should we trust the numbers coming from federal, state and provincial authorities on this?
i don't know.
some kind of evidence of undercounting would help.
it's probably best to be skeptical, at least in position, for a while.
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
this is just the latest installment in a stream of disinformation.
listen, i guess the liberal ruling elite in canada caught the nihilism flu, and has decided that truth is a malleable object to prepare for public consumption, but underlying this is actually a kind of desperate, altruistic nihilism, almost a white lie nihilism, to try to achieve what is seen as a public necessity.
so, they're doing everything they can to plead with you to stay inside - not because that's actually going to work, but because they don't know what else to do.
what they need to do is continue preparing, and, thankfully, it does seem like there are some thinking people in the federal government that are rising to the occasion on this. we'll see how quickly these industrial plans actually materialize.
so, i don't want to rip this apart, because...it's not serious. it's theatre. the better mathematical decryption of this is to rebroadcast the message - they are pleading with you to stay home, and resorting to this out of desperation to have you do it, whether it's likely to be effective, or not.
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/coronavirus-live-updates-trump-eases-mask-export-ban-amid-backlash/
listen, i guess the liberal ruling elite in canada caught the nihilism flu, and has decided that truth is a malleable object to prepare for public consumption, but underlying this is actually a kind of desperate, altruistic nihilism, almost a white lie nihilism, to try to achieve what is seen as a public necessity.
so, they're doing everything they can to plead with you to stay inside - not because that's actually going to work, but because they don't know what else to do.
what they need to do is continue preparing, and, thankfully, it does seem like there are some thinking people in the federal government that are rising to the occasion on this. we'll see how quickly these industrial plans actually materialize.
so, i don't want to rip this apart, because...it's not serious. it's theatre. the better mathematical decryption of this is to rebroadcast the message - they are pleading with you to stay home, and resorting to this out of desperation to have you do it, whether it's likely to be effective, or not.
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/coronavirus-live-updates-trump-eases-mask-export-ban-amid-backlash/
regarding the effects of globalization on the supply chain, though.
i don't know how many times i've been listening to some prof rant about the effects of neo-liberalism, or some panel discussing the effects of globalization, and heard some remark about what happens to supply chains in a crisis. the general way to make this remark was to present it as an oncoming catastrophic event; you'd often hear something like "just wait until we have a crisis that disrupts the supply chains, then we'll be really sorry, then we'll realize what we've done".
so, to suggest this scenario was predictable is an understatement - the inevitability of this situation was one of the most critiqued components of the system that created it, and one of the most compelling arguments against continuing on with it.
you could probably find a relevant quote warning about this by virtually anybody operating on the economic left.
anarchists on the ground tend to focus on food sovereignty, but the idea of courses generalizes. the focus shouldn't be about hoarding, though, it should be about maintaining the capacity for self-sufficiency, even if the logic of ricardan free trade does imply the benefits of trade in the short run.
to be clear: the problem isn't really that we've been export-reliant for so long. the problem is that we didn't have a backup plan, in case that failed.
i have to point this out every time this topic comes up - i'm an anarchist, i'm not a communist, so i don't have this intellectual tendency towards emphasizing the nationalization of goods for the fatherland; trade is a good idea, so long as you're actually doing it right, which means actually understanding the theory. the extant "free trade" regime is actually something more akin to a series of mercantilist economies observing overlapping monopolies than any kind of ideologically coherent free trade zone, and we're just seeing how true that is as the system sees stress on it. so, i'll argue that i'm not opposed to tariffs in principle, but tariffs are hard, and you have to be deeply wonkish to use them right - a description that neither applies to donald trump nor to justin trudeau. the reverse argument, though, is also true - understanding the rules of free trade means that it isn't always the best arrangement, especially not when you have large disparities in quality of life between the work forces in the trading nations. in that case, special rules need to be put in place to prevent an absolute advantage in labour costs from siphoning production out of the more wealthy nation, leading to supply chain disruptions in the wealthy country in cases of emergency.
so, i believe in ricardan free trade, if it makes sense, under the rules of ricardan free trade, which don't appear to be consulted very often when attempting to engage in "ricardan free trade", any more.
so, when trade is mutually beneficial, of courses anarchists would advocate it, as mutual aid.
but, as much as anarchists support mutually beneficial trade, they insist on self-sufficiency, as well. just because we can do a calculation and come to some reasoned deductions on the mutual benefit of trade in terms of minimizing resources allocated to produce those goods doesn't mean we should always prioritize the minimizing of resources allocated as paramount; at the least, maintaining a capacity for self-sufficiency may, in many contexts, be seen as of greater priority than minimizing resources allocated, or, in the capitalist context, of maximizing profits.
but, don't let them tell you they didn't see this coming; there was a sign at every protest, a comment in every documentary, a remark in every flyer - this was a major component of the opposition to nafta from day one, and we see the predictions coming true.
let's hope that we can react quickly enough to adjust, but let's examine a lot more things a lot more carefully, as well, to ensure this doesn't happen again, and that it's not worse if it does.
i'm encouraged by what i'm hearing about a government-directed response to the manufacturing crisis around medical supplies here in canada. if done well, this could kickstart a substantive manufacturing recovery in the region.
this region has historically been the canadian component of the great lakes automotive manufacturing economy, going back to the auto pact signed by lestern pearson in the 60s, but this has been slowly evaporating since the first nafta was signed, a process that appears to have only been accelerated by the new nafta. this has left the region with a substantive manufacturing excess that nobody has really seemed eager to move on.
in the vacuum created by the decline of the automotive industry, the broader medical industry, including a substantive biomed sector, has moved into southwestern ontario, especially the areas around the university in waterloo. there is a great deal of continuity in retooling these factories for the production of medical equipment, as most of the actual industry in the region, at this point, is, in fact, medical.
we can have silly ideological debates about the role of government, but the reality is that the only way to get an industry up and running in whatever this really existing capitalism actually is is to set up a crown corporation and spin it off.
canada is a large purchaser of medical supplies, so even a shift to domestic production could have dramatic multiplier effects.
let's hope that this government, and successive governments, hold their ground on this, in the face of whatever eventual wto challenges are no doubt coming.
this region has historically been the canadian component of the great lakes automotive manufacturing economy, going back to the auto pact signed by lestern pearson in the 60s, but this has been slowly evaporating since the first nafta was signed, a process that appears to have only been accelerated by the new nafta. this has left the region with a substantive manufacturing excess that nobody has really seemed eager to move on.
in the vacuum created by the decline of the automotive industry, the broader medical industry, including a substantive biomed sector, has moved into southwestern ontario, especially the areas around the university in waterloo. there is a great deal of continuity in retooling these factories for the production of medical equipment, as most of the actual industry in the region, at this point, is, in fact, medical.
we can have silly ideological debates about the role of government, but the reality is that the only way to get an industry up and running in whatever this really existing capitalism actually is is to set up a crown corporation and spin it off.
canada is a large purchaser of medical supplies, so even a shift to domestic production could have dramatic multiplier effects.
let's hope that this government, and successive governments, hold their ground on this, in the face of whatever eventual wto challenges are no doubt coming.
so, these drugs that trump is pushing for covid-19...
i'm starting to piece together a more coherent narrative. they're conducting trials; i stated that what i want to see is a mechanism, regarding just exactly how it is that they expect an antibiotic to eliminate a virus from the system. you can do all the trials in the world, you'll get lucky pretty often given the low mortality rate, but you're not going to convince me of anything until you explain to me how it actually works.
it turns out that my skepticism was well-grounded, and nobody wants to use the drug to directly treat the virus at all. rather, the potential for the drugs is as use as immunosuppressors to combat septic shock, which is apparently a leading technical cause of actual death, related to this outbreak. this is similar to how the drug is used in lupus patients, lupus being an autoimmune disorder where your body goes into something like septic shock repeatedly.
changing the context of the use of the drug clarifies a lot of the hype around it, in cutting through the media babble. it does indeed make no sense to prescribe this drug as a treatment for this virus, at all, but it may eventually be a necessary tool that doctors need to use in patients that are suffering from severe sepsis as a complication.
with that subtlety in the drug's predicted use clarified, a few things should be immediately apparent:
- taking the drug as a precaution, as though it's some kind of magic potion, will, as magic potions often sadly tend to do, actually make you more susceptible, because it's intended use is as an immunosuppressor. if you're relatively healthy, and you take these drugs as a "precaution", they will actually weaken your immune system. that's their medical use - it's the actual intent.
- as such, there is no long term potential for this drug in therapeutic use for patients not experiencing sepsis. so, you should not ask your doctor to prescribe you this drug if you get sick. if your doctor does give you this drug on request after confirming a diagnosis, they should be charged with malpractice, as they should damned well know it's an immunosuppressor, and they damned well know you're infected.
- if your doctor does prescribe you this drug in good faith, you will be struggling for your life when it happens.
understanding this better both clarifies the actual medical use of the drug in context, and clarifies the really depraved behaviour of the president around this. it's actually better if he really doesn't know what he's saying, but i suspect that's less true than anybody wants to acknowledge; this is an immunosuppressor, it's used as an immunosuppressor, and people are going to needlessly die by mass prescribing it.
is this insanity and incompetence or greed-fueled malevolence?
it's a scary question.
but, i'm glad i understand this better, now.
i'm starting to piece together a more coherent narrative. they're conducting trials; i stated that what i want to see is a mechanism, regarding just exactly how it is that they expect an antibiotic to eliminate a virus from the system. you can do all the trials in the world, you'll get lucky pretty often given the low mortality rate, but you're not going to convince me of anything until you explain to me how it actually works.
it turns out that my skepticism was well-grounded, and nobody wants to use the drug to directly treat the virus at all. rather, the potential for the drugs is as use as immunosuppressors to combat septic shock, which is apparently a leading technical cause of actual death, related to this outbreak. this is similar to how the drug is used in lupus patients, lupus being an autoimmune disorder where your body goes into something like septic shock repeatedly.
changing the context of the use of the drug clarifies a lot of the hype around it, in cutting through the media babble. it does indeed make no sense to prescribe this drug as a treatment for this virus, at all, but it may eventually be a necessary tool that doctors need to use in patients that are suffering from severe sepsis as a complication.
with that subtlety in the drug's predicted use clarified, a few things should be immediately apparent:
- taking the drug as a precaution, as though it's some kind of magic potion, will, as magic potions often sadly tend to do, actually make you more susceptible, because it's intended use is as an immunosuppressor. if you're relatively healthy, and you take these drugs as a "precaution", they will actually weaken your immune system. that's their medical use - it's the actual intent.
- as such, there is no long term potential for this drug in therapeutic use for patients not experiencing sepsis. so, you should not ask your doctor to prescribe you this drug if you get sick. if your doctor does give you this drug on request after confirming a diagnosis, they should be charged with malpractice, as they should damned well know it's an immunosuppressor, and they damned well know you're infected.
- if your doctor does prescribe you this drug in good faith, you will be struggling for your life when it happens.
understanding this better both clarifies the actual medical use of the drug in context, and clarifies the really depraved behaviour of the president around this. it's actually better if he really doesn't know what he's saying, but i suspect that's less true than anybody wants to acknowledge; this is an immunosuppressor, it's used as an immunosuppressor, and people are going to needlessly die by mass prescribing it.
is this insanity and incompetence or greed-fueled malevolence?
it's a scary question.
but, i'm glad i understand this better, now.
Monday, April 6, 2020
this is a review of the sunsquabi/floozies show at the royal oak theatre on mar 5, 2020,
as well as a review of the "classical roots" presentation at the dso,
which ended with a performance of beethoven's fifth piano concerto, on mar 6, 2020.
in the week leading up to this show, or excursion, i found myself trying to juggle a number of shows into a one or maybe two day escape, and so flirting with going to the concerto on the saturday or maybe trying to fit a double bill in on the friday, meaning i should come home early on thursday - or even just giving up and going to steve hackett on wednesday, instead.
i do feel that the first thing i should acknowledge is actually that hackett concert. the following was posted a few days before the show:
so, this gives me a better understanding of what the steve hackett set on wednesday is going to be about, and whether i want to spend what was $30 usd minimum on it, last i checked (the $25 seats are sold out). this is really a dad show, though, so he's supposed to yell at me for offering to pay my own way, and then insist on buying me food on the way home. alas....
what is steve hackett? well, he was the not-quite-original-but-certainly-classic guitarist for the legendary 70s prog act genesis. mr. hackett left the band in 1977, so he had absolutely nothing to do with the band's somewhat infamous run of 80s pop singles, and in fact only did two records with collins singing, at all. however, he was the band's guitarist for all but one of their string of classic records (he was not the guitarist on trespass) between 1970-1977.
genesis is known mostly for being the initial vehicle of peter gabriel and then of phil collins (who initially played drums, before gabriel left for a solo career), and is generally thought of as a synthesizer-driven band when discussed for it's compositions. however, the guitar work on these records is actually somewhat revolutionary. amongst other things, hackett is widely credited for introducing the technique of tapping into rock music, something that was picked up on most prominently by van halen and has became a staple in rock music ever since.
on this tour, he appears to be starting with a solo record he did in the late 70s and finishing with a set of genesis material centered around the classic record, selling england by the pound, which was the third with the classic lineup of gabriel on vocals, collins on drums, banks on keyboards, rutherford on bass and hackett on guitar.
he appears to have hired younger musicians to do the vocal and drums duties, which is fine and probably necessary.
if i could get cheaper tickets, this would be a no brainer. but i don't want to spend too much on this show and then regret missing a bunch of others, and this weekend may be full of other stuff that i want to get to, instead. if i had a money tree. alas...
i want to decide what i'm doing on the weekend, first. but, if i go out on wednesday, this is where i'm going....
by wednesday morning, i'd come up with a kind of maximal plan that started wednesday with hackett and ended early saturday morning. i had to face the facts - if i were to go to the hackett concert, i would have to cut something out. i also realized it was going to be seated and mostly populated with older men. if i had another $100 to blow, i would have started here, on the wednesday, and ended up at an experimental noise show a little later, before going home and heading back out for the thursday night.
after scratching wednesday off, i then decided that the most interesting things could be strung together starting on thursday evening and ending on friday afternoon, leaving friday night open as a variable, if the weather and my consciousness, as well as my finances, permit.
this was the ideal that i hoped set times would align around:
1) talking ear @ cliff bell's, 20:00-21:30 - first set.
2) take the bus to royal oak for roughly 22:00 and hopefully catch the last two acts, sunsquabi and the floozies. i want this to go late - until after 2:00.
3) get something to eat. it's a thursday, so i don't expect to find an after party. but, the bus runs all night, now. so, i can make my way back to detroit for the morning.
4) the beethoven concerto is running at 10:45 in the morning.
5) go home, shower, sleep.
6) maybe come back for another funk show on friday night at tangent gallery, followed by dancing.
obviously, imagining set times on my blog doesn't make them real, so the next thing to do would be to actually ask the artists what time they're playing at. this is done these days by posting at the event listing.
talking ear indicated that they would actually start at 20:00 sharp, and perform three 45 minute sets, each on the next subsequent hour. so, if i could get a confirmation that sunsquabi were going to be on a little later, i could maybe even catch the first two sets. perfect.
talking ear would also be playing as a four piece, without their singer, who is now their ex-singer. i will admit that much of the charm in the recorded material is driven by this now departed singer, but that's only really a drawback in terms of the uncertainty in direction that it creates; the rest of the band seems capable of holding my interest, regardless, even if i have little to go by in predicting what they actually would sound like. i'm sure i'll enjoy any new recorded material, once it exists.
i grew up listening to fusion records by the likes of holdsworth, di meola, mclaughlin....as well as some non-guitar jazz, albeit not much of it. i've heard ridiculous amounts of chick corea. there were a couple of bruford/holdsworth records with a singer named annette peacock. that's maybe the closest thing i can think of directly, although i should point out that it's also roughly in the same space as a local act name saajtak.
https://talkingear.bandcamp.com/album/talking-ear
i wanted to get up and dance before the end of the night, but i was actually kind of stoked about starting at the jazz club early; that's something i wish lined up well more often.
unfortunately, after some prodding, we eventually got set times for the royal oak show - and learned that sunsquabi were scheduled for 21:00, making it impossible to schedule both shows. i'd have to cut out talking ear from the night.
this opened up some space for me, as i was planning on picking up beethoven tickets on thursday night, before the box office closed, at 17:00. so, i settled on crashing what looked like a weekly experimental dinner time series at tv lounge, that seemed like it might even have free food, before catching the bus to royal oak.
with all that planned, it was time to get ready to actually go. of course, that took hours longer than planned, and so i ended up failing to make even the 5:30 bus, and instead ending up in detroit around a quarter after six, without much to do but crash the dinner series, which happened before the hour, at the latest.
there was indeed free food, some sort of vegetarian burrito type affair, with some chips and salsa. i got a cheap beer, and found myself outside talking about this virus with somebody that actually works in the insurance industry.
he fully acknowledged the error of insufficient testing, and the problems that a large uninsured population would face. was i concerned, though? this seemed to be his interest - measuring my concern. we're all collecting data in our own ways, aren't we? the whole world's a laboratory. i tried to articulate myself as best i could - being that i was healthy, i was not particularly concerned about myself, or my well-being, and would rather consider it advantageous to confront the virus early, but if i were uninsured, or older or suffering from existing conditions, and i lived in the united states, then i could see some potential for alarm. my lack of concern is due to being in a relatively privileged position as a relatively young and healthy canadian.
he wanted to rely on the who mortality stats, which i insisted were an exaggeration; the high mortality rate in the united states may appear to be more in line with a third world country, or a country like iran that's been battered by us sanctions, but that's really just because they aren't testing; it's not really 7%. it's more like a 0.5%. although i'd be a lot more concerned if i thought it was 7%! but, he needed data, not speculation. in his mind, that 4.5% coming out of china was reason for serious alarm. and, i guess if i thought that was a reasonable mortality rate, i'd be alarmed, too.
the artist performing at the tv lounge on this night is also known as the detroit bureau of sound, and tends to frequently do these kinds of early night spotlights that are a kind of mix of high and low art; i've seen him perform philip glass pieces in dilapidated warehouses, and also do pretentious reinterpretations of cage pieces at energy drink showcases. he had an electronic reinterpretation of koyaanisqatsi up for showcase at the detroit institute of art in mid-march that got canceled. i keep an eye on him because a lot of what he puts together is kind of the perfect pre-show event, even if i end up showing up too late to catch it more than half of the time.
on this night, he appears to have set up a large amount of analog gear in the bar, and decided not to do much with it. i would have to label what i saw as a brap, albeit not a particularly lively one. so, i ejected from the situation a little bit before 20:00, with the intent to catch the early bus out.
i just had to get up and around the corner to temple, down the street to woodward and - hey, there's a bus...no....wait.
gah.
so, i had 20 minutes to wait to catch the bus i initially planned to take, to get to royal oak a few minutes after 21:00, and into the bar by 21:15 - hoping they're running late. when you miss the bus by seconds, the wait for the next one is of course maximal. but, even so, it would take as much time to drive there as it would to bus there, according to google, so i wouldn't actually be saving any time by driving. once i was able to get the driver to stop and let me on, it did run on time, and did get me to the neighbourhood of the venue at very close to 21:00, as expected.
i feared i'd miss the first song when i got there, but i actually showed up with plenty of time to spare. in fact, i'd been in and out for a few smokes, including finding the kind i like, by the time they came on, after 22:00. if i knew they weren't going to be on until after 22:00, i could have caught the fusion band after all.....
sunsquabi are a fully instrumental three piece white-boy funk band that also take strong influences from some specific guitar-driven progressive rock acts, like tangerine dream and pink floyd. while there are lots of bands that are vaguely like this out there right now, sunsquabi caught my attention due to the musicality - which is not to say that this is particularly technical, so much as to point to the wide musical vocabulary. so, they tend to make good use of abstract rhythms and syncopation, for example, in ways that would be better described as playful than technically impressive. the result is a convincingly fun sound that is also more than interesting enough to keep a nerd engaged, one that i tend to enjoy dancing to, as i get lost in the shuffling beats and the soaring guitars. i'd recommend this to anyone, but it's going to be especially intriguing for all those that exist in that intersection of the electronic with the guitar....
i found myself back outside between sets, and this is when the giant blunts started getting passed around, leaving me feeling fairly spaced out before the floozies set. this bar will make you leave your $8 beer on a table, in a room with hundreds of people, before you go for a smoke, and then who knows what's going to happen to it when you're gone. it was against my better judgement, but i did what i had to, and seemed to make it out of the venue able to walk.
the material i'd heard from the floozies also included a horn section, so they seemed a little bit stripped down on this night, as a two piece. this hemmed their sound into something that was a little bit more generic and formulaic, from a modern "edm" template. so, you had lots of dubstep wobbles, for example. i took it for what it was, and kept dancing in between the guitar licks, which were less plentiful than i'd have liked, but the truth is that sunsquabi is a hard act to follow.
my stark suggestion to the floozies is to make it a habit to bring a horn section with them when they tour. they're just not pulling it off as a two-piece.
a lot of people may consider a show that ends a little after 1:00 to be a late night, but it left me with some time to blow, as i could either find a late-night speakeasy in royal oak and ride it out until the morning buses started up or evacuate the suburbs and go back downtown early on the late night bus out. if this show had lingered past 2:00 to 3:00ish, it would have been relatively seamless to catch the early morning bus out, right from the venue. but, the earlier night had me wanting to catch the late bus out, instead. i had time for a beer, before the bus came, a little after 2:00.
i had picked out a couple of divey bars that i thought would be open, but neither were. instead, i found myself at a sort of sports bar, as they were the only thing around there that seemed to be open. it was moments after i ordered my beer, though, that they were yelling at everybody to finish their drink and get out.
the place was actually fairly well populated on a thursday, so it was maybe a bit weird that they were aggressively shuffling everybody out at 1:35, but i had little choice but to drink my beer quickly and be sure i'm not the last one out.
outside now, at 1:45, i'm having a smoke and am approached by a woman who remarks that she likes my red overcoat (indeed, the coat is a bit of a hit) and wishes she could straighten her hair as well as i do. she then proceeds to speak to me in what i presume is some dialect of hebrew, although i would be unwise as to advise on which one.
i have a complex ancestry, and i do get recognized sometimes, most often by native americans, but also by italians and also by people that are from the northeast of europe. i used to get teased for looking jewish when i was in high school, years before i realized i was, actually, of some ancestral hebrew heritage. i've never, however, been identified as a jew on the street and then spoken to in hebrew, with the assumption that i'd understand it.
"i'm part italian and part jewish, so i do have very wavy hair. i wouldn't call it curly, exactly. it's actually also really light and fine, due to the norse ancestry on my mom's side. so, it's more like a thin, fine and wavy hairtype than thick, heavy and curly type. and, i certainly don't speak hebrew..."
"you're not really jewish, then."
(she was disappointed)
"no, not culturally. except i kind of am like a secular american jew in my politics and in my tastes in art, which is sort of a different jewish culture. i'd bet the number of jews in new york city that are bilingual is pretty low nowadays. so, you could think of me like that, and it's not totally wrong. but, i'm only really vaguely aware of my actual jewish ancestry and don't really prioritize it over my other heritage."
"i still like your coat."
"thanks."
after some further late night banter, and an eventual dispersion from the closing bar, i did catch my late night bus out of royal oak, which tricked me into thinking it was going to take me downtown and then dropped me off at the state fair transit centre instead, to await the regular city bus going back downtown.
waiting for the woodward bus at 3:00 am at state transit in detroit is maybe not the most enviable situation to be in, but i can be friendly enough with the other riders, whoever they are. so, one of them wants a smoke, and i give it to him. it turns out he's recently been released from hospital, and nursing a gunshot wound that just missed his vitals; both lucky and unlucky, as he claims, at least, that he was an innocent bystander, and essentially struck by a stray bullet. the doctors told him he should have been killed. right now, he needs to get downtown to get to the mission, which is where he's staying until his wound has healed. and, i can have some of his vodka if i want (i passed).
he carries a sleeping bag around with him on his back, stuffed into his coat. says he needs it to keep the cold out.
"no, you use it to keep the warmth in."
"yeah, gotta keep the cold out."
"it would probably be useful to you on a day-to-day basis if you actually realized that you keep the warmth in, you don't keep the cold out."
"gotta keep the cold out...works good if you get bundled up right...."
eventually, the bus comes and our gunshot victim actually wanders down the street the other way, before he's coerced back by the driver. i admit that i sat in a place that would force him to sit elsewhere.
it's pushing 4:00 when we get back downtown, and i find myself getting off a stop early, due mostly to badly eyeing the stops - i knew where i was, but didn't know where the stops were. as it is, i'm walking south on woodward to the diner when a man in a wheelchair rolls up to me and asks me for a smoke. and, he needs me to put it in his mouth and light it for him too.
obviously, this guy probably shouldn't be smoking. but, what is the use of denying a dying man a smoke?
so, i give him the smoke, and i light it, and i turn around to walk off, but he asks me to come back and help him get a bag out of the side of his wheelchair. i initially thought he meant out of a pocket on the external side of the wheelchair, but after some discussion it is clarified that he meant a bag that was lodged between himself and the seat of the wheelchair. i am able to oblige this request relatively painlessly.
he tells me he's pulling a cup out of the bag to take a piss, right there, in his wheelchair, on the side of the road, on woodward avenue, in midtown. he wants me to get another bag out of the back, and i can't see where, and he's yelling at me to hurry up....
what's going through my mind at this point is a kind of self-righteous indignation as to why it is that this clearly severely sick man is in a wheelchair on the side of the road at 3:00 am and asking a canadian tourist to perform unpaid volunteer work as an orderly. any concept of dignity had left this man behind. everything else aside, that was what had me angry and almost shivering, the fact that i was forced to suffer this man of his lack of dignity so badly.
i eventually walked away, and went straight inside to wash my hands. there's a virus going around, they said.
this man was eventually wheeled into the diner, which was no doubt an unacceptable sanitation decision, but i said nothing. it was hovering around freezing outside.
i always get the same thing at this diner and wanted to take a closer look at the menu, so i didn't end up ordering until well after 4:00, but i ended up getting my breakfast special, anyways, nonetheless. it was barely 5:00 by the time i was done eating, so i just got a lot of water and a lot of coffee and camped out.
of course i nodded off a few times, but they were punctuated by smoke breaks in the cold air that did a good job of waking me back up.
i was lucky that i got the specific waitress doing the overnight shift that sees me as harmless local colour, and doesn't seem interested in chasing me out. i just told her up front that i was waiting for the symphony to start and would probably be there until after 9:00, and she seemed to register it and then said nothing to me about it.
i got some french fries around 7:00 and munched them slowly on purpose.
the food, the coffee, the water and the brisk smoke breaks actually had me largely sobered up by 9:00, when i ordered one extra large coffee to go (the specific waitress had been refilling my cup all night for free, actually) and made my way out to the box office to get a ticket for the symphony.
i was aware that they were doing a specifically african-themed event on this day, something i didn't look too deeply into, and also noticed that they were initially planning on doing the same ravel piece i saw the previous month, which minimized my interest in the whole thing. however, the pianist performing the ravel piece had to withdraw at the last minute due to tendinitis, and they replaced it with a performance of beethoven's fifth piano concerto, which i hadn't seen yet. that all of a sudden became a priority when i noticed it; the whole thrust of the adventure is really centered around making sure i can get to the symphony at some point that weekend, with the friday morning show being identified as most tactical, due to there not being a great follow-up show on the saturday and there not being a sunday show at all. this let me get to the two things that were most interesting to me, sunsquabi & the concerto, in one long & epic trip, rather than piecing together two or three half-nights in order to stretch it out.
i still didn't really look into the african themed first part of the show, though - i decided that i'd just go and check it out. i had a vague expectation of something religiously themed, but i otherwise didn't really know what to expect.
they started the show off with a piece called lift every voice and sing, in which the expectation was that we would all know the words (i did not. sorry.) and that we would all stand together and sing it (i did neither. sorry). it seems as though this tune has some political significance in the black community. i just have this aversion to choir-singing for some reason; i don't like the group think, the unity of action, it gets into my skin and makes me squirm. it doesn't really matter what it is, if i'm instructed to stand and participate, i almost certainly won't.
the piece itself sounded like an orchestration of a gospel tune, which i gather is what it actually is.
i'm not sure if this is the exact arrangement, but i think it is.
this was followed by an arrangement of ave maria. is ave maria black? it seems somewhat farcical on first glance, but i take it that this particular arrangement must have been constructed by a black american. it's still a little bit of a curious pick.
these pieces were running into each other like a medley, or, i guess, like a haphazardly thrown together symphony; these were movements, and the third was....a meditation on the word 'hallelujah'. it has a very minimalist feel to it in the reich or glass sense, but i was almost cracking up, really.
they then went into two pieces by a black female composer called nkeiru okoye, the first of which is supposed to be a hopeful reaction to 9/11 but actually kind of comes off as a walt disney megahit, to me, which is perhaps just a topical reflection - if america were to produce a hopeful response to 9/11, it would have to be in the form of a disney film. you can and i might suggest should imagine heroines singing soliloquies into their mirror in the middle part, psyching themselves up for their task. the big band perhaps gives it a downtown manhatten feel, but it kind of just comes off sounding like 49th street massacre.
https://soundcloud.com/nkeiruokoye/voices-shouting-out-1
the second piece by this composer was apparently a world premiere of her piece black bottom, which is a sort of opera in several short movements about the northwards adjoining neighbourhood in detroit, which is also currently the party district. i didn't even try to follow this, but i generally have no interest in opera, so i was not a good test subject; to me, the piece seemed sort of disjointed and didn't flow well, but i'd probably say that about most opera. i think that the dso did have this at their youtube site previously, as it is in the google cache, but it appears to have been taken down; as it was the world premiere, this is probably the only extant recording, as of this time.
the fifth piano concerto started up after a short intermission, and at that point i became cognizant of the nature of the audience - it was black, but it was also very young and apparently in attendance due to some kind of function. it clapped between the movements of the concerto.
this was my write-up, a few days after the show:
so, we didn't do a preliminary review of beethoven's 5th piano concerto.
the reason i didn't catch this earlier was that it was added at the last minute. the program was initially supposed to start with what the dso decided was specifically "black music" (and i'll have a bit to say about that when i do the review) and end with the same ravel piece i saw a few weeks ago, but the pianist had to drop due to tendinitis. so, they brought somebody else in at the last minute to do what is one of beethoven's most classic works.
i hope they didn't pick beethoven in order to buy into the urban legend that he was black. the arguments i've seen would lead to the conclusion that he might have maybe been distantly arabic - if you want to pull something out of his tonality, that's really what you pull out, and these reaching deductions about some paintings at most have him looking a little tanned, rather than black. it's supposedly due to the idea that his mother came from an area that was once under moorish control. in fact, the idea that the moors were black is itself just a eurocentric myth that should really be vigorously corrected across the literature; european art constantly depicted the moors as dark-skinned, and they of course were, but they were dark-skinned in the sense that an arab is, and not black like subsaharan africans. that is an anachronism that we've picked up fairly recently. so, shakespeare's contemporary audience would have actually known that othello was an arab. what the moors really did was create a neo-carthaginian state that was fundamentally semitic in every way, not african. but, i don't think anybody actually takes this idea seriously as it isn't based in any hard evidence, and i'll remind you that there is an urban legend that mozart was black, too. rather, this idea seems to get it's support from a strain of historical revisionism called "afrocentrism" that essentially argues that everybody was black - including historical figures like darius (iranian) and cleopatra (greek) that quite clearly were not. maybe, though, there were good reasons to pull the ravel from a concert about black music...beethoven was at least about liberty, equality and fraternity, even if his mother was actually polish and he was, actually, pretty much lily white.
this piece is perhaps beethoven at his most cliched, and you can kind of interpret that in a variety of ways. is it therefore beethoven at his peak? or does it get a little bit expected, in a sense? regardless, it's impossible to deny the sheer enjoyment of it, if you love the aspects of beethoven's work that he is still best known for all of these years later - the raucus piano parts, the sheer fucking with christian tonality and the nice, catchy melodies that he wraps all of that into. we get beethoven as barnstorming revolutionary, beethoven as purveyor of catchy tunes for the masses and beethoven as epic, brilliant troll all at once. it's hard to present an argument against such compactness.
but, it is a little predictable in terms of following his own previously established form, for better or worse.
if you ever get a chance to see this, jump at it. there's a magic to it. really. i'm glad i stayed up all night for it...
i was aware before i left that the weather might turn on friday night, but it was also supposed to hit a peak of niceness on friday afternoon before rapidly deteriorating. in fact, the wind was already starting to pick up when i got out of the orchestra hall around 13:00, enough that it was somewhat of a difficultly cold walk home.
i was finally back in before 15:00, a little less than 24 hours since i'd left, and this ritual did end properly with nachos, a shower and some good sleep.
as well as a review of the "classical roots" presentation at the dso,
which ended with a performance of beethoven's fifth piano concerto, on mar 6, 2020.
in the week leading up to this show, or excursion, i found myself trying to juggle a number of shows into a one or maybe two day escape, and so flirting with going to the concerto on the saturday or maybe trying to fit a double bill in on the friday, meaning i should come home early on thursday - or even just giving up and going to steve hackett on wednesday, instead.
i do feel that the first thing i should acknowledge is actually that hackett concert. the following was posted a few days before the show:
what is steve hackett? well, he was the not-quite-original-but-certainly-classic guitarist for the legendary 70s prog act genesis. mr. hackett left the band in 1977, so he had absolutely nothing to do with the band's somewhat infamous run of 80s pop singles, and in fact only did two records with collins singing, at all. however, he was the band's guitarist for all but one of their string of classic records (he was not the guitarist on trespass) between 1970-1977.
genesis is known mostly for being the initial vehicle of peter gabriel and then of phil collins (who initially played drums, before gabriel left for a solo career), and is generally thought of as a synthesizer-driven band when discussed for it's compositions. however, the guitar work on these records is actually somewhat revolutionary. amongst other things, hackett is widely credited for introducing the technique of tapping into rock music, something that was picked up on most prominently by van halen and has became a staple in rock music ever since.
on this tour, he appears to be starting with a solo record he did in the late 70s and finishing with a set of genesis material centered around the classic record, selling england by the pound, which was the third with the classic lineup of gabriel on vocals, collins on drums, banks on keyboards, rutherford on bass and hackett on guitar.
he appears to have hired younger musicians to do the vocal and drums duties, which is fine and probably necessary.
if i could get cheaper tickets, this would be a no brainer. but i don't want to spend too much on this show and then regret missing a bunch of others, and this weekend may be full of other stuff that i want to get to, instead. if i had a money tree. alas...
i want to decide what i'm doing on the weekend, first. but, if i go out on wednesday, this is where i'm going....
by wednesday morning, i'd come up with a kind of maximal plan that started wednesday with hackett and ended early saturday morning. i had to face the facts - if i were to go to the hackett concert, i would have to cut something out. i also realized it was going to be seated and mostly populated with older men. if i had another $100 to blow, i would have started here, on the wednesday, and ended up at an experimental noise show a little later, before going home and heading back out for the thursday night.
after scratching wednesday off, i then decided that the most interesting things could be strung together starting on thursday evening and ending on friday afternoon, leaving friday night open as a variable, if the weather and my consciousness, as well as my finances, permit.
this was the ideal that i hoped set times would align around:
1) talking ear @ cliff bell's, 20:00-21:30 - first set.
2) take the bus to royal oak for roughly 22:00 and hopefully catch the last two acts, sunsquabi and the floozies. i want this to go late - until after 2:00.
3) get something to eat. it's a thursday, so i don't expect to find an after party. but, the bus runs all night, now. so, i can make my way back to detroit for the morning.
4) the beethoven concerto is running at 10:45 in the morning.
5) go home, shower, sleep.
6) maybe come back for another funk show on friday night at tangent gallery, followed by dancing.
obviously, imagining set times on my blog doesn't make them real, so the next thing to do would be to actually ask the artists what time they're playing at. this is done these days by posting at the event listing.
talking ear indicated that they would actually start at 20:00 sharp, and perform three 45 minute sets, each on the next subsequent hour. so, if i could get a confirmation that sunsquabi were going to be on a little later, i could maybe even catch the first two sets. perfect.
talking ear would also be playing as a four piece, without their singer, who is now their ex-singer. i will admit that much of the charm in the recorded material is driven by this now departed singer, but that's only really a drawback in terms of the uncertainty in direction that it creates; the rest of the band seems capable of holding my interest, regardless, even if i have little to go by in predicting what they actually would sound like. i'm sure i'll enjoy any new recorded material, once it exists.
i grew up listening to fusion records by the likes of holdsworth, di meola, mclaughlin....as well as some non-guitar jazz, albeit not much of it. i've heard ridiculous amounts of chick corea. there were a couple of bruford/holdsworth records with a singer named annette peacock. that's maybe the closest thing i can think of directly, although i should point out that it's also roughly in the same space as a local act name saajtak.
https://talkingear.bandcamp.com/album/talking-ear
i wanted to get up and dance before the end of the night, but i was actually kind of stoked about starting at the jazz club early; that's something i wish lined up well more often.
unfortunately, after some prodding, we eventually got set times for the royal oak show - and learned that sunsquabi were scheduled for 21:00, making it impossible to schedule both shows. i'd have to cut out talking ear from the night.
this opened up some space for me, as i was planning on picking up beethoven tickets on thursday night, before the box office closed, at 17:00. so, i settled on crashing what looked like a weekly experimental dinner time series at tv lounge, that seemed like it might even have free food, before catching the bus to royal oak.
with all that planned, it was time to get ready to actually go. of course, that took hours longer than planned, and so i ended up failing to make even the 5:30 bus, and instead ending up in detroit around a quarter after six, without much to do but crash the dinner series, which happened before the hour, at the latest.
there was indeed free food, some sort of vegetarian burrito type affair, with some chips and salsa. i got a cheap beer, and found myself outside talking about this virus with somebody that actually works in the insurance industry.
he fully acknowledged the error of insufficient testing, and the problems that a large uninsured population would face. was i concerned, though? this seemed to be his interest - measuring my concern. we're all collecting data in our own ways, aren't we? the whole world's a laboratory. i tried to articulate myself as best i could - being that i was healthy, i was not particularly concerned about myself, or my well-being, and would rather consider it advantageous to confront the virus early, but if i were uninsured, or older or suffering from existing conditions, and i lived in the united states, then i could see some potential for alarm. my lack of concern is due to being in a relatively privileged position as a relatively young and healthy canadian.
he wanted to rely on the who mortality stats, which i insisted were an exaggeration; the high mortality rate in the united states may appear to be more in line with a third world country, or a country like iran that's been battered by us sanctions, but that's really just because they aren't testing; it's not really 7%. it's more like a 0.5%. although i'd be a lot more concerned if i thought it was 7%! but, he needed data, not speculation. in his mind, that 4.5% coming out of china was reason for serious alarm. and, i guess if i thought that was a reasonable mortality rate, i'd be alarmed, too.
the artist performing at the tv lounge on this night is also known as the detroit bureau of sound, and tends to frequently do these kinds of early night spotlights that are a kind of mix of high and low art; i've seen him perform philip glass pieces in dilapidated warehouses, and also do pretentious reinterpretations of cage pieces at energy drink showcases. he had an electronic reinterpretation of koyaanisqatsi up for showcase at the detroit institute of art in mid-march that got canceled. i keep an eye on him because a lot of what he puts together is kind of the perfect pre-show event, even if i end up showing up too late to catch it more than half of the time.
on this night, he appears to have set up a large amount of analog gear in the bar, and decided not to do much with it. i would have to label what i saw as a brap, albeit not a particularly lively one. so, i ejected from the situation a little bit before 20:00, with the intent to catch the early bus out.
i just had to get up and around the corner to temple, down the street to woodward and - hey, there's a bus...no....wait.
gah.
so, i had 20 minutes to wait to catch the bus i initially planned to take, to get to royal oak a few minutes after 21:00, and into the bar by 21:15 - hoping they're running late. when you miss the bus by seconds, the wait for the next one is of course maximal. but, even so, it would take as much time to drive there as it would to bus there, according to google, so i wouldn't actually be saving any time by driving. once i was able to get the driver to stop and let me on, it did run on time, and did get me to the neighbourhood of the venue at very close to 21:00, as expected.
i feared i'd miss the first song when i got there, but i actually showed up with plenty of time to spare. in fact, i'd been in and out for a few smokes, including finding the kind i like, by the time they came on, after 22:00. if i knew they weren't going to be on until after 22:00, i could have caught the fusion band after all.....
sunsquabi are a fully instrumental three piece white-boy funk band that also take strong influences from some specific guitar-driven progressive rock acts, like tangerine dream and pink floyd. while there are lots of bands that are vaguely like this out there right now, sunsquabi caught my attention due to the musicality - which is not to say that this is particularly technical, so much as to point to the wide musical vocabulary. so, they tend to make good use of abstract rhythms and syncopation, for example, in ways that would be better described as playful than technically impressive. the result is a convincingly fun sound that is also more than interesting enough to keep a nerd engaged, one that i tend to enjoy dancing to, as i get lost in the shuffling beats and the soaring guitars. i'd recommend this to anyone, but it's going to be especially intriguing for all those that exist in that intersection of the electronic with the guitar....
i found myself back outside between sets, and this is when the giant blunts started getting passed around, leaving me feeling fairly spaced out before the floozies set. this bar will make you leave your $8 beer on a table, in a room with hundreds of people, before you go for a smoke, and then who knows what's going to happen to it when you're gone. it was against my better judgement, but i did what i had to, and seemed to make it out of the venue able to walk.
the material i'd heard from the floozies also included a horn section, so they seemed a little bit stripped down on this night, as a two piece. this hemmed their sound into something that was a little bit more generic and formulaic, from a modern "edm" template. so, you had lots of dubstep wobbles, for example. i took it for what it was, and kept dancing in between the guitar licks, which were less plentiful than i'd have liked, but the truth is that sunsquabi is a hard act to follow.
my stark suggestion to the floozies is to make it a habit to bring a horn section with them when they tour. they're just not pulling it off as a two-piece.
a lot of people may consider a show that ends a little after 1:00 to be a late night, but it left me with some time to blow, as i could either find a late-night speakeasy in royal oak and ride it out until the morning buses started up or evacuate the suburbs and go back downtown early on the late night bus out. if this show had lingered past 2:00 to 3:00ish, it would have been relatively seamless to catch the early morning bus out, right from the venue. but, the earlier night had me wanting to catch the late bus out, instead. i had time for a beer, before the bus came, a little after 2:00.
i had picked out a couple of divey bars that i thought would be open, but neither were. instead, i found myself at a sort of sports bar, as they were the only thing around there that seemed to be open. it was moments after i ordered my beer, though, that they were yelling at everybody to finish their drink and get out.
the place was actually fairly well populated on a thursday, so it was maybe a bit weird that they were aggressively shuffling everybody out at 1:35, but i had little choice but to drink my beer quickly and be sure i'm not the last one out.
outside now, at 1:45, i'm having a smoke and am approached by a woman who remarks that she likes my red overcoat (indeed, the coat is a bit of a hit) and wishes she could straighten her hair as well as i do. she then proceeds to speak to me in what i presume is some dialect of hebrew, although i would be unwise as to advise on which one.
i have a complex ancestry, and i do get recognized sometimes, most often by native americans, but also by italians and also by people that are from the northeast of europe. i used to get teased for looking jewish when i was in high school, years before i realized i was, actually, of some ancestral hebrew heritage. i've never, however, been identified as a jew on the street and then spoken to in hebrew, with the assumption that i'd understand it.
"i'm part italian and part jewish, so i do have very wavy hair. i wouldn't call it curly, exactly. it's actually also really light and fine, due to the norse ancestry on my mom's side. so, it's more like a thin, fine and wavy hairtype than thick, heavy and curly type. and, i certainly don't speak hebrew..."
"you're not really jewish, then."
(she was disappointed)
"no, not culturally. except i kind of am like a secular american jew in my politics and in my tastes in art, which is sort of a different jewish culture. i'd bet the number of jews in new york city that are bilingual is pretty low nowadays. so, you could think of me like that, and it's not totally wrong. but, i'm only really vaguely aware of my actual jewish ancestry and don't really prioritize it over my other heritage."
"i still like your coat."
"thanks."
after some further late night banter, and an eventual dispersion from the closing bar, i did catch my late night bus out of royal oak, which tricked me into thinking it was going to take me downtown and then dropped me off at the state fair transit centre instead, to await the regular city bus going back downtown.
waiting for the woodward bus at 3:00 am at state transit in detroit is maybe not the most enviable situation to be in, but i can be friendly enough with the other riders, whoever they are. so, one of them wants a smoke, and i give it to him. it turns out he's recently been released from hospital, and nursing a gunshot wound that just missed his vitals; both lucky and unlucky, as he claims, at least, that he was an innocent bystander, and essentially struck by a stray bullet. the doctors told him he should have been killed. right now, he needs to get downtown to get to the mission, which is where he's staying until his wound has healed. and, i can have some of his vodka if i want (i passed).
he carries a sleeping bag around with him on his back, stuffed into his coat. says he needs it to keep the cold out.
"no, you use it to keep the warmth in."
"yeah, gotta keep the cold out."
"it would probably be useful to you on a day-to-day basis if you actually realized that you keep the warmth in, you don't keep the cold out."
"gotta keep the cold out...works good if you get bundled up right...."
eventually, the bus comes and our gunshot victim actually wanders down the street the other way, before he's coerced back by the driver. i admit that i sat in a place that would force him to sit elsewhere.
it's pushing 4:00 when we get back downtown, and i find myself getting off a stop early, due mostly to badly eyeing the stops - i knew where i was, but didn't know where the stops were. as it is, i'm walking south on woodward to the diner when a man in a wheelchair rolls up to me and asks me for a smoke. and, he needs me to put it in his mouth and light it for him too.
obviously, this guy probably shouldn't be smoking. but, what is the use of denying a dying man a smoke?
so, i give him the smoke, and i light it, and i turn around to walk off, but he asks me to come back and help him get a bag out of the side of his wheelchair. i initially thought he meant out of a pocket on the external side of the wheelchair, but after some discussion it is clarified that he meant a bag that was lodged between himself and the seat of the wheelchair. i am able to oblige this request relatively painlessly.
he tells me he's pulling a cup out of the bag to take a piss, right there, in his wheelchair, on the side of the road, on woodward avenue, in midtown. he wants me to get another bag out of the back, and i can't see where, and he's yelling at me to hurry up....
what's going through my mind at this point is a kind of self-righteous indignation as to why it is that this clearly severely sick man is in a wheelchair on the side of the road at 3:00 am and asking a canadian tourist to perform unpaid volunteer work as an orderly. any concept of dignity had left this man behind. everything else aside, that was what had me angry and almost shivering, the fact that i was forced to suffer this man of his lack of dignity so badly.
i eventually walked away, and went straight inside to wash my hands. there's a virus going around, they said.
this man was eventually wheeled into the diner, which was no doubt an unacceptable sanitation decision, but i said nothing. it was hovering around freezing outside.
i always get the same thing at this diner and wanted to take a closer look at the menu, so i didn't end up ordering until well after 4:00, but i ended up getting my breakfast special, anyways, nonetheless. it was barely 5:00 by the time i was done eating, so i just got a lot of water and a lot of coffee and camped out.
of course i nodded off a few times, but they were punctuated by smoke breaks in the cold air that did a good job of waking me back up.
i was lucky that i got the specific waitress doing the overnight shift that sees me as harmless local colour, and doesn't seem interested in chasing me out. i just told her up front that i was waiting for the symphony to start and would probably be there until after 9:00, and she seemed to register it and then said nothing to me about it.
i got some french fries around 7:00 and munched them slowly on purpose.
the food, the coffee, the water and the brisk smoke breaks actually had me largely sobered up by 9:00, when i ordered one extra large coffee to go (the specific waitress had been refilling my cup all night for free, actually) and made my way out to the box office to get a ticket for the symphony.
i was aware that they were doing a specifically african-themed event on this day, something i didn't look too deeply into, and also noticed that they were initially planning on doing the same ravel piece i saw the previous month, which minimized my interest in the whole thing. however, the pianist performing the ravel piece had to withdraw at the last minute due to tendinitis, and they replaced it with a performance of beethoven's fifth piano concerto, which i hadn't seen yet. that all of a sudden became a priority when i noticed it; the whole thrust of the adventure is really centered around making sure i can get to the symphony at some point that weekend, with the friday morning show being identified as most tactical, due to there not being a great follow-up show on the saturday and there not being a sunday show at all. this let me get to the two things that were most interesting to me, sunsquabi & the concerto, in one long & epic trip, rather than piecing together two or three half-nights in order to stretch it out.
i still didn't really look into the african themed first part of the show, though - i decided that i'd just go and check it out. i had a vague expectation of something religiously themed, but i otherwise didn't really know what to expect.
they started the show off with a piece called lift every voice and sing, in which the expectation was that we would all know the words (i did not. sorry.) and that we would all stand together and sing it (i did neither. sorry). it seems as though this tune has some political significance in the black community. i just have this aversion to choir-singing for some reason; i don't like the group think, the unity of action, it gets into my skin and makes me squirm. it doesn't really matter what it is, if i'm instructed to stand and participate, i almost certainly won't.
the piece itself sounded like an orchestration of a gospel tune, which i gather is what it actually is.
i'm not sure if this is the exact arrangement, but i think it is.
this was followed by an arrangement of ave maria. is ave maria black? it seems somewhat farcical on first glance, but i take it that this particular arrangement must have been constructed by a black american. it's still a little bit of a curious pick.
these pieces were running into each other like a medley, or, i guess, like a haphazardly thrown together symphony; these were movements, and the third was....a meditation on the word 'hallelujah'. it has a very minimalist feel to it in the reich or glass sense, but i was almost cracking up, really.
they then went into two pieces by a black female composer called nkeiru okoye, the first of which is supposed to be a hopeful reaction to 9/11 but actually kind of comes off as a walt disney megahit, to me, which is perhaps just a topical reflection - if america were to produce a hopeful response to 9/11, it would have to be in the form of a disney film. you can and i might suggest should imagine heroines singing soliloquies into their mirror in the middle part, psyching themselves up for their task. the big band perhaps gives it a downtown manhatten feel, but it kind of just comes off sounding like 49th street massacre.
https://soundcloud.com/nkeiruokoye/voices-shouting-out-1
the second piece by this composer was apparently a world premiere of her piece black bottom, which is a sort of opera in several short movements about the northwards adjoining neighbourhood in detroit, which is also currently the party district. i didn't even try to follow this, but i generally have no interest in opera, so i was not a good test subject; to me, the piece seemed sort of disjointed and didn't flow well, but i'd probably say that about most opera. i think that the dso did have this at their youtube site previously, as it is in the google cache, but it appears to have been taken down; as it was the world premiere, this is probably the only extant recording, as of this time.
the fifth piano concerto started up after a short intermission, and at that point i became cognizant of the nature of the audience - it was black, but it was also very young and apparently in attendance due to some kind of function. it clapped between the movements of the concerto.
this was my write-up, a few days after the show:
so, we didn't do a preliminary review of beethoven's 5th piano concerto.
the reason i didn't catch this earlier was that it was added at the last minute. the program was initially supposed to start with what the dso decided was specifically "black music" (and i'll have a bit to say about that when i do the review) and end with the same ravel piece i saw a few weeks ago, but the pianist had to drop due to tendinitis. so, they brought somebody else in at the last minute to do what is one of beethoven's most classic works.
i hope they didn't pick beethoven in order to buy into the urban legend that he was black. the arguments i've seen would lead to the conclusion that he might have maybe been distantly arabic - if you want to pull something out of his tonality, that's really what you pull out, and these reaching deductions about some paintings at most have him looking a little tanned, rather than black. it's supposedly due to the idea that his mother came from an area that was once under moorish control. in fact, the idea that the moors were black is itself just a eurocentric myth that should really be vigorously corrected across the literature; european art constantly depicted the moors as dark-skinned, and they of course were, but they were dark-skinned in the sense that an arab is, and not black like subsaharan africans. that is an anachronism that we've picked up fairly recently. so, shakespeare's contemporary audience would have actually known that othello was an arab. what the moors really did was create a neo-carthaginian state that was fundamentally semitic in every way, not african. but, i don't think anybody actually takes this idea seriously as it isn't based in any hard evidence, and i'll remind you that there is an urban legend that mozart was black, too. rather, this idea seems to get it's support from a strain of historical revisionism called "afrocentrism" that essentially argues that everybody was black - including historical figures like darius (iranian) and cleopatra (greek) that quite clearly were not. maybe, though, there were good reasons to pull the ravel from a concert about black music...beethoven was at least about liberty, equality and fraternity, even if his mother was actually polish and he was, actually, pretty much lily white.
this piece is perhaps beethoven at his most cliched, and you can kind of interpret that in a variety of ways. is it therefore beethoven at his peak? or does it get a little bit expected, in a sense? regardless, it's impossible to deny the sheer enjoyment of it, if you love the aspects of beethoven's work that he is still best known for all of these years later - the raucus piano parts, the sheer fucking with christian tonality and the nice, catchy melodies that he wraps all of that into. we get beethoven as barnstorming revolutionary, beethoven as purveyor of catchy tunes for the masses and beethoven as epic, brilliant troll all at once. it's hard to present an argument against such compactness.
but, it is a little predictable in terms of following his own previously established form, for better or worse.
if you ever get a chance to see this, jump at it. there's a magic to it. really. i'm glad i stayed up all night for it...
i was aware before i left that the weather might turn on friday night, but it was also supposed to hit a peak of niceness on friday afternoon before rapidly deteriorating. in fact, the wind was already starting to pick up when i got out of the orchestra hall around 13:00, enough that it was somewhat of a difficultly cold walk home.
i was finally back in before 15:00, a little less than 24 hours since i'd left, and this ritual did end properly with nachos, a shower and some good sleep.
there are two ways to extrapolate the data relative to the models.
1) maybe social distancing worked. this suggests that they modeled it correctly, and our good behaviour changed the outcome.
2) or, maybe they overestimated the severity of the disease, including both the need to seek medical help for mild cases and ultimately the mortality rate. this would suggest that the modeling was exaggerated because it was based on exaggerated data, and the reality isn't getting close to it because it was exaggerated in the first place.
i would consider social distancing to be untested science, and am deeply skeptical of the clams being made. yet, my projection was actually that there would be many fewer deaths, because it was based on a mortality rate of 0.1%. if 70% of the population gets infected, a 0.1% mortality rate would suggest it should burn out around 5-6,000 deaths in the city, which is looking like it will be much closer to reality than the projections.
they should be pushing a 40% infection rate in the city, right now.
i'm just wondering about what kind of evolutionary impact that a sudden genetic defect leading to quadriplegia in lemmings would have.
the example i've used before is of aliens coming to earth and killing us all with a frequency gun that fries our brains via our aural circuitry; it just inputs an electrical load and pow, you've got brains all over the kitchen table. if you just go with this without asking too many questions about the actual biophysical realities around deafness, only the deaf would survive such an attack - and what is undoubtedly a disadvantage in every other conceivable scenario ends up selected. now, it's another question as to whether any lingering dominance might in the end reassert itself, or if deafness may even mutate to be dominant. but, silly examples aside, you can easily imagine scenarios where recessive traits end up selected, and you end up with a kind of de-evolving.
i just like overturning the aristotlianisms, i think. evolution isn't a tree, it's a graph with crossings. further, temporal evolution is not necessarily correlated with increases in the complexity of a species, which may be due as much to counter-intuitive adaptations as it is to a decrease in the frequency of mutation.
but, what about these quadriplegic lemmings?
well, if they can't make it to the cliff, and there's enough of them, what do they do? they're lemmings. they might be quadriplegic, but i'd bet even quadriplegic lemmings will have a strong drive to breed - like lemmings. and, some of these lemmings will end up worse off than others, in terms of ability to locomote.
there no doubt will quickly become food shortages, and the lemmings that are the most quadriplegic will no doubt end up dying.
now, it could very well be that they all end up dying. mutations happen all of the time; they usually fail, and this one is going to make them easy prey for birds and medium-sized canids. yeah, i think the prey issue is likely a substantive challenge for our quadriplegic lemmings, and probably the most likely outcome is that they just all get eaten.
but, let's say a few are able to roll off the other side of the cliff and land in a relatively safe space, with enough food for a few generations.
i want to imagine that a quadriplegic lemming might exhibit convergent evolution with something like a mini-manatee - remember that lemmings are herbivores, so they're unlikely to evolve in convergence with a seal or an otter. so, if the quadriplegic lemmings could somehow roll down the hill and find their way into an aquatic environment, they might have a chance.
or they might just get eaten by other aquatic animals, like seals or otters. yeah. it's an unavoidable fate for our quadriplegic lemmings - we can imagine ironic evolutionary twists all we want, but they're just going to get eaten, clearly.
Sunday, April 5, 2020
squirrels.
i've been saying for years that squirrels will eventually become the new rats - they will transport a disease that will cut us down by half, and we'll be almost powerless to stop it. eradicating squirrels is a hard job.
what if coronavirus gets into the squirrels?
it's effortlessly passing between mammals, right now.
yeah.
this is a feisty little piece of rna, alright. wow.
that's four species jumps, we think - from the bat to the civet cat to the human to the tiger.
they may not have measured it repeatedly yet, but this thing is reactive enough that i'd be concerned about your pets, if they're mammals. your iguana is probably fine, although wouldn't it be remarkable if it did hit a reptile? it's reactive! so, i wouldn't want to get nonchalant with mammalian livestock, either - i'd be taking some precautions around that. we have no evidence for birds, but again....it's reactive.
this thing is evolving rapidly; waiting for it to strike before you react is foolhardy. they should be assuming it's potentially transmissible to really any mammal at all, at this point, and maybe even to birds, too.
my take on the 3m thing.
i agree that it's not a great idea to retaliate in terms of cutting off the supply of pulp; that's easily recoupable, and largely pointless. but, i'm sure there are some items that we export to the united states that could be rationed for internal use.
i think the more pressing concern is trying to find a way to manufacture the damned masks.
why is trump doing this? because he needs a bad guy, and canada's an easy bad guy. i think he may have been insulted by the request for a border closure, as that's when he started acting erratically; regardless, we're just a pinata, an illusion, something to kick around. it's enraging, but there's no strategic logic in it, it's just lashing out. so, escalating directly isn't a rational choice, when faced with that kind of psychology, which is just looking for easy meat. it's better, perhaps, to respect the assertion of sovereignty and plan around it, as is necessary.
perhaps we could eventually find ourselves in need of the currently exported pulp for use in a domestic factory, and see fit to redirect it there.
i agree that it's not a great idea to retaliate in terms of cutting off the supply of pulp; that's easily recoupable, and largely pointless. but, i'm sure there are some items that we export to the united states that could be rationed for internal use.
i think the more pressing concern is trying to find a way to manufacture the damned masks.
why is trump doing this? because he needs a bad guy, and canada's an easy bad guy. i think he may have been insulted by the request for a border closure, as that's when he started acting erratically; regardless, we're just a pinata, an illusion, something to kick around. it's enraging, but there's no strategic logic in it, it's just lashing out. so, escalating directly isn't a rational choice, when faced with that kind of psychology, which is just looking for easy meat. it's better, perhaps, to respect the assertion of sovereignty and plan around it, as is necessary.
perhaps we could eventually find ourselves in need of the currently exported pulp for use in a domestic factory, and see fit to redirect it there.
*sigh*.
is this actually a parasite, not a virus?
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/malaria-drug-being-studied-on-the-list-of-possible-covid-19-treatments-tam-1.4883377
is this actually a parasite, not a virus?
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/malaria-drug-being-studied-on-the-list-of-possible-covid-19-treatments-tam-1.4883377
yeah, i got a deposit in motion for $290.
but, it should have been for $390.
i'm going to have to call them on monday.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cra-gst-credit-arrives-a-month-early-1.5520007
but, it should have been for $390.
i'm going to have to call them on monday.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cra-gst-credit-arrives-a-month-early-1.5520007
it's one thing to point out that it only affects people under 60 with underlying conditions.
it's another thing to point out that 70% of your population under 60 has the underlying condition of being obese or overweight.
higher in some cities.
it's the middle of the country that's going to get hit the hardest.
it's another thing to point out that 70% of your population under 60 has the underlying condition of being obese or overweight.
higher in some cities.
it's the middle of the country that's going to get hit the hardest.
if new york city is over 3,000 deaths, now, you're potentially looking at over 3,000,000 actual cases, which is over a third of the population.
if you're over the age of 60, going outside in new york right now is a dangerous, risky task.
P(x1 or x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
P(x1) + p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) - p(x1)*p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
.33 + 0.67[p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5)] =
.33 + 0.67[0.33 + 0.67(p(x3 + x4 + x5)] =
.33 + .2211 + .67^2[0.33 + .67[p(x4 + x5)]] =
.33 + .2211 + 0.148137 + .67^3[0.33 + .33 - .33^2] =
.33 + .2211 + 0.148137 + 0.1657504893=
0.8649874893
so, if you interact with five people every time you go out in new york city right now, you will come into infectious contact with the virus four out of every five times you go out.
if you're over the age of 60, going outside in new york right now is a dangerous, risky task.
P(x1 or x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
P(x1) + p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) - p(x1)*p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
.33 + 0.67[p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5)] =
.33 + 0.67[0.33 + 0.67(p(x3 + x4 + x5)] =
.33 + .2211 + .67^2[0.33 + .67[p(x4 + x5)]] =
.33 + .2211 + 0.148137 + .67^3[0.33 + .33 - .33^2] =
.33 + .2211 + 0.148137 + 0.1657504893=
0.8649874893
so, if you interact with five people every time you go out in new york city right now, you will come into infectious contact with the virus four out of every five times you go out.
mortality rates over the age of 60, and certainly over the age of 70, are consistently higher than 10%, pushing 20% in people over 80.
that means that your elderly relative has a roughly 10% chance of dying just by going to the grocery store in new york, right now. if they're really old, it's pushing 1 in 5. how many times will they go shopping this month?
please do everything you can to keep them inside.
the rest of the city needs to wait it out. it won't be long before it burns through the population, which will end the rapid spread, but then you need to stop the lingering cases from getting into these homes, potentially for months.
as for long island, note that it has a large percentage of elderly people, so a higher percentage of contracted cases will need to seek treatment. so, cases may be growing faster there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the virus is spreading faster there, it just means that a higher percentage of the population there is more vulnerable.
that seems to also be the case in new orleans and also in detroit, where serious underlying conditions like obesity and diabetes are actually quite prevalent in the general population.
so, i was just thinking about the last time i got sick (i'm actually feeling just fine right now), and i referenced the giant joint handed to me at the party where i got attacked by a vcr. it took a few days to feel it, but i picked up something fairly virulent that night.
and, then i remembered back to the write-up i did about the seven seals, and joked about the oncoming apocalypse.
i also recently posted something about locusts in africa, suggesting that they just eat the damned things.
well, maybe i did get the seventh seal, which means what, exactly?
i was never particularly religious, but in my pre-teens found myself with the conundrum of all of a sudden having a born-again christian (ex-alcoholic) stepfather who dragged everybody to church with him, so i took the step of sitting down and actually reading the bible, top to bottom, at around the age of 10 or so.
even then, i was actually approaching the thing as an anthropologist. when i was very little, i had a fascination with dinosaurs, as so many young people do. that managed to develop itself into an interest in ancient civilizations, i guess you could say the humanities, well before i turned ten years old. this was still before the internet, so i took advantage of the tools i had before me, which was mostly an encyclopedia set. i would read through the articles on the romans and greeks and follow the footnotes out to the carthiginians and scythians; i especially enjoyed reading about the punic wars, or that's something that i have a clear memory of, at least. when i got a little older, i could take books out of the library, and these compendiums of ancient cultures were the thing i tended to head for.
so, the jews were an ancient civilization, and the bible was their book. to me, it was just like reading any other history book.
i think this also fed into my interest in the game civilization, which i first played on my stepfathers old computer, in the middle of the night, as it was stashed away in the corner of the basement, just outside my bedroom.
i did actually read the thing, though, and it is what it is - a genealogical saga adopted from a variety of sources. but, i didn't actually believe any of it, not any more than i believed in romulus & remus, or in any other origin myth. i've often remarked that i dispensed with christianity fairly promptly by simply reading the source material; it was just impossible to take seriously, even down to the vicious portrayal of god, which was just nefarious.
despite my rationalist tendencies, though, i have to say that it was immediately clear to me that the revelation is an eschatological text; that is, that it is intended to be a description of the end times, however inappropriately, and not a prophecy that has already happened. i would have to assume that any theologian that is attempting to assign the revelation to an already existing historical event, as realized prophecy, has a strange interpretation of the apocalypse, relative to accepted pan-christian dogma.
that said, if this is an end times prophecy, then it leaves it's exact meaning open to interpretation, especially considering how many times it's been retranslated.
so, i'm going to just be literal about this - the seventh seal is when the eighth angel comes in and destroys, or at least severely damages, the earth with a sceptre full of fire, which is so very pagan, isn't it? these trumpets appear to me to be part of this angelic ritual sacrifice of the earth, rather than any message of any sort. really. what the passage describes is a ritual destruction of the earth by the gods, articulated here as angels. see, and i'll let you bring in the neoplatonism here, even if i won't let you assign the events to the neoplatonic period.
if that's my seal, i can work with that.
"oh, the earth? it will be gone, soon."
metaphorically, is that what i'm actually doing, though, in my analysis of the situation?
and, then i remembered back to the write-up i did about the seven seals, and joked about the oncoming apocalypse.
i also recently posted something about locusts in africa, suggesting that they just eat the damned things.
well, maybe i did get the seventh seal, which means what, exactly?
i was never particularly religious, but in my pre-teens found myself with the conundrum of all of a sudden having a born-again christian (ex-alcoholic) stepfather who dragged everybody to church with him, so i took the step of sitting down and actually reading the bible, top to bottom, at around the age of 10 or so.
even then, i was actually approaching the thing as an anthropologist. when i was very little, i had a fascination with dinosaurs, as so many young people do. that managed to develop itself into an interest in ancient civilizations, i guess you could say the humanities, well before i turned ten years old. this was still before the internet, so i took advantage of the tools i had before me, which was mostly an encyclopedia set. i would read through the articles on the romans and greeks and follow the footnotes out to the carthiginians and scythians; i especially enjoyed reading about the punic wars, or that's something that i have a clear memory of, at least. when i got a little older, i could take books out of the library, and these compendiums of ancient cultures were the thing i tended to head for.
so, the jews were an ancient civilization, and the bible was their book. to me, it was just like reading any other history book.
i think this also fed into my interest in the game civilization, which i first played on my stepfathers old computer, in the middle of the night, as it was stashed away in the corner of the basement, just outside my bedroom.
i did actually read the thing, though, and it is what it is - a genealogical saga adopted from a variety of sources. but, i didn't actually believe any of it, not any more than i believed in romulus & remus, or in any other origin myth. i've often remarked that i dispensed with christianity fairly promptly by simply reading the source material; it was just impossible to take seriously, even down to the vicious portrayal of god, which was just nefarious.
despite my rationalist tendencies, though, i have to say that it was immediately clear to me that the revelation is an eschatological text; that is, that it is intended to be a description of the end times, however inappropriately, and not a prophecy that has already happened. i would have to assume that any theologian that is attempting to assign the revelation to an already existing historical event, as realized prophecy, has a strange interpretation of the apocalypse, relative to accepted pan-christian dogma.
that said, if this is an end times prophecy, then it leaves it's exact meaning open to interpretation, especially considering how many times it's been retranslated.
so, i'm going to just be literal about this - the seventh seal is when the eighth angel comes in and destroys, or at least severely damages, the earth with a sceptre full of fire, which is so very pagan, isn't it? these trumpets appear to me to be part of this angelic ritual sacrifice of the earth, rather than any message of any sort. really. what the passage describes is a ritual destruction of the earth by the gods, articulated here as angels. see, and i'll let you bring in the neoplatonism here, even if i won't let you assign the events to the neoplatonic period.
if that's my seal, i can work with that.
"oh, the earth? it will be gone, soon."
metaphorically, is that what i'm actually doing, though, in my analysis of the situation?
what's my take on the issue in china?
my immediate analysis of the data was that there must be many more cases than were documented, and that if that were the case then it would be hard to believe that the situation was really under control. it seemed to me that the tactic they were following was to declare a kind of false victory, then blame any second wave on contact with the outside world, as they slowly released more accurate numbers. so, i realized and stated that the truth was probably that there were many, many undocumented cases, due to the high published mortality rate. i don't recall taking a position on whether there were also undocumented deaths.
the story about the urns is plausible on it's face, but it has a kind of familiar feel to it, and could be outright disinformation. i would like to see some independent reporting on this before i jump to believing it. but, note that my disbelief is not strong - i would just like to see the case made a little bit better. for now, some skepticism is really required.
what i do think is clear is that it will not be long before china begins releasing numbers documenting further spread in the country. whether those numbers should be taken at face value or interpreted as a creative narrative for their own domestic audience is going to be an empirical question, in the end.
at some point, they will need to make the numbers add up properly, even if they're creative in how they do it, in order to fit the politburo's nationalist messaging.
it's a constant: marxists think facts are pliable, that truth is meaningless, that maintaining actual knowledge in the public sphere is secondary to maintaining worker morale, in the face of whatever delusion or absurdity. it simply doesn't matter what is true.
but, expect the numbers to add up, eventually. somehow.
my immediate analysis of the data was that there must be many more cases than were documented, and that if that were the case then it would be hard to believe that the situation was really under control. it seemed to me that the tactic they were following was to declare a kind of false victory, then blame any second wave on contact with the outside world, as they slowly released more accurate numbers. so, i realized and stated that the truth was probably that there were many, many undocumented cases, due to the high published mortality rate. i don't recall taking a position on whether there were also undocumented deaths.
the story about the urns is plausible on it's face, but it has a kind of familiar feel to it, and could be outright disinformation. i would like to see some independent reporting on this before i jump to believing it. but, note that my disbelief is not strong - i would just like to see the case made a little bit better. for now, some skepticism is really required.
what i do think is clear is that it will not be long before china begins releasing numbers documenting further spread in the country. whether those numbers should be taken at face value or interpreted as a creative narrative for their own domestic audience is going to be an empirical question, in the end.
at some point, they will need to make the numbers add up properly, even if they're creative in how they do it, in order to fit the politburo's nationalist messaging.
it's a constant: marxists think facts are pliable, that truth is meaningless, that maintaining actual knowledge in the public sphere is secondary to maintaining worker morale, in the face of whatever delusion or absurdity. it simply doesn't matter what is true.
but, expect the numbers to add up, eventually. somehow.
i can't stop reading these poorly written covid-19 articles.
i get some useful information out of them, i guess. numbers, mostly.
but, it's really most comparable to the kind of reaction you'd associate with slowing down at a car crash to observe the wreckage - this is a catastrophe in every way, and i'm not sure people really realize it, yet. there's been a flurry of propaganda recently to insist that the measures are working and the authorities are in control, but it's obviously a gloss over the reality that the measures aren't working and they got caught flat-footed, due to putting too much faith in an unrealistic model (the idea that social distancing would effectively slow the spread of the disease) that utterly failed.
we're going to have a longterm mess to deal with, now - a mess in social services, a mess in housing, a mess in employment, and it's going to get worse the longer this continues on for, with little evidence that it is working - despite loud declarations to the contrary by politicians at all levels, which seem to be operating under some kind of centralized plan.
people right now are probably preoccupied with their day-to-day concerns, and that's reasonable. i'm broadly taken care of, so i'm not blinded by this.
right now, it's the people that are sick that are the priority. but, the near future is going to be very difficult for a much larger number of people that didn't actually get sick. and, i don't think we've collectively clicked into this, yet - i don't think we've fully fathomed what has just happened.
so, i'm sorting through these articles, trying to get a handle on the spin, on the official story. it's proving hard to let go of.
i get some useful information out of them, i guess. numbers, mostly.
but, it's really most comparable to the kind of reaction you'd associate with slowing down at a car crash to observe the wreckage - this is a catastrophe in every way, and i'm not sure people really realize it, yet. there's been a flurry of propaganda recently to insist that the measures are working and the authorities are in control, but it's obviously a gloss over the reality that the measures aren't working and they got caught flat-footed, due to putting too much faith in an unrealistic model (the idea that social distancing would effectively slow the spread of the disease) that utterly failed.
we're going to have a longterm mess to deal with, now - a mess in social services, a mess in housing, a mess in employment, and it's going to get worse the longer this continues on for, with little evidence that it is working - despite loud declarations to the contrary by politicians at all levels, which seem to be operating under some kind of centralized plan.
people right now are probably preoccupied with their day-to-day concerns, and that's reasonable. i'm broadly taken care of, so i'm not blinded by this.
right now, it's the people that are sick that are the priority. but, the near future is going to be very difficult for a much larger number of people that didn't actually get sick. and, i don't think we've collectively clicked into this, yet - i don't think we've fully fathomed what has just happened.
so, i'm sorting through these articles, trying to get a handle on the spin, on the official story. it's proving hard to let go of.
no. wait.
this is the koolaid.
drink up, sheep.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-trump-says-he-may-take-drug-to-treat-coronavirus-questions-states-2/
this is the koolaid.
drink up, sheep.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-trump-says-he-may-take-drug-to-treat-coronavirus-questions-states-2/
i've been quiet.
i've been tired....
at the end of the second day of shopping, which was the 1st, i took a walk downtown in search of soy milk and found two cartons (fwiw, the repackaged organic vanilla soy good has the same stats on the side, but has lost it's distinctive vanilla hue. i initially avoided the rebranding because it looked like they weren't fortifying it as well, but they seem to have fixed that. first, we lose strawberry, now we lose vanilla.....ugh.....and, this stuff was truly the most deliciously healthy elixir you could imagine, too. you should be forced to drink three glasses of this stuff, daily, by law. instead, there's no market for it. because we're collectively a bunch of fucking idiots.). while i was there, i picked up a gram of marijuana at the new store that was downtown, and a small pre-roll for the walk. this was actually mostly medicinal - i know from experience that walking substantive distances with a limp is a lot easier when you're a little bit stoned. so, i smoked through the rest of that on friday, but the combination of things - the panic attack, the overexhaustion and then the marijuana - meant i was mostly using it as a sleep aid. i'd go for a walk, and be out for three or four hours within minutes after coming back in.
on the one hand, i think that i clearly needed some sleep and rest in general, and if it helped with that then great. on the other hand, the day felt sort of wasted overall - i wasted the time, i wasted the pot.
so, i went back on saturday and got myself my biyearly quarter, a ritual i haven't observed since the beginning of 2018. there was no head cave over the summer of 2018, as i was in a straight edge phase, as i sought smoke-free housing. there was no head cave over the winter, as i was still living straight edge. by the summer of 2019, i found myself more interested in partying in detroit than hermiting with a head cave. and, we skipped that this most recent winter solstice as well - partly because i was sick, but mostly because i was laser-focused on trying to get a lot of work done.
i was very sick with a weird pneumonia in october after beethoven's 5th (something i attributed to smoking cigarettes the wrong way due to being handed a 40 of vodka earlier in the night) and again after the plaid/armed weekend in december (something i attributed to a massive joint that was handed to me). i was around a lot of people that had recently traveled, on both weekends. who knows; what i want is an antibody test. it could be a while before we figure out where this thing really came from.
i was planning on getting a small amount for 4/20 and maybe headcaving in july. but, on friday, they announced plans to close the stores indefinitely, so i got my quarter in while i could. it cost me $65 cdn for a quarter of 15% thc marijuana, which is a little on the high side, but not terrible. i'm used to paying $55-60 for a quarter. in fact, it was $59 + tax.
after getting a lot of rest on friday night, i got some cleaning done in here early on saturday morning before i headed out to the store to get the quarter. my knee is better, but it's still bugging me, and it's developed a lot of bruising around it. i don't explicitly remember anything happening, but i must have smashed it into a shopping cart or something. my feet are getting better, but the walk was still a little bit challenging.
and, i was able to locate four more cartons of soy as well, bringing me up to 8, meaning i probably have enough until mid-may. a carton lasts me about 5 days, on average. so, i go through around 6 a month.
i guess i was still exhausted, because i didn't last very long after my first roll on the quarter, and slept more or less the entire afternoon.
what about internet usage?
when i checked yesterday morning, it was the second that had no stats, not the first. oddly. reasonably low stats came in for the 3rd, but they seemed to be offset by a time frame at the server, as it logged 0 hours in off peak (and i know i was online in the morning). so, the numbers have gone down to something more reasonable and expected, but the server and modem also seem to be out of sync. i'll have to check again soon.
am i awake now? let's hope so. but, i may need to sleep this off a bit more, too.
i've been tired....
at the end of the second day of shopping, which was the 1st, i took a walk downtown in search of soy milk and found two cartons (fwiw, the repackaged organic vanilla soy good has the same stats on the side, but has lost it's distinctive vanilla hue. i initially avoided the rebranding because it looked like they weren't fortifying it as well, but they seem to have fixed that. first, we lose strawberry, now we lose vanilla.....ugh.....and, this stuff was truly the most deliciously healthy elixir you could imagine, too. you should be forced to drink three glasses of this stuff, daily, by law. instead, there's no market for it. because we're collectively a bunch of fucking idiots.). while i was there, i picked up a gram of marijuana at the new store that was downtown, and a small pre-roll for the walk. this was actually mostly medicinal - i know from experience that walking substantive distances with a limp is a lot easier when you're a little bit stoned. so, i smoked through the rest of that on friday, but the combination of things - the panic attack, the overexhaustion and then the marijuana - meant i was mostly using it as a sleep aid. i'd go for a walk, and be out for three or four hours within minutes after coming back in.
on the one hand, i think that i clearly needed some sleep and rest in general, and if it helped with that then great. on the other hand, the day felt sort of wasted overall - i wasted the time, i wasted the pot.
so, i went back on saturday and got myself my biyearly quarter, a ritual i haven't observed since the beginning of 2018. there was no head cave over the summer of 2018, as i was in a straight edge phase, as i sought smoke-free housing. there was no head cave over the winter, as i was still living straight edge. by the summer of 2019, i found myself more interested in partying in detroit than hermiting with a head cave. and, we skipped that this most recent winter solstice as well - partly because i was sick, but mostly because i was laser-focused on trying to get a lot of work done.
i was very sick with a weird pneumonia in october after beethoven's 5th (something i attributed to smoking cigarettes the wrong way due to being handed a 40 of vodka earlier in the night) and again after the plaid/armed weekend in december (something i attributed to a massive joint that was handed to me). i was around a lot of people that had recently traveled, on both weekends. who knows; what i want is an antibody test. it could be a while before we figure out where this thing really came from.
i was planning on getting a small amount for 4/20 and maybe headcaving in july. but, on friday, they announced plans to close the stores indefinitely, so i got my quarter in while i could. it cost me $65 cdn for a quarter of 15% thc marijuana, which is a little on the high side, but not terrible. i'm used to paying $55-60 for a quarter. in fact, it was $59 + tax.
after getting a lot of rest on friday night, i got some cleaning done in here early on saturday morning before i headed out to the store to get the quarter. my knee is better, but it's still bugging me, and it's developed a lot of bruising around it. i don't explicitly remember anything happening, but i must have smashed it into a shopping cart or something. my feet are getting better, but the walk was still a little bit challenging.
and, i was able to locate four more cartons of soy as well, bringing me up to 8, meaning i probably have enough until mid-may. a carton lasts me about 5 days, on average. so, i go through around 6 a month.
i guess i was still exhausted, because i didn't last very long after my first roll on the quarter, and slept more or less the entire afternoon.
what about internet usage?
when i checked yesterday morning, it was the second that had no stats, not the first. oddly. reasonably low stats came in for the 3rd, but they seemed to be offset by a time frame at the server, as it logged 0 hours in off peak (and i know i was online in the morning). so, the numbers have gone down to something more reasonable and expected, but the server and modem also seem to be out of sync. i'll have to check again soon.
am i awake now? let's hope so. but, i may need to sleep this off a bit more, too.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Friday, April 3, 2020
so, what's happened over the last few days?
after realizing that the unauthorized traffic on my network was now using my router as a relay, i decided that right then was as good a time as any to go and get groceries for the month, so i completely dismantled everything in the apartment and was out to get some groceries by 7:00 in the morning, with the intent to get everything done with by sunset.
it was on my fourth trip out, around 13:00, that i ended up moving towards the far store, on dougall. i only intended to get some wholesale salami at the deli and then come back, but the deli was closed indefinitely, so i decided to just keep walking, in order to get a specific brand of soy milk. by this time, i'd been on my feet, often lugging bags full of food, for more or less six hours straight, and my feet were incredibly sore. i'd also picked up a slight sprain in my left knee that was giving me a mild limp.
i'd been to the two closer stores earlier in the day, and they were regulating the number of people in the store, but they allowed for more or less free movement within it. the far store, though, was like entering a compound. you begin your entry procedure by lining up around the corner, separated from each other by increments of ground that are defined by tape on the ground, two meters apart, no doubt with substantive error if actually measured, before being given hand sanitizer and then handed a sterilized cart on the way in and slowly making your way into the store, where these restrictions are suddenly lifted almost entirely, until you get into the checkout line.
something unexpected happened as i was in line to enter the store; i felt very faint, and had to sit down for a good twenty minutes or so, where i shivered in a cold sweat. observers no doubt interpreted me as symptomatic; that would be false, as i actually haven't experienced any symptoms at all. i'd been inside for two weeks, solid, remember. rather, it became clear to me right away that i was experiencing an anxiety attack from the lockdown measures put in place, and i was having trouble dealing with it due to overexertion.
this attack hit me a second time, when going through the checkout line, but i was able to shake it off until i got out of the store, and sat down there.
worse, they didn't even have my brand of soy milk.
anxiety attacks are not merely psychological trauma, they are a physical event. the nausea, weakness and sweating i was experiencing took a strong physical toll on me, leaving me exasperatingly exhausted; i did manage to drag myself home, but then i needed to sleep it off, immediately - and, i did. for roughly 12 hours...
after getting myself something to eat and taking another nap, it was all of a sudden 8:00 am all over again. i was absolutely still exhausted, but i wanted the shopping from the month done quickly, so i pulled myself out of bed and went out to finish the task.
the soreness of my feet took minutes to reassert itself, but i was actually able to walk off the limp after a few hours. after a few productive trips, i found myself in possession of everything i needed, except one thing - i couldn't find my brand of soy milk.
the soy i buy is a canadian brand called soy good that is fairly heavily fortified with vitamins. unfortunately, the silk brand seems to be taking over shelf space in most stores, and this brand has lower amounts of vitamins and nutrients than the soy good. i was considering compromising on chocolate soy good over vanilla silk.
i decided to try one more spot downtown - and was successful in locating two cartons. by the time i dragged myself home in the afternoon, i was so exhausted that i passed out yet again for another lengthy sleep. when i first woke up, around 3:00 am, i wasn't sure i'd be able to stand up for a day or two - it was hard to walk to the bathroom, even. but, after eating some food, i was alert and strong enough to get out one more time.
so, for a third day in a row, i found myself ready to get out of the house for groceries at 7:00 am.
at this point, i had everything i need, including soy milk. but, i drink 4-5 cartons of soy milk a month, so i needed more than the two i had been able to locate up to that point. where could i find some? i'd just checked the store downtown, i'd just checked the far store....
it made more sense to me to try the far store, first. did they have my brand? nope.
so, i took a walk south to the walmart. did they have it? nope.
so, i walked around to fred's. nope.
the last place i tried was the close store, where i was going to compromise on the chocolate, and they actually had what i was looking for. so, i grabbed four cartons and brought them to the cash...
"there's a limit of two items for soy milk."
in fact, there was no sign in the section. but, i didn't want to argue with them...
for a third day, i was so exhausted that i had no choice but to sleep - and, for the third day, i woke up feeling like a newborn fawn learning how to walk.
so, i finally turned my network back on on thursday night, after i'd slept the walking off a little, and checked my usage stats early on the 3rd...
i dismantled my network early on the 31st and had it off all day, so i should have had minimal traffic. teksavvy logged a large amount of traffic on this day.
there should have been exactly no traffic on the first. while teksavvy logged some traffic on this day, it was actually a recognizable amount of < 2 gb.
there should have been a small amount of traffic on the 2nd, about what teksavvy logged for the 1st. but, there was no traffic for the 2nd at all...
at that point, i realized what i'd done - i'd confused the server by keeping my modem off for so long, and it then logged me in under the wrong date. so, it logged my stats for the second and filed it under the first. in the process, it seems to have undone whatever was creating the problem.
while i initially was convinced of a police listener, and these outcomes are not mutually exclusive, the isp appears to increasingly be the culprit.
we'll see what happens in the morning.
i should be able to get back to writing that sunsquabi review very soon.
after realizing that the unauthorized traffic on my network was now using my router as a relay, i decided that right then was as good a time as any to go and get groceries for the month, so i completely dismantled everything in the apartment and was out to get some groceries by 7:00 in the morning, with the intent to get everything done with by sunset.
it was on my fourth trip out, around 13:00, that i ended up moving towards the far store, on dougall. i only intended to get some wholesale salami at the deli and then come back, but the deli was closed indefinitely, so i decided to just keep walking, in order to get a specific brand of soy milk. by this time, i'd been on my feet, often lugging bags full of food, for more or less six hours straight, and my feet were incredibly sore. i'd also picked up a slight sprain in my left knee that was giving me a mild limp.
i'd been to the two closer stores earlier in the day, and they were regulating the number of people in the store, but they allowed for more or less free movement within it. the far store, though, was like entering a compound. you begin your entry procedure by lining up around the corner, separated from each other by increments of ground that are defined by tape on the ground, two meters apart, no doubt with substantive error if actually measured, before being given hand sanitizer and then handed a sterilized cart on the way in and slowly making your way into the store, where these restrictions are suddenly lifted almost entirely, until you get into the checkout line.
something unexpected happened as i was in line to enter the store; i felt very faint, and had to sit down for a good twenty minutes or so, where i shivered in a cold sweat. observers no doubt interpreted me as symptomatic; that would be false, as i actually haven't experienced any symptoms at all. i'd been inside for two weeks, solid, remember. rather, it became clear to me right away that i was experiencing an anxiety attack from the lockdown measures put in place, and i was having trouble dealing with it due to overexertion.
this attack hit me a second time, when going through the checkout line, but i was able to shake it off until i got out of the store, and sat down there.
worse, they didn't even have my brand of soy milk.
anxiety attacks are not merely psychological trauma, they are a physical event. the nausea, weakness and sweating i was experiencing took a strong physical toll on me, leaving me exasperatingly exhausted; i did manage to drag myself home, but then i needed to sleep it off, immediately - and, i did. for roughly 12 hours...
after getting myself something to eat and taking another nap, it was all of a sudden 8:00 am all over again. i was absolutely still exhausted, but i wanted the shopping from the month done quickly, so i pulled myself out of bed and went out to finish the task.
the soreness of my feet took minutes to reassert itself, but i was actually able to walk off the limp after a few hours. after a few productive trips, i found myself in possession of everything i needed, except one thing - i couldn't find my brand of soy milk.
the soy i buy is a canadian brand called soy good that is fairly heavily fortified with vitamins. unfortunately, the silk brand seems to be taking over shelf space in most stores, and this brand has lower amounts of vitamins and nutrients than the soy good. i was considering compromising on chocolate soy good over vanilla silk.
i decided to try one more spot downtown - and was successful in locating two cartons. by the time i dragged myself home in the afternoon, i was so exhausted that i passed out yet again for another lengthy sleep. when i first woke up, around 3:00 am, i wasn't sure i'd be able to stand up for a day or two - it was hard to walk to the bathroom, even. but, after eating some food, i was alert and strong enough to get out one more time.
so, for a third day in a row, i found myself ready to get out of the house for groceries at 7:00 am.
at this point, i had everything i need, including soy milk. but, i drink 4-5 cartons of soy milk a month, so i needed more than the two i had been able to locate up to that point. where could i find some? i'd just checked the store downtown, i'd just checked the far store....
it made more sense to me to try the far store, first. did they have my brand? nope.
so, i took a walk south to the walmart. did they have it? nope.
so, i walked around to fred's. nope.
the last place i tried was the close store, where i was going to compromise on the chocolate, and they actually had what i was looking for. so, i grabbed four cartons and brought them to the cash...
"there's a limit of two items for soy milk."
in fact, there was no sign in the section. but, i didn't want to argue with them...
for a third day, i was so exhausted that i had no choice but to sleep - and, for the third day, i woke up feeling like a newborn fawn learning how to walk.
so, i finally turned my network back on on thursday night, after i'd slept the walking off a little, and checked my usage stats early on the 3rd...
i dismantled my network early on the 31st and had it off all day, so i should have had minimal traffic. teksavvy logged a large amount of traffic on this day.
there should have been exactly no traffic on the first. while teksavvy logged some traffic on this day, it was actually a recognizable amount of < 2 gb.
there should have been a small amount of traffic on the 2nd, about what teksavvy logged for the 1st. but, there was no traffic for the 2nd at all...
at that point, i realized what i'd done - i'd confused the server by keeping my modem off for so long, and it then logged me in under the wrong date. so, it logged my stats for the second and filed it under the first. in the process, it seems to have undone whatever was creating the problem.
while i initially was convinced of a police listener, and these outcomes are not mutually exclusive, the isp appears to increasingly be the culprit.
we'll see what happens in the morning.
i should be able to get back to writing that sunsquabi review very soon.
so, i watched this, and let's be clear about what this actually is, and you don't have to take my word for it, you can listen to the doctors state it clearly themselves, repeatedly; this is not a serious scientific briefing and shouldn't be analyzed disingenuously as though it is one, what this is is an attempt to sort of scare people into staying inside, a justification for the economic shutdown as it has already occurred and is likely to continue occurring for quite some time.
they don't show their work, so who knows how they decided that the situation would be so much worse without the steps that have been taken, or if the truth isn't even that it already is, due to an apparent lack of actual testing. but, i'd be missing the point if i were to take the calculation seriously - these are just big numbers designed to reassure you that the steps that they've already taken are working so well, and we need to carry on that much longer.
i don't particularly want to impugn these people, because they legitimately realize that they're going to have capacity issues very soon, and they think they need to drastically alter public behaviour very quickly in order to prevent the system from overflow; the question of exactness is perhaps unimportant when faced with the requirement of such drastic social conditioning. but, i'm supposed to soberly analyze the data, here, and i can't do that, if i can't take it seriously.
they may even fully realize that what they're doing is futile, but they don't have a better idea.
so, this is really a desperate plea: they really, really, really want you to stay inside now, please.
i'm not commenting on the actual modelling.
slides here:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-covid-projections-1.5519575
they don't show their work, so who knows how they decided that the situation would be so much worse without the steps that have been taken, or if the truth isn't even that it already is, due to an apparent lack of actual testing. but, i'd be missing the point if i were to take the calculation seriously - these are just big numbers designed to reassure you that the steps that they've already taken are working so well, and we need to carry on that much longer.
i don't particularly want to impugn these people, because they legitimately realize that they're going to have capacity issues very soon, and they think they need to drastically alter public behaviour very quickly in order to prevent the system from overflow; the question of exactness is perhaps unimportant when faced with the requirement of such drastic social conditioning. but, i'm supposed to soberly analyze the data, here, and i can't do that, if i can't take it seriously.
they may even fully realize that what they're doing is futile, but they don't have a better idea.
so, this is really a desperate plea: they really, really, really want you to stay inside now, please.
i'm not commenting on the actual modelling.
slides here:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-covid-projections-1.5519575
While aggressive measures (e.g., widespread antiviral use and restriction of movement) to attempt to contain or slow an emerging pandemic in its earliest stages were previously considered possible on the basis of modeling, experience from the 2009 pandemic has resulted in general agreement that such attempts are impractical, if not impossible.
Thursday, April 2, 2020
so, i've done a lot of rambling about this topic, and i just want to summarize and clarify my arguments and analysis and commentary, so that my position is clear enough.
1) the mortality rate of the coronavirus appears to be roughly comparable to, if not a little lower than, the spanish flu epidemic, which was a very bad flu year. i was always careful to qualify that i meant it was on par with a strong or novel flu strain, and i think the data has upheld the point. actually. however, it's important to point out that while the spanish flu had substantive mortality in young people, and was especially hard on children, almost everybody that dies from the coronavirus is over 60.
2) pandemics in and of themselves are not cause for particular alarm; we have pandemics all of the time. it's a scary word, maybe? it shouldn't be.
3) if you're a young and healthy person, the probability of contracting this disease and dying from it while you're out and about is in the same category of risk as getting in a car accident, which would be much less likely than getting eaten by a lion, back in the old days. we all have no choice but to take acceptable risks on a day-to-day basis in order to survive, or go crazy and lock ourselves inside.
4) given the truth of the above statement, my argument against social distancing was always related to the question of it's practicality, rather than it's theoretical efficacy. is it true that if we could imagine ourselves all just staying inside for the next 6-8 weeks then the virus would die? sure. but, how could you even imagine doing that? you need people to distribute food, you need people to deliver health care, etc; the virus isn't going to avoid these people just because they're labeled 'essential' or something. then, given that some spread is unavoidable without having everybody stay inside, what's the point of these partial restrictions? if a policy is likely to be ineffective, it should be abandoned.
5) if social distancing is in truth an unrealizable theoretical abstraction that can't exist in real life, then substantive spread is unavoidable, and measures need to be taken to adapt. these measures include ramping up the healthcare system to ensure it has enough equipment and taking special precautions to isolate the most vulnerable from the effects of rampant spread, most importantly lockdowns on long term care facilities. aggressive steps to adapt should have been adopted almost immediately.
6) as the virus cannot truly be stopped by statist tactics, we must instead wait for it to run it's course. only then will the number of cases come down.
7) in the longrun, this virus is almost certainly a new fact of life. if we will not take aggressive steps to protect the vulnerable from it, we will need to accept what will happen to them.
my argument against these draconian laws has been, from the start, that they are not rooted in sound science and are unlikely to work. i suggested some alternative strategies that i felt would be more successful, instead.
we can't know if my suggestions would have been more effective.
but, we can be certain that social distancing has failed, as any sober analysis would have concluded it must. nobody should be surprised that this didn't work. the lockdowns of vulnerable populations are coming, but they are likely too late, and they are happening in parallel with more general restrictions on everyone's freedom, which will be increasingly ineffective.
rather, the more substantive effect of these restrictive laws will likely be to slow down widespread immunity, thereby prolonging the process, and also spurring the virus' evolution, and consequently infecting more vulnerable people as it happens.
they're probably pushing 20% contracted in new york city, now. expect it to burn out around five to six thousand.
1) the mortality rate of the coronavirus appears to be roughly comparable to, if not a little lower than, the spanish flu epidemic, which was a very bad flu year. i was always careful to qualify that i meant it was on par with a strong or novel flu strain, and i think the data has upheld the point. actually. however, it's important to point out that while the spanish flu had substantive mortality in young people, and was especially hard on children, almost everybody that dies from the coronavirus is over 60.
2) pandemics in and of themselves are not cause for particular alarm; we have pandemics all of the time. it's a scary word, maybe? it shouldn't be.
3) if you're a young and healthy person, the probability of contracting this disease and dying from it while you're out and about is in the same category of risk as getting in a car accident, which would be much less likely than getting eaten by a lion, back in the old days. we all have no choice but to take acceptable risks on a day-to-day basis in order to survive, or go crazy and lock ourselves inside.
4) given the truth of the above statement, my argument against social distancing was always related to the question of it's practicality, rather than it's theoretical efficacy. is it true that if we could imagine ourselves all just staying inside for the next 6-8 weeks then the virus would die? sure. but, how could you even imagine doing that? you need people to distribute food, you need people to deliver health care, etc; the virus isn't going to avoid these people just because they're labeled 'essential' or something. then, given that some spread is unavoidable without having everybody stay inside, what's the point of these partial restrictions? if a policy is likely to be ineffective, it should be abandoned.
5) if social distancing is in truth an unrealizable theoretical abstraction that can't exist in real life, then substantive spread is unavoidable, and measures need to be taken to adapt. these measures include ramping up the healthcare system to ensure it has enough equipment and taking special precautions to isolate the most vulnerable from the effects of rampant spread, most importantly lockdowns on long term care facilities. aggressive steps to adapt should have been adopted almost immediately.
6) as the virus cannot truly be stopped by statist tactics, we must instead wait for it to run it's course. only then will the number of cases come down.
7) in the longrun, this virus is almost certainly a new fact of life. if we will not take aggressive steps to protect the vulnerable from it, we will need to accept what will happen to them.
my argument against these draconian laws has been, from the start, that they are not rooted in sound science and are unlikely to work. i suggested some alternative strategies that i felt would be more successful, instead.
we can't know if my suggestions would have been more effective.
but, we can be certain that social distancing has failed, as any sober analysis would have concluded it must. nobody should be surprised that this didn't work. the lockdowns of vulnerable populations are coming, but they are likely too late, and they are happening in parallel with more general restrictions on everyone's freedom, which will be increasingly ineffective.
rather, the more substantive effect of these restrictive laws will likely be to slow down widespread immunity, thereby prolonging the process, and also spurring the virus' evolution, and consequently infecting more vulnerable people as it happens.
they're probably pushing 20% contracted in new york city, now. expect it to burn out around five to six thousand.
we thought we could control the spread of a virus. lol.
let me ask you this - might social distancing measures actually spur the evolution of the virus? if it's harder to catch, only the mutations most susceptible to contagion will...i'm trying to avoid using terms relating to procreation, or generations, as that implies the virus is alive, and that's a touchy subject, but the virus is rna, which means it exists in an evolutionary context, and it will evolve, it will adapt, to the environment.
i do believe that there is historical data to suggest that a virus is it's most reactive, it's most adaptive, and it's most virulent, immediately after taking on a new host - this is a feisty little piece of rna, it just jumped hosts and it's no doubt got a lot more adapting to do; an anthropomorphized concept of rna mutation, but we do know that mutations do tend to be more plentiful around a speciation event, and in the populations most directly ancestral to that event.
i'm going to write a bit more about this soon.
we should have spent our resources on special precautions for those that most required them.
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
today's usage stats are...
wan: 5637276 down / 1934306 up
lan: 3873317 down / 2636558 up
wireless: 0 down / 0 up
this works out to:
wan: 8.06 gb down / 2.77 gb up
lan: 5.54 gb down / 3.77 gb up
are those number correct?
no.
there was some low bandwidth streaming at youtube overnight, but it didn't add up to 5.5 gb. that's way, way too much bandwidth.
so, i'm going to reset everything again, powercycle, etc.
wan: 5637276 down / 1934306 up
lan: 3873317 down / 2636558 up
wireless: 0 down / 0 up
this works out to:
wan: 8.06 gb down / 2.77 gb up
lan: 5.54 gb down / 3.77 gb up
are those number correct?
no.
there was some low bandwidth streaming at youtube overnight, but it didn't add up to 5.5 gb. that's way, way too much bandwidth.
so, i'm going to reset everything again, powercycle, etc.
Monday, March 30, 2020
this is a central component of our existing legal foundation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Big_M_Drug_Mart_Ltd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Big_M_Drug_Mart_Ltd
this has already been ruled unconstitutional repeatedly and i would stand in solidarity with businesses that defy this order and stay open.
i would encourage somebody to challenge this, legally.
https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/most-quebec-stores-will-be-closed-on-sundays-as-coronavirus-cases-mount/wcm/ca148c14-0557-4145-b5ff-d173473baef8/
i would encourage somebody to challenge this, legally.
https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/most-quebec-stores-will-be-closed-on-sundays-as-coronavirus-cases-mount/wcm/ca148c14-0557-4145-b5ff-d173473baef8/
alright, ontario. let's see a show of force against fascism, here.
this is not constitutional, and it's not evidence-based. it's just fascist bullshit.
ontarians rights are under attack?
what do we do? stand up, fight back!
let's overrun these barricades. let's march through the streets. let's make sure that the government knows that it can't do this kind of bullshit and get away with it, that it needs to be addressing the problem at it's source, and not passing laws that make everybody suffer, based on no evidence at all.
let's put doug ford in his place, on this.
i'm not a park person myself, but i'd challenge you to present me any actual science that suggests this is in any way dangerous to anybody. not speculation, not hyperbole, not "expert advice" - actual peer-reviewed science.
*crickets*
so, i don't think they're being reckless at all, and i will stand in solidarity with people that are pushing back against unreasonable and evidence-free restrictions on personal freedom, of which i would agree this is defined as.
if we all simply avoid the elderly as much as possible, we should be able to get through this without the need for draconian rules.
and, i hope that people continue to prioritize their freedom, and continue to push back.
this is a review of the bummer/buildings show at ufo on feb 24, 2020.
the second act was called buildings, and are a little more elaborate, a little more developed in their sound, and a little less boneheaded, over all. i had not heard of this act before, but, looking into it, learned that they're on their fourth record, after some lengthy down periods. they're still fundamentally a northwestern punk band, but, and i suppose this was always true of the best northwestern punk bands, they're pulling in influences from a collection of related genres - shoegaze, no wave, noise rock and a little bit of psychedelic rock, or doom metal, as well. i wouldn't quite say it sounds contemporary, but it could be mistaken for it, if that makes sense.
as mentioned, i was kind of keen to get out of the house; this was my third trip out this year, but my first at a show like this, which is also in a genre that is demonstrating increasing scarcity amidst an aging core audience. i'm not giving up on new music any time soon, especially new electronic music, but you do have to expect me to act my age sometimes, too. this is the kind of music i grew up with....
a local act called teener closed the show, as they frequently do whenever bands of this style come through town. i guess they're just kind of the go-to to fill out the bill, for right now. i've consequently seen them a couple of times. on this night, they played as a three-piece because their singer had strep-throat.
this is marble bar in detroit, which is more often a dance club; i was catching fly pan am in windsor, on this night.
it actually didn't feel that bad at this point, as the wind had died down. or, so i thought, anyways.
as i was walking, i suddenly started to become cognizant of the reality that i was in a dangerous place, temperature wise. my face was experiencing mild frostbite. worse, i found myself fighting a sudden urge to sit down, which is very bad news, in that situation.
i went to an unusual elementary school on an army base that had a very small number of students and found myself in a split 5/6 class, twice - in grade 5 and then again in grade 6, and in fact with the same teacher both years. the instruction was often scattered, anachronistic or outright absent. as such, one thing that i found myself doing was watching a tv series called the voyage of the mimi, and doing what was essentially english-class style reading comprehension in place of actual science instruction.
and, i did get home.
and, i warmed myself up in a warm blanket.
and, i ate some nachos.
and, i took a hot shower.
and, i watched the debates.
and i got some sleep...
what do you do when you plan around going to two concerts within a few days, under the expectation that the weather won't be so bad for either, and then come up against the fact that the weather is actually going to be absolutely awful for the second, at the last minute?
you made sacrifices for the first show, so you don't want to cut your losses if you can avoid it. maybe you skipped a beer. maybe you came home an hour early. whatever it was, you want to tough it out, if you can, so that the sacrifices you made were not in vain.
i woke up on this day to a blizzard warning, which is not much of a challenge for an ottawan, with the important caveat that finding a way home at the end of the night was truly essential, and the border was consequently somewhat of an unwanted and annoying barrier. canadians don't fear the cold, but we do respect it; we know when to push it, but we also are very conscious of when not to, because we've all been in those situations, where we're teetering on the brink of hypothermia; unless, of course, that we were foolish enough to die of exposure, in which case we don't have to worry about making that mistake again. the benefit of hindsight is 20/20, right? glib humour aside, i would not have wanted to wander too far from the tunnel on this night and risk being found in a snow bank and, thankfully, i didn't need to - the venue is walking distance from the tunnel, something i wish i could take advantage of more often, nowadays. detroit isn't detroit anymore, everything has been exported to the suburbs....
that said, i realized pretty quickly that the weather was about as brutal as i could tolerate in the attire i left the house in. it's not like i was really a big fan of either of these acts, i really just wanted to get out of the house for a few beers and a loud, boneheaded rock show in what i thought would be acceptable weather after being couped up since december, but the wisdom of the excursion was admittedly somewhat questionable; in hindsight, though, given that the rest of 2020 is more or less cancelled, i'm actually glad that i managed to get out. it could be a while before i get another chance.....if i even survive the boredom...
it's not that the temperature, itself, was even that bad; in truth, it actually really wasn't. the issue on this night was more about the wind, and the brutality of walking through it. standing in one spot for a while actually really wasn't that bad. it was moving through the -20 windchills and the blowing, blinding snow....
there were no pancake breakfasts on this night, though, once i succeeded in trudging my way through the snow to the venue.
i was expecting a late show, so i didn't miss anything by showing up late, thankfully.
the first band was from kansas (why is kansas in missouri, anyways?), and i'm more or less just going to post the video. while they have a more melodic component to them, they fundamentally exist in the same space as a goofy, boneheaded band like the melvins, meaning i can only really truly enjoy this from a bit of a distance, but sometimes that's good enough for the night. sometimes that's all you want, and all you need to enjoy a few hours of escape....
there were no pancake breakfasts on this night, though, once i succeeded in trudging my way through the snow to the venue.
i was expecting a late show, so i didn't miss anything by showing up late, thankfully.
the first band was from kansas (why is kansas in missouri, anyways?), and i'm more or less just going to post the video. while they have a more melodic component to them, they fundamentally exist in the same space as a goofy, boneheaded band like the melvins, meaning i can only really truly enjoy this from a bit of a distance, but sometimes that's good enough for the night. sometimes that's all you want, and all you need to enjoy a few hours of escape....
the second act was called buildings, and are a little more elaborate, a little more developed in their sound, and a little less boneheaded, over all. i had not heard of this act before, but, looking into it, learned that they're on their fourth record, after some lengthy down periods. they're still fundamentally a northwestern punk band, but, and i suppose this was always true of the best northwestern punk bands, they're pulling in influences from a collection of related genres - shoegaze, no wave, noise rock and a little bit of psychedelic rock, or doom metal, as well. i wouldn't quite say it sounds contemporary, but it could be mistaken for it, if that makes sense.
as mentioned, i was kind of keen to get out of the house; this was my third trip out this year, but my first at a show like this, which is also in a genre that is demonstrating increasing scarcity amidst an aging core audience. i'm not giving up on new music any time soon, especially new electronic music, but you do have to expect me to act my age sometimes, too. this is the kind of music i grew up with....
a local act called teener closed the show, as they frequently do whenever bands of this style come through town. i guess they're just kind of the go-to to fill out the bill, for right now. i've consequently seen them a couple of times. on this night, they played as a three-piece because their singer had strep-throat.
this is marble bar in detroit, which is more often a dance club; i was catching fly pan am in windsor, on this night.
i was out in plenty of time to catch the bus, and eventually got home to canada after what was a somewhat lengthy wait at the bus stop with some very cold kids coming back from an edm party at the magic stick that cost them each $50 to get in. they had just missed the previous bus, and were consequently seriously considering calling a cab, somewhat naive at the cost - i had to talk them out of it, although there was almost enough of them there to justify the $60 fee up-front, if they hadn't already bought tickets.
it actually didn't feel that bad at this point, as the wind had died down. or, so i thought, anyways.
i did try villain's a second time, but i didn't recognize the bartender. somebody outside recognized me, though. i bummed a smoke, but i didn't stay; i was starting to feel the cold, and knew i had to get in. that respect for the cold became a dominant concern, and when that happens it is sudden and it is absolute - you get home, and you don't fuck around...
i need to reiterate that, if you were to check the forecast, you wouldn't be led to believe it was a particularly cold night. further, i had a toque and gloves, in addition to a sweater, with my overcoat. i was actually dressed relatively well. but, the fact that i had at that point been outside for well over an hour in subfreezing high humidity, coupled with the wind, which had picked back up again, was the kind of thing that can shut you down for good, as the icicles start building up on your hair, and the frost begins to claim you as it's own.
as i was walking, i suddenly started to become cognizant of the reality that i was in a dangerous place, temperature wise. my face was experiencing mild frostbite. worse, i found myself fighting a sudden urge to sit down, which is very bad news, in that situation.
i went to an unusual elementary school on an army base that had a very small number of students and found myself in a split 5/6 class, twice - in grade 5 and then again in grade 6, and in fact with the same teacher both years. the instruction was often scattered, anachronistic or outright absent. as such, one thing that i found myself doing was watching a tv series called the voyage of the mimi, and doing what was essentially english-class style reading comprehension in place of actual science instruction.
in hindsight, i think some heavy criticism of the curriculum is well-warranted, but it did teach me valuable life lessons about hypothermia; you don't want to experience a sensation of warmth when you know you should be cold, and you don't want to sit down. so, i dragged myself, i pushed myself - i talked out loud, i counted, i did everything i could to make sure that i strenuously avoided any thoughts about stopping.
and, i did get home.
and, i warmed myself up in a warm blanket.
and, i ate some nachos.
and, i took a hot shower.
and, i watched the debates.
and i got some sleep...
this is a review of the man or astroman show at el club on feb 24, 2020.
this is another show that i instantly realized i had to get to, whether the weather was going to cooperate or not, and then almost missed, this time due to the need to sleep a little bit before the show.
i can't claim it was much of an exciting night outside of the show, though; there were no adventures to report, no conversations of particular interest. my attention was largely focused on trying to get to the venue before the rain started (which i failed at.), and then in getting myself home in the rain after the show. it was an early night, and i arrived late, missing both opening acts.
they did play some newer material, and i noted in a previous post that it's leaning towards a riffier, dirtier, almost grungier kind of sound that is maybe a little less campy and more evocative of the rougher edges of the american southwest. they also brought out a dot matrix printer and performed a reinterpreted piece from eeviac to give the guitarist time to change a string; it reminded me a little of autechre's gantz graf, but i doubt that meant much to the crowd. they were, overall, though, exactly what would be expected, and i think that's what most people wanted.
there was some talk about the venue in the smoking section, and i'm going to repost my initial analysis to that question. it's not that i'm unsympathetic to the concern, it's that i'm not sure how substantive it actually is.
i haven't turned the laptop back on yet. i've been dreading it. it should come up out of hibernation, but if it doesn't then i'll have to reimage.
let's hope that i can get the clean-up finished before i crash for a few hours this morning.
i am planning on hitting the grunge show tonight. the damage last night wasn't that bad, because i was able to use the balance on the debit card, and i just avoided buying beer. so, i didn't spend nearly what i said - it was $23 usd for the ticket, $10 usd at the 7/11 and $10 cdn for the bus. yes, it costs me $5 to cross the border and $5 to get back. and, yes, it adds up. it's still cheaper to live here, though.
essentially, my choice to avoid buying expensive beer at el club last night means i'm good to go for cheap beer at ufo tonight. yeah, i didn't set the fucking prices, don't look at me. if it was reasonable, i would have bought at least one..
i'm waiting until i can order last sunday before i do these february reviews all at once. but, there is still a lot of lingering concern regarding the fiasco at el club, with people worrying about crossing boycott lines. personally? i'm a free thinker, i'm not interested in being told what to do by the central committee on ethical consumption in late capitalism, and they can rule on the issue all they want, i don't give a fuck. but, i have to be honest - i didn't find the arguments i heard to be convincing.
and, you can browbeat me on it if you want, i don't really care. what i want is a convincing argument, not a demand that i follow your moral code, which i may or may not agree with.
but, i'll be equally clear that i wouldn't go to a place that i thought was actually horribly sexist or horribly racist. for a bastion of white supremacism, the bar seems to have a lot of black employees (they always did. it's detroit.) and seems to cater disproportionately to the black community. if there was a problem, they made a legitimate attempt to adjust to it.
that said, i don't go there on random nights, either, for the reason that they've largely exited my sphere of interest; this has largely not been much of an issue for me for the reason that the bar no longer caters to my tastes, anyways. so, i haven't been finding myself in this conflicted space, where i'm trying to figure out if i should go or not because i haven't had any interest in what they're booking, anyways.
the bar has a great sound system. it's not likely that random touring acts have any idea what happened, so i'm not going to tar them by association for something they don't know about, whatever the merits of it. so, if a band i like does play the space, i don't see any logical reason why i wouldn't go.
man or astroman formed in the early 90s and have been one of my favourite acts for a very long time. getting to see them was a kind of a bucket list thing. while the sound system at el club really is great, and the band does legitimately have substantive latin influences, i'll also acknowledge that it would have been a lot easier had they played the magic stick, or perhaps delux fluxx. but, for whatever reason, they didn't and i had to make a choice between missing out on a band i've been listening to for most of my life or an empty statement of solidarity with something that i'm not really convinced of the value of.
that's not a hard choice, for me.
i'm sorry if you find that upsetting, but i think you're wrong.
this is a more accurate representation of the set than the previous video i posted:
i walked right back to the tunnel after the show, took the bus back to canada and tried to stop to talk to somebody at villain's on the way home, but they were closed - as they always are on monday nights.
there were nachos, there was a shower & there was some sleep.
this is another show that i instantly realized i had to get to, whether the weather was going to cooperate or not, and then almost missed, this time due to the need to sleep a little bit before the show.
i can't claim it was much of an exciting night outside of the show, though; there were no adventures to report, no conversations of particular interest. my attention was largely focused on trying to get to the venue before the rain started (which i failed at.), and then in getting myself home in the rain after the show. it was an early night, and i arrived late, missing both opening acts.
they did play some newer material, and i noted in a previous post that it's leaning towards a riffier, dirtier, almost grungier kind of sound that is maybe a little less campy and more evocative of the rougher edges of the american southwest. they also brought out a dot matrix printer and performed a reinterpreted piece from eeviac to give the guitarist time to change a string; it reminded me a little of autechre's gantz graf, but i doubt that meant much to the crowd. they were, overall, though, exactly what would be expected, and i think that's what most people wanted.
there was some talk about the venue in the smoking section, and i'm going to repost my initial analysis to that question. it's not that i'm unsympathetic to the concern, it's that i'm not sure how substantive it actually is.
i haven't turned the laptop back on yet. i've been dreading it. it should come up out of hibernation, but if it doesn't then i'll have to reimage.
let's hope that i can get the clean-up finished before i crash for a few hours this morning.
i am planning on hitting the grunge show tonight. the damage last night wasn't that bad, because i was able to use the balance on the debit card, and i just avoided buying beer. so, i didn't spend nearly what i said - it was $23 usd for the ticket, $10 usd at the 7/11 and $10 cdn for the bus. yes, it costs me $5 to cross the border and $5 to get back. and, yes, it adds up. it's still cheaper to live here, though.
essentially, my choice to avoid buying expensive beer at el club last night means i'm good to go for cheap beer at ufo tonight. yeah, i didn't set the fucking prices, don't look at me. if it was reasonable, i would have bought at least one..
i'm waiting until i can order last sunday before i do these february reviews all at once. but, there is still a lot of lingering concern regarding the fiasco at el club, with people worrying about crossing boycott lines. personally? i'm a free thinker, i'm not interested in being told what to do by the central committee on ethical consumption in late capitalism, and they can rule on the issue all they want, i don't give a fuck. but, i have to be honest - i didn't find the arguments i heard to be convincing.
and, you can browbeat me on it if you want, i don't really care. what i want is a convincing argument, not a demand that i follow your moral code, which i may or may not agree with.
but, i'll be equally clear that i wouldn't go to a place that i thought was actually horribly sexist or horribly racist. for a bastion of white supremacism, the bar seems to have a lot of black employees (they always did. it's detroit.) and seems to cater disproportionately to the black community. if there was a problem, they made a legitimate attempt to adjust to it.
that said, i don't go there on random nights, either, for the reason that they've largely exited my sphere of interest; this has largely not been much of an issue for me for the reason that the bar no longer caters to my tastes, anyways. so, i haven't been finding myself in this conflicted space, where i'm trying to figure out if i should go or not because i haven't had any interest in what they're booking, anyways.
the bar has a great sound system. it's not likely that random touring acts have any idea what happened, so i'm not going to tar them by association for something they don't know about, whatever the merits of it. so, if a band i like does play the space, i don't see any logical reason why i wouldn't go.
man or astroman formed in the early 90s and have been one of my favourite acts for a very long time. getting to see them was a kind of a bucket list thing. while the sound system at el club really is great, and the band does legitimately have substantive latin influences, i'll also acknowledge that it would have been a lot easier had they played the magic stick, or perhaps delux fluxx. but, for whatever reason, they didn't and i had to make a choice between missing out on a band i've been listening to for most of my life or an empty statement of solidarity with something that i'm not really convinced of the value of.
that's not a hard choice, for me.
i'm sorry if you find that upsetting, but i think you're wrong.
this is a more accurate representation of the set than the previous video i posted:
i walked right back to the tunnel after the show, took the bus back to canada and tried to stop to talk to somebody at villain's on the way home, but they were closed - as they always are on monday nights.
there were nachos, there was a shower & there was some sleep.
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