i need to eat, and then spend the rest of the night on court stuff.

i found 30 tablets at the furthest store in the exact opposite end of town.

it's a week's worth...

so, i'm going for a very long bike ride in the morning :)

it'll be good for me - some exercise. i'm overdue.

what's next, though? well, i've literally called every store in town. that was the last one in the list. so, what's next is that i'm going to need to keep calling around and see what i can find. i've at least ruled out a lot of places.

i guess i can start calling places that are a little further out. and, if i can find another week or two's worth somewhere, maybe i can get out to detroit near the end of the month.

it's a good excuse for a bike ride in the heat, and i'll take it for that alone.

oddly, the brand name estrogen has largely been removed from most online websites - they're only selling the generics. and, the few that are willing to sell the brand name are doing so at what seems like very high prices, but that might be more of a consequence of the low canadian dollar.

i wish i could just go over to detroit, but the border is closed until at least mid june.

well, i contacted somebody at the company that resells this in canada, which is called acerus, and they explained that the supply issue is actually in europe. he doesn't think it's virus-related, because the issue precedes it. but he has no date of re-availability...

i don't know how seriously to take the response, but what he told me suggests that there's a relatively high demand for the product and he realizes that there's a lot of people looking for it. he's apparently getting a lot of calls about it.

there's some chance, i guess, that the company in europe is ultimately sourcing it from china, who of course had the virus earlier. the issue seems to have started around january or so, apparently. but, if that's the case, it's not clear. what's clear is that the supplier does not know when it's going to be available again.

what i want is to get around the hemi-hydrate, so i don't have to buy this specific brand of the drug, but it appears to be the only supplier in this province, so i might have to order it from out of province, or maybe from a different country, which i'm willing to do.

let's call some local pharmacies and see what's out there.

but, i'm ready to order.

it's a known issue with a lot of drugs.

and, it makes you wonder why they even manufacture it at all. what's the point?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211383515001069

no. i'm weirded out about this. i'm taking the first pill and it's not dissolving, which is what the literature says - this formulation isn't water soluble. so, you can't absorb it through your digestive tract.....

but, i'm super sketchy about fucking with my existing estrone levels. like, i've been taking this every day for 11 years. what happens if i just stop? i don't want to know.

i'm going to double dose for today - i'm going to take it orally and sublingually. and, i'm going to call around and figure out what's going on.

i'm going to actually call the manufacturer directly, first, and see what they say..

so, i got the fax out.

i couldn't find any brand name 2 mg estrace yesterday, although i had to get to the appointment, as well. so, i got some generics. i'm about to try the first dose right now.

the issue with the generics is that it's bound to a different delivery agent that doesn't make it through your stomach acids, so you basically have to take it under your tongue or it's useless. sublingual administration results in higher spikes but lower plateaus. so, i might be a little bit moody for a while, until i get back on the brand name drugs.

i may notice a slight increase in feminization, but it will likely be at the expense of my mental health. i don't need or even want giant breasts; i have an athletic body type that is more slim and lean than curvy. i find curvy women to just look fat and gross; i'd rather look like a swimmer than a porn star. sorry.

but, this is what i have for at least the next week whether i like it or not, so i'm doing this experiment against my will (and definitely against my better judgement). i've got bloodwork papers for when i want to test, which i'll do before i switch back.

my estrogen levels were at 396 pmol/L when i tested on the 20th of may, which is about 110 pg/ml. the oral administration route plateaus, so this is all around a little bit low. based on what i'm feeling, i suspect that this is a little low because it's being counteracted by creeping testosterone levels, and it's the latter issue that i feel is a more pressing concern that i want to correct.

at the end of the day, i'd rather have zero testosterone and zero estrogen than ignore the creeping testosterone, or try to overpower it with estrogen. at this stage of my life, emasculation is actually more important to me than feminization - i want my testosterone annihilated more than i want my estrogen boosted.

but, we'll see where the sublingual experiment takes me. here i go...

in the mean time, i'm going to call around and see what i can find.

i will fax this to the doctor in the morning.

========

hi.

so, the short of this is that i'm requesting a reversal of the switch to spiro that we did yesterday and an increase in cyproterone to 200 mg/day, instead. while i tentatively consented, i didn't expect the order to come in so quickly, and didn't have time to do any kind of research of my own before i picked it up yesterday. after reviewing some research, i've decided that the switch to spiro would not be consistent with my transition goals, at this time. further, i would like to reiterate that i really should be looking at an orchiectomy, and not an increase in cyproterone, but my testosterone levels have been doubling yearly since they were at 0.1 (from 0.1 to 0.2 to 0.4 to 0.8), so it is past time to increase my dosage. i would appreciate it if you could send that request to the shopper's at university mall and contact me to let me know about it.

the long of it is...

i first came in and asked to get my testicles out in 2017, when my t-levels were still almost zero. however, i was noticing an unwanted increase in male libido (no reason boners) that, after so many years of absolutely no male sexual activity, came in as exceedingly unwanted. i'd been on t-blockers for eight years at that point and had experienced almost no male libido for essentially that entire period. i had entirely stopped masturbating, even - i just had no penis at all, sexually speaking. so, after many years without it, i had absolutely no interest in a return of a male libido at all and wanted to stop it from happening before it started. after looking into it, i decided the orchiectomy was a better option than an increase in t-blockers, due to concerns about liver functions with high levels of cyproterone. while that seemed a long ways off, i decided that fighting an arms race with my testicles was pointless and it was time to go to the next step, instead. 

within a few months, i saw a specialist in windsor, who denied my request for an orchiectomy. he was not explicit about it, but it seemed to be a rejection on religious grounds. while i found this deeply disappointing, the reality is that my t-levels were still so low as to be almost undetectable. further, i found myself in a fight with my landlord over the space of 2017 that was mostly about second hand smoke and made it impossible to put aside money for things like trips to toronto. i ended up moving at the end of 2017, and came back for my yearly in 2018.

i was in an even bigger fight with my new landlord, at that time. i was told the building was moving to nonsmoking, but i ended up directly on top of a 10 g/day "medical" marijuana user, in an old building with no flooring. i was experiencing frequent contact highs and a general level of unpleasantness that i associated with the second-hand marijuana smoke. but, i was also experiencing a range of symptoms that included random bouts of anger, frustration and anxiety - what are, in hindsight, "male emotions" that could be associated with an increase in testosterone. i also found myself sleeping more and having difficulty concentrating and focusing on day-to-day tasks. on a hunch, i had myself tested for meth, thinking maybe i was inhaling fumes from downstairs, and that came back negative. however, i tested positive for thc, apparently from the neighbour's habit - a reflection of the sheer bulk of smoke coming into my apartment. i did not, in the end, get tested for increased cortisol levels from the marijuana smoke (something that is a well understood consequence of marijuana use), but i was tested for heavy metal poisoning, which also came back negative. when my t-levels came back at .2, it didn't click that that was twice as much as .1 - it was still so low that it could just be error. however, given that my living situation was so unstable, i requested that we put off the issue for another year, until i could figure out what was going on. empirically speaking, .2 is still very low; i realize that. but, it seemed to be moving in the wrong direction.

over 2018, i also started to notice that my skin was getting rougher, that my facial hair was getting thicker and that my hair was knotting up more easily. i actually initially assigned most of this to the second-hand marijuana smoke, but when it didn't get better i became more suspicious. my male libido was also incrementally, if slowly, continuing to return, which remained deeply unwanted.

when i came back for my yearly tests in 2019, my living situation had stabilized enough that i was willing to look at booking an appointment in toronto for the orchiectomy, so we went through the process. we also increased my estrogen a second time from 6 mg/day to 8 mg/day, after noticing it was a little low. we also noticed that my testosterone had increased again to 0.4, which was still low, but twice as much. i still decided it was better to have a surgical than a chemical solution at this point, so i waited on the dose increase. but, i've been experiencing many of the same symptoms over the last year, and it's really just been getting worse and worse, even as the increase in estrogen has led to renewed breast growth, which had stopped for a while. are the creeping t-levels adversely affecting the estrogen levels?

when i came back in 2020, my t-levels had skyrocketed to 0.8, which is confirming to me that all of these symptoms i've been having are a result of unwanted testosterone levels. more frustrating, my estrogen levels are still low, after having been doubled over the last few years. and, there has been no progress on the preferred surgical solution.

if we were to plot the curve of t-levels since 2017, we would realize they've been doubling every year since. so, should i expect them to be 1.6 this time next year? that would be a 16 fold increase in four years, and i will no doubt have a list of terrible symptoms to look forward to. while i understand that 1.6 is still low, it is these symptoms that i am tying to the creeping testosterone that i want to reverse. this is, after all, ultimately a quality of life issue, right?

while what i want is the surgery, it doesn't seem likely that this will be available in the next 12-24 months. so, we decided to make a treatment option to move to spiro.

my research into the topic indicates that if i want to get my t-levels back under .5 and pushing towards .1 - or even an absolute 0 - then spiro would be the wrong decision, as spiro is less effective at blocking testosterone than cyproterone. a recent study is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6612061/.

while spiro may have comparable feminizing effects overall, it would seem that a reasonable expectation of t-levels would be around 2.0, which would actually be an increase. as my goal is very specifically to reduce the side effects associated with creeping t-levels, this would appear to be counter-productive. i've seen no research anywhere that suggests that i should expect the spiro to take me to the t-levels i want, which i admit is perhaps lower than most transfemales experience or even want.

i am also concerned about what spiro may do to my heart health. i eat a very large number of bananas and an unusually low level of processed foods (so i don't get much salt), so i would be a bad candidate for a drug that increases potassium levels. i survive largely on fresh fruits and vegetables. i would expect that my potassium levels are already high, as it is, and that my sodium levels are probably a little low. i also have low blood pressure, as it is, from diet and exercise, so i probably shouldn't be taking drugs that are likely to decrease my blood pressure - it could lead to dangerous hypotension, which is what i need to actually be concerned about.

this study also suggests that spiro may reduce my hdl, while cyproterone may increase it:

https://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(16)30421-0/pdf

i know that it's easy enough to look at my cholesterol levels and tell me i have nothing to worry about, but i need to dissent. my father died of a brain tumour in his mid-50s, but he had already had several heart attacks by the time he turned 40, which i will do in january. his youngest brother died of a heart attack in his early 30s, and his father died of a heart attack in his early 50s. my cholesterol levels are low due to great amounts of effort on my behalf to keep them low with diet and lifestyle, which seems to be working. my genetic risk factors are so frightening, that i am very adverse to doing anything at all that might increase them. if my cholesterol is so great, maybe the cyproterone & estrogen is actually helping, and maybe i should keep at it.

lastly, i'm also dealing with an unwanted change in my estrogen delivery systems over the upcoming months that i want to isolate for testing. if i switch from cyproterone to spiro and my estrogen comes way down, i won't know if it's the switch to generics or the switch to spiro that's at fault. i'm also looking at switching back to prometrium, soon. i want to do one thing at a time to ensure that i can properly isolate and understand the effects.

my concern with cyproterone and liver functions was less immediate and more long term. i fully understand that i can't win an arms race with my testicles, in the long run, and that i'm not supposed to be in this situation, in the first place. 11 years on t-blockers is bizarre. my testicles should have been removed ages ago, and i shouldn't be in this mess. however, cancer patients can take up to 300 mg/day of cyproterone before they begin to suffer adverse effects and there is apparently essentially no risk of actual overdose:

https://pdf.hres.ca/dpd_pm/00022190.PDF

this isn't the right answer in the end, and it didn't seem necessary before, but it does now and it's not all that scary for the short term.

so, for all of these reasons, i am proposing that we go to 200 mg of cyproterone instead of switching to the spiro.

however, what i really want is to get them out and, while i understand that elective surgeries are not available right now, i would request some urgency be attached to the matter, as much as is possible. i think i've laid out my case, here.

he's the only doctor in town i can deal with.

and, probably the only one for miles and miles.

the reason i didn't ask for a dose increase last year was that i decided to get the orchiectomy, instead. so, i waited. and waited.

he didn't even fucking mail it.

i should have just asked for the dose increase; i'd probably have avoided the year's worth of difficulty focusing. and, i'm almost certain that's what i'm doing.

i had a doctor's appointment today after getting my blood taken a few weeks ago.

my vitals are, as usual, outstanding. but, the t-blockers are decreasing their effectiveness in an increasingly worrying direction, and i found out that he didn't even send the fucking letter to the surgeon, yet.

i noticed this intuitively, to start with, and i actually think it's at the root cause of the problems i'm having with drowsiness and focus. i was feeling anxious and angry and frustrated, and thought i was dealing with cortisol issues or even lead poisoning. but, then i realized my testosterone was going up.

it was at 0.1 four years ago, .2 two years ago, .4 last year and .8 this year. this is the wrong direction!

but, it's not surprising, either. i'm developing a tolerance to the cyproterone acetate, which is a well understood reality of it.

so, if i'm developing a tolerance to the drug, i can either increase the dosage or i can just cut my testicles out. i desperately want my testicles to be put through a fucking incinerator. i want them gone. forever. but, i can't get a doctor to do it.

it's covered. it's simple. it's fast. but, they won't do it.

i was concerned about increasing the cyproterone due to eventual strain on my liver.

so, the doctor suggested i switch to spironolactone instead, and i said "ok", and i even filled a prescription today, but i'm looking into it and i think this was a stupid suggestion.

to begin with, clinical studies seem to suggest that the spironolactone is less effective than the cyproterone acetate, at the dosages i've been prescribed - with the spiro only reducing levels to 2.0, and the cyproterone generally coming in around the 0.8 i'm currently at. so, if i'm trying to get my testosterone back down to .1, the spiro seems unlikely to do it. it's probably going to actually increase it, from what i can see.

second, the spiro seems to reduce hdl, whereas the cyproterone seems to increase it. the doctor is consistently amazed at my cholesterol levels. the cyproterone - which he doesn't usually prescribe - may have something to do with it.

worse, the spiro is often prescribed for heart conditions, which is something i'm not sure i want to fuck with. the cyproterone is simply a safer drug at high concentrations. so, if i'm concerned about complications from high concentrations, moving me to spiro is backwards.

i'm going to do some more research, but i'm leaning heavily towards tossing the spiro and asking him to just boost my cyproterone instead. i'm only taking 100, which is usually considered a maximum dose for trans patients, but appears to be substantively below levels where liver complications are a serious problem.

this is the end of this for a while, as i pivot back into period three.

but, here is the complete readable archive of this blog for the first reconstruction phase, from july, 2013 to january, 2014, and for the other three, as well.

the second reconstruction phase ran from february 1, 2014 to the end of june, 2015, when i looped back around to remaster the inri material from source. while the politics and music journal sites are largely reconstructed over this period, i do not intend to get back to rebuilding the travel or dtk blogs in any systematic matter or doing music journal releases until (1) i am in a comfortable flow with the alter-reality and (2) i am finished with period three, which ran roughly from the time i got back from bc in 2003 to the time i moved into the apartment on bronson in 2007. journal releases for the foreseeable future are going to be dated from 1988 or 1989 forwards.

so, that's what's coming up.

but, i need to get through another 11 liner note releases, and update at least inri022, probably others. the coming re-releases are inri031-inri034, inri036-inri041 and inri045.

http://books.noisetrade.com/j/072013-012014-dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja
http://books.noisetrade.com/j/072013-012014-music-journal
http://books.noisetrade.com/j/072013-012014-travel-blog
http://books.noisetrade.com/j/072013-012014-deathtokoalas

https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-travel-blog/ebook/product-nm4jeq.html
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-deathtokoalas-blog/ebook/product-zrgr94.html
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja-blog/ebook/product-qg9g54.html
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-music-journal/ebook/product-p5v576.html

i was extra thorough, but i am now satisfied with it.

here are the noise trade smashwords links to the readable versions of the january, 2014 archives of each of the four blogs, including this one:

http://books.noisetrade.com/j/012014-dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja
http://books.noisetrade.com/j/012014-music-journal
http://books.noisetrade.com/j/012014-travel-blog
http://books.noisetrade.com/j/012014-deathtokoalas

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026654  (music)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026655  (politics)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026658  (deathtokoalas)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026660  (travel; full first reconstruction phase)

and, while i'm at it, somebody tell trudeau to take a fucking bath.

gross.

we're in irreversible decline.

freefall.

collapse.

it's what mr. trudeau and his neo-liberal douchebag friends always say, right?

there's winners and losers in the new global order. somehow, they've missed the obvious....

canada's a loser.

the biggest loser out there, in fact.

what happened?

canada has been a major loser in the globalization process.

well, unless you're a shareholder that lives in canada. of course.

the actual g7 is:

1. united states
2. china
3. japan
4. germany
5. india
6. france
7. united kingdom

the countries that don't belong there are canada and italy. but, italy can get in with the 8th seed if you want to be more generous.

8. italy

is canada next? no. it's brazil.

9. brazil

then canada.

10. canada
11. russia

however, russia is growing at a much faster rate than we are and will pass us within a year or two.

so, keep trying to exclude others, canada - you're just ensuring your own irrelevance, in the long run.

if small, unimportant countries like canada want to insist on excluding the russians from international meetings, i would suggest that the larger players move to erect parallel bodies where they can engage in a more constructive dialogue without us.

they should invite the chinese, as well.

it's been years since we've had a nice, hot summer in this area of the world.

and i'm going to have to spend it sitting inside fighting with the fucking a/c :(.

with the return of the sun, let's hope the oscillations flip and it's even more humid next year. i want it to hit 20 degrees on april 1st and stay above it nonstop until nov 1st, even overnight.

it seems like i'm just going to have to postpone my 40th birthday until next year, i guess.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/canada-2020-summer-forecast

as usual, dion was right, and his leadership is sorely missed in this dark time of dubya lite.

when am i going to give up on the liberals and just accept that they're gone forever?

but, this was not a long time ago, and it makes you long for better days with more intelligent leaders.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/dion-foreign-policy-russia-1.3510941

i agree with trump on this point, and think the decision to expel them in the first place was foolish.

canada's longterm interests are best realized by expanding ties with a country that probably has more in common with canada than any other country in the world, has been there for centuries and isn't going anywhere any time soon. i thought the russians were in trouble around 2014, but they surprised me.

the russians are not our enemies, and do not want to be our enemies. it's time we stopped pretending they are, and started focusing more on containing countries with truly alien, hostile, incompatible cultures - like the saudis.

aimlessly flailing against moscow is simply not acting in our self-interest, and never was.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52885178

from what i've heard, the people on the street right now neither sound like anarchists, nor like nazis.

what they sound like is islamists.

what they want is to punish the sinners.

and, i'm growing more and more concerned about the general situation, as we're being forced to wear masks and being coerced to yell biblical slogans, like dark age barbarians.

you don't have to agree with me completely; it's ok if you don't.

the united states is unusual in the modern world in it's continued embrace of retributive justice. it's a broader social issue in your country, and we're not likely to see eye-to-eye on it. you're likely to want to pluck mine out over it, too.

but, let's all sit down and read through some historical approaches to the question "what is justice?" before we go back to yelling for blood on the streets like a bunch of barbarians. i'm sure we can find some kind of consensus...

justice isn't more thuggery, or reverse thuggery, or enlightened thuggery.

justice is putting an end to the thuggery.

justice means reforming the police services to expunge the teaching of thuggery, not tracking down the bad apples and parading their heads around on stakes.

no. shut up. you're wrong. deal with it.

stop.

my opposition is to judeo-muslim (christians are actually a little better, here) concepts of retributive justice, and the opposition is foundational and deep. i will never side with any political movement calling for increasing punishment of anybody.

i wrote an essay about this a while ago:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/essays/pauchay.html

...but it's actually a constant thread through the site, even if i get a little angry from time to time.

so, in a situation where a cop by all apparent means accidentally kills an unarmed civilian due to his own overwhelming stupidity, what is justice? is it enacting as much retribution on the individual as possible? is it punishing everybody in sight at the highest degree possible?

i must adamantly dissent - no! this is not justice! this is merely a continuation of the cycle of violence. it is barbarism, not justice.

justice is reforming the system so that stupid people are no longer taught stupid things at cop school, and then let loose on the general population to be idiotic thugs with guns. that's justice.

and, that's the movement i'd support, if it was out there.

you people calling for blood and retribution and punishment and think that that's "justice" can do so without me.

this is the last one of these for a while. when i started this project several years ago, i never expected it to take this long. i thought it would be something i could do to blow the time as i weaned myself off of a physical nicotine addiction. as it is, it's taken me longer to compile these journals than it did to write them. it's really been absolutely absurd.

i still need to finish the liner notes for the series of rereleases attached to this journal - inri031-inri034, inri036-inri04 & inri045. these will come up in due time. that will end the first reconstruction phase, which documents my move from ottawa to windsor and the initial series of re-releases that happened as soon as i got here. the first release of new recordings (of old material) was in june, 2014. after realizing how time consuming this is, it could be a while before i get back to the second phase.

i need to put this aside asap and get back to actually finishing the recordings. period 3 starts soon.

======

the seventh entry in the music journal series, which is the month of january, 2014 and is 189 pages long. i am not going to summarize the story, but it is available on the web over here: http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/.

this is a compilation of written correspondences that occurred around me over january, 2014. it includes facebook posts, google+ posts, youtube comments discussions and emails with acquaintances, strangers and family members, in an attempt to document the first reconstruction phase of rebuilding my discography, including remastering and (re)publishing inri031, inri032, inri033, inri034, inri036, inri037, inri038, inri039, inri040, inri041 and inri045. the contents of this download are the dummy track, a word doc file and a pdf file, both written in a more readable, chronological ordering. i've also added the respective files for my other three blogs, for general interest, as well as 57 separate txt documents (all html files) that are referenced in the journal.

the events documented in this journal occurred in january, 2014 and were compiled into a narrative in several stages over the years 2014-2020. journal completed, released and finalized in doc and pdf format on june 1, 2020. doc201401.

credits

released February 1, 2014

j - editing, participant

nick austin - participant
jonathan jaeger - participant
uncle elvis - participant
arod13arod - participant
Nickelpitts - participant
DatzWhatsUp - participant
TheStory SoFar - participant
TrulyHorrifying Productions - participant
Erik Paulson - participant
kurtless guhle - participant
danny shuddup - participant
cklin114 - participant
Matt Gaub - participant
Memphis. Methods - participant
Evanya Parker - participant
Nowell Kishimoto - participant
George Porte - participant
Bearslikejaimie - participant
Adam Moscinski - participant

nana - participant
the oldest aunt's wife - participant
mom - participant
jeff - participant
sister - participant
stepmother - participant
the surviving uncle - participant

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

just to clarify/reiterate/remind what the problem is.

i'm creating these documents in word 2003 because i like the program, because i have a copy of it and because it works just fine. word processing isn't the kind of thing you should have to pay for over and over again. i don't remember where i got the version i have, but somebody paid for it, and that shouldn't expire.

but, i never got used to the office 2007 interface. i was supposed to eventually deal with it, i know; i didn't, and i don't want to now, and i'm never going to. but, they changed the format at the time from .doc to .docx.

this was a substantive change in the way that office files are created. i don't know how the old office files work, but the new office files are using an xml-based architecture that appears to be dramatically different.

unfortunately, converting from .doc to .docx is something that everybody has massive problems with. google, adobe, the free sites and microsoft, too. it breaks the formatting, every time.  sadly, the standard way that doc is converted to pdf seems to implement the conversion to docx as an intermediary step. so, if i go to google docs, it will convert my doc file to a docx file first and then convert it to pdf after, which leaves me with a slew of broken formatting, essentially undoing everything i spent the last month doing.

but, i was able to find a workaround at the microsoft cloud that converted directly from doc to pdf. it's the only free site that has that option, that i'm aware of.

this broke on me this morning, and then righted itself, and then broke again, and then fixed itself again. but, i think i squeezed what i need out...

the issue could of course be resolved by fixing the conversion step. i'm labeling it as unnecessary and trying to just avoid it, but if they'd just fucking fix it, it wouldn't be a problem.

regardless, that's something that should be made clear - any .doc file that you download from me will lose it's formatting when converted to .docx format, so you should try to open it in a version of word that lets you open it natively, without having to convert it to xml.

ok.

i think i got it. i had to mess around with a few things, and i may have even just gotten it to avoid the conversion by accident. !.

it's going to be an extra slow process of double checking, so i might not have these finalized for a few more hours, but i think i got what i wanted downloaded and it's just a matter of time before i get these links up.

finally.

ugh.

microsoft has undone my trick. it won't convert directly from doc to pdf. and the other site i was using wants a credit card, now, because i'm browsing incognito (and can't turn it off).

i don't have access to a newer version of ms word and don't want to pay for it. on top of that, i just don't like the user interface in the new word.

we might have to just not have pdf files, anymore, if nobody is going to let me convert from doc to pdf.

but, why is this happening? i had a method worked out, and they broke it. twice...

i would, in the end, expect the courts to side with speech advocates; i don't think that repealing s. 230 would lead to less legal protections for speech.

the concern is that the companies might not want to go through the process of litigating, and would just ban hammer everything on the slightest complaint, instead.

and, you neo-fascist progressive-conservative brownshirts need to take heed - you'll be the first to go.

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/30/865813960/as-trump-targets-twitters-legal-shield-experts-have-a-warning

again: i slept all day. and, i wish i knew why i'm so physically exhausted recently.

it's cold in here and it's cold outside, and i think that's a big part of it. i felt better last week when the humidity briefly peaked, and i feel better wrapped up in a hot blanket where i can sweat. so, that's really what i've been doing all day - trying to escape the cold by hiding in a hot blanket. it's going to warm up tomorrow, finally.

but, whether it's the weather or something else, i feel tense and frustrated and depressed and angry, and it's been constant now for weeks and i don't really understand it. i have a lot of work to do, but i'm not able to do it because i'm not able to mentally focus.

the best way to describe the situation is that i feel like i'm on drugs, but i'm not doing any drugs, so i don't understand.

let's just hope it gets better.

i'm going to try to wake up, take a shower, get my hydration up and get to finishing this up.

ok, it's done, up to cross-reference, as i'm hacking through somebody smoking. fuck...

so, i'm going to need to hit the shower before i finalize this.

but, we've got:

travel blog - 15 pages
deathtokoalas - 90 pages
music journal - 175 pages
politics blog - 226 pages

expect it up before midnight.

it's mostly young & healthy people; if it speeds this thing up, it's probably good news.

although there's that diabetes issue to be concerned about with black americans with poor diets.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7008473/george-floyd-protests-coronavirus-outbreak/

i'd actually rather they brought back the cheaper rates overnight. previously, i could plan my hydro use for off peak hours. now, i'm stuck paying higher rates, whether i like it or not.

but, it's easy to see what the next step is - expect the rates to skyrocket, and for there to be no escape from it.

we probably just lost time of use pricing for good :(.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7007471/coronavirus-ontario-hydro-rates-2/

i stopped this morning to shower, and then to eat, and ended up sleeping, and got distracted.

i'm back on it now, and i am for real almost done - 29th, 30th, 31st. that's it. so, expect it up today.

i wish i knew why i'm so tired all of the time :(.

the difference in opinion here comes right out of engels, and i could understand it being confusing to somebody that doesn't have a basic understanding of marxist theory. i hinted at this previously. but, let's talk about the flip side of limited liability, which is corporate personhood.

unlike most of the faux-left, i don't have any particular opposition to the concept of corporate personhood. if anything, i'd like to take the issue to its logical conclusion, although i've been frustrated by that in canada, which separates "legal personhood" from "natural personhood" and allows for different rights protections based on it. so, we can't tax corporations like people, because they're not natural people. alas.

but, this really is right out of engels.

if you haven't read this, do it. i cite it all of the time. it's so very important:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

Before capitalist production — i.e., in the Middle Ages — the system of petty industry obtained generally, based upon the private property of the laborers in their means of production; in the country, the agriculture of the small peasant, freeman, or serf; in the towns, the handicrafts organized in guilds. The instruments of labor — land, agricultural implements, the workshop, the tool — were the instruments of labor of single individuals, adapted for the use of one worker, and, therefore, of necessity, small, dwarfish, circumscribed. But, for this very reason, they belonged as a rule to the producer himself. To concentrate these scattered, limited means of production, to enlarge them, to turn them into the powerful levers of production of the present day — this was precisely the historic role of capitalist production and of its upholder, the bourgeoisie. In the fourth section of Capital, Marx has explained in detail how since the 15th century this has been historically worked out through the three phases of simple co-operation, manufacture, and modern industry. But the bourgeoisie, as is shown there, could not transform these puny means of production into mighty productive forces without transforming them, at the same time, from means of production of the individual into social means of production only workable by a collectivity of men. The spinning wheel, the handloom, the blacksmith's hammer, were replaced by the spinning-machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer; the individual workshop, by the factory implying the co-operation of hundreds and thousands of workmen. In like manner, production itself changed from a series of individual into a series of social acts, and the production from individual to social products. The yarn, the cloth, the metal articles that now come out of the factory were the joint product of many workers, through whose hands they had successively to pass before they were ready. No one person could say of them: "I made that; this is my product."

when we speak of corporate personhood, we need to put it into this context of the socialization of production eliminating the ability to separate the specific roles of individuals in a corporation. as nobody can claim that this is their product, nobody can assume liability for it; the product is owned only by the corporation, and only the corporation can be held liable for it's defects. this is corporate personhood, regardless of what else you've heard about it.

but, how does the internet work? am i more like the worker on the production line, engaging in but one of a series of social acts that is bringing a product to market? or am i in truth more like the medieval guildsperson, engaging in an act of individual production? i would argue the latter and, as such, would argue against the idea of sharing liability for the product. i can truly say these words in good faith: i made this; this is my product.

so, we're back to the provider as publishing house again, except to point out that the great conflict that occurred in the medieval period was over the commons, and the question of whether there should be private property or not. there were wars and revolutions fought over this question, ending in the conversion of feudalism to capitalism. so, are we going to relive this conflict, as the technology hits a breaking point? should we have publishing houses that buy and sell copyrights or otherwise offer their services for a fee, or should we hold it all in common and provide free and unfettered access to all?

we will need to figure this out.

but, read the engels pamphlet. it's not esoteric; it's meant for workers. it gets the point across very clearly, as to why it is that i'm approaching these things so differently.

and, what about this issue of liability and s. 230?

well, i went through the long version of this previously - either the platform owns the content, or the user does, and this kind of in between reality is sort of muddling it up.

as a heavy user of these services, my primary concern with this discussion is the potential outcome that i may lose ownership over my content. i'm happy to take full responsibility for what i'm posting, for better or worse. just don't mess with my content.

i've argued against the concept of limited liability in investments rather heavily, but i actually don't see the parallel, here, and kind of take exception to the language as it was used in the executive order. limited liability allows shareholders to invest in unethical corporations without being liable for the crimes they commit, which could include genocide, rape and environmental desecration - the worst things that humans can do, and they're done all the time by resource & extraction companies. these are terrible rights abuses that need to be ended and i am quite confident that eliminating the shield that shareholders have from the actions of the companies they invest in would have a huge effect on their investment decisions.

are we going to compare posting a mean tweet to burning down a village in guatemala, or the deepwater horizon oil spill? it's a difference of scale that is so tremendous as to be bluntly comical to even consider.

so, do i think that we should make these companies liable for the content of their users in order to stop them from being so mean on the internet? would this eliminate the profit motive in hosting the content? well, broadly speaking, i'm not sure there'd be a lot of liability in most cases, anyways, so long as users own the content, but it would give the hosting companies a greater excuse to take down content they don't like, and more of a prerogative to be proactive in policing speech - which is a bad thing to anybody that believes in free speech, even if this creepy new breed of progressive/conservative seems to think it's so important for some reason. i actually don't think that the law as it exists is really making much of anybody much of any extra money (just about the only thing you could actually prosecute is libel), but it is allowing for a more open internet by preventing the companies from acting like actuaries.

that said, if people feel that laws against things like libel are not being strongly enough enforced, then steps should be taken to better focus actions against the specific actors being accused of breaking the law.

further, i would support a greater role for the courts in determining what kind of speech is acceptable and what kind of speech isn't. decisions should be subject to appeal and rooted in precedent, not made on the whim of some faceless corporate executive in an empty suit, based on opinions about ad revenue.

limited liability is a major problem in existing capitalism. we shouldn't be allowed to invest in companies that we know do bad things, and be shielded from the consequences of it. but, i just don't see the connection between the need to reign in investor rights and s. 230 of the communications decency act in the united states; the former is a pressing concern that should be at the front of the political agenda on the left, whereas the latter is largely a triviality, except in it's negative implications for the intellectual property rights of internet platform users.

go after the users, not the companies.

i mean, what twitter is essentially doing is providing a filtering service and then forcing it down on users, who may or may not appreciate it. that's kind of what's being lost, here. we're all arguing about first amendment rights and private property, but what about user choice?

if they feel this is important, that's their prerogative. fine.

but, users should be given the choice as to whether they want their feeds filtered or not, and maybe they could even open it up to different types of filtering that different users would have more interest in.

that's a workable compromise, isn't it?

what do i think twitter should do?

well, it needs to be able to allow the user to determine whether it's interested in it's opinions or not, to start. as a user, i don't care what twitter thinks. i didn't subscribe to twitter, and i'm not interested in having them interfere with the content i did subscribe to. so, to begin with, as user, i should have the ability to tell twitter that i don't care what it thinks, and i don't want it to interfere with my feed, ever, at all. that is to say that it's warnings and what not should be a user-configurable setting, rather than a site-wide decision.

that would mean that doing things like disabling comments and shares should never happen, ever.

second, any opinions that twitter wishes to express should be presented in parallel to those expressed by it's users, rather than on top of them. so, rather than put a disclaimer over top of a feed item, they should present a second item in the feed for people to interact with, if they decide to - or not interact with, if they don't want to. as mentioned previously, this should be user-configurable. and, maybe you could even granularize it; i might not be interested in twitter's opinions on what is true and what isn't, but i'd be happy to remove any posts from my feed that have to do with the proselytization of any type of religion.

something like this would be a proper balance that would allow twitter the ability to express it's views without stifling the views of it's users, and while allowing it's users to decide which views it feels are more worthwhile.

the lieutenant governor of minnesota is claiming that the riots over the death of the black man are being instigated by white supremacists.

let's just think that through for a minute.

but, you should recognize that this is reflective of the level of much of the discourse coming from the democrats, nowadays, who see themselves as so utterly reliant on black voters that they're willing to bend the truth in any direction possible. and, in a state like minnesota, which is overwhelmingly white, it makes you wonder if that narrative came down from head office.

she then claimed that the white supremacists were working with anarchists, which is an equally ridiculous claim. you might not like us, but try to understand us. we reject any sort of hierarchy - including hierarchies of race - on first principles.

it's literally a suggestion that communists and nazis are working together to burn down the city.

but, what's going on, here, in the wider context? there have been similar deaths recently, but these things only seem to happen during economic recessions, don't they? is this happening separately from the fiasco with the virus?

there's two ways to parse this.

1) this is some kind of disaster capitalism, and it's going to be used as an excuse to bring in martial law. i would have argued loudly against this as recently as two months ago, but i told you to read the handmaid's tale. is this the next phase of this?

2) this is what happens when you have millions and millions of unemployed young people. maybe you sent them checks, but they're still unemployed, and they obviously have nothing better to do.

frankly, i could think of worse ways to waste your time than burning down the police station, but that's only a start. and, i wonder. should i be out there on the street? what kind of revolutionary potential is building right now? and how controlled is it, in the sense of being generated to justify an increasingly draconian lockdown on our civil rights?

well, ok.

these are the right targets.

stay focused, minneapolis - don't turn on each other.

this is not a conspiracy theory.

this is reality.

the tactic was invented by bismarck and has appeared in virtually every public protest for the last 150 years.

https://www.insider.com/minneapolis-protesters-social-media-users-suspicious-of-umbrella-man-2020-5

so, i'm not going to tell people to stay in. go riot.

but, i will ask you to pick your targets more carefully, and question your leadership if they seem to be trying to distract you.

why are they inciting you to burn down a mcdonalds, or a local clothing store? are the people doing that perhaps what is called agents provocateurs? i don't know; i'm not on the ground. work out your own deductions.

instead of burning the shopping district down, why don't you burn down a police station or a city hall, instead?

mike is making what is a common error in reactions to these events - he wants retribution, which he calls "justice". so, he wants to go after the prosecutors. he wants to send these "bad apples" to jail. it's the same response you see over and over...

but, what is the point of sending these cops to jail if the academy just replaces them with four more that think exactly the same way?

this is systemic, and you have to go after the root causes, which are in the way that police are taught to act. it's not an accident that this happens over and over - it's the system. they're not "bad apples". it's by design.

i know you don't want to think of it like this, but sending these cops to jail isn't any more useful than sending some low level crack dealers on the street to jail. it addresses something emotional, it expresses something religious, but it is an absolutely useless step in actually solving the actual problem.

this is complete nonsense.

what are they going to do if i just ignore them and walk right in? are they going to call the police? are they going to charge me with not wearing a mask?

you can be sure they'll end up with a charter case, if they do.

they have no enforcement rights, here. at all. nor does their status as private businesses give them the right to discriminate against customers based on their clothing - that's what human rights laws are for.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/mask-rights-covid-questions-answered-1.5590534

there are plenty of examples of systemic racism out there. i'm not doubting that.

but, this is more of an example of systemic stupidity.

as far as i can tell, what happened in minneapolis was a very stupid police officer. there's a lot of people with a lot of agendas, but the constant that keeps coming up in these cases is that police officers nowadays are, more often than not, of exceedingly low intelligence. there's not really another way to explain what happened.

the thing is that it isn't an accident - the police training specifically pulls out officers that are obedient, and specifically removes officers that demonstrate any sort of independent thinking.

so, the most frustrating thing you're going to hear about this is how he was a "bad apple", and how he "failed" to "protect". that's all rooted in utter nonsense. he's exactly what he was created to be, and he did exactly what he was trained to do.

everything else aside, you'd have to be halfway to being retarded to keep your knee on somebody when they're yelling at you like that.

and, while other scenarios may lead to other recommendations, the basic truth here is that this officer was obviously simply not intelligent enough to do his job.

if we must have cops, we need to stop making them so fucking stupid.

she's a war criminal, and she should be in jail.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/biden-vice-president-susan-rice/612115/

when both candidates have essentially the same position on a specific topic, it's because it's what the money wants.

and why do you think he said that?

something needs to be done to reduce the power of social media companies to police speech, but revoking s. 230 would be a catastrophe for speech advocates.

yet, it seems like the parties agree with each other. so, it's congress' move, and what they do next could very well be horrible.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/29/21274812/joe-biden-donald-trump-twitter-facebook-section-230-moderation-revoke

so, i've been sleepy since wednesday morning and have largely blown the last few days. i mean, i've been working at it, but i've only gotten a few hours done.

the temperature crashed by ten degrees celsius yesterday afternoon, which messed with me, and we're getting a cold and gross weekend. i'm not going to ask for the heat to come on, but it's cold in here, and it really sucks.

i've already used the stove a few times, and i'm going to have to take...i'm probably going to have to shower a few times to warm up. it's just the facts of it.

i've got one last section to cross-reference, and it could really, honestly be done by the morning, or by the afternoon.

greg palast has often argued the opposite position, and does so here.

but, the united states has a very long history of electoral fraud, and stuffing ballots is how they do it. jfk, for example, stole the election in 1960 - as bush did in 2000.

trump may only be accidentally half-right, as is so often the case. but, it's the kind of thing that people should actually be taking very seriously, if they're concerned about electoral integrity.

if you want your vote to count you should walk it in.

and, if you don't want the political class rigging elections, you shouldn't hand them the opportunity to - an opportunity they will take, if you give it to them, because they always have.

https://www.gregpalast.com/rush-to-vote-by-mail-could-cost-dems-the-election/

i'm not concerned about lying, cheating voters.

what i'm concerned about is lying, cheating politicians.

the court ruling is essentially that hypochondria is not a medical condition.

....which is technically actually wrong...:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/psychiatry-psychology/news/dsm-5-redefines-hypochondriasis/mac-20429763

...even if i kind of like the tone used by the judge.

what i'd like to see around mail-in voting is a better paper trail. i'm not really concerned about voter fraud in the sense of voters voting twice or ineligible voters casting ballots; what i'm concerned about is ballot-stuffing by elected (or not yet-elected) officials, and those concerns are well-grounded, if more so in california than in texas.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/texas-court-mail-voting-1.5588160

to repurpose an old term, what twitter is is an ivory tower.

and, they don't want to come down and mingle with the commoners.

twitter is sending a very clear message - it doesn't want to be a public square, and it doesn't care about speech rights.

it wants to be a private club for middle class liberals, and is happy enough to check you at the door if you speak out.

on some level that's fine. but we need a public square, too - even if the elite prefer to avoid it.

i personally have very little interest in what trump does or does not tweet, and care little about slapping warnings on his posts. i'm a very idealistic free speech advocate, but i ultimately just don't fucking care.

my actual interest is in ensuring that i maintain ownership over my own content - that these companies don't steal my labour from me.

and, independent artists need to be cognizant of what's unfolding and the threat it poses to them, as they give in to their ritualistic two minutes of hate, in a deeply pyrrhic shot to their own face.

you may think it makes you feel good to tell the president to shut up, which says a lot about you and your repressive instincts.

but, you're going to wake up to an internet where five media companies own 95% of the content.

...which is a return to the world we used the internet to break free from.

see, this is why i don't use twitter.

it's not a helpful response.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/29/twitter-hides-donald-trump-tweet-glorifying-violence

we're not going to do the next part in sharpie font. i can't edit html headers on a per-post basis, and the process of converting and cutting is rather time consuming.

so, the order is over here:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/

i'm going directly to the source because i don't trust the capitalist press to report on the capitalist president carrying out what looks like a capitalist power grab. i know they like to make it look like they're in conflict, but the world runs on class divisions, not political partisanism. the republicrats and silicon valley are on the same side, here. so, what are they doing, then?

the news reports were confusing, to say the least. but, reading the order directly isn't helping much. this appears to be a true exercise in trumpian logic, and it's probably going to take a logician to understand the multivalued logic system - and i've had to sit down and write it out to get it, and just concluded that it's incoherent.

so, what does the law say, first?

what it seems to say - and i'm a canadian that has never looked into this before, but does have legal training - is (1) that only the direct author of any content uploaded through any service should be considered to be it's owner and publisher and (2) that no "provider" of an "interactive computer service" should be held liable for any good faith attempt at restricting access to legitimately lewd material. that's clear enough, and i think we take it for granted as obvious.

and, what is trump trying to do?

well, he's arguing that if you edit the post then you should be liable for it. but, what that really means is that he's trying to scratch out the first part, without which no liability could be legally erected. there's no law against aiding and abetting offensive speech; if google or facebook (i don't use twitter...) is to become liable for the content of it's users, that necessarily implies it owns their content, otherwise there would be no basis for liability. that's what the analogy to a publishing house implies, in the end - that these companies will take ownership of the content via copyright. and, i'll get to that in the end.

but, of course, it's ridiculous and incoherent for the president to try and push something like that down. rather, he seems to be trying to threaten twitter into laying off on the censorship. this is where the trumpian logic comes in - he seems to legitimately think that making an absurd threat will create the outcome he wants, and the weakling tech companies will cower in fear of his greater manliness, or some stupidity such as that (or that's at least the surface delusion).

but, what's going to actually happen, of course, is that the lawyers for twitter and facebook and ... are going to look at this and scratch their heads and say "ok. what? this makes no sense.". and, they're not going to cower in fear and comply until they can at least make sense of it. and, at some point, they're going to ask the question "what if we don't comply?".

trumpian logic, which is not rooted in game theory, doesn't seem to allow for dissent or free will, which is why it doesn't ever work out in reality. it's just bully logic - you do what he says, because he says so, because he said so. there's no good reason for it besides dominance and alpha male superiority. which is laughable...

so, what happens if they just shrug it off and don't comply? which is what keeps happening over and over...

well, they may lose liability, but they'll gain ownership. well, in theory anyways. i couldn't imagine them arguing against that particularly loudly, to be entirely honest with you. i might wonder how long they've actually been lobbying for it...

see, trumpian logic is also cartmanian logic in the sense that it tends to skip a lot of steps. there is an endpoint here that seems to make some sense, at least. i've been arguing that we should have public ownership in order to constitutionally protect users (and, in context, the president should be treated like a garden variety user, not like a government entity with special powers), but the other way to bring in constitutional protection would be to have the corporations take copyright over the content. you'd have to break these entities up, so you'd have competing services, but this is the publishing house analogy taken to it's logical conclusion - the services would be liable for defamation, but they'd also have free speech.

so, if twitter ignores the threat, and trump follows through with it, what happens next?

what trump is thinking is something along the lines of "we gave you immunity from defamation, and you're still fucking with my posts. so, i'm going to take away your immunity, and expose you to lawsuits. fuckers.".

twitter is supposed to become fearful and remove the censorship.

but, what they will no doubt actually do is just delete trump's account, because it exposes them to liability.

and, this is why trump always loses - he thinks that he can bully people into submission with these threats, and they usually just laugh at him when he tries.

is any of this going to happen?

well, it's up to congress, really, isn't it?

but, i think he's at least laying down a binary choice and we are going to have to make it at some point. the status quo is not sustainable - we can't have private tyrannies policing speech like this. this has to change. but, will we adopt the model that trump is hinting at, where online companies are treated like publishing houses? or will we take public ownership of the commons?

uch-o



and, i'm actually in full agreement with the president up to this point.



this is where he loses me.

if big brother edits my post, does that mean he now owns it? all of a sudden, this seems less like it's about free speech and more like it's actually a power grab by the tech companies.

i must interject - google did not create this content. this is my content. dammit.



ok, i agree with this, entirely.

but, how do we get from this valid concern to the conclusion that google and facebook (and bandcamp?) now own my content?

i'm going to continue this in a new post - but you see what my concern is.

the internet is not like a factory. i'm not an employee of the sites i post to, and i'm not contributing to a product that is being produced by these sites, in the end. i know that americans have a hard time understanding what "socialism" means, but social media doesn't have much to do with socialization in production.

this needs a marxist deconstruction, because it's looking a lot like a 21st century analogue to the appropriation of labour that happened in the industrial revolution, without any of the logic underlying it.

this is still my product. i still made this. and, if google is going to be given property rights (and responsibilities.) over it, that's just an example of how property is theft.

but, this is still capitalism. we had to expect this, right?

section 2 forthcoming.

(executive order here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/)

would you hold in your urine? your shit?

no?

then why would you hold in your sweat?

i need to be able to sweat in the summer.

it's so weird and unnatural - and unhealthy - to stop yourself from sweating. i don't understand why anybody would do such a weird thing to their environment and their body...

i guess it's a male thing, in the end, isn't it? men are taught to bottle everything up inside - their emotions, their feelings, and, i guess, their sweat, too.

but, they need to let it out.

they need to relearn to cry and stink at the same time, it would seem.

but, i don't want to turn off my glands - i want to sweat. and i will.

i was feeling better earlier in the week when the humidity first came in and warmed the place up, but i've been tired and having difficulty focusing over the last few days, as the machines upstairs have adjusted. i'm going to keep the windows open as the humidity falls, in order to short them out. if i'm stuck with cooler air one way or the other, i'd rather have fresh air from outside than dry air from the refrigerants.

it's different this year. last year, i was able to get outside quite a bit, so that when i did come in, i didn't notice the air as much. this year, i'm going to be inside for 98 out of 100 days and i'm going to need to find ways to acclimatize the surroundings. otherwise, i'm just going to sleep all summer as i hide from the air under hot blankets, and i don't want to do that.

for right now, i'm going to try to warm the place up by using the stove and then taking a hot shower. hopefully, i'll be more alert and focused when i get out of it.

what cuomo just signed is legally equivalent to a "separate but equal" order.

the courts need to rip it apart. with force.

it doesn't matter if "they work" or not, it's a discriminatory policy, regardless. you don't have the right to tell me what to wear because "it works" in stopping the spread of a disease - that's a red herring.

i would be more likely to vote with my feet and boycott the business than launch legal action.

but, i hope somebody drags him through court over this and stops this process of legalized discrimination in it's tracks. it sets a terrible precedent that can't be allowed to stand in a free society.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/499942-cuomo-to-sign-executive-order-allowing-businesses-to-deny-entry-to

i'm so distracted.

i haven't touched this since yesterday.

focus, jess.

i have to warn you, though.

you need to expect massive levels of ignorance from the press on this issue, from all sides. we've been through this over and over - almost nobody seems to understand speech on this continent. the response from the aclu (who seems to lose every case they file, nowadays) is going to be just as bad as the response from fox news. it's just going to be complete nonsense from every direction...

if this ends up in court, the ruling will not be about political bias, and it won't be about first amendment rights - although you might stop to pause for a moment and realize that the precedent twitter would be citing would be citizen's united if it came down to it.

the question before the court will be about property rights, and the legal ruling in the end will be that there are no first amendment rights on private property.

that's what the issue here is.

don't let them confuse you.

ok.

i'm going to guess that this executive order is going to be political theatre. again - he gets my hopes up, but he's not going to follow through with anything substantive.

the claim from the whitehouse is that twitter is engaging in "political bias". but, so what? they own the servers - it's their private property. they have no legal obligation to maintain neutrality. and, that's the actual legal fact, here.

i think it's a lamentable reality, but it's the current legal order.

so, what is he doing, then? he's just riling up his base.

as mentioned repeatedly, i'd like to see a total reversal of the way this is approached legally, but it would require overturning the courts, so it would need to go through congress, and i don't see any hope of that going anywhere. 

just about all he can do is post a tweet condemning the censorship on twitter, and that's about all you're going to see actually happen.

there's a lot of ways that the state can approach something like this if it doesn't want to nationalize the servers, which is what i'd actually argue for. the thing is that trump isn't going to be interested in anything like that because it would undo his own relevance. i'm approaching this from a very idealistic perspective about the sanctity of speech; he's just looking to maximize marketing reach. 

it does open a lot of questions, though, about how speech advocates move forward in restricting corporate censorship, in the future. but, don't think trump is an ally, here. he's just in it for himself.

so, i've decided.

the last time i went through this, i was trying to find a way to work blueberries into my diet, decided on the juice and then couldn't find any actual blueberry juice for a decent price; everything at the store was blueberry-cocktail or blueberry-concentrate. so, i just started buying blueberries. but, blueberries make sense in my diet in a way that carrots don't. if i can't find a decent source of carrot juice at a decent price, i'm not going to start buying carrots. maybe, one day, if i ever get a juicer....

the more i look into it, the less sense that green peppers are making to me. as mentioned, i just always got the greens because i liked how they tasted better. i knew they were high in c, and that was of importance to me, but it didn't really cross my mind to look into the different vitamin profiles of the different colours of peppers. now that i have, i realize i should be getting the reds. can i find reds that are bitter, though? or can i adjust to the sweeter taste?

i'm going to give it a try, next time i'm out, and see how i react. the reds have more c, so if my goal with the greens was the c, i'm not losing anything by moving to the reds. however, they have 10x as much beta carotene, which you can't overdose on. this simple switch would be enough to get me up past the daily recommended value for vitamin a at what is probably a moderate price difference.

if i don't like the sweet peppers in my pasta, i'll switch back. and, then what?

what i'll do is go shopping for carrot juice and see what i can find. the point of this is to get a lot of vitamin a, so i'll need to make sure i can actually get what i want. if all i can find is, like, v8 mixer and shit, then i'll need to find something else.

what if i find pure carrot juice and it's expensive? well, maybe i can add it in, without replacing the apple juice explicitly. the pure carrot juice will give you 300% of the rdi in a small glass. so, something i could do is mix the carrot juice with the apple juice. that could stretch it out and make it more affordable.

yes - i get 1000x more c than i need, but i kind of want to keep it that way.

let's hope i can handle the switch to the reds to start with. then, the carrot juice is just an added benefit on top of it.

there's a third reason, and it's ethical.

"it's ok to eat bugs, 'cause they don't have any feelings."

they literally have no brains....

https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/insect-bug-eating-guide/

on second thought, i seem to be overestimating the amount of vitamin a that is in a serving of milk. it's only 6-10%. the soy i buy is actually 10%, which would be better than fortified cow's milk.

again - i just prefer the taste of soy milk more than anything else. it's a habit that stuck from a vegetarian phase i went through years ago and had to reverse because i just wasn't absorbing enough plant iron, and might not have been getting enough b12. that's not a universal condition - some people can be vegan, and, frankly, i actually wish i could be, too. but, it just left me anemic.

so, i buy small amounts of processed meat, and just eat enough of it to keep my b12 levels up. i might buy a burger at a fast food restaurant once in a while, and i'll buy bacon once every couple of years, but i'm actually almost 40 years old and have never purchased actual meat, ever, in my whole life. no steak. no ground beef. no chicken. no ham. nothing - ever.

what i actually want to do in the long run is move to insect protein, so i've been waiting for years for something to come up and it just hasn't materialized. if i could replace the salami in my pasta with caterpillars, i'd feel a lot better about myself....

the eggs & milk don't bother me in principle and at the end of the day i'd rather the animals get eaten than wasted. i'm more about minimizing suffering; the reality as it exists is largely unnecessary, and we're only harming ourselves by doing it. i mean, look at what's happening just right now - people are dying by the thousands of diabetes-related complications as a consequence of a virus that is essentially a mutated common cold. it's as much about their lifestyle choices as it is anything else. at the end of the day, the unavoidable consequence of strict veganism adopted en masse is that you're going to have to kill billions of animals and dump them into mass graves. so, if you really want to do this right, you want to move towards co-existence, which means toning it down more than cutting it out.

so, i'd be happy with myself if i could get my daily protein from insects and just rely on eggs and milk for the rest of it.

for the a, specifically, moving to carrot juice is probably the best approach. i get enough c from my daily fruit bowl - i don't need the apple juice.

they fortify cereal with vitamin a, but i'm an adult, i don't eat cereal.

they should fortify the pasta with it.

so, i never really refocused after eating yesterday morning, then i slept a while, and got up and finished eating. i want to get back to it.

but i'm wondering this morning if i'm getting enough vitamin a.

i don't drink milk, and i don't eat much of any kind of processed food at all so i'm not getting it fortified anywhere. i eat a lot of cheese, but it's actually not stated how much vitamin a is in it. also, the amount of vitamin a in the soy milk i buy is actually disappointingly low.

i eat four eggs/week, in one sitting, and i eat a lot of tomatoes. your body can at least store vitamin a, so eating a bunch of eggs all at once should be a good start, at least. but, i'm crunching the numbers, and it seems a little low, regardless - four eggs in one sitting is more like a daily amount than a weekly amount.

the reason i'm wondering is that my eyesight has been declining. i've been nearsighted since i was a kid, so it's nothing new, but it doesn't seem to have recovered fully from the last round of migraines. i eat a lot of fruit, but hardly any vegetables. i don't drink milk. i hardly eat any meat, and the little bit i do is mostly for the fat content. i'm not sure where i'd work more vegetables in, except maybe the pasta.

my pasta plate has one tomato and one green pepper, and i eat half the plate, six days a week. so, six out of seven days a week, i'll have roughly half a tomato and roughly half a green pepper. i've mostly been worried about c rather than a, but the actual truth is that i prefer the more bitter taste of the green peppers over the sweeter taste of the red peppers and that's really the reason i buy the greens - i just like the taste better. but, an easy way to boost my vitamin a would be to buy red peppers instead of green peppers.

i could also consider replacing the apple juice (which, again, is for vitamin c) with carrot juice. i'm sure i can find some carrot juice with some vitamin c in it.

i just didn't really realize how low my vitamin a intake actually is. i'm kind of surprised by it, actually. i should adjust to that....

i hope they checked the office for pretzels, though.

cocaine pretzels, specifically.

i remember one time i was having sex, and my girlfriend at the time was sitting right on top of me and leaned down to bite my nipple, causing me to reflex in such a way that my back arched, which threw her off of me rather violently. she hit her head on the nightstand, creating a nasty bruise.

she was ok. thankfully. and, i don't blame myself - i reflexed, it was involuntary.

but, if she had landed a few cms one way or the other? yeah - it could have killed her. certainly.

the husband may not be the best person to analyze the data, frankly.

you'd obviously need an autopsy to know for sure, and i understand that foul play was not suspected, but when you tell me that a woman has been found dead of head injuries in her boss' office, apparently consistent with head trauma, a seizure is not the first thing that comes to mind.

i'm not saying joe killed her. at least not on purpose.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-tweet-scarborough-1.5576546

and, what about the claim about mail-in ballots?

well, i've seen some results in primaries that don't seem quite right, to say the least. i have some strong reservations about their use and would like to see stronger paper trails attached to them.

i would not consider trump's claim to be objectively false - his concern has some merit.

and, what about the people that actually want the government to crack down on free expression?

well, those are the actual conservatives.

but, our legal system doesn't actually take these people seriously, on either side of the border. they have no mechanism on which to actually act - they would need private companies to do the deed for them. well, unless we rip up our respective constitutions...

but my basic position is clear enough - social media is central enough to public discourse at this point that it should be removed from private oversight and nationalized, so that speech over social media is constitutionally protected.

we shouldn't have private companies determining what you can or can't say, it should be up to the courts.

and, that's a left wing position, not a conservative one.

given the current legal paradigm of private property and free markets, trump has the choice to abide by the rules put in place by the owners of the social media or not; if he doesn't like the speaking rules put in place by the owner of the property, he has the right to leave the premises and speak elsewhere.

but, if he wants to try to change that, i'd actually support him.

well. let's see what he has in mind, first, before i commit to that.

this is yet another situation where i'm sort of agreeing with trump, from the far left. i've been over this before, but i'm going to summarize what i've already posted.

the issue of speech on social media is confusing for a lot of people, and conservatives are often the most confused. legally speaking, social media is considered to be private property. what that means is that the government really has no more of a right to get involved in this than it does in a private speaking event, and the social media companies have as much right to basically do what they want as the owner of a private venue does.

so, trump's claims are actually rather dubious, especially in the united states, where property is so constitutionally protected. any attempt made by this administration to regulate social media in this manner would be ripped apart by the courts.

but, as a leftist, i don't like that - i think this is an example where property rights are a bad thing, and should be abolished. as an anarchist, my opposition to private property is more or less my most fundamental axiom, and forms the starting point of almost all of my politics. what that means from where i'm standing is that i want to treat social media not as private property but as a public forum, something that the courts have already thoroughly rejected, and that liberals seems to think is reasonable.

so, we're in a situation where liberals want to support social media as private property and let the companies regulate it (and may or may not want stricter enforcement), and self-identified conservatives seem to actually agree with the socialists, who want to treat it as a public forum, which would bring in constitutional protections for freedom of speech.

do i think that twitter should place a parental discretion warning on trump's tweets? i don't, no. and, if twitter was a public forum rather than private property, they would be prohibited from doing so by the first amendment. it's the fact that it's private property that lets them do that.

and, the way out of this is to nationalize social media, which is something i've been calling for for a long time.

i hope i've clarified the actual legalities here and where i stand on them.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-social-media-twitter-fact-check-1.5586285

in fact, i'm going to call for a permanent boycott on any company that is refusing service to people based on whether they wear a mask or not.

doug ford has no legal background and is completely fucking wrong in every way. as usual.

if this were to show up in a court, it would be a clear issue of discrimination, and the business would be forced to pay a fine. and, that is the correct ruling under any concept of human rights law.

that said, if i show up at a grocery store and they tell me i can't come in unless i wear a mask, i'd be just as happy to take my business elsewhere. permanently.

https://www.inbrampton.com/no-mask-no-service-businesses-have-the-right-to-require-masks-on-customers

so, i told you months ago that i couldn't support bernie anymore because he was a sellout. basically.

are you admitting i was right, yet?

i'm halfway done the final cross-reference, if measured chronologically. however, it's closer to being two thirds of the way done, if measured in terms of amount of content - more than that, really, because a lot of the posts left are very lengthy, and the remaining process is about running the 'compare' program in notepad++.

i might get this finished by noon.

right now, i'm stopping to eat.

i am not a religious person, but there is a popular saying that religious people often trot out:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

unfortunately, a lot of people in government seem to have more courage than wisdom right now.

and, maybe they should go watch the wizard of oz.

https://nationalpost.com/news/fatalism-effect-study-says-people-who-overestimate-covid-19-spread-are-less-likely-to-follow-rules

to be clear - recognizing the futility of fighting this virus is not "fatalism", it's just sound reasoning and rational thinking.

and, why is it so cold in here?

fuck.

i've got the window open, and i'm still shivering.

listen.

i'm not getting my information from anywhere at all besides a sense of deductive reasoning. if i have a source to share, i'm not shy to do so.

but, i don't read social media and i don't follow really any "alternative media" at all, for the reason that i find so much of it to be so controlled. those quotes are there for good reason; i'd be more likely to rip apart much of what you see in the "alternative press" as statist bullshit than to follow it with any kind of seriousness.

i'm not a bot, i'm just an independent thinker. that's all. and, what you're afraid of is the example of somebody carrying through with actual critical reasoning, not some imaginary russian propaganda that doesn't actually exist.

what's changed with me over the years is that i've stopped reading the news. so, this page doesn't have the kind of media deconstruction that it may have had in previous years, because i've decided that i have better things to do and don't want to waste my time with it...

i try to get my information from the most basic sources possible, to try to minimize bias, and then draw my own conclusions based on my own knowledge base, and my own reasoning skills.

that is what scares you.

and, your fear is what scares the fuck out of me.

- i don't want comments threads here
- i don't want ads here
- while i would like an rss option, i don't want a friends list, and i don't want a feed to read, and won't read one if i have one

i migrated here to get away from social media, because i don't want to be involved with it.

so, i don't want this site to be more like facebook - the whole point was to get away from it.

and, i should have the option to avoid it, if that's what i want.

there's unfortunately a new interface on the backend of this site that looks like it's going to make it a lot harder to use. i tried it for a few seconds and switched back, because i don't have the interest in relearning how to use something that i already know how to use.

why do they do this? what's the purpose of it? it doesn't make them any money. it doesn't make anybody's lives better. it's just a pointless annoyance.

i suppose i'll have to figure this out eventually, but the first thing i noticed is that they eliminated the separation on the side between published posts, drafts and all posts. how do i find drafts, then? i don't really want to figure it out right now, but i guess i'll have to, eventually.

they're also eliminating the search function, apparently - frustrating for a large site like this, that has over 20,000 posts. hopefully, i can bring it back. but, it's there because i want it there. why take it away, only to force me to re-implement it? do you think i have nothing better to do, or what?

lastly - and this is going to be an incredible annoyance if they don't fix it - they appear to be listing the posts by their post title strictly, meaning a post like this would show up as "untitled post". are they trying to force me to title every single fucking post? why? i don't want to title this post - it doesn't deserve a title, it's just a thought. so, are they going to make me come up with some stupid title as a place holder every time i post a thought? again, why?

this site isn't broken, google. don't fix it. it's not wanted...

this government had a choice of models to pick from, including it's own research, and it picked the most authoritarian, most draconian, most heavy-handed, most right-wing, most conservative models that it could find.

countries like singapore, china, south korea and taiwan - fascist states.

and, we're seeing the obvious result of it - we are now afraid of our own government.

congratulations; that's an accomplishment. no more than ten years ago, we had one of the strongest levels of trust in our government on the planet, justified or not.

we were once like sweden.

now we're like singapore.

welcome to the dark ages, canada. they could last a while...

i actually don't think the pandemic in ontario has even started yet, but the low testing numbers are sending the government the message that we don't want to co-operate with the lockdown.

what i think is happening is that people are deciding that the facts are that the disease is not likely to be harmful to them, which is true. maybe they're making an attempt to avoid the weak, like they should. maybe they're not. but, they're making a decision that this isn't serious enough to seek medical attention.

and they don't want to be told to self-isolate at the butt of a shotgun.

we saw this happen in singapore, and it blew up in the end. that is the likely end outcome.

who do you blame for that, when it happens? well, i told you that was going to happen in the first place, and i'm telling you it's going to happen again. the authoritarian response in ontario has made people afraid to seek treatment. the entity that you blame is the government, and all three levels are responsible for this. this is a complete failure in government policy...

don't listen to me, listen to the scientists - they'll tell you this is still spreading, and that it's increasingly spreading undetected.

you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. and, while i didn't expect much better from the dumbass at queen's park, or the conservative mayor of toronto, the authoritarian response from the feds has been very saddening.

what do you do now?

it's probably too late to unscare people. you'll just have to sit and wait.

but, you should also recognize that people are voting with their feet.

we do not consent to this and we want the government to stop.