did.

- two shots of vodka in my mountain dew, 1:45-2:35.

- one tall mike's hard, 2:45-3:20

- one corona, 3:20-4:00

- one heineken, 4:00-5:00

- one tall hamm's, 6:00-7:00

- two james ready, 7:30-11:00

that is not an excessive amount of alcohol, and i was not particularly drunk.

i was, however, exceedingly stoned, as a consequence of smoking on a couple of joints outside the bar, so stoned that i fell asleep on the bar stool. i was actually warned of the strength of the pot as it was being passed to me, and i have a history of similar reactions to strong pot. so, it's not an unexpected reaction, but i would have been fine in a few minutes, once my body metabolized it.

so, it was the marijuana that passed me out, not the alcohol. and i've been through this before...

i enjoyed the show and ended up at villain's after. i smoked some pot outside and ended up needing to sit down for a few minutes. an overzealous bar manager was convinced i was going to get raped (i don't know whether to thank her or yell at her) and called the police to escort me home, which is, like, the worst thing to do, but that's not how she saw it. you can't convince them you can walk home after they show up....somebody at the bar had to volunteer to get me home.....

i passed out pretty hard when i got home and need to eat and shower.

i don't want to get angry. but, i don't think i'll go back there.

i was not drunk, i was stoned, and i would have been fine, and they should have avoided calling the police, who are not there to serve or protect but to control and dominate.

inri022 updated and tested

this is tested and working on the chromebook and on firefox on the windows 7 box.

what's in there, now?

- the 10 songs on the record
- cover.jpg. this release is download only, because these tracks are thoroughly rejected.
- a playlist.m3u file stored as raw text
- a 23 page doc file of liner notes over the fall of 2013
- a 23 page pdf file (same)
- an instructions file
- inri022.html.7z.txt is a 50 mb document that must be renamed and unzipped and contains (1) an html version of the liner note package, including an html5 player that can load the purchased audio in the browser and (2) deleted masters of the record from 2013, in standalone 320 kbps mp3 and embedded into the html file.

the full download, in flac, is 304 mb.

there will be further updates to the liner notes as i run through the alter-reality, and as i run through the remastering period that took place over 2015-2016. but, this is likely the last major revision to this period 1.2 outtakes collection, which is nearing a point of final completion.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrijected

it's time to stop to eat and shower.

so, i crashed this morning during testing. i'm up now and have finished testing the windows box. it won't be long before i'm done here and i should have a post up soon.

i'm still planning on getting to the dso, but it depends on timeframes. i might miss it. it's streaming...

the landlord/main-cop is back and the stinky cop seems to be gone. can i make a request to the force, which i know is reading this, to keep that gross, smelly cop away from here? surely, you can find a cop to stake me out that i can't smell from a distance of 100 yards?

very soon, and then i'll get back to inri023 when i get back, if i go.

it's done. 

final testing.

soon.

there's one more after this...

this one is much shorter, and it will be done quite shortly. soon.

why isn't the fake left press covering this?

https://thearabweekly.com/undeterred-clerics-intimidation-iraqi-women-press-protests

first liner note release for inri022

this is a collection of rejected tracks from the inri/inriched period. it's just chronologically sequenced. download only.

recorded over 1998. compiled and remastered in late 2013. released dec 27, 2013. corrected to normalize for stereo in september, 2014. expanded incrementally between dec, 2014 and dec, 2016. merged with inricycled b and then finalized and re-released on december 16, 2016. first liner note release added on feb 15, 2020, to include the initial 2013 release in 192 kbps mp3 only. as always, please use headphones.

this release will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1996-1999, 2013-2020). as of feb 15, 2020, the release includes a 23 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over sept-dec, 2013, as well as the initial 2013 release in 192 kbps mp3 only.

credits

released January 27, 1999

j - guitars, effects, bass, bass synth, synthesizers, vocoders, octavers, drum programming, sequencers, noise generators, sound design, vocals, found sounds, cool edit synthesis, digital wave editing, loops, windows 95 sound recorder, sampling, production.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrijected

it turns out that poll in nevada was commissioned by an explicitly republican polling firm. that might explain a few things.

i need a better source than that.

i quit smoking years ago.

and, i shouldn't have to go to any great lengths to prove that statement - it should be taken on face value.

i have not been cold turkey for a while.

but, i functionally quit smoking in january, 2016, and anybody pushing back against that is just being dishonest in their argument.

i've had maybe ten cigarettes in the past ten weeks.

and, i haven't bought a pack of smokes for casual, habitual use since the end of 2017.

fwiw, i have not bought a pack of smokes since i got back from toronto in mid december. i've bummed maybe 10 smokes in that period, while i'm out grocery shopping.

it's actually a subconscious factor in staying in tonight - i know that i'll buy a pack if i got out for the night and i don't really want to. i can probably avoid that if i just go to the show tomorrow afternoon, instead. i might bum a couple...

so, the fact that these cops are smoking upstairs is exceedingly frustrating to me. but i just have to focus on winning these court cases and getting out of here.

that means that i should get inri022 up by the end of the night.

i was badly distracted yesterday. we know that happens when i get cabin fever. and, it actually means i need to get out. tomorrow.

yeah, the wind chill tonight is still pretty bad, coming off the deep freeze yesterday morning. and, the change in the lineup at the psych show means the combination of the night falls apart.

i'm going to wait and go tomorrow afternoon, instead.

iran is an advanced society under the thumb of a brutal dictatorship.

they don't need the kinds of social programs that senegal needs. what they need is solidarity on the ground.

don't waste my time with your morality.

it's bullshit.

like, i don't even want to talk to the kind of conservative idiot that would try to frame complicated social problems in terms of morality. we diverge from first principles.

your morals are of absolutely no concern to me at all.

yes, you have to get to root causes before you can fix problems, but that's not an argument against the use of force, it's an explanation of when it's useful and when it isn't.

arguing for root causes as a means of pacifism is a co-option of socialism by religious groups. anybody that's actually read any kind of socialist literature at all will tell you of the importance of violent overthrow in the model.

it's a question of restricting the use of force to scenarios where doing so is productive and can lead to a substantive outcome. for that reason, blowing up senegal would be pointless, whereas very careful support for the revolutionary forces in iran could actually be decisive.

but, it's not some kind of moral issue. it's a tactical question.

"separating religion and state is much better then separating males and females", 

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/02/14/hundreds-of-thousands-take-part-in-million-women-march-in-iraq/

yay!

https://peoplesdispatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Womens-protest-in-Iraq-1536x864.jpg

On Thursday, ahead of the protests, he (sadr) again slammed the protests as being rife with "nudity, promiscuity, drunkenness, immorality, debauchery ... and non-believers."

finally - a contemporary movement in the middle east i can stand in solidarity with!

debauchery forever! drunkenness for all!

solidar, solidarity!

no, seriously. this is a positive development in iraq as of late, and i hope it has a secularizing effect, and i hope that secularizing effect spills over.

and, if there's anything we can do to help....

https://www.dw.com/en/women-and-men-stick-together-in-iraq-after-cleric-al-sadr-criticizes-protesters-immorality/a-52372819

that's an encouraging development.

i can stand with this.

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/02/iraq-protests-feminism-women.html

also, the turks need to immediately cease all support for the rebels in idlib, and i fully support any actions by the syrians and their russian backers to restore syrian sovereignty to the area.

i would then hope that the russians recognize the need for regime change in syria once the country is properly stabilized, and assad himself sees the need to make way for a civilian government.

for right now, wiping out these islamofascist nazis needs to be the primary purpose, and the turks should be ashamed of the actors they're supporting in order to advance their narrow self-interest.

this is quite different from what bernie has done in the democratic primary, which is to very purposefully distance himself from queer activists so as to not upset his chances at winning black voters.

and, as punishment for his cynical failure of leadership on this point, he will probably lose both demographics, and rather badly.

i feel obligated to respond to this, although i'd actually rather not.

first, i'll reiterate that i'm not a supporter of justin trudeau or the liberal party. there happened to be a relatively good liberal candidate running in my riding, and i did vote for her because i thought she had a good chance of getting rid of the rather useless ndp back bencher that we've had here for far too long, but i spent months insisting i'd vote for the greens, and would have if it weren't for the strength of the local liberal candidate. i didn't vote for him, i voted for her - both technically and symbolically.

so, trudeau can't lose my support because he doesn't have it in the first place.

but, the issue of homosexual oppression in africa is extremely widespread and baked directly into the culture, there. there aren't even really substantive allies to connect with. i need to be able to present an alternative course of action before i can criticize somebody for doing something, and there really isn't much of one, here.

if the implication is that trudeau sold out queer rights for a security council seat, then that would be deplorable and worthy of condemnation in the starkest terms possible, and possibly even grounds to demand an immediate resignation. i would hope that other countries would look at something like that and vote for norway instead, as we clearly wouldn't be worthy of sitting on the security council if we were going to behave in such an undignified manner as that. as a canadian, that would leave me feeling ashamed and embarrassed. but, i don't think that's what actually happened.

what can canada do with these countries like senegal that just refuse to modernize around this issue, and so many others? well, pulling investment isn't going to help anybody. nor is boycotting them. as an anarchist, i completely reject the premise that market theory is a force for social change. this is a longstanding liberal position, though, that is challenged mostly by conservative zealots on the fake left that insist on upholding these purity tests in who they interact with - that's not a position i'd ever advance or advocate. so, for example, i'll follow chomsky on his criticism of bds, in arguing that it's likely to backfire. and, while a bds movement against africa on queer rights might feel good, it's not likely to materially aid any queer people in africa; i might support such a thing abstractly, but i'd never actually advocate it, as i'd expect the outcome to be terrible for the people i'd be trying to support.

nor is trudeau standing there and saying things going to mean anything to anybody. nobody cares.

we could slaughter the leadership in the hopes of an uprising, but that would never work in africa. i've been very careful to point to iran as a specific example where there is a lot of opposition to the state, and a powerful modernizing force on the ground, and i've tried to frame the issue around the likelihood of critical mass. i would never argue for a second that slaughtering the african leadership would lead to a modernizing uprising, so the justification for doing so wouldn't exist. i am cognizant of the fact that the self-righteous moral zealots will call me a hypocrite, but that's rooted in the fact that they're too stupid to understand the argument i'm presenting. if you read this post and conclude i'm a hypocrite, you're an imbecile - but you might, and i expect as much from a certain collection of people that think with their hearts instead of their heads.

the best thing we can do is try to provide support and hope it helps to change attitudes on the ground in the long run, and my understanding is that that's actually what we're doing. i may have other criticisms for the economic projects that exist beyond this, but i would reject the explicit argument that they should be pulled to help the queer movement get off the ground - i do not think that this is a well thought through argument.

likewise, i'm hardly going to have a melt down about the prime minister attending a meeting with the iranian foreign minister. i've been clear that i'd support a very tactical strike to remove the religious leadership, explicitly, in the hopes that it would lead to a secularist uprising, if the likelihood of such a thing could be established beforehand. zarif is actually a part of the civilian leadership, and not really representative of the theocracy. again: what can canada do in or with iran? and, if you believe that it should be seeking to prop up secularist voices and minimize religious ones then isolating or excluding the civilian leadership would not be consistent with any kind of progress, even if it makes you feel good about yourself for doing it. in context, there are clearly some discussions that need to be had between the countries, and i don't see any value in preventing that.

i would support a targeted strike against the ayatollah, though. that's the source of oppression here, the religion; the civilian government, if anything, is a buffer against that.

i hope i've clarified any confusion that might exist.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/pm-defends-not-publicly-supporting-lgbtq-rights-in-senegal-photo-with-iranian-minister-1.4812426

if you put money down on andrew yang to win the presidency, i have a bandcamp site to send you to.

i think the error here is thinking this is a serious projection, rather than a way for fools to part with their money.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/14/21137882/prediction-markets-bloomberg-sanders-president

this is explored in greater detail in the dawkins film 'nice guys finish first'.

there's lots of examples in this primary, but klobuchar v warren is particularly clear. if they continue to compete, they're going to end up both getting <15% across the board. but, if they cooperate by picking a ticket and sticking with it, they could give bernie a run for his money.

buttigieg and biden is another example, but it's not as clear, yet.

i suspect i'll be talking a lot about this in the upcoming weeks.

if you don't know what it is....

...and i like the advertising example, in context.

i'm forced to live inside the system that is erected around me.

but, you would find the depth of my rejection of capitalism to be shocking, should i ever choose to get involved with politics in a serious manner. the groups i would support would be extremely radical, and i would not stand with groups in the centre, at all.

if you were to see me in action, you might begin to understand why i reject bourgeois politics so thoroughly.

but, my art is more important than my politics, and is where my energy will be focused for the near future.

and, why don't i go to shows in windsor?

because there aren't any. or, there aren't any worth going to, anyways. it would be far easier if there were, trust me. but, there aren't.

it's a small city. i'm a big city person...i need a large metropolitan area to be able to generate the kind of art i'm interested in. 

my focus, right now, is my art.

i'm not done yet.

i am a canadian citizen and live in windsor. i just go to detroit to party, because it's the closest major city. if there was a closer city on this side of the border, i would go there, instead.

i have no interest in detroit politics, and would even consider engaging myself within them to be an example of foreign interference. i may make comments or observations about things that are meaningful to me, but it's intentionally done from a great distance.

i would involve myself with issues on this side of the border, strictly, if i were to decide to make that choice. but, i am not likely to find myself interested in bourgeois politics any time soon. i would be more likely to involve myself with ngos and anarchist groups.

we have a special place in our law for indigenous groups that take direct action against groups that would infringe upon their constitutionally defined rights, it is true.

but, that place doesn't extend to people acting in solidarity with other groups, even if popular opinion is on their side.

actually, the issue here in ontario is pretty cut and dry, although scheer's suggestion (and trudeau could order the rcmp in if he wanted) is pretty hamfisted, in terms of public relations, and intended more for a political audience.

but, that's my point - everybody loves the phrase "rule of law" nowadays, even if few people seem to know what it means, but that's not really the point on either side.

the government doesn't want to create any martyrs, and should not be overly aggressive in it's actions. if they were blocking somebody from entering their own territory to lay a pipeline here, the courts would interpret the situation in a different manner than they do with run of the mill vandalism, even if that's technically what they're doing. but, this isn't what's happening. you can stand with them and agree with them, and i do to an extent, but this is going to end with mass arrests and convictions for garden variety offences like mischief and trespassing. what the police are really waiting for is for the topic to exit the news cycle - it's an entirely political response, through and through.

likewise, scheer surely knows that calling for tanks in the streets in canada is just an authoritarian right pipe dream to rev up his racist political base, although it demonstrates why so much of the country refused to even consider his candidacy. it's just crazy talk from somebody that will never hold any power.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6551391/wetsuweten-protests-trudeau-scheer/

i need to repeat the point.

if sanders is the only person that gets over 15%, he gets 100% of the delegates.

so, he could in theory get 22% of the vote and 100% of the delegates if the second place finisher gets 14%, and the field is bunched up behind him. and, that looks like what's going to happen, if buttigieg can't clear that hurdle.

there is no polling support for anybody else besides sanders and maybe biden clearing 15%. not warren, not steyer. and, the polling support for biden is rather weak (i'll get to that).

my intuition is that buttigieg remains the most likely second place finisher, but we're running out of time to build polling support, and if the data doesn't come in soon, that will need to be abandoned. i won't run on gut feelings in any scenario besides the complete absence of data, which is what we're faced with. my gut is not a convincing oracle, nor is yours. this telephone poll has a very small sample size, though, and isn't enough to go all in on - we're still forced to rely on guessing.

but, i think it's more likely that they both fail than that biden succeeds at buttigieg's expense. i mean, you've got three options:

1) buttigieg takes votes from biden and ends up viable while biden doesn't. i still consider this likely, in nevada, in the end.
2) biden recovers support from buttigieg and ends up viable while buttigieg doesn't. i can't imagine that happening, anywhere, anymore, not after listening to biden speak, recently. he's a senile idiot. you'd have to be retarded to vote for him. i'd vote against him, explicitly, if i could. he should be in a retirement home, not running for president..."too old" is maybe not a fixed number, but biden really is too old.
3) they split their own vote and both get under 15%. this is currently the second option and is increasingly looking more likely.

you could say something similar about klobuchar and warren, except that all evidence at this point suggests they're going to split and both end with nothing. they're in a classic prisoner's dilemma, and failing badly.

how likely is it that biden will be viable? polling at 18% with a 5% moe means you're between (13,23), 99% of the time. as he has tended to underperform his polling just about everywhere, it seems likely that he'll end up on the bottom end of this, that is below 18 rather than above it, so it's not strong evidence that he'll end up viable. and, these are higher numbers than i expected to see.

so, if we don't get any polling evidence that buttigieg or at least klobuchar have a shot at viability, if the polls continue to suggest that it's just biden & sanders, you should prepare yourself for the strong likelihood that sanders takes the pot, here.

these numbers are roughly in line with what i suggested, with the open questions being how much support will flow to buttigieg from biden and how much will flow from warren to klobuchar. i am skeptical that biden will run that high in the end (he's demonstrated himself to be a doddering idiot, and if being "diverse" means you're more likely to vote for a moron then that reflects poorly on diversity, doesn't it? i'm not buying into that, that's racist.), but we'll see what happens. 

note that if these numbers are roughly correct and nobody can get to 15% then sanders actually gets all of the delegates, in the end.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/sanders-holds-lead-heading-into-nevadas-democratic-caucuses-poll-finds-1957583/

inri021 updated and tested

this is tested and working on the chromebook and on firefox on the windows 7 box.

what's in there, now?

- the 17 songs on the record
- cover.jpg & a jpg of the backsheet for cd-r printing (the insert for the spine)
- a playlist.m3u file stored as raw text
- a 126 page doc file of liner notes over the fall of 2013
- a 126 page pdf file (same)
- an instructions file
- inri021.html.7z.txt is a 175 mb document that must be renamed and unzipped and contains (1) an html version of the liner note package, including an html5 player that can load the purchased audio in the browser and (2) deleted masters of the record from 1999 and 2013, in standalone 192 kbps mp3 and embedded into the html file.

the full download, in flac, is 570 mb.

there will be further updates to the liner notes as i run through the alter-reality, and as i run through the remastering period that took place over 2015-2016. but, this is likely the last major revision to my second record, which is nearing a point of final completion.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriched

it's time to stop to eat and shower.

i'm done testing on windows.

the chromebook testing should be relatively quick. soon....

is sanders the front-runner?

right now, he is, yes. maybe he shouldn't be, and maybe he won't be next month, and maybe the fact that he is right now is a reflection of the field being unsettled, but he's the only guy you can place a bet on to get over 15% in any particular state.

it's not often that "getting over 15%" means you're in first place, but that's the reality that exists, right now.

i keep pointing out that it seems like this is intentional, and the longer these goofs keeping running into each other for, the more likely that will seem. 

ok, so i've finally got those typos i told you about on tuesday afternoon updated.

- i removed a "/p>" from the html frontend for inri002 and inri015.
- i removed an extra "</p>" from the html frontend for inri015.
- i unscratched out a track from the html frontend for inri015.

that's it. but, it means reuploading the 7z.txt package and redownloading the end point in flac for archiving.

inri002:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled

inri015:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-3

the (hopefully) final update (for now) for inri021 should be up soon, i hope.

and, i may have to make some pasta in the wee hours of the morning because it's -30 out for the first and hopefully last time this year.

if the demographics in new hampshire preferred klobuchar over warren, cheating or not, it's hard for me to think that the demographics in nevada would reverse that.

warren is more white, older & a little less socially conservative. they ought to prefer klobuchar.

but, black churchies in south carolina ought to like buttigieg, too.

should i post about nevada? i have an hour and a half to blow before i turn the pc on, which i turned off early this morning to go to sleep. i have slept most of the day....

i suggested a little earlier that i basically think this "diversity" line is just an excuse and that, notwithstanding the clear reality that southern blacks are neither going to vote for a jew nor a gay male in any kind of substantive numbers, i don't really think that nevada is going to be as different from the first two states as is often surmised.

the polls that exist are ancient, now - early january. but, the trendline is actually more or less the same as we've seen elsewhere - biden & warren are falling, while sanders is stable and buttigieg is climbing, by capitalizing on support wandering from biden & warren. is there some kind of accompanying klobuchar bounce? we'd need fresh polling to conclude that, but, frankly, i'd expect something or other.

the only thing that really looks like it might be different in nevada is that steyer may be polling substantively higher, presumably cutting into the same voter pool as warren, biden, buttigieg & klobuchar. if you start with new hampshire results and you take 2% from each of those candidates and give it to steyer, you end up with:

sanders - 26%
buttigieg - 22%
klobuchar - 18%
steyer - 12%
warren - 7%
biden - 6%

and, if i was to take a guess, a priori, which is a terrible idea, that's probably not far from what you'd end up with - on the first ballot. the only tweak i'd make would be to move some of klobuchar's vote to warren.

sanders - 26%
buttigieg - 22%
klobuchar - 15%
steyer - 12%
warren - 10%
biden - 6%

what that means is that you're probably actually looking at the same three candidates in nevada - maybe. steyer is probably just going to kill off biden, without getting over the threshold, himself. and, klobuchar and warren may destroy each other.

the last thing that i want to take note of is yang, whose suspended campaign doesn't have an obvious beneficiary in nevada but who could potentially help a candidate become viable if they move together. warren is a curious possibility and maybe the best fit, but i don't know if it's enough. yang himself has suggested sanders, but sanders has not responded favourably to yang's proposals, and frankly seems to be a bit of a productionist. on the other hand, if turnout just comes down by a few points, it will have the effect of inflating totals by any candidates right on the bubble.

if we get some polling, great, and i'll change my analysis to react to it. but, maybe this is better read as how i'm expecting any polling to come up.

south carolina may be a very different story. but, i don't actually expect nevada to come in that different than the first two states, which will hopefully undercut this goofy narrative about "diversity" helping biden. his numbers were already falling there; i think he's going to do terribly, and i think warren is going to tank, too.

the real question mark is if klobuchar and steyer can get viable or not.

so, splitting yang's three between warren & sanders, my tentative first ballot hypothesis in nevada is going to be something like:

sanders - 27%
buttigieg - 22%
klobuchar - 15%
steyer - 12%
warren - 12%
biden - 6%
rest - 6%

if klobuchar clears the hurdle, she's going to split support from warren & biden voters.

what about steyer? his selling point appears to be openly supporting reparations, something klobuchar has rejected, sanders has been dismissive about and buttigieg has been most supportive of. i don't know, so let's split it equally.

and, you get something like:

sanders - 27 + 4 (steyer) + 2 (warren) + 2 (rest) = 35%
buttigieg -  22 + 4 (steyer) + 5(waren) + 3 (biden) + 2 (rest) = 36%
klobuchar - 15 + 4 (steyer) + 5 (warren) + 3 (biden) + 2 (rest) = 29%

i understand that i made a mistake in completely redistributing second votes, and that a lot of people just won't vote a second time. so, you should take everybody down 5-6%, probably.

regardless, i'm basically suggesting that the results will be essentially the same as in new hampshire, after the second vote - that sanders & buttigieg will be in a toss-up for first, with klobuchar a ways behind.

...if she's viable.

if she isn't? well, most of that 29% goes to buttigieg, and you could see him pull off his first consolidation of moderate forces, something bernie is going to not want to see happen again.

so, if the other candidates split the moderate vote badly enough that only buttigieg ends up viable, expect massive recombining in the second round, and a potential landslide victory on the order of 55% to 30%.

we simply don't have the polling to make predictions, though. i'm just thinking out loud.

if that result were to happen in a primary state, it would benefit sanders, as all of the unviable centrists would just get crossed out. so, the fact that nevada is a caucus could end up costing him, if the results end up a specific way.

but, if klobuchar is viable more often than not, and the other middle three eek out some district wins, i think you're looking at a tie between the same players as previously, and some hard decisions for warren, particularly.

now, let's hope we get some polling...

chances are that you wouldn't last very long under a system of traditional indigenous law, and i wouldn't condemn anybody to an existence i couldn't tolerate myself - i will stand with those agitating for overthrow, revolution and change. because i'm on the left, and that's what we do...

but, these colonial band councils aren't the right answer, either.

so, to summarize:

- our courts should require a treaty to define who has jurisdiction before they even try to interpret a contract.
- we should not be enforcing the indian act on groups that have never signed treaties.
- aboriginal title in canada is not allodial in scope.
- the right type of law here is international law, not canadian constitutional law.
- i generally stand with those seeking to overthrow tradition, not those seeking to uphold it, but
- pipelines are always evil and must always be stopped.

it's important to avoid treating indigenous legal traditions as a monolith, so i don't want to fall into either stereotype. the stereotype of the commie indian is largely inapplicable to the remnants of indigenous law as they exist today; what's left is more conservative in scope and leans more towards religion as a guiding force in society, and i have to strenuously reject that and support anybody seeking to fight against it.

but, there are ideas kind of buried in indigenous history that i would stand more strongly with, if elements in the society would dust them off and bring them back.

but, i don't stand with creators or spiritualism or tradition for the sake of it - i stand with science and change and secularism, and i assign these people their rights based on my own axioms, not theirs.

the indian act should not be enforced on groups that have not signed any treaties.

think of it like this: i may find myself on the same side as these conservative indigenous groups on the specific issue of pipelines, but i'm going to support those that are agitating to overthrow them in pretty much any other context. it's a question of temporary allies. 

it's not unusual, though, for a contemporary leftist to end up stuck like this. what are my choices, here? i can stand with the liberal capitalists or i can stand with the traditionalist conservatives. in truth, i'm a socialistic anarchist, and i don't actually stand with either side. the side i stand with is the one that is fighting to overthrow both the traditional aristocracy and the enforced colonial system, and introduce a system of egalitarian self-government and distributive justice. i'm a communist everywhere, and i'm not interested in these relativist arguments.

i'm aware that the perspectives of these people are often comically ignorant. a lot of them seem to think that if they sit together and pray then god will take the capitalists away. if you've read any marx, you realize how vicious he was on people like this. i don't see the point.

so, my solidarity with these traditionalist groups is really very narrow. i'm broadly more interested in standing with agents of change within the society, but not the ones that would argue for things like property rights or capitalist expropriation.

but, i'm not a conservative, and i don't stand with tradition or aristocracy.

i'm an anarchist, and i stand with egalitarianism and the acceptance of change.

i want to be clear on a point, though.

while i would stand with the rights of indigenous groups to self-determination, i would not stand with the traditionalist elements within their society, and would rather stand with the groups advocating for change within the society. and, if you can present me with situations where indigenous groups are oppressing minorities within their ranks, like happens routinely in iran, then i would support intervening with the use of force, because my solidarity is always with the oppressed and never with the oppressors.

there is this kind of tendency to define the issue in ethnic terms, nowadays, and i will reject this idea on it's face. i'm not interested in even contemplating the idea of siding with the indians against the white people - that's not the way i'm going to approach the issue, and i'll reject those terms of framing it. what i'm interested in is standing with specific elements within the indigenous community against other elements within that same community.

so, i will stand with the rights of queer indigenous people in the face of the views of their religious traditions, and i will stand with the scientific over the spiritual, and i will stand with the socialistic over the capitalistic & etc.

so, in the sense that this is about indigenous rights, i'm going to define those a little bit differently than you frequently see on the fake left, nowadays. the fake left is essentially what we used to call toryism. it wants to preserve tradition in the face of change. i'm having none of that. rather, i'm interested in solidarity with those that would stand against the band councils and against the traditional leadership, and seek to liberalize and socialize the society - as i stand with those that reject the state, everywhere else.

at the end of the day, these matriarchs are just statists and should be torn down and replaced with a council.

but, so long as they aren't giving us good reasons to dismantle their society by force, they need to sign a treaty before we can take it upon ourselves to apply our laws on their lands. we can't just show up and start legislating - not by our own legal standards.

ok, so i am getting a funny item in my device manager - "unknown device". i'd never seen that before, and i've looked.

i installed it and it came up as "motherboard resource".

i'm quite uncomfortable with this, but i don't know where it is, physically, on the board. 

i'm going to reimage the machine and disable it when it comes back up. but i'll need to keep an eye on what's going on underneath the hood. i think they plugged something into the board...

i know this all sounds insane, but i'm empirically driven and i have to react to the facts as they appear in front of me.

and, i really wish that cop would stop fucking smoking up there. yuck.

we're not looking at a 30% chance, which is not bad, really. one in three.

we're looking at a 0.01% chance - one in ten thousand, or perhaps as small as one in a million.

i've been critical of his work.

but, somebody ask nate silver what the probability of klobuchar running at 19.8% was, according to his data.

you're going to be looking at something like 0.01%. 

rare events happen; there are better fishes out there for this than jesus'. but, some events are so rare that they just don't happen.

we didn't run ten million elections in new hampshire on tuesday, we ran one.

the common law is not a set of rules that were created by the king like the civil codes were, but is rather a set of conventions and traditions that has changed dramatically over time based on the input of the people that live with it.

as a legal system, it is actually uniquely positioned to integrate indigenous legal concepts. they could not be faced with a better system to deal with. really.

if they were dealing with islamic or judaic or ecclesiastical law, there would be no compromise, at all - the book says it, and that's it. any kind of civil code coming from the roman tradition is likewise entirely inflexible.

only the common law will integrate outside traditions, and, if you look around the world, the fact is that it really has.

but, they have to participate. and, i wish they would...

again: british imperial law is actually on their side here, they just don't realize it. if the judge had somebody make the right arguments, she'd have to concede the point, and she might even just have never thought about it properly - that happens sometimes. a good lawyer would win this case for them.

this isn't the first time that trudeau has used the phrase "rule of law" in this manner, and it's frankly rather dubyaesque - he clearly doesn't understand what he's saying. he thinks that "rule of law" just means "law and order".

and, it's deeply ironic, because the issue at hand is indeed centered around the rule of law, and whether the police have the jurisdiction here to act - an issue i claim the court is incorrect about.

this particular group of natives is frustrating, though. they don't want to sign a treaty on any terms, apparently. they won't launch legal action, even when they're likely to win, because they don't want to legitimize the common law - a tragic error, on their behalf.

i want to actually enforce the rule of law, which means respecting that they're not under treaty, and abstaining from enforcing treaty rules on groups that never signed any. but, they only seem to show up in court when they're summoned, and they seem to be badly misinformed about what their options are.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/trudeau-coastal-gaslink-protests_ca_5e4437e6c5b61f8ad4e2d43e

alright, i'm back up. 

let's hope i can get this done before the debussy show.

your delusional thinking is rooted in calvinism.

and, it's bullshit.

so, when i see somebody beat their polling numbers by 10-15%, and i can't explain it using turnout, i'm going to forcefully argue that they cheated. every time.

their gender is not a meaningful factor in deducing that.

in the world of homo mathematicus, underdogs always lose, and only stupid people place bets on them.

the caveats are that streaks always end, and that sometimes underdogs cheat and get away with it.

hard work is meaningless in the face of hard math; the universe is a cold, dour, fascistic place.

i know that capitalists won't like my narrative, which is something along the lines of that nobody ever beats the odds and stories of perseverance are just bullshit; she didn't succeed with hard work, the american dream is bullshit, etc.

but, that's homo mathematicus for you.

we don't care much for human interest stories; chances are you didn't beat the odds, chances are you just cheated.

i mean, maybe it's worth reflecting a little on how polling firms get those numbers.

they don't just take a flat survey, although i often prefer to see them give me that data. they ask you questions about your age, income, etc and then they fit the data to the census results.

so, the polls you saw would have assumed roughly 20% youth turnout and roughly 60% adult turnout, with roughly 20% turnout in between. if you actually get 15% youth turnout and 65% adult turnout, and 20% in between, then that discrepancy will affect the accuracy of your projections.

but, this is what margins of error are for, and you don't expect something like that to mess with your results more than a few points. so, the low youth turnout will explain why sanders is 2-3% lower than the averages, and why buttigieg is 2-3% higher than the averages. but, it won't explain why klobuchar beat the polls by 10% - you would need lower turnout overall to pull that out, and it's not there.

instead, what you see on it's face is that very high turnout inflated her numbers. but, that just suggests that she cheated.

just an update on the turnout question.

In New Hampshire's Democratic primary, people 45 and older made up 63 percent of voters, according to the exit polls. People aged 18 to 29 made up just 14 percent.

that would mean that voters 30-44 made up 100-63-14=23%.

recent data suggests that voting demographics in new hampshire are:

18-29 - 19.4%
30-44 - 21.3%
45+ - 59.3% (45-64 - 38.5%, 65+ - 20.8%)

so, my initial perception was correct - turnout amongst young people was lower than the models would have pegged it at, while turnout amongst older people was higher. that's the basic factor underlying the results, and explains the basic shape of the data, with sanders underperforming & buttigieg & klobuchar overperforming.

but, turnout overall was not low, so you need more than this observation to explain klobuchar's dramatic overshoot of the polling, and it's just not consistent with the data.

https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/citizen_voting_age_population/cb16-tps18_nh.html

if you absolutely have to put somebody upstairs to try to hack into my computer over short-range radio (da fuck...), can you pick a clean person that doesn't smoke, please?

i have no idea why they're doing this at all.

but, talk about the worst stake-out cops, ever. i can smell them, i can hear them. i mean, c'mon.

it's more than just the smoke. she smells like she hasn't showered in quite a while; it's that stinky-ass smell that you normally get, specifically, with fat women.

take a shower, you dirty pig.

and go smoke somewhere else.

like, he's supposed to be gone this week. but, i can smell somebody smoking upstairs, and i can hear them talking, too. it's a female voice. and i'm fully cognizant of the fact that it's a cop filling in for him.

i can find no sign of any installed chip in this machine.

i cleared the cmos, and the bios isn't picking anything up. 

xp isn't picking anything up.

i don't see anything.

i'm going to have to test, i guess. 

ok, let me get the system back up and let me finish this up.

ugh.

there should be no work done in that region at all until a treaty is signed.

if i was the supreme court, i would tear that contract right up.

so, what would i tell the pipeline company?

i'd tell them that they need to wait for this nation to sign a treaty before they can move forward on any project, legally - and anything they sign or agree to runs the risk of having no legal force until such a treaty comes into existence.

i want to be clear: i'm not saying that this nation can't join the indian act, or shouldn't, or even won't in the end.

but, it hasn't at this point, and these indian act band councils are consequently extra-legal governing bodies that should be afforded no meaningful legal status.

maybe the way this ends is that the band councils opt to sign a treaty. i know there's been discussions on the point for many years. but, the court can't and shouldn't get ahead of itself by making assumptions about the outcomes of the treaty process.

until the process concludes, the court should be abiding by the status quo.

the way that british imperial law worked, and this was brought into the common law via roman precedent because the romans were the empire that the british had legal documents about and sought information about when conflicts arose, was that if you colonized an area with british subjects (terra nullius) then you introduced british law to rule over them but if you occupied or conquered an area that was already peopled (like india, or french canada) then you had to allow for them to govern themselves under their own laws.

canada was interpreted under british imperial law as a series of conquered french colonies first and foremost, and an area of unceded aboriginal land, second. so, the french colonies came under british dominion and kept their civil law traditions, which were at the time under the napoleonic code. this is why an algonquin claim about unceded territory in ontario would not be recognized under british law - it was conquered from the french. the aboriginal areas, on the other hand, were given a kind of suspended sovereignty. they could keep their land and their traditions, but only on the condition that they refused to cede their land to anybody else. specifically, the proclamation of 1763 gave the british crown the monopoly over land purchases, which american land buyers and sellers did not like one bit. it's still the law in canada, though - the crown, which now means the government in ottawa, still has a monopoly over indigenous land purchases in canada.

and, everywhere was eventually bought except for most of british columbia, which just never was. there have been some "land transfers" since then, but they've been unconstitutional under our own laws! really, the right way to look at the canadian occupation of british columbia is to compare it to the israeli occupation of palestine - people keep moving in, but there's no actual legal basis for it. the correct legal status for these areas remains defined by the 1763 proclamation, which defines them as a part of an "indian reserve", gives them ownership of their own land and denies their right to sell their land to any entity except the crown.

indigenous title in canada is not what these people actually want, as it's just another type of fief; indigenous title is not sovereign land rights, in canada. the nisga'a agreement presents a model that goes beyond "indigenous title" in the sense that it's actually a kind of peace treaty, which carves out a semi-autonomous area for the nisga'a people. i don't know what the various peoples in bc want, but if they want land rights, it's in the nisga'a agreement, and not in these judicial constructions of "indigenous title", which would keep them at the whim of the colonial government. there is not actually a way for the court system to award sovereignty...that has to be done via treaty.

so, this idea that "the white man's law" is oppressing them and allowing for this and they need to rebel against it is actually wrong, in this limited context. again: you can't apply these arguments in new brunswick, or ontario. but, in bc, british imperial law actually should forbid the application of the indian act on unceded territory, at least until a treaty is signed. the judge here is actually wrong, and the supreme court should reverse her ruling.

enforcing the indian act on unceded territory is roughly equivalent, under imperial law, to enforcing common law in quebec.

this is a major error of law that it seems like this judge has made before and that the supreme court should be taking a proper look at.

so, the court is arguing that it's own jurisdiction stems from the indian act, and that's the point that i'd argue is wrong, because the land was never ceded. it was occupied. as such, the indian act is the wrong type of law to use. they should rather be using british imperial law, which stems from roman precedents and allows the occupied nation to administer it's own laws.

we have a very clear precedent of this in canada, actually. it's called quebec.

by enforcing the indian act on unceded land in british columbia, the court is advancing the colonial project. the supreme court ought to reverse this.

my previous statement about the duty to consult applying to traditional law relies on the band council leadership accepting it, as that is the relevant body under canadian law. as there is a conflict here - something i knew, but forgot - that wouldn't be applicable, in context. the company's argument that it consulted the band council and sought it's approval would essentially be correct.

but, there is no legal basis for the band council to be making these decisions, as the land was never ceded or formally brought under the control of the indian act in the first place. for the supreme court to rule otherwise would be to argue for a unilateral annexation, which is something that is actually even inconsistent with imperial law, in this country.

https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/sc/19/22/2019BCSC2264cor1.htm

she had a following in conservative circles.

but, she was truly reviled and despised on the left.

personally, i think she was often just trolling, and i generally took her with a grain of salt when i didn't avoid her altogether. but, i'm a free speech advocate in ways that much of the contemporary left isn't. 

she was the type of writer that a lot of people wanted banned and censored.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/christie-blatchford-columnist-journalist-dead-68-1.5460763

there should be an injunction until the supreme court can deal with this.

i haven't read the ruling directly, but let's get a few things clear:

1) there are no treaties governing this particular space in british columbia (that is not true in ontario), so the jurisdiction of the constitution is questionable in the first place.

2) while the duty to meaningfully consult does not necessitate a duty to listen in all scenarios, i think it is reasonable to think that the supreme court may interpret it that way under the specific scenario of the existence of traditional laws, in unceded areas, if presented with that argument explicitly, which is something i do not believe has been done as of yet.

so, if i was the lawyer here, i would make those arguments - that this case should be dealt with under international law rather than constitutional law (this is very specific to some regions in bc, where that argument is actually seriously legally compelling beyond an indigenous pipe dream sort of thing....that wouldn't fly for a second in, say, new brunswick), because canada is technically an occupation force in this area rather than a national one, and that the duty to consult should include a special place for existing indigenous law, where it actually exists and can be convincingly articulated.

i otherwise stand in solidarity with the blockades, as well.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-anti-pipeline-protests-1.5460793

i might never really agree with buttigieg much on the issues.

but, he would earn my infinite respect by taking hold of this opportunity to go into these black churches and talk about the homophobia that exists within them.

that's the test that sanders failed, and he has the chance to pass.

for southern blacks to reject northern whites over issues of sexual and religious liberation would be a massive shot in their own foot.

....because the inevitable republican supermajority that would follow would not serve their interests. at all.

it's not my place to present an opinion on what order the primaries in the united states should be conducted in. that's ultimately a ballot question that should be decided by the people of america, and the outcome should be respected and implemented.

however.

let's not confuse ourselves as to what this discussion is really about.

if biden had swept iowa & new hampshire, does anybody think we'd be talking about how these states "lack diversity"? hardly. so, what is this, really, besides an attempt for biden to lay a lot of excuses for his losses?

we haven't seen any polling in nevada in weeks, but i think there's a good chance that biden is running a distant third or fourth. latinos may generally run a little to the right of the democratic party on social issues, which is something the party shouldn't cave in to, but vegas & reno don't present your typical latino demographics, and i don't think it's likely that buttigieg's sexuality is going to be the kind of problem there that it's going to be in somewhere like texas. i would actually be rather surprised to see biden ahead of buttigieg in nevada, at this point.

so, that leaves black voters, and i'll concede the point that they're not likely to like him, but why is that? they may point to various issues regarding race relations, but the truth is that buttigieg has good answers for all of this stuff - better than the answers that biden and sanders can provide for their own errors, such as voting for the crime bill. bloomberg has stop & frisk. klobuchar has her own problems. and, warren just hasn't had the opportunity to fuck up.

i could see if the alternative had a perfect civil rights record, but has there ever been a serious democratic party candidate that has? buttigieg will argue for the reality of systemic racism, and the truth is that he's right in that answer. there is no ideal candidate from this perspective, they all have serious blemishes on their record.

so, there's lots of reasons to dislike buttigieg and not want to vote for him, but if your argument is racial, and your alternative is biden, then you're either ignorant of the facts or being dishonest in your argumentation - there is no reasonable argument that biden is a better candidate for the black community. biden also has a history of questionable racial decisions, it's just a longer history because he's older. and, if you think buttigieg is too right-wing, how is biden a solution? that's just not going anywhere. in fact, i'd go so far as to say that there is no rational reason to vote for biden over buttigieg at this point, at all.

so, why don't they like pete?

you could say he doesn't have the contacts in the community, but that's not hurting steyer or bloomberg, neither of which have any contacts in the community, either. on the other hand, sanders has been trying for decades to get black support and can't get the time of day from them. so, that doesn't seem real, either.

so, why don't they like pete?

and, why don't they like bernie, either?

if buttigieg is smart, he'll turn the issue on it's head and start talking about the pestilence of homophobia in the black community. let me tell you this, at least - they're not going to like him much, no matter what he does.

i think the faultlines in the democratic party have been building for a while, and, while northern liberals shouldn't let the party go without a fight, they should let the process run it's course. no political configuration lasts forever, no coalition is permanent. and, the coalition between southern black conservatives and northern white liberals may be getting to the end of it's cycle.

a theoretical southern black party is going to have a hard time winning without some kind of support in the north, though.

what i will say though is that the decision to headhunt me actually reflects rather poorly on the institution.

by the mid 00s, it should have been crystal clear that i wasn't somebody that cared very much about this country, or should have been offered any kind of security clearance. and, that's maybe the irony, here - while i'm not working for another government, i can tell you straight up that i wouldn't have any particular allegiance to the canadian government, if they had hired me, and probably would have ended up as a liability, and skipped the country for somewhere warmer at the first chance i got.

imagine there's no countries...

and, no religion, too.

i don't have this patriotic slant that somebody like an edward snowden has; i feel no particular connection to this country, or it's governing institutions, and no particular calling to serve, one way or the other.

so, what somebody else may have interpreted as some kind of patriotic duty just struck me as a boring waste of my time. it wasn't even ideological, really - i mean, i certainly would have some moral problems with working for csis, but i wouldn't even get that far in working out the problem. it's just a job i wouldn't enjoy doing, and i made a decision a long time ago not to spend my life doing jobs i don't want to do.

i'm not even sure that i had explicitly defined myself as an anarchist, yet. 

but, if i didn't want to do it then, nothing has changed, now. i would much rather live on disability and focus on my art than work for csis at whatever pay grade, because it's the job that matters, not the pay check. sorry.