i support this individual's rights to wear what they want, when they want, regardless of whether it upsets people or not.

i hope they look the cops in the eye, point blank, and tell them to fuck off.

and, i would suggest to the police in the area that they surely have better things to do than this.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/30/cops-hunt-person-wearing-creepy-17th-century-plague-doctor-costume/

there's some more information on this study here, which i can't find.

https://www.firstpost.com/health/study-claims-there-are-11-strains-of-sars-cov-2-heres-how-viruses-mutate-8309091.html

punks have been arguing for decades that these dumb hippies will be the fucking death of us all.

here we are....

if there's 11 different strains, do you need 11 different vaccines?

not necessarily. but, the vaccine would need to account for all 11 strains to actually be halfways effective - as well as continually evolving strains.

it would, however, mean that you could potentially catch it 11 different times - and that antibody tests likely only test for one or maybe a few strains.

do you see the futility of what we're doing, yet?

as stated previously, the more that trump argues that the virus was created by the chinese military, the more likely it is that it was created by the pentagon.

we've seen this repeatedly, now - the more vicious their projections are, the more guilty they are.

i again need to ask - what kind of effect has imperfect distancing (inevitable in a free society) had on the virus' evolution?

consider three scenarios. this is what einstein would call a 'thought experiment', meaning it's valid in abstraction, but you need to collect data to see if it's real or not.

1) scenario a is where you have no social distancing at all. in such a scenario, you would have no selective pressure on the virus to jump over large physical distances (via aerosols, or over surfaces). so, it is less likely that the virus would evolve to be more easily transmissible over wider physical distances, and the most widespread strains of the virus would be the least virulent ones.

2) scenario b is imperfect social distancing, where you might have people standing just close enough that transmission is barely possible, and you might have places (like debit machines) that almost everybody in a specific region touches with their hands, after or before touching their faces, without even being cognizant of it. this would create very strong selective pressures for the virus to mutate to become more transmissible. in scenario b, the most widespread strains of the virus would also be the most virulent.

3) scenario c is perfect social distancing, where a complete lack of transmission actually kills the virus off.

it doesn't take a dialectic to realize that scenario b is the most likely one when distancing rules are implemented in a free society. in the long run, that might be worse than scenario a. scenario c would be considered to be utopian and unrealistic.

if i understand correctly, this study is suggesting that the strain out of china was many times less transmissible than the strain that is dominant, now, and developed outside of the country - perhaps as a result of selective pressures created by distancing.

this should be a stark warning for future tactics.

viruses evolve.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/virus-has-mutated-into-10-types-one-now-dominant-across-regions-study/articleshow/75417399.cms

right when i was about to get started early this morning, i ended up with a migraine. i may have triggered it by not eating...and then eating...

i tried to shake it off a few times, but it doesn't work like that - you have to sleep. so, i slept for essentially the entire calendar date.

the type of migraines i've been getting since i moved here come with auras, meaning you can't do anything when they click in, too. you can't even read because you can't see. you're just stuck.

i don't know if i'm up yet.

i'd rather make an uncoerced choice that is wrong than be a slave and do what i'm told and be right.

and, then, in the end, i'm not going to fault myself for not listening to bad logic based on authority - i'm going to call for your head for lying to me and everybody else.

"you just need to put your faith in experts and do what you're told!"

no. that's called fascism...

in a democracy, we consult experts for their views but we ultimately analyze data independently and then make decisions together.

if you withhold information, or give me bad data, and then tell me to do things that don't make sense because you didn't give me information, then i'm going to ignore you and make the wrong choice based on the deficit of information - and i'll keep doing it, too.

the right answer is not to tell me to listen, it's to give me useful data.

so, they couldn't get them from china and made them themselves.

based on what strain, though?

https://abcnews.go.com/International/crucial-coronavirus-antibody-tests-destined-york-city-caught/story?id=70199489

so, yes - if there are multiple strains of this virus going around, as appears to be the case, then an antibody test would only be useful in testing for one strain, and would not provide immunity for the rest of them.

that was the situation we wanted to avoid, but may have been the truth from the start.

if governments want citizens to trust them, they need to stop lying to them as a starting point.

it would be very useful if the various authorities would be more transparent so that people can make more informed decisions based on more reliable data.

i don't want to be talked down to to prevent me from panicking.

i'm not going to mindlessly do what i'm told.

if you present me with nonsense (like the idea that antibodies don't provide immunity), i'm going to criticize it; if it turns out that you told me that because you were trying to obfuscate the truth because you didn't want me to overreact, then that was exceedingly bad governance, because i didn't take you on authority, i ignored you for being absurd.

you should have been honest in the first place.

if there's multiple viruses, antibody testing would also indeed be unreliable - in the sense that you're only testing for one virus. and, you could look at that either way...

are these antibody tests being based on chinese data or european data? i know that a lot of the kits came from china.

if we're testing for the chinese virus in new york, and find that 30% of the people tested have antibodies, that is an intriguing result, but may ultimately have little to do with the outbreak that occurred, which was in the european virus. i've been scratching my head wondering why the numbers are so low. it could be that they're testing for the wrong virus, and that an antibody test for the european strain would produce even higher antibody prevalence.

i know this is a flurry of information. for me, it's confirming a lot of things i already realized. for you, it could be alarming and concerning.

the more information i see, the more unlikely it seems to me that any sort of lockdown is ever going to be remotely effective.

we're going to have to learn to live with this.

the new normal cannot be fascism.

the new normal is co-existence with the virus.

if we have different strains in circulation already, that answers the question as to how some people could get "reinfected" - they've come into contact with multiple strains.

there were only ever two answers to this question - either the testing was in error, or the virus has mutated. it could be a little of both.

but, if there are actually two or more viruses out there and not just one, that's also a big concern for vaccine testing...

if we're basing our vaccines on chinese data, it might not work on the european strain, which appears to be far worse.

this preprint article is arguing that the strains are showing the potential for dramatic differences in mortality rates - indicating that the virus that showed up in italy and traveled to new york may be much deadlier than the one that came to the west coast from china.

and, that may be a kind of epiphany in analyzing the data.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20060160v1.full.pdf

it's an open - but important - question as to whether there are differences in mortality associated with these different strains, which are already building up quickly.

giving people drugs that you know are going to increase the mutation rate even further is playing russian roulette - it's true the most mutations are not beneficial, but this is a numbers game, in the end. the more mutations you create, the more likely it is that you get one that works.

the threat of prescribing this drug and accidentally creating a superstrain out of it should not be underestimated.

https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-020-02344-6

re: remdesivir.

this is the drug that was widely touted as a way to fight ebola and ultimately didn't work. thankfully, we have an ebola vaccine, now. so, my best guess is that they're essentially trying to find a way to profit off of a waste product; the idea of the fda approving this for covid-19 appears to be driven by capitalism, rather than science.

but, i remember there being concerns about this drug not only not working in disrupting rna replication, but it actually leading to mutations in translation. if you think about it, that actually makes sense - if you're trying to interfere with replication, and you don't actually succeed in stopping it, you're probably going to at least succeed in messing with it. this is very bad, in context.

the claim with ebola was that the mutations were not beneficial, so it didn't matter anyways. but, that sounds more like good luck than predictive science.

the primary thing we should be concerned about right now is preventing mutations - that's why there needs to be so much testing. approving a drug that doesn't actually work and may instead increase the mutation rate is the absolute worst thing that could be done.

now, as was the case with the hydrocholoroquine, maybe there's some other reasoning behind this that will clarify itself in time.

but, given that this drug has not worked well in the past, my primary concern would be about it's effect on the mutation rate - that is a potential disaster in the making.

again: i don't know exactly what the chiefs want.

but, if it's something like the nisga'a agreement, which is what it sounds like, then that's a major step forwards.

they needed a treaty first, then they can talk about signing contracts with oil companies - which i will oppose, regardless.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/wetsuweten-pact-hereditary-chiefs-onboard-but-elected-chiefs-now-rescind-approval

"that's socialism!"

touche.

further, people that repeatedly try to get into the hospital via the back door are going to inevitably end up getting banned from the hospital altogether, due to their antisocial behaviour - and that's the right thing to do, in context.

no, the hospital analogy is almost perfect.

suppose somebody found a way in through the back door of a hospital and snuck into an empty room. when discovered, what would happen?

the doctor would no doubt make a snap triage decision; if they had a knife in their neck or something, then, yeah, they'd need to be dealt with first. otherwise, they're going to receive a warning not to do that again, and be escorted back to the waiting room - meaning they're going to have to wait even longer than they would have if they just did it right in the first place.

all i'm really saying is that we should be properly triaging refugees, which means bringing them back to the waiting room when they sneak into the country via the back door.

.....and, that is a fundamentally egalitarian and inherently left-wing position.

to somebody like chrystia freeland, an independent analysis is merely second-guessing and distorting the narrative.

the state defines what is real, and what isn't - and anybody challenging it is a terrorist.

they don't want independent analysis.

they want you to obsequiously shut up and do what you're told.

so, i do suspect that the death rate is climbing at a much higher rate than is being reported.

and, i do know that they're undertesting, by all appearances on purpose.

but, i can't make up numbers. they'll have to come out in the wash...

all i can do is point to the delays, and explain that they're making the officially reported numbers entirely useless to analyze - and that it seems to be intentional.

say what you want about new york, but they were honest and transparent in their briefings. they stood up and reported awful numbers with no apparent attempt to sugar coat or distort them, and they deserve respect for that.

we're just not getting that kind of honesty from our politicians, here.

it seems like the government doesn't want the kind of curve we saw come out of new york to be broadcast - they'd rather that our numbers look like an authoritarian state, because they are, at heart, a bunch of fascists.

so, they're delaying reporting the deaths in order to manipulate the curve.

there's apparently over 20,000 tests in the backlog in ontario, alone.

karl rove told us that it doesn't matter what is true, it matters what people think is true.

chrystia freeland seems to have updated this: reality isn't what is important, it's the projection of "reality" over twitter that is.

this government seems to be more concerned about it's international reputation than it is in the lives of it's own citizens.

so, it's manipulating it's presentation to conform to expectations erected via social media; they want to broadcast the message that we're succeeding in "flattening the curve", because that's the metric that twitter users are using, however daft it is. and, while they may not be good at understanding reality, they seem to at least be good at understanding twitterspeak.

the convictions of hyper-honest mathematicians aside, in the end, the numbers are going to need to add up. so, this seems foolish - but that's normal, from this government. and, all we can do is sit and wait.

i need to reiterate that the number of cases being reported by the authorities in canada is entirely worthless information, as it's being intentionally skewed to try to fabricate a "flattening" of the curve. doug ford and chrystia freeland appear to be colluding to essentially falsify the data, via delays and undertesting.

to our governments in canada at both levels, this appears to be more of a public relations issue than a public health issue.

as a consequence, i've been relying more on the mortality statistics, but there are reports coming out that this information is also being distorted via intentional delaying.

if my role is to try to provide an independent analysis in order to keep the government honest, i need reliable statistics to begin with. if i cannot get them, my only meaningful analysis is to point the issue out.

so, all i can do is point out that the mortality rates in ontario are currently unreliable, and that it's consequently not entirely clear how things are progressing. 

cuomo's daily briefings were refreshing in their clarity and transparency, and it maybe set a high bar and put down unrealistic expectations that are not being met in canada. 

it seems like the issue is getting worse, but we're being lied to, up here, to obfuscate it, for political reasons - and that's all i can really tell you.

so, i think that a record and a few weeks or months in jail is actually really a pretty light sentence for what is truly exceedingly poor behaviour, that lacks solidarity with the rest of the working class.

most historical leftists would tell me i'm being pretty soft on this.

hey, listen.

back in the soviet union, they'd have just shot you on the spot for not standing in line.

while i may have the same basic leftist set of morals around being steadfast in the total rejection of any concept of preferential treatment, i'm just suggesting a criminal record for stepping out of line.

historically communist states have generally been far less lenient than that.

who is the victim in this crime of pushing to the front of the queue?

the other refugees, and everybody else requiring access to state resources - like the disabled, and the homeless, who end up thrown under the bus in an act of selfish randianism.

you need to view refugee status like being in an emergency room full of sick patients. everybody's there to see a doctor; everybody's sick. of course, you want to see the doctor first - everybody does.

the hospital has staff there to triage you, which has access to the information required to do so.

when patients start trying to push their way ahead of the others, how do we treat those patients? depending on how disruptive they are, we're going to criminalize that behaviour - and we should.

likewise, we should not give in to people that try to ram their way through the system - that behaviour is criminal, and it should be criminalized.

you are morally wrong in your position.

i will not concede - i will convince you to see your folly, your ignorance.

imagine a scenario where you're on a boat, lost at sea, and there's only a small amount of food to go around. you've got flares and stuff - you think you'll be rescued. but, you need to ration resources correctly until you're found.

everybody would universally condemn the person that hoards resources, or tries to push everybody else out of the way to ensure they're prioritized. that person's demand for special treatment would be rejected across the board, and they would be first on the list to be cannibalized.

but, our morals get blurry when we're dealing with a system of capitalism that thrives on cheap labour - we pull out the ones most useful to us, and encourage them to stamp on everybody else to get to the front of the line.

it's not crossing the border the bugs me, exactly - it's the hoarding of resources, the elevation of the self.

no, i'm going to dig in on this point - because it's the proper leftist position.

to decide that your emergency is more valid than everybody else's, and push everybody else out of the way so that you're dealt with first, should be a crime - and you should get a criminal record for it. it's a criminal act.

a good global citizen, the kind a sovereign country should want, realizes that they are not more important than everybody else, and allows the system to queue the resources properly.

i have a hard time with the medium of film, in general.

tv. movies. i just don't.....

tell him to write me a book, instead.

i've actually never seen a michael moore film.

if you were curious.

i'm aware that this is a shit-disturbing article.

regardless, when was the last time that a rematch election didn't uphold the status quo?

nixon won on his second try, but it was years later and against a different opponent. stevenson lost against eisenhower twice.

i don't think this election will be close. but, i don't expect that clinton would win back the states she lost last time, either.

this is of course ignoring legitimacy problems; she didn't even run.

there's some problems with handing it to bernie, too.

rather, if biden resigns or otherwise has to step down, how feasible is it to redo the primary on short notice? this is a crazy year, all around....

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/495371-as-biden-struggles-hillary-waits-for-the-call

i can put a sweater on if i'm cold.

dealing with the coercion of market forces is not so easy.

and, yes, i'd rather find a female landlord than a partner; i'd rather just pay rent and tell her to leave me alone.

what about buying a house, though? it would solve the problem, surely?

well, yeah - but then i'd have to go to work to pay for it. i'd rather be cold and unemployed and free than employed and warm and enslaved....

i don't need control over the thermostat, i just need somebody who has a more similar body weight to me to make those decisions.

it's just kind of a bad match.

https://news.usc.edu/157448/female-productivity-warmer-temperature/

for now, i'm freezing, and he's probably overheating at the same time.

so, i just need to find other ways to generate heat....

it's a bmi thing.

i'm an underweight transfemale; he's a fairly muscular, jockish sort of dude.

i've said this before: i need to find a female landlord, next time. living with a male is never going to work out.

to be clear - he's not withholding heat.

he just doesn't want the heat on.

i want it to be 30 degrees and humid so i can sit in my underwear; he seems to prefer 15 degrees with a breeze, which, for me, requires a winter jacket.

i wasn't sure if the rule in ontario was that you have to have the heat on until may 1st or june 1st.

it turns out it's actually june 15th.

so, i stopped this afternoon to build up the linked lists on the left side (your left, while reading it) of the music journal. i've added linked lists to records, symphonies, alephs, etc.

i tried to post that here, but it broke the formatting on this blog, so just go here to check it out:
http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/

i fell asleep while doing it and have finished it now....

that would be a detour that spun me around a little; there were some posts at the dtk blog, as well. so, i got a little distracted. i wanted to wait to eat, but now i kind of have to. so, i'll be back to rebuilding the master document in a few hours.

something else that happened when he got home is that he turned the heat off. it was actually nice and warm in here when he was gone, but it's now freezing cold again. so, i'll need to find ways to produce heat in here, like showering more frequently.

i've been musing about finding a way out of here. maybe i'd be better off if he just sold the place....

why do people like it so cold? i don't get it.

what about the listener on my internet line?

i've been quietly checking my usage stats on a day-to-day basis all month, and they haven't been out of line. i guess my usage is a little higher just right now because of the virus - but that's the difference between 15-20 gb on a slow month, and 35-40 on a heavy month. the idea that i was going to log anything higher than 40 gb in one month was ridiculous from the start.

i checked my stats this morning, and there's no numbers for yesterday. at all...

so, in the last 12 hours, (1) my internet connection appears to have been recompromised and (2) i appear to have had somebody set up a fake kickstarter account using my email address. is it a coincidence that he just got home?

it's starting to look like i'm going to have to cut the line again, for who knows how long. i'm certainly not interested in connecting to my bank account over this line....

i was considering getting groceries today, but i'm not going anywhere until i get this figured out.

so, it seems like somebody tried to set up a fake kickstarter account using my email address under the name "marge batson".

it seems as though they were unable to verify that account.

i have since deleted it. but, i will remind you - my sites are on the side, and if i set up a new site then i'll post about it, at least, and probably add it to the side quite quickly.

this has to be china's last chance to demonstrate that it's a responsible member of the global community - before being sanctioned for refusing to be.

right now, they're best described as a bad actor.

they should take heed not to turn themselves into a rogue state.

north korea is a relatively small export market.

i don't just mean participation.

i mean enthusiastic participation.

otherwise, we should throw them out of the un and erect a total economic blockade on them, indefinitely.

we have a virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and may just be getting started. nobody really questions the premise that it originated in china.

if they don't participate in an investigation as to it's origins in good faith, they should be treated as outcasts and shunned.

the chinese may cry "racism", and a lot of very stupid people may fall for it.

but, this is just another iteration of a longstanding problem, regarding their refusal to be responsible global citizens.

the premise that this is even up for debate is surreal.

also, i would call on the chinese government to pull it's head out of it's ass and realize the importance of participating in a proper investigation of the origins of the virus, with the intent of being open about accepting any recommendations that an investigation may find.

the rest of the world should have very little patience with the chinese if they resist this.

as you should expect higher per capita rates in detroit, overtaking them on that graph doesn't suggest higher levels of incidence than new york, yet - it more likely suggests higher mortality rates.

so, you can have new york well past it's peak, with detroit not quite yet there, and still have detroit with higher per capita levels.

poverty may be the root cause (well, after racism). but, the medical answer is likely diabetes.

if there are 1000 deaths in the city of detroit proper, then a .3% death rate would suggest roughly 50% of people have contracted the virus.

a .5% death rate would suggest it's more like a third.

unfortunately, this was indeed predictable.

i don't actually think that detroit has peaked yet, but it's much closer than toronto.

https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2020/04/29/detroit-tops-1000-coronavirus-deaths-surpasses-new-york-city-in-fatalities-per-capita

fwiw, i also drink chocolate soy in my more than a half a pot of coffee a day.

this is a little outdated.

but, my diet hasn't changed.

brace yourself.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2017/01/also-in-long-run-ill-need-to-keep-eye.html

i don't think i've ever bought a carton of cow's milk in my life.

but, i eat a large amount of cheese.

how do i get enough c?

1) i eat a bowl of fruit daily, which includes:

- 5-6 strawberries <-----
- 20 blueberries <------
- 10 raspberries <--------
- 1 large kiwi  <--------
- 1 banana
- 1 scoop of cherry ice cream
- a bit more than the daily recommended serving of the most fortified soy milk i can find <-----

that is quite a bit of c, and i get it every single day.

2) when i make pasta, i include an entire tomato and an entire green pepper, in addition to the pasta itself. these each give me even more c. i also include a tall glass of apple juice. so, on days that i have pasta, that is in addition to the fruit bowl.

3) on days that i have eggs, my c intake would be a little lower. i heavily rely on the eggs for other nutrients, though. and, i get a lot from that bowl of fruit...

think of it like this...

your dna is elite.

it codes in c.

so, the latest round of anti-science stupidity from the fake left appears to be a denial of the efficacy of vitamin c in immune system functionality.

let's clarify a few points.

1) with the exceptions of water and glucose, vitamin c is perhaps the single most important molecule in your body. you need a lot of it.
2) your body uses vitamin c as a building block in erecting it's immune response.
3) while your body is efficient in eliminating excess amounts of it, it's almost impossible to take too much of it.

so, should you take it as a prophylactic, then? the right answer is actually yes - or, at least, sort of.

the most correct thing to say is twofold: (1) a vitamin c deficiency will certainly increase your risk of getting sick and (2) if you do get sick, you will certainly need a sufficient amount of c to successfully defeat it.

if you eat a halfways healthy diet, you get plenty of c and shouldn't worry much about it.

but, if you survive on restaurant food and pantry items, then you should strongly consider modifying your diet to get more c, for sure, and might even consider taking pills, if you can't, for whatever reason.

will it work as a treatment? i'd argue it very well might, in patients with severe deficiencies that should otherwise be able to beat it fairly easily. i'd be specifically looking at relatively young people with diseases like diabetes, which are caused by eating garbage and are known to be a major risk factor. these people are almost certainly not getting enough c, and it is almost certainly a factor in their higher levels of vulnerability. it may very well be the case, in the end, that vitamin deficiency is the reason patient a dies and patient b lives.

with c, you would have to prescribe regular doses, and you'd have to get the disease at an early enough stage that your body can still beat it on it's own. further, it should not be seen as an end-all, or a reason not to move to more advanced treatments.

i would not expect that vitamin c would help much with very old patients, or patients that are very advanced. but, i don't think anybody would expect that it would...

if prescribing vitamin c is probably a good idea, and is very low risk, why is this idea being attacked by the corporate media and it's shills on the fake left?

my best guess is that it threatens to cut into profit margins for pharmaceutical companies.

c is cheap, and it's good for you.

make sure you're getting enough of it.

so, i slept later than i wanted to again this evening, and decided i'd get the local section of the master document done first, before moving on to eat...

then, i heard somebody upstairs, and realized they were smoking. so, i took a very, very long shower...

hopefully, the air quality holds overnight, and i'm able to get some work done while it does.

he's been gone for weeks. i don't know if he was in quarantine, or what...

why is the washington post, specifically, so insistent that we adopt fascism permanently?

democracy does, indeed, die in darkness - but that's supposed to be a stark warning, not a hopeful prediction.

i've largely avoided the bezos hate-on, but this is a paper that clearly needs more responsible ownership.

we should protect the weak, yes.

we shouldn't let their needs dominate, or define the response.

do we need a re-evaluation of morals on this continent?

we'll, i'd argue we already had one, and we're kind of in a point of flux regarding which side really wins the debate. we're in the midst of a major generational overturn, that's being muddled and confused by increasing levels of slave morality via mass immigration.

like nietszche, i'm not a nihilist. i'd rather call for the rationalization of christian morality, and would even settle for a sort of re-embrace of natural law, at least to start, than an embrace of master morality. i'm not a christian at all, but i am a secular humanist. christianity actually has a history, however flawed, of using logic and reason to uncover right from wrong, and that's actually the tradition i'd most identify as being a part of.

but, any roman emperor would consider what we're doing to be insane, and i'm certainly leaning in that direction, myself.

but, the nature of the problem means that you have to wait for the simulation to end before you can draw valid conclusions.

i think they're probably doing this better - and i have a stronger level of identification with the value system underlying their approach.

but, we'll need to wait to see.

i can follow nietszche in setting out two basic concepts of morality - a slave morality which comes from evolutionary pressures attached to the settled, agricultural areas of the middle east and a master morality which comes from evolutionary pressures attached to nomadic civilizations, like the mongolians or the indo-europeans.

in reality, cultures are mixes of these ideas. so, the romans and greeks both initially followed very dominant master moralities, before having it softened up due to the effects of being settled into agriculture, something that ended with christianization (but started with plato). sweden is not what it was 1000 years ago, but it was arguably never fully christianized, so that difference in values is still very real.

i would have identified with the franks in 476.

and, i'll identify with the swedes, now.

sorry.

"but, values are universal."

that's fucking nonsense...

but, let's be clear on the point.

i know this is a false dichotomy, but let's over-simplify, anyways.

if you think that freedom is a more important value than security, you're a liberal; if you think that security is a more important value than freedom, you're a conservative.

stated tersely: i don't think there's any meaningful evidence right now that what sweden is doing is worse from a public health standpoint, but we'll have to wait and see. it's not going to be until or if death counts in sweden start to tick up over 20,000 that grounds to second guess the approach will have any merit.

but, it's clearly been far less invasive on people's freedom.

in the end, what the more important concern is is a value judgement, and the following may be a valid deduction when this is over: swedish values are a little different than elsewhere.

so, when the who says that sweden may be a model moving forward, are they on to something?

i'd say they are - it's backing up what i said previously.

but, they should probably stay mum for a bit longer; i'm an anarchist with a blog, they're the world health organization. we have somewhat different standards, and their's at least shouldn't be met, yet.

how is sweden doing?

well, you could be naive and just divide the number of deaths by the number of cases. but, we know that's a horribly retarded analysis, at this point. rather, as deaths are a direct metric and official government case counts are basically worthless information, what you need to do is try to calculate an accurate number of cases via the number of deaths, and an estimate of the mortality rate.

a good estimate of the mortality rate right now is between 0.1-0.5%. this is somewhere between the seasonal flu and the spanish flu, but much closer to the spanish flu.

so, an off the cuff calculation would suggest they have between 500,000-2,500,000 cases.

"but, that means they're failing. look at all of the cases."

again - that's based on the idea that you can burn the virus out, which we know is a horribly retarded opinion. as the population of sweden is around 10.25 million, that would suggest that between 5%-25% of the population is now immune to the virus, at least until it mutates.

at 66% for protective immunity, i would suggest a lower bound for the death toll would be about 6800 in the end.

now, is it fair to compare sweden to new york city? well, sweden is a country, and new york city is a city. that means that sweden has varying population densities, and new york city doesn't. the north of sweden is even basically a different country. the answer is "no, not really".

what kind of numbers do you get by doing the same analysis on data from the united states? the answer is that there are probably between 12 million and 62 million cases in the united states, indicating there's between 4%-19% immunity.

"so, if america has lower immunity, then it's winning. the lockdowns are working! hooray!"

well, they don't say americans are stupid without evidence, right?

these are marginal differences, in truth. but, i'd rather get to immunity faster, meaning i'd argue that sweden is winning.

what about canada?

calculating case counts from the death toll and a reasonable mortality rate, you're looking at between 600,000 and 3,000,000 actual cases - most in the detroit-quebec city corridor. that's 2%-8% immunity. so, unfortunately, canada would be rather far behind on building immunity, right now - but immunity is probably much higher in the more populated regions, even if it lags behind in the rural areas.

note: these calculations are extremely haphazard, in that you probably shouldn't compare the entirety of sweden to the entirety of the united states or the entirety of canada, even if it's better than comparing the entirety of sweden to the city of new york.

so, the number of deaths from the flu per year in new york is fairly constant at around 4500.

it would seem that a number below 50 would be more reasonable.

so, they should have a ways to go, still.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/newyork/newyork.htm

they're only reporting deaths under 6.

a very rough takeaway from this is that they found around 1,000 cases of flu in the state of new york over the last seven days, this time last year. this was a 50% decline from the week before.

but, that number is better comparable to the number of people walking into the hospital than the number of cases, because.....you don't get tested when you get the flu, do you? they only test the worst cases...

they're getting around that walking in, daily.

i'd like to find an actual death count before i speculate.

https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/communicable/influenza/surveillance/2018-2019/archive/2019-04-27_flu_report.pdf

how many deaths/day does new york expect to see from the flu this time of year?

i'm asking this because you should not expect deaths to reach zero, there. like, ever.

so, what is a "normal" or "acceptable" daily death rate?

50? 100? 200?

if it flattens at 300, you might have to concede to the empirical truth; that might be your answer.

and, don't say "zero". that's just wrong.

when people talk about a "second wave", they're implicitly referencing the 1918 flu outbreak.

so, realize this - the second wave was a mutation.

it is true that if the virus mutates, your antibodies will be of minimal use in protecting you. so, it's exceedingly important that these changes are carefully monitored. they consequently need as many samples as possible.

it is also true that a successful mutation would require that the vaccine process be rebooted. they'd have to start all over again...

you won't burn this virus out, so staying inside won't prevent a second wave. however, increasing testing to the absolute maximum possible might help, if they can catch it quickly.

https://www.investing.com/news/coronavirus/new-york-maps-coronavirus-genome-to-help-track-future-outbreaks-2154900

the number of cases that doug ford gives you on a daily basis is completely useless information.

it's the death rate that is meaningful, and it continues to be on an upward trajectory.

obviously, we can't wait two years for a vaccine - which means that the supposed best case scenario is for us to get to herd immunity the slow way.

"flattening the curve" is not even supposed to burn the virus out, it's just supposed to slow it down a little.

there's only two ways to burn a virus out, and they both involve the widespread presence of immunity.

no, this was thought through - after sars.

nobody did their homework.

reading their twitter feed was far easier.

apparently, people are hoarding by maxing out their credit cards.

....which means they're all using the machine, in line.

and, the exchange of cash would hardly be better, would it?

it's not reducible to a six foot spread, either - whether the virus is airborne or not.

people will touch their noses at some point, then use the debit machine. or, they'll go to the bank machine before they go in.

if you're lucky - lucky - you can slow it down.

but, stopping it is hopeless.

we knew that. we had documents that told us it. we ignored them.

i can't think of anything that could be more high risk than a grocery store.

everybody goes there - healthy or sick, symptomatic or not. you couldn't define a better transmission vector if you tried; if your goal was to spread a virus, you would set up grocery stores to distribute food.

i'm not saying they should have shut down the grocery stores, i'm pointing out that our own white papers and planning documents made it clear that you can't stop transmission, you have to adjust to it.

the public response to this is increasingly reflective of the definition of insanity.

but, despite the policy being designed by actuaries to minimize risk, they bet everything on it.

again: i don't want people to die. but, we had white papers that told us this wouldn't work - which we completely ignored, to listen to evan solomon, and follow the herd on social media.

it shouldn't be surprising that this isn't working - the science was crystal clear that it wouldn't.

so, all i'm really saying is that we should have followed our own policies - and that, next time, we'd better learn the lesson that we thought we learned last time.

so, they're starting to realize that social distancing really isn't working.

the solution?

more social distancing.

and, they say i'm insane.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/contracting-covid19-ontario-1.5548087

if you're new here and you like the track i posted, there's more here:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides

my hydro bill this month was -$16.00. and, i did a ton of laundry, too.

enwin now owes me $6.00. two months ago, i had a $60 bill that i was planning on slowly eating away at via careful conservation. now, i'm hoping to build that credit up so i can turn my gear back on relatively soon.

i don't know if things go back to normal in mid-may or not. there was an announcement by the board that they would, but ford claimed otherwise soon after. i don't see any further press releases.

so, i've been slow to get started today, after struggling with awakeness. i don't know. i haven't been smelling any drugs....

i might have just needed to catch up on some rest.

i uploaded an (i think.) unreleased midi remix of stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides as the dummy track for the next journal, yesterday morning:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/01-2014-music-journal

hopefully, i can get some work done today before nodding off.

i've been clear that i think that religion should have been the first thing cancelled, but it was always with an assumption towards voluntarism. i never suggested throwing anybody in jail...

but, this demonstrates the futility of it - a lesson that the authoritarian left failed to learn after many attempts. look at russia, for the worst example - a genuinely well placed effort to systematically eradicate religion just brought it back even stronger.

it also demonstrates the broader folly of trying to order people around.

so long as there's a demand for this product, people will continue to purchase it.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/26/louisiana-pastor-blows-social-distancing-to-hold-sunday-service/

well, they've got lots of beds all of a sudden, right?

https://nypost.com/2020/04/28/de-blasio-demands-mta-close-subways-for-homeless-clearance/

ok, they're doing it.

good.

now, we wait.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/28/antibody-tests-are-being-rolled-out-across-new-york-city/

blood curdling yet?

and, if you didn't get the quip regarding kim il-sung singing whitney houston, i'll repost this:

we will never bury the 80s.

it's 80s retro night, again.

forever.

you don't think this ends here, do you?

kiiiiiiim

will

always

love

yooooooooouuuuuuoooooouuuuooooaaaaayyyyy..

*coughing fit*

they talk like it really matters.

what they should do is create a holographic projection of kim il sung, claim he came back from the dead, infer immortality upon him and just let the military stop worrying about it.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/28/kim-jong-uns-uncle-emerges-as-possible-successor-in-north-korea/

the most recent numbers i've seen from new york city are over 25% now, with the same 3-4% margin of error, suggesting it could be higher than 30% - and getting closer to my deductions.

there was also an antibody study that suggests 30% in a small area of boston, which i'm going to agree looks a little bit shady. but, you have to understand that error works in both directions. pointing out that the sample may be unrepresentative necessarily means that it's just as likely to be an underestimate as it is to be an overestimate. so, that particular neighbourhood might have seen substantive spread through a specific grocery outlet, for example - and the true number in that region could be 40% or higher.

we need more testing...

but, don't ignore the data or write it off as "unreliable". that's bad form.

they keep testing people, and while the results are variable, the conclusions are consistent - way, way, way more people have already gotten this thing than previously realized.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/antibody-surveys-suggesting-vast-undercount-coronavirus-infections-may-be-unreliable

so, i guess i had covid-19 before it was cool.

what else would you expect?

we don't have heresies in science.

we have debate and discussion - and we win via persuasion, not force.

i lost my sense of smell and everything.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2019/12/plaid-was-show-that-i-was-looking.html

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-had-to-sleep-this-afternoon.html
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-spent-morning-cleaning-and-i-ended-up.html

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-spent-little-time-on-friday-morning.html

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2019/12/so-im-sick-and-am-dealing-with-it.html
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2019/12/when-i-woke-up-on-sunday-night-around.html
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2019/12/how-am-i-doing-ive-been-up-since-i.html
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-am-feeling-better-absolutely.html

what if they stay shut down in toronto and los angeles and see a rapid ramp up, anyways?

well, that's what i think we're about to see.

and, we'll all have to learn the right lessons from that.

i'm going to repeat myself a little, to clarify the point i'm making.

this is a jpg of an earlier image i posted, scrawled over slightly in a javascript clone of microsoft's paint.

new york is bigger and more densely populated than anywhere else on this continent, so the numbers in new york will inevitably be bigger than anywhere else. so, we can scratch the numbers out, along with the dates. it's the shape of the curve you want to look at...

we have been getting mixed messages about where we are on this curve in places like toronto and los angeles, with some suggestions that we are passing the peak. that's where the green arrow points.

however, i think these suggestions are past the point of optimistic and are rather just flat out delusional. deaths are piling up in both of these places, at higher rates, not lower rates. lower case counts are probably better explained in both jurisdictions by under-testing than they are by decreasing transmission rates.

further, it would seem as though the introduction of the virus into new york was very, very early - which is why it peaked very, very early, relative to other jurisdictions. toronto is probably not days behind new york, as the green arrow would suggest, but weeks - or even months.

rather, i think we're in the part of the curve that the red arrow points to.

we'll see who is right over the next seven to ten days or so.

my track record, so far, has been pretty good...but it's your prerogative as to what you should believe and what you shouldn't. don't take me or anybody else on authority. what do you think, based on the evidence presented to you?

if toronto and los angeles are where the red arrow points, it would mean that cities like calgary and winnipeg are at an even earlier stage. they may not peak in calgary until july. i suspect that detroit and montreal are both further along, but are not at the peak quite yet. i got very sick in detroit in early december....

so, what does that mean for re-opening?

first, you have to realize that it means that much of the country shut down too early, and is now talking about reopening before they peak. is that potentially catastrophic? is it worse than staying shut down until the fall?

see, i'm not yet sold on the efficacy of any of these measures, so i'm not yet sold on the idea that any of these measures have made any difference, or that staying shut down will reduce transmission, much. it's easy to say "this is working", but we don't know that, yet.

if they ease up in toronto and see a spike in cases, they may very well blame it on easing up too early and call it a "second wave". but, i need to insist on rigour, here - there's no convincing evidence of a peak, and, rather, quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. that "second wave" may actually be the initial wave cresting.

i would favour re-opening, with specific measures taken to protect the weak. but, there's no clearly correct answer at this point, and the responses need to be strictly regional to account for it.

my reaction to the modeling update in canada is that they're still over-estimating the mortality rate by about a factor of 10, despite apparently having roughly halved it. i'm not going to repeat myself.

i'd guess around 2-3% of the population is already infected, but that is national, and a bad calculation, conceptually - it would be lower than that in areas like manitoba or saskatchewan, and higher than that in the 401 corridor. as mentioned, off the cuff calculations suggest that the gta could be nearing 20%, even as swift current is still less than 1%.

as the nature of how this disease spreads is inherently local, it's probably a bad idea to rely on federal modeling, and i'm not really going to blame the feds for bad modelling - asking them to do this is actually really the wrong approach. you don't even really want to even look at provincial models, except maybe in small provinces like pei. the six major provinces in this country are each geographically equivalent to the order of 10-15 different states, and the low population density just exacerbates the point. you really want to look specifically at cities, and metropolitan areas.

there are areas of canada that are so remote and so sparsely populated, that they might not have serious epidemics at all and, if they do, may only see first waves in the fall. even a city like thunder bay, which is a substantive population centre, is unlikely to be experiencing much through traffic of the sort that spreads disease.

it's cities like toronto, montreal, calgary and vancouver (as well as border cities like windsor and niagara falls) that are potentially moving into the upswing of the curve over this week and the next, and that you shouldn't be expecting to peak for quite a while, still.

but, the basic analysis is that when you take diverse data sets and combine them too much, you water them down, and just create a worthless mess. that's what the updated federal models are doing - but that's all they ever could do. rather, you need to separate the data very carefully and look at things hyper-locally....

so, if i tell you it's propaganda, you should realize that it's intended to be.

i mentioned yesterday that i was unexpectedly tired, and i did sleep for quite a while. i'm still less awake than i'd like to be. but, i think i'm awake, and i'm just going to get to it.

he says he was being "sarcastic", which is....listen, everybody's known for years that americans do not understand irony.

he should have used the word facetious, instead. it's at least an explanation. i'll cite occam's razor on this.

so, do you blame jim jones for the massacre? the idiots willingly drank it...

what is the opposite hypothesis - that we shouldn't question the president? that we should just shut up and do what he says, and blame him if he he's wrong?

you can keep your bacon cheeseburgers with french fries under the bun. but, that would be the end of the american revolution, wouldn't it?

he's right: you need to take responsibility for your own actions. the absurdity of the scenario is just demonstrative of the point....

yeah.

i think we need a darwin award for this one, really.

personally, i was thinking about injecting lysol, but where am i going to find a needle when everything is under lockdown?

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/trump-said-he-takes-no-responsibility-for-any-spike-in-people-using-disinfectants-improperly-1.4914851

This marks the lowest number of patients reported in a single day since April 13, but the highest death count since the province began tracking cases daily earlier this year.

well, what does that tell you about testing loads?

we're going to end up with a 20% death rate due to undertesting...and it's not an accident....

let's hope it doesn't get too awful this week.

but, you need to brace for the reality that it probably will.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-confirms-57-more-deaths-sees-decrease-in-new-covid-19-cases-for-3rd-straight-day-1.4913266

so, these were the re-releases from jan, 2014 that i'm working on, now:

1) the liquify single, newly split off from inrimake (see entry 3). this is now inri031. this is dated to the summer of 1999. it was remastered in 2017.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/liquify-ep

2) the book it! single, newly split off from inridiculous (see entry 4). this is now inri034. this is dated to late 1999.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/book-it-single

3) the newly expanded and finalized inrimake, without the liquify single (entry 1), which is download only. this is a covers & remixes collection, entirely unauthorized. it's now inri032. this is dated to late 1999, but some of the material was from 1998.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrimake-covers-lp-2

4) my third official record, inridiculous, was uploaded without modification, except to strip out the last track into the book it! single (entry 2). this is now inri033. i did not even remaster this record. this is dated to late 1999, but some of the material was from as far back as 1996.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inridiculous

5) the inricycled b compilation was initially released in parallel to inricycled a as a way to salvage material from the 1997-1999 period that i thought was otherwise unworkable. when i realized in 2015 that i could actually remaster this material from tape, this compilation was deleted from my discography by appending it to the inrijected collection, inri022. i suppose the compilation dates to jan, 2014, even if the material is raided from 1996-1999.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/inricycled-b

6) the let freedom ring single, newly created from a discarded remix of a track on deny everything (see entry 11) that included martin luther king and doonesbury samples. this is now inri036. this is dated to late 1999 and early 2000. it was updated in 2017.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/let-freedom-ring-ep

7) the first ever release of the full curious george suite in it's original form, which was thought lost until it was found later in the year. this is dated to the spring of 2000. it is now inri037.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-curious-george-suite-ep

8) the ignorance is bliss single, with a comprehensive exploration of remixes of the track over the period of 2000-2014. the track was first written in 2000, but the lead track at this time was recreated from source in early 2014. it was updated with a final lead mix in 2017. this is inri038.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ignorance-is-bliss-ep-single

9) my fourth symphony, released in final standalone form as the acidosis ep, for the first time. this recording was created in the summer of 2000 and has not been modified since. this is inri039.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/acidosis-ep

10) i also had to split off a separate curious george single, as the sample version did not exist until late 2000 and neither makes sense in the context of the suite, nor in the context of the record (now without any samples). this is a comprehensive collection of remixes created after 2000. this is inri040.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/curious-george-single

11) my fourth official record, deny everything, was initially created near the end of 2000 out of material created since late 1999. this record was re-released several times between 2000 and 2014; this is the final version, void of all vocal samples, except the star trek sample in gravity's rainbow. this is inri041.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything-lp

12) my truncated experimental guitar experiment, an ep called j's adventures in guitarland, was one of the first things i uploaded to bandcamp back in 2010. it was re-released without further modification at this time. these are renaissance guitar pieces that i recorded in 2001. this is inri045.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/js-adventures-in-guitarland-ep

...which means that i'm also finally ready to build the master document for january.

well, if i can recalibrate to understand what i was actually doing, anyways.

this is going to be tricky because i'm splitting tasks between the chromebook, which is online, and the pc, which is not. again: i don't connect my pcs to the internet at all. it's just not safe.

it's just going to mean an extra step in compiling....

so, i got a quick short list down, but there's actually nothing in it that would have been higher than 50/50. and, i think i was leaning towards mostly skipping movement this year, as well.

i'm going to work through it carefully before i do up some mock reviews at the deathtokoalas blog.

ok.

i've eaten and showered and tried to drink some coffee, but i'm oddly still sleepier than i should be. more coffee. more coffee. more....

it's getting better, i think.

i did try a few more versions of chrome on the 90s laptop as a backup, and it just spun out on me, indicating i'm missing some kind of internal files. that means that, if it turns out to be unworkable after all, i'll have to go to the next level of complexity in the image. i might be missing some directx files or something...

it's somehow the end of april already, so the next thing to do is build the list of shows that i can't go to in may - which should be shorter than usual, for obvious reasons.

the who has apparently quietly walked back it's outlandish claims that there's no evidence that the presence of antibodies suggests immunity.

expect the associated retractions to be buried on page 57 of the new york times.

maybe you might require such a retraction before you believe it. but, any political leader that fell for that should be embarrassed, and any public health expert that fell for it should resign.

if you're stressed out, you can always get a chiropractor.

or talk it through with a psychotherapist.

now is the time to be skeptical, more than ever.

they fucked up, and they're going to lie about it.

or, how about the question of transmission in the presence of antibodies?

are we going to sit here and watch the prime minister tell reporters that the germ theory of disease is alternative medicine, on his way to yoga class?

this might be the single biggest fuck up in public policy in the country's entire history.

the damage control will be intense.

it was, in fact, not very long ago that the likes of theresa tam were telling us that we should expect more than 40% infection rates within a short period of time.

it's now almost a short period of time later....

they might backtrack, but they were right the first time.

they are in some trouble, here.

they've borderline ruined the country trying to shut down a virus that's almost as contagious as the measles, and roughly as deadly as the flu.

so, they've got a major catastrophe of their own making on their hands.

what we know of this government is that they'll spin doctor everything they can until they can't get away with it anymore, so expect massive levels of face-saving bullshit for months.

and, i'll do what i can to cut through it and draw attention to what the actual science actually says.

i've said this from the start: the function of this site is to keep the fuckers honest.

i'll let you decide if it's reliable or not.

on one side, you have a slew of peer-reviewed papers and a developing scientific consensus.

on the other side, you have the government of canada, as led by a trust fund kid and a couple of truly amateur spin doctors.

which of these two options exists in an alternative reality?

the scientific consensus? or the government?

i have posted numerous peer-reviewed or pre-print studies that draw attention to the increased contagiousness and decreased mortality of the disease.

the government needs to accept this data and adjust to it, not pretend it's an "alternative theory".

i mean, alternative to what? the government models? lol.

it's the government that's in an alternative reality, but that's the status quo, isn't it?

the scientific consensus right now is that there are very high infection rates in most places (certainly much higher than reported), and this is variable on geography and connectivity. so, toronto would have much higher infection rates than moose jaw or swift current - for now.

how much higher? that's what we don't know yet.

we need to do antibody testing to put proper bounds on this, but the consensus is that it is many orders of magnitude greater than has been tested for directly, or ever could be - 50x, 80x, 100x.

certainly, 10% would be a lower bound for cities right now, based on data from sewage. but, just based on the death rate in ontario, which is about 900, infection rates around 20% are very easy to calculate with off the cuff calculations. this is the consensus opinion, and has been from the start, regardless of what your twitter feed says.

am i a reliable source?

well, it depends on what i'm citing, doesn't it?

i think i tend to base my analysis and deduction on fairly reliable evidence, but i'll leave it up to you to work that out.

you'd be daft to ever, ever believe a politician, though - they are the absolute worst source of information out there.

unreliable sources: politicians, tv personalities, celebrities, advertisements, news media, memes, social media.

reliable sources: scientific journals & academics interpreting them.

every day, more and more science is being published that debunks the ridiculous narrative put forward by our governments - a narrative that educated people knew from the start was tentative at best, and in truth clearly outlandish.

they can't continue along this path very much longer, before they fall into the realm of conspiracy theory.

we've seen the likes of chrystia freeland do this before, with counter-factual narratives about venezuela, as one example.

we need to stay vigilant, here.

we need to stay skeptical.

the science in the journals takes precedent over the narratives by the media and government, or viral memes on social media. let's not forget that, as they increasingly diverge, and our governments increasingly fall into nonsense-based delusions.

you should not turn to your political leaders, or your television set, to understand science.

please consult more reliable sources.

however, very high infection rates - over 20% - are not an "alternate theory". that's what the science actually says, and has said all along.

rather, it's this idea being spread in the media that there are very low infection rates, along with the efficacy of social distancing and "flattening the curve", that are an "alternative theory" that is not aligned with the facts or with the scientific consensus.

science is not worked out on msnbc, it's worked out in peer-reviewed journals - and the latter has not upheld the narrative in the former.

saskatchewan has not seen the kind of numbers yet that would be reflective of widespread infection and immunity.

in north america, the only place where that seems to be true at this point are a handful of major cities that include new york for certain, and potentially detroit. it is likely far more widespread in europe.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/u-of-r-biology-prof-draws-ire-of-sask-scientists-1.5541748

we can talk about bell's inequality later.

but, for now just chew this through - just because a statistical analysis that models a phenomenon as random works relatively well in deriving correct answers doesn't mean that that the phenomenon is truly random.

so, i'm eating before i shower and move on, and we're back to this again, which i'm just starting over from the start.

the gravitation example of F=mg is actually quite useful, because we know that newton's cosmology does not have infinite precision at all, but is rather governed by error relating to what we call the n-body problem. in a newtonian approach to this problem, however deprecated, we need to work in the effects of perturbations from the sun, jupiter and all of the other planetary bodies in order to come up with a perfect orbit, which is not spherical or elliptical at all but, rather, a bumpy and chaotic ride through extreme turbulence.

the point i want to get across is this - in the context of newton's theory, we don't consider this to be "randomness". it's a very hard problem, certainly - unsolvable, in fact. the best we can do is make guesses using differential equations. however, if we didn't understand gravity, we could model the problem using a statistical analysis, and replace the physics that we know exists and call gravity with randomness. and, you know what? we'd get something that's startlingly accurate, if we did that.

just think that through a bit.

there's another test, the situational judgement test, which evaluates how you behave in the workplace.

i've failed this test repeatedly, and would probably fail it again if asked to write it, now.

as far as i can tell, i just fundamentally disagree with the answers in such a way that i can't actually grasp how to answer the scenarios correctly - i don't think i'm failing a judgement test, so much as i think i'm failing a values test. you'd have to send me to boot camp....

but, maybe my answers are actually correct - maybe the government is wrong.

i'm sleepy this evening and i'm not sure why, but let's try to get some coffee and wake up.

my dad was proud of his gct2 score - he thought it proved he was smart. and, it helped him with the jobs he applied for.

i don't doubt him when he said it was higher than the people he managed.

like i say - he was worried. but, he wasn't expecting that, either.

i've wondered many times since if the reason they didn't call me back was actually because the score was too high.

i think i've told you the story about the gct2 test.

the gct2 test is a basic iq test for the canadian public service, so a very large number of canadians have written it and know what it is. i don't think i ever wrote the gct1 test. i last wrote the gct2 some time around 2007 or 2008, for an entry level position with statscan, which i caved in and applied for after getting nagged about it for however long.

my father was keenly interested in the results of this test because everybody knows that you never beat your dad at chess. he projected confidence that he'd score higher, but you could tell he was worried. so, i had to deal with daily haranguing from him ("did you get the score yet?") for what seemed like months...

i'll never forget the reaction.

he wouldn't actually tell me his mark until he saw mine, he just told me i wouldn't beat it because it was higher than anybody he knew.

"did you get it? did you get it?"

it finally came in the form of a letter, and was 80/90, which is 89%. that's not that high a grade for me, so i'm initially not that impressed with myself. i knew the pass was 51/90, so i'm at least feeling good about the job, depending on the competition. so, i'm figuring he's bragging because he got somewhere in the 70s or 80s. you don't beat your dad at chess. so, i rounded up..

"yeah, it came in today. i got a 90, which i guess is not bad."

what?

"yeah, i could have maybe done a little better if i wasn't so tired, but hopefully that gets me an interview."

it's out of 90. you didn't get 90.

"no, i got 90 percent. it was 80/90."

he changed the topic very quickly, and i don't know what he actually got; he never brought it up again.

but, i get to the interview and the interviewer actually thinks it's a typo.

"that must be 80%, which is itself very high. a pass is 51. when i hire managers, they need to get over 70. i've never even heard of a score that high. we're going to get that checked..."

i didn't hear anything back from the interview, but nobody corrected the score.

i've looked this up since, and that mark is in the 99th percentile.

i had the same thing happen when we did standardized testing in elementary school, midway through the sixth grade. the teacher just did not believe the results when they came through. but, they were what they were.

are iq tests that useful? probably not, no. but, when you consistently ace them, it does tell you something.

so, i've frequently been frustrated for being misunderstood. maybe it's not your fault.

(edit - i can't find the document, so the exact numbers are from memory and they might be somewhat off. but, the scope of the story is the idea i'm trying to get across. the 99th percentile bit is precise, at least.)

i tell people i have three degrees, but it's a gloss.

i have an actual diploma for a b. mathematics, 2006. my first & second year grades were reflective of reality, i wasn't really engaged. some As, some Bs. i then ended up homeless over third year due to being thrown out of the house (my step-mother may claim otherwise, but i was thrown out for being transgendered), and found myself trying to juggle getting through the third year of an honours degree in mathematics, while living on my girlfriend's floor - my grades were reflective of the reality of the situation. but, when i finally got things back to some semblance of normality, i got very high marks in fourth year, which allowed me to graduate with a strong B+.

when you look at my transcript, it's straight Ds in third year and straight As in 4th year - unusual, and reflective of an odd underlying reality.

when i applied for grad school, i tried to get the point across - i was homeless in third year, and math is hard anyways, and especially when you're struggling to find somewhere safe to sleep. in hindsight, i wonder if those essays hindered more than helped. i didn't really have a class analysis at the time; i just assumed the school administrators were all far leftists and would see the obvious need to be empathetic. rather, what people saw was no doubt a B+ student with uneven grades, not an A student that got screwed over by a bigoted stepmother that literally told her to starve to death for being queer.

within a few years, i'd decided i was happier working part time in a call center doing surveys than i would be with a full time job, anyways. it was enough to pay the rent, and i had a lot of free time to write and record. for perhaps the first time in my life, i was actually legitimately happy, and it came via rejecting labour rather than embracing it. i really changed a lot in those years.

my father, however, was not satisfied with the scenario, and he continually badgered me to apply for government jobs that i didn't actually want. he even tried to buy me a car at one point to make me a better management candidate (which i turned down - i told him that if he wanted to throw money at me, he should pay my student debt down, which he declined. i had no interest in a vehicle, whatsoever; i didn't, and still don't, even have a driver's license. i didn't want to be anybody's boss.). i was, i think, the first person in his extended family to ever graduate from university, and he didn't seem to understand why i wasn't instantly transformed into the monopoly guy once i got my diploma - he'd been told his whole life that education was the way out of poverty, and was baffled to watch his oldest child get through school with decent grades and then end up worse off than he was, given that he never even graduated high school. my mother was an army brat and did not graduate high school, either. when i managed to convince him that an undergraduate degree in math with a B+ average isn't exactly the most impressive education, he just reacted by trying to send me to grad school. he was insistent that i'd go to school and get ahead through it.

he was delusional; that's not how our society works. rather, you're born into your place, and there's not much you can do about it. i am the offspring of poor, uneducated people. going to school and "working my way up" is no solution to that, and you'd have to be daft to actually think otherwise. my father was lucky enough to marry into the middle class, but it then predictably rejected me as unworthy. i'm exactly what i had little choice but to be...

so, the reason it didn't work was his wife's fault, in the first place. most third year students that find themselves homeless due to conflicts with their stupid parents don't end up graduating at all - i'm the exception. but, it wasn't enough. those Ds are there forever.

i actually didn't want to go to grad school anymore and, by that time, i was old enough and independent enough to tell him "no.". i had an apartment downtown that i liked, a job across the street that paid the bills and tons of free time to spend on things i actually cared about; i didn't want to move back to the suburbs to live in his basement and work towards a math degree to get a job i didn't want (and probably wouldn't get, anyways). i was legitimately happy for probably the first time, and didn't actually want things to change. i had finally defined myself in terms i was happy about, in ways that transcended the childishness of careerism.

in the middle of 2008, just before the economy crashed, he managed to talk me into it by presenting me with a bribe: if i'd only agree to go back to school, he'd pay the tuition out of his savings account and pay my rent, as well. but, i'd have to get straight As.

i decided that that was even better than things were. that was a huge mistake...

so, carleton let me back in on a qualifying year with that B+, because they at least knew me and realized i did good work most of the time. if i could get straight As in the qualifying year, as i did in 4th year, i could start the master's degree the next year. but, i got cold feet before it started.

i looked at the potential outcomes and bailed - i interpreted the outcome, a job at cra, as an absolute death sentence. i just couldn't go through with it. nor did i want to be an academic. if i was going to do this, i wanted a job in the private sector, in the end. living in ottawa, all of the private sector jobs were technology-oriented. so, i switched into an undergraduate computer science program, instead.

then, the market crashed and my father bailed on me, forcing me to take out a student loan at the last minute in order to pay my rent. he promised he'd pay it down when the economy recovered, but he never did. i've been broke without caring much ever since. that loan is now somewhere near $100,000, and he's long dead.

so, yes, i went back in 2008 and eventually got 19.5/20 credits for a computer science degree at a very high gpa (around 95%.) before deciding that i didn't want to do it anymore. i spent the last several semesters getting through the requirements of a three year sociology of law degree. i didn't graduate from either program. while i was in the computer science program, i also took enough graduate level math courses as electives to complete a master's degree, but i did not consider having that formally acknowledged. a large number of these courses would be categorized as "computer math".

rather, i was accepted into disability at the end of 2012 and realized that this is what i actually wanted out of life - financial stability, and the freedom to exist outside of the constraints of careerism. so, i essentially dropped out of school to go on odsp - because i interpreted that as a preferable path, as a way out of careerism.

so, yes - i essentially have a programming degree. but, i'm really not very techy.

it's a reality of capitalism - we need to center our labour aspirations around market demand. i didn't choose that subject out of a legitimate interest in it, i chose it because it looked like that's where the jobs were.

in the years since, i haven't kept up, but it's not because i lost interest - it's because i didn't have any interest in the first place.

if i could do it over again, i would have stayed in the part time job and told my father to fuck off.

it seems like my appointment is going to need to be rescheduled, although i cannot reach anybody at this number, and haven't been able to for years.

i was scheduling everything around the appointment. i guess i'll need to schedule it around my next estrogen pickup mid-month, instead.

and, on second thought, it seems like i'm napping...

so, this is what was happening, apparently.

and, that's a fairly recent thing.

there doesn't appear to be an active chromium-for-xp fork to use as a backup, meaning i need any alternative to chrome to both have tls 1.2 and be xp compatible, in addition to being html5 compliant. vivaldi 1.0 is the last xp version, and it's not tls 1.2 compliant. uc might be useful for xp, but i'm a little apprehensive about downloading a browser from china, still.

so, it seems like the best back up still remains chrome - spyware and all.

https://www.ghacks.net/2019/10/02/tls-1-0-and-1-1-deprecation-chrome-to-display-your-connection-is-not-fully-secure-warnings/

the javascript is indeed still somewhat of a problem, which is partly because youtube is a pig with javascript, and partly due to the age of the machine. you can't turn that off, either.

but, the choppiness issue seems to be mostly fixed...

it works, at least - and it was updated at the beginning of this month. so, this is certainly my best option, so long as it runs smoothly enough to be usable.

ok.

i'm behind on eating again, so i'm going to focus on that before i get in the shower and probably crash.

so, i would have liked to get a bit more done today, certainly. but, if this solution holds, then it's at least a major step in the right direction towards being able to do the rather normal thing of making my self something to eat and watching a youtube stream at the table while i'm eating it. if i don't have to think about that anymore, it should be a step towards greater productivity in finishing the liner notes up.

if not, i think what i've learned is that my only other real option is to hone in on the correct older version of chrome.

there's some more people talking the issue out over here:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=68054

i'm very much like tricia - if i literally don't go anywhere except academic pages on youtube, there is an exceedingly low chance i'm going to run into a virus on this machine.

but, i keep my access speed very low for this reason, and the reality is that there's nothing on the machine - and i'm happy to run an automated format/reinstall if it gets dirty, through whatever accident.

my concern is malicious hacking from the outside in, not picking up random worms or viruses, and moving to windows 7 isn't going to protect me from that.

i need to point something else out, though - this isn't your average windows xp machine, it's exceedingly stripped down to nearly nothing. i've ripped out almost everything, and that means that it's probably actually safer than running a stock seven, which has all kinds of goodies for bad guys to use.

what's going to actually happen if i pick up a worm is that it's going to error out because it can't find the system files it needs to operate and replicate.

if this works, it's perfect.

chrome was working a little better for me, but it's full of spyware.

firefox is a little less invasive, but it was sputtering out on the hardware.

so, if this works as well as chrome, without the spyware...

what i want is a lightweight firefox fork that i can get to youtube with.

let's hope this works.

ok, so did this guy did the research for me.

i've never heard of mypal before, but if it's a fork of pale moon then it should be a little lighter weight than firefox.

is that my answer?

so, i'm going to try doing this in the other direction, instead. it's formatting and reinstalling. once i find the right version to boot back into, that will be frequent.

the last version with xp support is 49.

can we start there and move backwards, if it stutters or is otherwise overloaded?

they could start a blog, even?

"but, what would people do?"

they could go to school?

read a book?

make some art?

be free?

removing the ad revenue as an incentive would no doubt drastically clean up the internet of garbage.

...just as removing the profit motive, in general, would eliminate massive amounts of waste from society.

70% of the economy just shouldn't exist, anyways.

the world isn't going to end if the roman atwoods out there no longer exist, guys.

"why would people upload if they can't get ad revenue?"

if you're just uploading for ad revenue, i'm entirely certain that your content is garbage to begin with, and we'd all be better off if you didn't bother in the first place....

let's seize the means of reproduction, and turn the ads off once and for all.

"well, if you don't support the business model, how will the service continue?"

we should nationalize it.

it should be public property.

what does it cost to run some servers? i'm sure there's a few dollars in the military budget.

at 144p, fwiw.

i'm trying to watch a lecture on quantum physics.

and, guess what?

it's not even monetized.

"but, ads are our business model."

i don't fucking care about your worthless business model....

so, can we get google to realize what's important here?

the environment is important.

ads are not important.

i'd rather have an old, insecure laptop that i use strictly to access youtube than a pile of perfectly good electronics in the fucking landfill, because you're enforcing advanced encryption to watch an ad for a bunch of worthless garbage that i don't remotely care about.

this is dystopic...

"you're the one that's not concerned about security!"

well, you're right, i'm not...

what i'm concerned about is the environmental footprint around being forced to upgrade my computer to access your fucking ad servers.

29 is better, but it's not actually working....

let's try 30, then.

and, yes: i'm being forced to download from shady places, because google won't offer secure downloads. clearly, they're not actually concerned about security, if they're forcing people with old machines to go to shady sites, are they?

this chromebook is running 60-something and seems fine....for now....

but, my computer might be too slow to run the ads on youtube - something that youtube has decided is a reason to deny access to the site, altogether.

what i'm worried about with this version of firefox is that video seems to lag behind the audio, which is kind of a shitty deal when you're watching somebody scrawl out equations on the board.

i guess the final workaround would have to be to move to a different site, like vimeo or dailymotion, but there's no guarantee that the encryption requirements are less advanced.

it does also seem as though there are more lightweight browsers for linux that are being more readily maintained.

if i could get a bit more ram in that laptop, i could probably upgrade it to vista, but that doesn't actually help me.

i'm not sure if the windows 7 setup disc would let me install to that machine, or if there might be a workaround in a version for "developing markets".

fuck, i just don't want to put a working machine in the landfill. this is stupid...

some of youtube is even using tls 1.3, apparently, which was enabled in chrome 70.

the last version with xp support is 49.

but, if i'm getting blocked due to not having tls 1.3, then firefox 52 would have to have tls 1.3, too, and that's certainly untrue.

it does, however, have tls 1.2.

i think that should be the end fix, but let's find out.

the encryption is for the ad server.

lol...

how did we get here?

i'm really bad at letting things go.

surely, somebody is still supporting xp?

k-meleon? no. but, i tried the last available version from 2015 anyways, and it wouldn't load the codec. i don't know why, but i'm not the only person with the problem.

if there's a good html5-ready firefox fork that still supports xp, i can't find it.

i think the problem i was having with chrome was that the early versions didn't have tls 1.2. that clicks in with v 29. so, let's give that a run.

actually, this is literally his father's car, for some reason that i don't think anybody else in the world understands.

and, then, there's this:

i'll let you look up comments previously made about authoritarian regimes.

the song is from 1979. it isn't about him. but, it nails him.