let's be clear that we understand what the cancer argument for recreational drugs actually is.

nobody is claiming that these mushrooms will cure cancer, although some marketing apparatus will eventually no doubt claim that they will, just as we saw with the marijuana industry, which was also never prescribed as a curative agent.

rather, the argument for allowing these patients legal access to these specific drugs is tied into the fact that they are terminal. as they are terminal, the argument goes, they ought to be allowed to die in the narcotic state of their choosing. after all, the doctors are just going to give them opioids anyways, right?

i can sympathize with this. in the end, i'd rather trip myself to the grave than spend it strung out on government heroin.

but, it's important to understand what the terms of debate are and what they are not. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/4-dying-canadians-wait-to-hear-if-they-ll-be-allowed-to-try-magic-mushrooms-for-their-anguish-1.5653083

i've previously argued against legalizing recreational mushrooms, for the reason that the market is mostly underage. i suppose that argument is malleable to shifts in demand, but the current cultural truth is that people grow out of mushrooms before any relevant legal age of purchase. my mushrooms phase was about 16-18, and that's potentially even a little older than normal; the psilocybin market is really more in the 14-17 range.

it would make the most amount of sense to legalize mdma, which is an adult drug of minimal harm that is generally sold in harmful impurities. most lingering adults in the psilocybin market would even be likely to switch to legal mdma, if it were available.

mushrooms are just kind of intense, as a commodity, which is why people stop doing them. ask around. virtually everybody that goes through their kiddy mushroom phase will tell you that they had to step back because it was messing with their concept of reality. mdma is really actually a better idea.

i don't want to shit on mushrooms too hard (they would defy me and grow, anyways). i had some good times. i can recommend them in the right scenario, after the right research has been done, at the right age. i may do them again one day. but, you learn to respect their powers and avoid them, except in special scenarios.

it just seems obvious to me that what happens with legal mushrooms is very low demand in the legal, adult market and the inevitable illegal dumping of the product to underage sellers, because the vendors can't sell it. nobody should strive for that. just let the market function underground, and maybe stop policing it instead.

again, that could change if a substantive end-of-life market develops. 

some google ad spam got me again on the faul mccartney story, and here's an interesting twist to that whole rumour.

if paul was really replaced by a lookalike, there's some chance that he faked his death, and might actually still be alive. if that were true, he'd have no doubt done it to escape the fame, and just disappear somewhere with some cash and exist. but, he would have no doubt eventually caught up with what happened to the beatles after his disappearance, and with john lennon and everything that john lennon became.

so, what if the real paul, the one that faked his death, and is still out there, is the actual person that orchestrated the assassination of john lennon?

well, it's possible.

he does start to look a little different around that time, though, doesn't he?

deaths in the united states due to coronavirus should increase dramatically this week.

actually, considering that we appear to be heading backwards in time after 2000, after nixon is indeed johnson.

i understand and agree that the nixon-trump comparisons are deeply flawed, but that's only true if you look at time as flowing in the forward direction. if nixon had been born today, and gone backwards in time to 1970, he'd have probably ended up a lot like trump, in the end.

following this model, that would suggest that biden will die in his second term and be replaced by a young vice-president that is perceived as "liberal" but is really a hawk.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/19/politics/joe-biden-donald-trump-suburban-voters-polling/index.html

well, i think dr jefferson needs to propose a mechanism before such an unravelling of virology can be taken seriously. is he proposing a global reservoir species? is it in the squirrels, and just jumps out due to climate change, or something?

no, really. for a man of his stature, this proposal is remarkably poorly worded, as though he's operating in some pre-socratic alter-reality where he's grappling with what the nature of a virus is. yet, we know very clearly that a virus is a piece of genetic material that requires a host to survive, and dismantles rather quickly in much of any kind of superzero temperatures. we also know how to sequence that genetic material from it's recent ancestors, which helps us understand the recent history of that genetic material, and it does not support dr jefferson's unusual and vague suggestions.

the question of pre-wuhan transmission is an intriguing one, though. while we can be sure that the virus originated recently in bats, evidence may force us to rethink where the jump occurred to humans, and how.

dr jefferson's suggestion, however, is interesting in the context of melting ice around the world, which is unthawing ancient viruses. we know that this idea of spontaneous virus generation is wrong for this virus, which came from bats. it might not be for the next one, which comes from a melting glacier...

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/the-coronavirus-may-not-have-originated-in-china-says-oxford-professor/

this is actually the same legal question i was up against a few years ago; the police think they can hold people on hybrid offences, and they can't. apparently, one of them is being held without any charge at all. you can expect that the justice released these people as soon as she was able to see the case.

see, and i think that the people on the street need a dose of reality as to the length of time required to process these individuals, to actually get the case in front of a justice. what i picked up from my own illegal arrest is that i was scheduled at the end of the day, because the first six hours of the day had already been booked by people coming in from the county jail. the precedent in canada is that habeas corpus is 24 hours, so there is no legal basis of complaint as long as they release you in 24 hours. that has led to a habit of scheduling randoms picked up on the street to the end of the day, after the day's scheduled appearances are done.

if there were more justices, or less inmates, then these things could be processed much faster. i guess that means that the protesters are really complaining about subpar social services, at the end of the day.

the cops need people to file cases in these situations and take them to court to get them to stop doing it. they do it because they get away with it, and it has to stop. that's why i'm suing, and i hope they sue as well.

so, what the cop should have done under canadian law was issue a summons to appear in court on charges of vandalism. while the police technically have the powers of arrest on charges involving hybrid offenses, they are supposed to only utilize it subject to a series of clauses that has been completely ejected from the process and was almost certainly not met, in this case.

that said, i do believe that a proper sentence once the issue works it's way into court would be to order these individuals to clean the statues. the placement of statues is a legitimate topic of democratic debate; their wanton destruction is most unfortunate, and quite barbaric. should it be democratically decided that these statues, which appear to have been of john a. macdonald (a drunk and a corrupt asshole no doubt), should no longer grace the steps of our parks and institutions, the correct step to take next would be to move them to museums, not douse them in paint.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2020/07/18/blm-toronto-continues-to-press-demands-to-defund-police-service/

first, she talks down lamar alexander, and then she slams betsy devos.

there is probably a dedicated anti-devos vote.

well, she could be an effective "attack dog", clearly.

no, listen.

biden is doing unusually well with white voters and, if that holds, he doesn't need to worry about eking out wisconsin by dominating the black vote in milwaukee. holding the upper midwest via cultural dominance is by far the superior strategy to eking out wins on the margins, like has been the norm in the party since obama. if they can just hold the upper midwest by winning back white voters, that is the dominant strategy. 

hrmmn.

did they search the area where the girls were for carpentier's body?

well, it was apparently a significant distance away. so, how did carpentier get from the car to the area to bury the girls?

there's really four possibilities:

(1) he buried the girls first, and then crashed trying to get away. that would appear to be what the cops assumed, but now they can't find him. this would also potentially be stretching time restraints. i've been following this for a while, and it didn't seem to make sense from the start.
(2) he set up an elaborate decoy, like something out of a mel gibson film (and there's lots of ideas to fake your death in films, something i wish cops would pay closer attention to) to trick the cops into thinking he was in a crash, while disappearing in a different direction. but, that really just makes the time issue that much worse, given that they were seen an hour earlier. he'd have had to kill the girls first, then set up the elaborate ruse, then get out.
(3) it rather seems like the more likely scenario is one where the car was forced off the road by another vehicle, and martin carpentier and his three daughters are ordered to get into it. the girls are then killed and buried, maybe as a result of something financial. this would suggest that carpentier ended up in the custody of some kind of third party at some sort. but, i would request that the area that the girls were found in be sorted through more carefully - the three of them may have been killed at once, and they may have missed his body. otherwise, he could be anywhere, dead or alive.
(4) if some entity wanted him and and/or his daughters killed, they could have created the decoy to make it look like a murder/suicide. they just can't find the body.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/manhunt-for-martin-carpentier-has-been-suspended-sq

oh, and hey republicans.

here's your easy trick to sink biden: he's yesterday's man. and, it's a perfect pivot from maga, too.

well?

if you present to me the hypothesis that structural sexism and structural racism both exist in the united states, with solutions to the racism lagging behind solutions to the sexism, then i would expect you to tell me afterwards that that structural oppression has led to less opportunities for people in that intersection.

if you were to tell me that all of this structural oppression exists, and then argue that there's a plethora of black female vp candidates to choose from, you'd be kind of contradicting yourself, wouldn't you?

the slim pickings in the field are just evidence that the hypothesis is right.

but, this isn't a vanity post. it's an important job, and it needs to go to somebody that has had those opportunities to build that experience.

if we want to make things more fair, the way to do it is to continue to ensure that opportunities are not restricted for those with specific identifiable characteristics, so they have the opportunity to build that experience for future opportunities.

the only halfways qualified candidate i've seen is susan rice, and she's terrible.

so, yes.

the fact that there are no qualified black female candidates is a consequence of the systemic racism and sexism that the country was founded on.

but, that doesn't mean it's not real.

there aren't any. let's move on.

i've stated previously that harris is toxic.

but, you'd might as well be voting for a scatter plot. you don't have the slightest idea where she stands on anything. it's just not an informed choice.

if there was an experienced black female legislator with a progressive streak to consider, i'd be happy to, but there kind of isn't anybody so he's looking at mayors and shit. the argument i made when this issue came up with supreme court judges in canada (they were looking for an indigenous candidate and couldn't find one) was that the best thing to do is look at promoting qualified people from the lower courts and wait it out, don't just promote an unqualified law prof to the highest court because of their ethnic background. the justice system is kind of important. i understand the identity politics, but you want to make sure that competency is the priority. in another generation, if more attention is paid to diversity in the lower courts, it should provide for better candidates, when the issue comes up at that time.

let's be real: it takes time for an emancipated population to develop. it was always hard to argue with a straight-face that obama was qualified for the job, even if he often sounded so very inspiring, and i'd bet biden knows better than most what the actual truth was when he first walked in there. whether picking obama over clinton ends up going down in history as a mistake or not (mccain was always a loose cannon...), it ought to have been a catastrophe, and i'm sure biden is fully cognizant of that, and everything that everybody did to hold things together with an unqualified president.

now, the situation is flipped over, and it's biden that is going to need the help. an effective vice-president is going to need to know how to pass legislation. she's going to have to have serious experience in the house, know who to call, etc. that's what biden could do, it's what cheney could do, it's what gore could do - and what pence can't do, because he doesn't have that experience.

so, i say give it another generation for some black women to work their way through congress and get that experience. as it is, today, right now, the women we have that are qualified are white - which reflects the changing reality of the last several decades, when white women were first in line for so long. that wasn't fair, but it's real, and so many years of being first in line back then means they are first in line, now.

so, let's focus on diversity for congress and all of the smaller offices, for now, and competency for the increasingly central role of vice-president.

well, i'd vote for patty murray over mike pence pretty fast, that's for sure.

i wouldn't even stop to think about that one.

that would actually be an excellent choice...

ok.

if this is what joe is thinking, he needs to pick a senator.

frankly, if this is what he wants, then the most obvious choice is hillary clinton. well, it is isn't it?

what he wants is a diane feinstein or a patty murray.

i don't like the names i've seen floating around, and would actually be more comfortable with an older senator that i understand well than one of these younger candidates that could turn out to be anything at all, in the end.

biden should not underestimate the importance of ensuring that the person he picks is able to take over without a tutor if he gets covid-19, or anything else happens to him. and, frankly, biden's not the luckiest man that's ever lived, either.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/joe-bidens-vice-president-powerful-history/614161/

in canada, this was pretty much the peak of action over the cold war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_Series

and our natural opponent is, of course, not the americans.

rather, it's the russians.

who are actually more like us, overall.

how we approach baseball here really is a really big difference between canada and latin america, though.

in cuba, for example, they see baseball as a defining part of their culture, and try to use their baseball skills as some kind of proof that they're just as good as the americans are. in latin america, they like baseball because it's american.

canadians, on the other hand, tend to see baseball as something foreign that they don't actually want. we would rather grasp on to hockey as "our sport", cast out baseball as "their sport" and then define ourselves in opposition to america by pointing out that difference.

because, unlike latin americans, canadians very pointedly don't want to be americans. we really do see it as this defining difference, and really do largely reject the sport as alien. but, we're friendly people - and enough of us still find it exciting enough to watch it.

they're just buying into the concept too much and taking it too far and it's going to massively backfire.

if they're going to cancel baseball, then they should surely cancel tfws, too.

otherwise, they're just contradicting themselves.

well?

according the the canadian government, it's reasonable to allow desperately poor tfws that live in bunk beds over, but not reasonable to allow millionaires that will stay in hotels.

the only way to grapple with that kind of stupidity is that it's political; it makes no sense, otherwise.

canadians like hockey.

baseball, basketball, football? that's yankee bullshit...

and, it's true that this view is widely held in canada, but not to the extent that the government seems to be banking on it. we might mutter under our collective breaths about baseball being a foreign ideology, but nobody wants to ban it. people still like it.

and, baseball fans may not exactly be the party's base within toronto, itself.

but, doug ford just showed us that the toronto is willing to swing hard to the right when pushed to over trivialities.

this is going to piss a lot of people off enough to be a ballot issue. wait for it.

see, this isn't being driven by health policy. the amount of virus the team could bring in is insignificant, compared to what is already circulating; there's no logic in this.

rather, this is a part of a developing strategy by the federal government to stir up anti-americanism to distract from their own shitty pandemic response. that is, they think this is going to be popular.

i don't care about baseball, but i know a lot of people in toronto do, and i know that they're not likely to buy into some jingoist propaganda designed to try to get them to hate america to distract them from te government's incompetence.

this will backfire, terribly.

toronto is the party's base. it can't come close to winning without these seats,

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-to-reveal-blue-jays-decision-1.5654846

it's interesting to compare the outcomes in california v the outcomes in new york, now that a sufficient amount of time has passed to measure the different approaches. this is really setting itself up as the classic comparison to make in the united states.

first, note that the virus appeared in these places at about the same time.

new york was unprepared, dithered on shutting down the economy and suffered a swift and vicious attack by the virus, which rendered large amounts of it's population sick very quickly and threatened to overwhelm the system, although i'm not sure the data backs up that actually happening. today, some areas in new york are reporting upwards of 70% infection rates.

california, on the other hand, was quick to act decisively in locking down the economy and initially featured less of an outbreak, although the reality of persistent community spread was in fact apparent the whole time. while no doubt in reality an order of magnitude greater than discovered through testing, infection rates in california would appear to have been kept relatively low.

over the last few weeks, however, new york has opened with few significant problems, while california has seen the number of cases skyrocket, to the point that california is now only about 40,000 cases behind new york, in total number of discovered cases. but, this is an inexact comparison. so, california has had to extend and reinforce a lockdown that ultimately failed to prevent the outbreak that new york got nailed with, by being hit off guard; new york seems to be in the clear, as far as anybody can see.

while it initially seemed like the death rate in california was much lower, there seems to be little reason to think, at this point, that california will, in the end, avoid a loss of life on the same scale as that suffered in new york. so, all of this extended hardship is unlikely to come with any net benefit attached to it.

today, it seems like new york certainly took the less painful path.

so, i want to draw your attention to the model that i posted here many weeks ago that criticized the "flattening the curve" model:

new york end up being red, california ended up being blue.

this isn't a prediction, it's a model. please realize that.

but, the argument is supposed to be that the same number of people will get the virus anyways, so you'd might as well slow it down. one of the key points i'm trying to get across here is that if you slow the virus down then you reduce the speed of immunity, thereby increasing transmission - and you actually get twice as many cases because it takes twice as long to get to herd immunity. that sounds like it doesn't make sense, but there's a difference between developing antibodies and getting sick.

you can tweak this. maybe it takes 1.5x as long. it's a model, it's not a prediction.

the other thing i'm doing here is arguing that you can't really flatten the curve, exactly, but can rather shift it. and, maybe that shift is valuable if it buys time for a vaccine. but, it's going to come with a slow increase in cases over time until immunity is reached.

don't get lost in this in nitpicking the numbers - it's a model, it's a conceptual thing, it's an idea. and, it's a valid critique.

unfortunately, it seems like much of canada (with the exception of quebec) also followed the blue curve.

we all know the liberals are corrupt.

it's just that there's degrees of it, you know?

so, you denounce this, because you must. but, you don't expect them to change, or people's expectations to change.

what's going to be more concerning to the liberals is if people's calculus changes. right now, you shrug off the corruption because you don't want to put the conservatives back in, because you don't like what the conservatives want to do. ok. but, if that line between the conservatives and the liberals starts to blur, which in my mind it did ages ago, then the corruption has the potential to piss you off more, and you might be more likely to lean towards a protest party. that is really the game the liberals need to play - not whether they are seen as corrupt, because they perennially just are, both in perception and in truth, but whether that corruption is seen as trivial enough in a trade-off over the prioritization of other policy. they're not going to chase too many people off like this - nobody really expects better, anyways.

ok.

so, i admit the corruption in this we thing is blatant. they're actually restructuring, apparently offshore. like, it's beyond fucking obvious.

but, i insist that that's capitalism and you don't fix that by removing figureheads. so, given that we have so many more pressing issues to deal with...

it's actually rather similar to the impeachment in the united states, and these parallels keep coming up. no, you can't give your family a $100 million speaking contract, or whatever it would have amounted to. yes, you have to go through the motions of making sure the money is repaid and holding them all accountable. but, at the end of the day, voters will speak, and i'm not sure how important they're going to find this.

so, next time don't be so obvious? is that what i'm saying? well, the need to go through the motions, here, is proportional to the level of corruption. you could try to hide it in a slush fund, and not throw around such huge numbers - i mean, it's just absurd greed. some corruption is normal, but something like this has to be denounced.

but, it's just....it's empty, in the end. nobody's going to really care.

i pulled that 20% number out myself, and it does seem to be representative of a kind of inflection point, where community spread perhaps plateaus for a while and then starts to slow down - but understand that that number is increasing while the infections are slowing down, too. something the media always misses in these discussions is that these numbers coming out of studies are lagged. so, that 7% in stockholm was measured in april, leaving the swedish authorities to extrapolate then current infection rates based on independently measured growth curves. that's how they got 20% out of 7%...

but, i'm posting to suggest that you're more likely to find reasons that this number grows higher in some populations due to their living conditions rather than seek it out in genetic factors. one of the examples cited is prisons, where it seems obvious that cramped living conditions have accelerated immunity. i know that we've recently measured high immunity rates in new york city, as well, where the population density makes living conditions not that much different from those in prisons, in many cases.

that doesn't mean that people living in more normal living conditions won't get to the same rates of immunity we're seeing in prisons, it just means that they haven't gotten there yet, because the rate of spread is that much slower - and slowing, due to that 20% threshold being sufficient to minimize spread under normal social conditions.

so, check back in a few months, and those 20%s will be 30%s and 40%s. but, the places that happens will likely not see explosive new outbreaks, but rather a manageable stream of steady cases.

vancouver would appear to not be there yet, but i wonder if toronto is. see, this is why my faith in the numbers, being as low as it is, is frustrating. if we assume that cases are undercounted by a factor of 10, which i think is a low estimate in the specific context of ontario, then we're only at 3%, and vulnerable. but, i suspect that the factor in ontario is closer to 100 than to 10, which has us hovering in that sweet region.

we're going to find out which is true, in ontario; it's not currently clear.

but, let's not pull out the genetics when the issue is obviously environmental. that kind of pseudo-science doesn't help at all - and could lead to creepy deductions.

https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-could-it-be-burning-out-after-20-of-a-population-is-infected-141584

ok, i know these faces and the truth is that the researchers have got this all wrong.

0 is when a cat has yet to consider the premise that it may eat you. note the empty, blank stare.
1 is when a cat is thinking through the idea that it could potentially eat you. notice the more ponderous posture.
2 is when a cat has decided that it will, in fact, eat you, as soon as it gets the chance. notice the hunting eyes and ready jaw.

and, while a cat in stage 2 may spend years biding it's time, and developing schemes, it won't ever change it's mind. and, quite a few get the chance, eventually, too.

and, that's the thing about cats - they really do fully intend to eat you, eventually.

i was once a teenager, and if i was in that situation, i might have decided to move out for a few months, in order to avoid my lifestyle from interfering with his health conditions.

so, my argument the whole time has been that extra precautions need to be taken to protect those that are vulnerable, even as restrictions maintain lax in the general society. what that means is that the son, here, had a duty of care to his father, to ensure he did not introduce the virus into the house - and his parents had the obligation to ensure he understood it and acted through with it.

it actually sounds to me like the teenager was told that he would be safe if he wore a mask at that party, which is false. there is actually no sound reason to think that the individual would have avoided spread at that party with a mask on, unless he was using a medical grade mask, which he no doubt was not. the correct messaging to the kid should have been that the consequences of his overweight 42 year-old father's preventable medical conditions means he is strictly not allowed to leave the house - or to re-enter it if he disobeys.

and, does his father not bear some responsibility for his health conditions? this is not a 77 year old frail grandmother, who is weak due to age; this is a 42 year-old grown ass man that is overweight and diabetic. his condition is of his own making, and it is not at all fair that he impose a life of isolation on his family in order to protect him from his own self-destructive habits. while the family must make the choice to act to protect him, it is an infringement on their rights that they must, and some effort should be made to call him out on it.

so, while this is indeed the feared vector of transmission, from healthy and young people to those with underlying conditions, it is the household's own responsibility to ensure it's own safety and it's own health on an everyday basis, and the household that failed in this case. the father allowed himself to become fat and weak at a young age, and is dying from a virus that he should have easily beat. that said, to protect the irresponsible father, the teenager must have been ordered to stay in and kicked out if he refused to listen; instead, he appears to have been told to go out and have fun, just wear a mask.

don't blame the government for your own irresponsible behaviour. we will never evolve to a system of anarchism like that.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7188224/florida-dad-coronavirus-teen/

so, i guess i needed another day to veg.

i want to flip this over, today.

what do i think about the polls that have biden way ahead just right now?

this is actually surprising to me, but biden seems to be doing unusually well amongst this specific midwestern demographic, mostly white, that has been iffy about the democratic party for many years, now. key traditionally democratic demographics that were shaky on obama, and liked clinton less, seem to be far more comfortable with biden.

i don't exactly get it, and i doubt it has much depth, but it seems to be measurable, and has been since the primaries. but, all i think it really is is this: biden has managed to co-opt some kind of popularity out of the anti-trump cultural moment. i think certain types of popular media got to them...

the thing is that this is flaky because it's not built on anything. something we saw happen in the democratic primaries was biden lose huge amounts of interest to any other candidate who managed to show up over and over again, and the reason for this is clear enough - he came off as doddering and past his prime, when compared to....anybody. even bernie. sort of.

they had to clear the field. remember?

so, biden is probably his own biggest opponent. if he can take advantage of the virus and use it to remain away from public scrutiny, he may spurn my earlier predictions and ride public indignation as the figurehead of a movement to remove trump. if it doesn't ask too many questions, that is. but, the more that people see of joe biden, the less they like him, and a good shot of joe in action at the debate could very well sober a few "moderates" and "progressives" alike up as to what they're actually voting for.

stated simply, it's too early.

but, i'd rather be up by 10 than down by 10.

if they do these tests and they come back with low immunity levels, one wonders if it is a testament to the high level of isolation that people in these communities face.

my own hunch is twofold: (1) that addicts are sick all of the time anyways and may have had other reasons to avoid the er and (2) that the spike in opioid deaths over the last months might be evidence of some kind of interaction of the virus with the tolerance levels of opioid addicts. 

vancouver is indeed a very wealthy, educated city, but it does have this impoverished underbelly as well. my understanding when i was there is that the city is almost designed to prevent that educated part of the city from interacting with the impoverished underbelly - which may work out to the latter's benefit in a scenario where a pathogen is introduced into the region largely via outside travel, at least to start. education breeds it's own sort of herd immunity, in that way, because let's be real - this thing is stopped pretty easily with basic hygiene.

so, yeah, there's lots of poor people in vancouver, too, but the character of the city is very well-to-do, and that is an increasing phenomenon. i'm interested in the results, but i stand by my statement.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-covid-downtown-eastside-1.5652316

when you watch something like this, and realize how foolish the previous generation was in terms of understanding human behaviour, it is not surprising that we stand here more than ten years later without having advanced an inch in solving the problem (in fact, it has merely gotten worse).

the neo-liberals insisted this was a moral problem that had to be changed by altering human behaviour, but then they modeled us as homo economicus, and every single thing they did failed.

they could have just spent the money on direct government spending to actually transition, and that would have worked. but, they did this stupid experiment on the efficacy of market theory instead, and the consequences have (predictably.) been catastrophic.

it is important to realize, then, that the crisis we face really isn't one of technology. nor is it really an issue of popular will. rather, the country is gripped in the throes of an ideological backwardsness that is preventing it from doing anything.

the closest historical example that i know to this is the byzantines, who, after thousands of years of being the smartest people on the planet (by far.) eventually succumbed to the stupidity of their own means of control. in the end, constantinople fell because the residents truly believed it was the end of the world and jesus was coming back any minute. how they went from what they were to what they became, and so quickly, is a testament to the power of a damaging ideology to completely dismantle a powerful empire.

as christianity destroyed rome, market theory is destroying america. but, it's taking the rest of the world down with it...

there's a young gavin newsom here, and we see the kind of people he associates himself with - market theorists, republican policy makers, etc. hindsight is 20/20, but there's all kinds of red flags about what he would turn into in this video, as well. but, the dominant takeaway is how much of a slimy, sleazy politician he really is - and how obvious it is.

in the end, the climate crisis will not be solved by utilizing market theory, but only by subverting it.

i want to be clear about what i've been saying, in summary, as we get out of this inflection point regarding the sun, because people find it confusing. i've done write-ups like this before, but this is a good time to resummarize it.

the reason people get confused is that they see arguments that they've heard from denialists juxtaposed with arguments they've heard from the ipcc and don't know how to interpret where i stand on the argument. and, my answer is that you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about. so, i could argue that i'm synthesizing the views in a dialectic rather than setting them against each other, but the truth is that if you understand the ipcc reports, you know that the sun is central to them.

so, what was the main finding of the ipcc report, all those years ago? what was it that the ipcc demonstrated to show that the warming being measured was anthropogenic?

the answer is that it separated the effects from the sun. that's the point! that's what climate change science is - the recognition and study of the fact that this planet is warming in ways that are not explainable by solar output.

but, why did we do that?

because if you follow the data backwards, you see that changes in the climate were closely correlated with solar output, for as far back as we can measure it. climate change is the realization that we have disrupted a system that is otherwise absolutely dominated by the sun - which is why the thing we had to prove is that what the sun was doing (namely weakening.) doesn't explain the warming.

so, this was the contradiction that the ipcc presented, to prove that climate change is anthropogenic: it showed that temperatures were dramatically increasing, while solar output was falling. that's something that only becomes apparent after about 1980.

now, this opens up a reasonable question: recognizing that the observed warming cannot be caused by the sun because the sun is dimming, just how quickly is that sun actually dimming? is it possible that it could start dimming so quickly and so much that it could actually overpower the warming, which is being caused by a separate process, namely atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses?

while the answer is yes, in theory, i believe that the scientific consensus is that we should not expect the sun to shut down that much any time soon. our sun is a star, and like all stars it will die, but the way our sun will die will lead to increasing solar output first, not decreasing solar output. what the scientists are saying is that if you do the math based on reasonable projections then you come to the conclusion that the most likely outcome is that a very quiet sun will merely slow the warming down by a degree or two at most.

however, this isn't a debate about whether we're heading to maunder minimum (i actually don't think we are), or what effect it will have on the climate. what i'm trying to establish here is the truth that, yes, the sun does have an effect on the climate, and that the ipcc report does not make any sense unless you acknowledge it. there is no contradiction, then, in trying to apply solar science to climate change or understanding the effects that changing solar output may have on the weather in the context of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

when we say that the solar output has been decreasing, what we mean is that the peaks of the 11-year solar cycle have been trending downwards. but, we also exist within the 11-year cycles themselves, and that is what i actually spend more time talking about.

so, if you live in central or eastern north america, you might have noticed that it actually seems like it's been getting colder over the last few years, even as you look around the rest of the world and realize that the global average mean temperature is going up. in fact, if you removed the area that i live in as an outlier, the effects of global warming would just be that much more exaggerated in terms of mean averages. for years, now, eastern canada has been pulling down the rate of warming by posting record cold, even in the summer. so, what's been going on?

well, that's about the same time that the last solar cycle, which also peaked at a weak maximum, started decreasing down to a very low minimum, which we're just coming out of now. we again have correlations going back as far as we can measure that show that this area of the world experiences colder weather when the 11-year solar cycle is at a minimum, for the reason that the jet stream tends to dip more often, pushing colder air further south. the mechanism of this action is thought to have to do with the solar field's effects on the various oscillations that define how the jetstream behaves.

as warming is happening independently of solar effects, that means variation in solar output should continue to have a noticeable effect on the weather, like this. and, here in canada, the effects of the weakening sun have largely overpowered the effects of global warming since about 2016. look at the data. it's just true.

so, over the last few years, what we've seen is the sun pulling temperatures down, here, counteracting the felt effects of climate change.

what's happening now, as we move at out of minimum, is that increasing solar output should exaggerate the effects of climate change in this area. once again, we have strong correlations going back many years that show that temperatures here are usually warmer during solar maximum.

i know that i may end up confusing you. just last year, i was arguing that the sun was muting climate change; now i'm arguing it's exaggerating it! did i flip-flop? do i not know what i'm saying? am i hypocrite?

this is the level of discourse, people. no, it is.

the sun is changing. always. and it's relationship to climate change will change along with it.

so, i will make a bold prediction - i will flip-flop my analysis again in 6, 7, 8 years, or something. that is, if the acceleration to climate change brought on by the increasing solar output doesn't render the solar output as a minimal factor.

so, all of that to say this: i'm reading about the heat waves in the arctic, and i'm wondering if the feedback cycles are here. i've suggested previously that the solar cycle we are entering is likely our last opportunity to stop the warming. if that methane is releasing, now, we're fucked - it's just going to get worse.

yeah. that's about on target.

https://leaderpost.com/news/local-news/sask-posts-highest-ever-daily-increase-in-covid-19-cases

ok, so i've got my workstation set back up.

one more, and then i want to get to work for the night.

while i recognize the right to a fair and open trial, i think the idea that this is upending the justice system is misguided. rather, i'm kind of frazzled by the volume of posts.

if you have a handful of accusations, the people being accused are easily identified, and it is possible that somebody could end up badly defamed. however, when you have scores and scores of accusations, what you end up with is so many that nobody keeps track of them. you end up with accusations that nobody hears. you end up with a media that only cares about the celebrities. so, what these people are actually accidentally doing is normalizing the act of being accused of assault.

does that just demonstrate the extent of the problem? i mean, is assault normal? a lot of the stats suggest it kind of is, actually.

so, i'd really look at this less like an issue where the rights of the accused are being infringed upon and more as a mass letter writing campaign, or almost a digital monument of some sort.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/online-allegations-sexual-misconduct-quebec-1.5650629

i could criticize the randomness of the study, but the results seem to be consistent with the general picture - there's far more spread than has been measured by testing, but british columbia's sort of unique geographic breakdown, where pretty much every region is naturally isolated, makes it well suited to prevent widespread community spread without much intervention from the authorities. the okanagan valley is it's own thing, the island is it's own thing, the city is it's own thing - and there are oceans and mountains separating them.

as i've stated previously, measuring low immunity in a population suggests that it is still at high risk of a substantive outbreak. so, it could be argued that a targeted release may be beneficial to help build immunity - or, at the least, that it may benefit british columbians in the long run to facilitate the spread somewhat in the healthy population. but, if it's been kept low this long by the geography, what reason is there to think the geography won't continue to act as a buffer? yet, if so, what are the benefits of maintaining restrictions?

that said, i'd suspect that kelowna probably has higher prevalence than vancouver, and that testing there may reveal higher immunity. i've been through the region, and i know that the cultural differences between lifestyles in kelowna and lifestyles in vancouver suggest that kelowna is the more likely vector, and place to pay closer attention to in terms of a likely serious outbreak. vancouver is an upper middle class city full of highly educated professionals, whereas kelowna is a large town full of agricultural labourers, many of whom live in tents over the summer and party pretty hard over night. wild sex parties involving multiple partners outside in the woods seems to be a normal part of the okanagan valley lifestyle. i would be baffled to find out that these people are observing any sort of distancing at all.

whatever the reason for it, bc does seem to have been unusually successful in stopping the spread of the virus, yet at the expense of remaining unusually vulnerable. so, now what? it consequently remains to be seen, in the end, if that is to it's benefit or not.

https://www.citynews1130.com/2020/07/16/covid-19-study-bc-second-wave/

when we were at a clearer place in the cycle, it was easier to be more assertive. but, we're turning around an inflection point, so attributing cause is a little less obvious and it will remain that way for a few years.

regardless, the general trend for the next decade should be substantively and increasingly warmer weather in most of the habitable parts of canada.

i posted all of this stuff years ago - it's in here somewhere if you want to look for it - but the way i understood what i read is that when the sun reverses polarity it more or less reverses the jetstream in the northern hemisphere, and if you sit and think about this for a second, it's actually kind of intuitive and easy to grasp. if you imagine the jetstream as a wave with an amplitude in the presence of a magnetic field, then flipping the field really ought to flip the jetstream, too.

anything oscillating in a field should flip if you flip the field. and, that's essentially all that the research says, albeit in a complicated way - the sun shifts polarity, which flips the oscillations, which shifts the jetstream.

the last string of exceedingly hot summers ended here about 2016, which would have been a few years after the last peak. the near future, in this region of the world, will be at least a little warmer, as we move into the next cycle.

but, are we there yet? we shouldn't be; if we are, we don't understand why. then, is it variation? or is it an example of the solar effects being overrun by the oceans?

except that it's so gorgeous out this week.

i got some sleep this morning, and i think i needed that.

i'm going to slow it down a little, but i don't want to waste the weather. it's not a predictive statement, but, statistical norms being what they are, it seems more likely than not that the second half of summer will balance out the first; otherwise, this is going to be a scorching summer.

does any of this have to do with the sun?

well, we've seen some signs of the magnetic reversal that these solar cycles are really about, and that i keep pointing out is really what i'm talking about. and, the shift in the jet stream that is responsible for this heat is consistent with what we expect to see with a more active sun. however, the model that suggests that colder temperatures over landmasses in the northern hemisphere are correlated with lower sunspot activity (due to the effects of the fields created by the sunspots on jetstream activity) also suggests a fair amount of variability and that, due to the nature of what a jetstream is, a cold area over one part of the hemisphere will generally be offset by a warmer spell in another. so, you don't have this iron law that says "if low sunspot then cold in canada and russia", but rather a tendency for that particular pattern to be dominant over other weather events (like hot air masses moving north) when the sun is in that configuration.

the reality is that we haven't seen any actual substantive solar activity yet, just some burps. but, i feel we should be finding ways to measure the effect of the sun's magnetic field, itself, regardless. we might find out in the end that the sunspots are an effect of the correlation, rather than the cause of them. so, maybe we've flipped over but can't see it yet, and we're already into the stretch of warmer years, where the habitable part of canada escapes this protective bubble that's shielded it from the most dramatic effects of the warming.

or, maybe it hasn't flipped over, and it's just variation. and, maybe the polar vortex has suffered a devastating blow, in the face of global warming.

what i'm concerned about is not wasting the heat, just right now.

ok, so my little veg-out period is done, now.

i'm going to do some cleaning in here, including laundry, and then we're shifting to forcing myself into a goal-oriented marijuana reality for a while. as i stated previously, i'm going to need to find a way to condition myself towards normalcy.

i bought some cigarettes for the ride yesterday, but that's done, now. no more smoking after joints. i can get used to that quickly, i think.

and, what i'm going to do is train myself, for a while, to complete a task first, and then smoke. the goal is that, eventually, having a small amount of pot in the house for whatever will become normal, like it is with alcohol. i have 75% of a 26er of vodka in my cupboard that i haven't touched since march, and haven't had the urge to touch since march. it's just normal for me to have alcohol in the house, and i simply don't want to drink it, unless i'm going out. normalizing myself to marijuana means training myself to that kind of sporadic use, which i just don't have a history of.

unfortunately, i think that the cop upstairs has taken advantage of the situation and started smoking inside again, because it's become very stuffy in here, all of a sudden. i can't smell that well right now. but, as things will normalize in a day or two, my sense of smell will return. and, i don't want to smell anything, or be sent into any asthma-induced coughing fits as a consequence of an inside smoker. lets hope this doesn't become an issue, again - because it wasn't one for quite a while, previously.

after i do some cleaning in here, i'm going to want to get back to rescanning over the 2013-2014 period, looking for consistency in the posts. it is only once i complete that task that i will roll and smoke another joint.

so, let's get to this.

it's his job to paint a horror picture about the existing reality. the truth whatever it may be, presidential candidates essentially always argue that we're in a terrible crisis, and the sitting president failed, and you need to elect the candidate to solve the crisis. and, however great the candidate might sound in it's plan to solve the crisis, the class war always asserts itself, in the end. i'm more interested in his climate change comments.

so, he starts off by arguing that he wants to spend billions on fixing the roads and bridges, and then continues with an argument to increase network connectivity in rural regions. in order to "get our kids to market", we need to "modernize the infrastructure". and, the republicans have failed to deliver these things (which is true).

he then went on to brag about all of the roads he fixed when he was vice president, which he refers to continually as a "clean energy economy".

so, it seems like the message here is that in order to solve the climate crisis, we need to fix the roads. because fixing the roads creates construction and automotive jobs. also, everybody should switch to led, because it create jobs, too.

and, people have questioned his commitment to climate change. c'mon. can't you see how dedicated he is? he's committing to fixing the roads in order to fix the climate. what else could these eco-socialists want?

i've heard all of these ideas before, and some of them are better than others, but none of them ever get done. what happens is that ideas get distorted in implementation, lobbyists win at the last minute and you end up with poor implementation and minimal effects.

it would be hard to be as bad as trump on the climate, granted. but, this is an economic policy, it's not a climate change policy. you might like it as an economic policy, but very little of what he said will substantively reduce emissions.

there's also a few red flags. for example, there's a part about 14:00 in where he promises that we'll extend battery life and reduce battery cost because "we know how to do this". that's such an absurdly false statement, that it's hard to believe it isn't a conscious lie; storage solutions are the single biggest problem we have to solve, and there's no guarantee that we will ever solve it.

he's doing the teleprompter thing, and it seems to have minimized the number of times he stumbled over his words, although not entirely eliminated it. he's coming off a little bit slowed down, but he's not trailing off. they can't manage him forever like this, but he seems to have gotten through this for now...

so, we're through the second lecture series, now. i'm going to watch a talk on public policy around climate change, and then the third series is on "quantum entanglements", and we might get our talk about bell either after or during it. given what i've seen from susskind so far, i'm expecting a mathematically truncated but theoretically thorough formulation of entanglement, which should once again give me some space to actually learn something.

this is presented as an introduction to classical mechanics, so i assumed the pre-requisite would be very introductory calculus and he'd just work out some basic newtonian equations for engineers. i only decided to watch it as review, really.

in fact, this is an exceedingly abstract course that would more or less need to be presented at the graduate level as almost a kind of philosophy course and, if presented with a more thorough mathematical development, would have third to fourth year mathematical prerequisites. he hints at a lot of pretty esoteric math that i, myself, barely touched upon, but he doesn't actually do any of it, he presents these kind of intuitive, ad hoc approaches that reduce some pretty hefty math to a kind of half-hacked out differential calculus. i can honestly argue that if i had tried to present some of these proofs in a paper in a math program, i'd have received a failing grade; however, very little of the audience for this specific lecture series could have followed these arguments if properly formalized, so he kind of had little choice but to chop his way through it, allowing an audience that is interested in mechanics at this level to follow a series of arguments that they really shouldn't be able to follow. that said, much of the calculus in this course is at a second year level, and i don't really recall working with any kind of abstract algebra until the second part of second year. so, even with the intuitive sloshes through topological spaces and measure theory, amongst other things, you'd still need to be an upper level undergrad to even start to follow this, and i'd imagine few people would have the incentive to relearn classical mechanics, except as a weird and sort of meta elective.

i was hoping that he'd develop some more known physics from these systems, but he didn't have time, and so instead focused strictly on developing the algorithm. he claims that the algorithm will then allow you to derive the equations of motion of any system, and he did manage to convince me of it, but he didn't actually do much of it, like i'd hoped.

i remember taking courses like this near the end of my time studying math, and they have their place, but don't be fooled - this isn't for beginners. what this is is a demonstration of how very advanced physicists do very basic physics, and it's consequently only going to be of interest to the general populace as a point of curiosity, rather than a serious course.

stated differently, if you can follow the math, then you already know all of the physics and it's only interesting as a philosophy course. but, if you can't follow the math, even with it simplified, you're not learning much about physics by following along - you're better off checking out the pre-reqs.

well, they always said alberta was the texas of canada.

in fact, alberta's timing on the curve is maybe closer to that of the deep south than it is to that of eastern canada - they had minimal impacts to start, opened early and are now seeing a spike in cases.

the population of alberta is 4.5 million people, so it's very sparsely populated, largely. if you translate that proportion of cases in the population of alberta to the population of texas, you get to roughly 1500 cases.

29*(230/4.5) = 1482, but i'm underestimating the population of texas and overestimating the population of alberta so a round up to 1500 is a reasonable correction.

that was roughly the number of cases that texas was seeing near the end of may, which actually puts it in line with the rest of canada, surprisingly - but that would then be an example of time variance, and the need to view the curve in terms of being an abstract, malleable shape rather than a fixed, physical thing.

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/230-covid-19-cases-over-weekend-government-urges-albertans-to-use-masks-1.5022039

i can just imagine the wall of blank stares coming back at him, as doug afford announces in front of a packed room of seniors that they'll never be warm again.

and, eventually, after however many seconds of absolute silence, a solitary voice may cry out in the crowd...

i'm cold.

i'm not fucking around. really.

https://training.mmlearn.org/blog/is-grandma-always-cold-heres-why...and-what-you-can-do-about-it

hey, doug.

maybe that old folks home that you broke a sweat in, which pissed you off so much, was hot because....


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wait for it.

keep going.

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ready?

still want to know?

so, maybe the old folks home that doug ford broke a sweat in, which pissed him off so much that he's mandating air conditioning in the homes was hot because....

.....the residents like it that way.

fyi.

https://caregiver.com/articles/why-seniors-cold/

i am happy to see the creation of new care facilities, and hope that there is enough capacity in the end to prevent overcrowding.

and, i hope that tenants are, in the end, given control over their own thermostats - and allowed to vote on their preferred temperatures in common areas.

maybe we should just hire a train of slaves to follow doug around, and toss rose petals in front of him when he walks, like an emperor, or at least a petty tyrant.

that way, he'll never break a sweat ever again.

like, ever.

i bet this guy hasn't exercised for more than five minutes since high school.

i think maybe doug ford often gets a little sweaty, and maybe he's mandating what he would like, rather than what the people that live in these facilities would actually want.

that way, when doug goes into the facilities, he won't be uncomfortable, himself.

have you ever heard an old person say "it's too hot in here."

no, really. have you?

all i've ever heard old people say is "it's freezing in here, turn the heat up".

the sad reality is that if you mandate air conditioning in these facilities, what you're going to end up with is a lot of old people complaining that it's too cold.

because old people love to complain that it's too cold. if you've ever known any...

but, what if a resident doesn't want air conditioning in their unit?

in fact, older people tend to like it warmer. that's one of the ways that your body changes, as you age.

but, it's a good example of the kind of warped mindset that this fat, privileged piece of shit really has.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-makes-air-conditioning-mandatory-in-nursing-homes-announces-indoor-visits-to-restart-soon-1.5024837

see, this guy should be getting meals on wheels or something. i know i'm completely avoiding the debate, but that is the truth of it - this person should not be in public, right now, for much of any reason, and he should have access to a service that delivers him the necessities, while that's happening. that's the safest thing for him to do...

my experience is that these cards are not necessary, and while i wouldn't advise using them, i think it's kind of harmless, if it makes people feel less anxiety about being judged for going out without a mask. i think that the real reflection, here, ought to be about the unnecessary stress that this is clearly causing people.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/anti-masking-rules-1.5649288

so, i'm vegging today. and we'll get back to work tomorrow, or perhaps tonight.

so, if you want to understand how to transform the canadian epidemiology into the american, and back, the formula should be something like this:

u(f(t)) = 10*c(t)

where,

u(t) = american deaths at time t
c(t) = canadian deaths at time t
f(t) is an equation that relates the domains of the two functions.

if we measure t in weeks and allow it to be linear, even though we know it isn't, and f(t) is roughly t-6 then,

u(t - 6) = 10*c(t),

so,

c(t) = 0.1*u(t-6)

to be a little more complicated, you'd need to derive a fourth order differential equation for t and solve it. you'd want it to be fourth order so that the derivative of the acceleration is still a non-scalar function of t. that is, the acceleration is not constant. and, this is an empirical question, so you could fit this, if you sat down and did it...

stop.

these are the two key observations in comparing the american and canadian responses to the pandemic, right now.

1) the united states has about ten times the population of canada, so should be expected to have about 10 times the number of deaths.
2) canada appears to be experiencing a very similar epidemiology to what's happening in the united states, except that we're lagging behind them by a few months. i don't want to be too precise because i wouldn't expect this transformation to be time-invariant, in the end - it's not like you can pick up one graph and drop it on the other, you're going to have to think more abstractly than that and look at the general shape of the curve, and transform it around where the inflection points are. the field of mathematics that deals with these kinds of transformations is called topology; we're not going to be converting coffee cups into donuts and back, but we're dealing with classes of curves that we can stretch and condense, and expand and contract, and stuff.

so, we've seen a huge spike of cases recently down there. but, the states that are getting nailed right now didn't reopen last week - they reopened months ago. texas reopened at the end of april; it took two months for cases to build quietly amongst the young and healthy before it flipped over. cases in the united states actually decreased for weeks after the economy started going again, about 10 weeks ago or so.

as reopening in canada started happening about 4 weeks ago, that would suggest that we have another 6 weeks or so to wait before the build-up of cases via community spread flips over, if we continue to follow the americans via a time lag. but, as mentioned, time is variable, here - that 6 weeks could be 4 weeks, or it could be 10 weeks.

you'll note that the weather also flipped over late in most of canada, especially relative to the american deep south, and that may contribute to the time lag, as well.

now, let's see what kind of time lag we get with total deaths, and how close it is to the time lag i just pointed out.

first, we have to multiply the total number of deaths in canada to get a good comparison. so, to see how far behind the united states we are on the curve, we need to ask when it is that the united states had not 9,000 deaths but 90,000 deaths, and the answer to that question is around the may 15th-20th period, which is a bit more than six weeks ago, but not much more.

is that inevitable? is there anything we can do to prevent this? well, you could put the military on the street, distribute food door-to-door and order anybody who leaves their house shot dead. that would work. so, no - it's not unpreventable.

but, with the rules we have in place (and with the rules we are willing to follow), it is, indeed, inevitable.

and, your mask won't save you, or the people around you.

"but, we're trying to stop the spread of the virus. we can't wait."

then argue your abuse of power is justified, don't pretend it's not an abuse of power.

i don't agree, myself. and, i don't expect that mask laws will help much, in the end.

so, i think this summarizes where actual, really existing science is right now with the whole mask thing:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/06/controversy-covid-19-mask-study-spotlights-messiness-science-during

what the article says is that we don't really have any useful science that demonstrates the effectiveness of mask wearing, but it seems like it makes sense (hrmmn.), so we should probably all do it, under the assumption that eventually the science will work itself out.

see, i'm not even going to really argue with my own summary of the article; i may have been a little snide, but i don't think i've constructed a strawman or otherwise misattributed, and it's almost tautological in terms of presentation - who is going to argue that mask use doesn't make sense in principle, if everybody does it right?

but, that's a suggestion. it's a hunch. it's the articulation of an idea that seems reasonable - but also a mea culpa that we don't actually know if it's actually true or not. it's certainly not a law, or an order, or a decree.

hey, let's be current and trendy in our thinking, in a way that is unusually substantive. this is a scenario where policymakers should be carefully seeking out the intersection of science and law, which i'm actually unusually qualified to talk about. seeking out true intersectionality here requires the ability to interpret the evidence from both components of the intersection, and erect them in a way that is unique to the intersection area.

understanding the legal area means realizing that science needs to be understood in terms of uncertainty, that sometimes scientists will tell you something is certainly true (such as evolution, or anthropogenically induced climate change) and sometimes scientists will tell you something is probably true (like genetic determinants for sexual identity, or the masslessness of specific particles) and sometimes scientists will tell you that they just imagine that something is true without having any evidence to back it up (like the existence of life outside of the solar system, or the idea that mask use stops the spread of viruses in a pandemic). the legal side of the equation needs to understand where the science is on any specific point before legislating, if it seeks to consult it properly. if something is certainly true, specific legal legislation is absolutely required to address it, and so forth, whereas if something really only exists in the mind of the imaginer then the issue is generally best left to whatever research departments, and the legal question reduces to what kind of funding seems reasonable, relative to the magnitude of any social or capital accruement that may come from the thought developing itself into actual science.

understanding the science area means realizing the need to be clear to policy makers about the nature of the reports being presented, under the realization that the issue is going to policy makers that ought to judge it as previously stated. it means being able to understand the science well enough to make that determination, and understanding what that determination actually means, in terms of what kind of funding or specific action is required.

so, then what to say about the quebec mask law and the backlash to it?
https://globalnews.ca/news/7178624/quebec-ombudsman-masks-coronavirus/

i don't have a general concern with the ombudsman, or any other government official, articulating a suggestion to wear masks. that is indeed in line with the science, which is currently at exactly that point, of suggesting that it is probably a good idea.

but, as the science is nether at the probably stage nor the certainty stage, there would not appear to be a sufficient scientific justification at this point for the mandating of masks, and the government of quebec is consequently jumping ahead of itself in implementation. this law is not informed by the science, as it exists, and should be overturned for that reason. there must be clear evidence to infringe on an individual's right to the "security of the person" in such an invasive manner, and the current evidence simply doesn't fit the bar to do so.

that said, i think that most people are interpreting the law as a suggestion. i live in a mask-mandated region, and mask use is not at all widespread, here. i highly doubt that the police are enforcing the law, or doing much of anything at all to uphold it. if you pass a law and the only people that follow it would have followed it without the law existing, and don't enforce it, then it's not really a law, is it? it's just a suggestion...

so, i'm going to wait until they start dragging people away before i get particularly concerned.

science, in general, is the opposite of what conservatives call "common sense".

i will usually strenuously oppose "common sense" policies because i'm in solidarity with science.

and, these trumpist border closures - which make intuitive sense to the uneducated, but are not backed by science - are a perfect example of this.

again: i would expect this kind of stupidity from a conservative government, but the liberals are supposed to argue that science > "common science". and, they're not.

there's some things that a government can do that are disappointing, and there are others that indicate a fundamental shift in governing philosophy. this is the latter.

i don't think there's any other liberal government in canadian history that would have tossed the science in the trash and caved into populist ignorance, like this. it's in line with my analysis over many years now, but it's really historic - this is an ideological shift in the ruling party, and one that is going to dramatically alter my view of the liberals as a science-based party for many years into the future.

and, they can't win without people like me, even if i'm currently in a dead riding.

https://theconversation.com/we-cant-trust-common-sense-but-we-can-trust-science-53042

so, that's what i did yesterday. the map cuts off, but the town i ended up in was tilbury....for a few minutes, anyways - enough to buy the pills and smoke a joint in a farmer's field and get out.

while it's about the same distance to leamington as it is to tilbury (my route is about 5 km's shorter than google's in either direction), this was a slightly longer ride, because a large part of it was through a residential area, and there were a lot more lights. i left at about 13:00, i got to the store about 17:30, i left about 18:30 and i was home before 23:00. so, i got the space covered in around 4.5 hours in either direction. considering that i stopped for at least five smoke & mt dew breaks in both directions, 3-3.5 hours of actual biking is about right. hey, if you can do that without stopping, then sign up for the olympics; in reality, you actually take the car to the corner store to get milk, don't you? ugh.

i got home, took a shower and slept for quite a while. i haven't even eaten yet...

how big is windsor, really? it's a weird layout for a city, and i suspect it's the same thing all around the peninsula - i don't feel like i left fully urban civilization until i got out of saint joachim., but it's only because i took the lakeshore drive, and i got some pictures of lac st clair (something i hadn't seen before). it's probably the same thing around the detroit river into lake erie, but i haven't done the trek, yet.

i'm not exaggerating - it's just a string of houses up the road along the lake for miles, of varying composition. some of these houses i drove by were legit 30 room mansions, while there was one section of particularly old and dilapidated housing that seemed like it might have been a small indigenous reserve (i don't know if that's true). i'm sure that the wealth disparity has a lot to do with which areas are more flood prone, but for the purposes of biking, that's not all that important. i'm just pointing out the long string of housing up the coast of the lake that makes it seem like you're still in the city, after you've left it behind miles and miles ago. there's small communities on the main road, county road 2, but if i had taken that route, i'd have been taking an old highway with no shoulders through much of it, and often driving through fields, making it seem more like a ride through the country. indeed, you'll note that i ended up back on a road that runs directly from windsor  (where it is called cabana road) to tilbury (where it is called mill street) and that i may have saved some time by just staying on it, but the trade-off is that cabana switches to rural almost right off the 401, so almost the entire road would have been through farmland and old roads. they actually announced a project to uplift the road recently, and if i could put in a request to mayor dilbert to just extend the bike line all the way to tilbury...

i got 40 days worth, though!

how much further can i go than tilbury? i felt this ride, near the end, more than i felt the last one, even if the distance was about the same. so, i don't know. i know that if i have to go to chatham-kent, or to some other small town on the way to london and/or hamilton (and/or niagara) then i'm going to need to leave earlier.

keeping the windows closed overnight actually seems to have resolved the issue i was dealing with yesterday, but only because i've got some latent heat built up in the floors, now, i think. it's about time to open them for the day...

this border closure is not a way to stick-it to the americans. it hurts us far more than it hurts them.

and, the liberals right now are run by sophomoric idiots that should go back to school, so nobody should be surprised that they threw away what will probably be their best, last chance at a majority, before justin trudeau ends up in the dung-heap of history, where he belongs.

no.

the closed border is a symbol of the triumph of trumpism. you're all trumpists, now.

and, you're all too stupid to understand it.

...and, guess what, you fucking idiots?

if you've fallen for this?

if you're all gung-ho about closing borders to keep the diseased americans out, based on nothing but debunked science and xenophobic rhetoric?

you've bought into trumpism. you're a trumpist. and, trump has now won. congratulations.

we need a government that's going to look at the science soberly with an analytic mind and apply it rigorously, not one that's happy to throw the science under the bus for all of this right-wing, xenophobic, populist rhetoric about "common sense".

stop.

do you think this is the only example in history where border closures actually worked?

that it's the one, magical counter-example to the mountains of peer-reviewed science that reject border closures as pseudo-science?

grow up. we need real world solutions to real world problems, not magical thinking based on pseudo-science.

i repeat: closing the border is not about science. the science is crystal clear: closing borders does nothing to stop the spread of diseases, at all. no, it is not working. we're just behind them on the curve.

what closing borders as a result of this is about is the government pushing a xenophobic, populist agenda to try to create enough of a distraction for them to avoid an election that they are unlikely to do well in.

and, here's the sneaky part: they'd actually be better off to dissolve parliament, while the opposition is in disarray. if you had an election tomorrow, the liberals might win back a majority. their chances of such a thing will decrease daily, as we continue to catch up to the americans on the curve.

...and, as much as i'm frustrated by the government's unscientific handling of the situation, if we go through all of this twitter-feed pseudo-science and come off no better than the united states in the end, except now with a 90% debt-to-gdp ratio, which we could have avoided by following the science, will that lead to some clearer thinking in the population about putting people with guns on the streets and telling people where they can or can't go?

and, why am i cheering on the spread of the virus?

because i want the border to reopen to commercial traffic asap, meaning i want the policy to fail asap, and for a public backlash to develop against it.

so, with the most recent border extension, i'm now in the awkward position of actively cheering on the spread of this virus in canada....

there is no science underlying the border "closures", which are truly no such thing, and no meaningful reason at all (except the logical fallacy of "common sense", which almost always leads to faulty deductions) to think they're having any effect whatsoever on the spread of the virus in canada. there is no reason, at all, right now, to expect that canada will not follow the united states into a major outbreak within the next two-three months, as it has had roughly similar infection rates, relative to population numbers, once you control for the fact that we are about 2-3 months behind the united states on the pandemic curve.

so, i don't think the canadian response to this virus has been very impressive, at all, actually.

i don't think we're doing a better job in containing the virus than they are - the data doesn't support that deduction, remotely.

i don't think that the border closures will stop the upcoming outbreak, which is likely currently in a process of development. wait for it.

and, i don't expect that the outbreak will be any different here when it happens, after you've given it some time to build roots in various communities and maybe even get into some local animals as reservoirs. i saw a shallow grave on somebody's lawn yesterday, and it got me to thinking about this thing getting into the raccoon or fox population, in which case we should expect periodic zoonotic transmission effects, like rabies.

so, what is this utter stupidity that we continue to be subjected to by this backwards, hard-right, populist-nationalist (the word for this is fascist) government?

well, i just described it didn't i?

the border is not closed because of the virus, the border is closed because a very weak liberal minority government is attempting to co-opt a trumpist foreign policy to maintain it's hold on power. not only have they managed to avoid elections (it's very likely that this government would have fallen this month, otherwise), but they haven't even passed a budget. it's a godsend for them, really.

all i can do is request that you don't fall for it.

but, you probably will.

because you're not very smart.

i want to be clear, though.

i didn't spend the morning complaining that i'm cold.

i spent the morning - since i woke up not long after midnight - physically unable to do much of anything because i was too cold to actually function. i did the things i usually do when i'm cold - dishes in hot water, cooking pasta on the stove, two sweaters and a winter jacket at one point and then three hot showers, but they were fleeting and i just ended up in my blanket after each one.

i don't know what would have happened had i tried to shiver through it. what i know is that i was cold enough that i instinctively didn't do that, and i assume my instincts asserted themselves for good reason.

ok. one, two...go...

in the short run, i'm realizing that i can't live with older white men that have recent genetic history in the northern parts of eurasia. we're just not evolved for the same environmental conditions - he likes it cool and dry, because he's adapted to it; i like it hot and humid, because that's my own adaptation.

even if the issue right now is more about outside than inside...

it's looking like it's popped up a little closer to 25, so i'm going to see if i can get out of bed and get dressed.

should we do this?

should atheists get a bunch of guns and just show up somewhere near the equator and throw the muslims and/or catholics (or jews. whatever.) in the ocean and take it?

we don't have a homeland, and our aristocrats are afraid of us, and keep bringing the abrahamists here to overrun us. it's kind of like...

if you guys want canada, maybe we can trade, or something?

so, do i want to go back to where i came from?

well, if i knew where i came from...

maybe.

the problem i have with warm climates is that they're full of muslims and felids. i think i can mostly avoid the crocs, but the leopards will come right in the house to get you, if you let them. muslims, too. if there was a forward thinking, atheistic-driven, anti-abrahamic society near the equator and the ocean somewhere...

there isn't.

i'd pick south america over the muslim countries in asia and africa, but they're all catholic, and consequently not very appealing as destinations to move to.

if i could design my own planet, right? i'd make all the muslims white and send them to the north pole, so that we could build atheistic utopias in the more appealing places. after we ban hurricanes by instituting daily pole reversals. or, maybe you just make the planet all land, except lakes, and put the fresh water underground. yeah...

i get these nasty cases of the chills, from time to time, but they tend to pass after an hour or two. i've been shivering since i woke up around 3:00, unable to stop my teeth from chattering for hours at a time. why is this happening?

the air conditioner upstairs is no doubt a part of the problem, and i hate air conditioners and would disown my children for ever using them, but i think what actually happened is that the temperature caved in very far, very fast. so, it went from 35 degrees to 17 degrees in a few days. while 17 degrees is not particularly cold, the difference is quite massive. i've essentially been unable to adjust, and been unable to do anything until it passes.

i've taken three scalding hot showers this morning, each upwards of an hour in length, and i still just can't stop shivering. i can't escape this blanket, which is at least trapping my body heat from escaping.

still. it's reminding me that my genes are not from the north, and that whatever epigenetic reactions occurred in last week's blissfully beautiful heat wave don't exactly want to let go. it's like you let the cytosine loose in a candy shop, creating what may be referred to as a cytosine storm.

yeah. well, this whole migration thing is kind of undoing evolution in a way, isn't it? you're not supposed to dramatically change climates within a few generations. my dna was in warmer climates for thousands, if not millions, of years; i evolved to live in humid, hot places. that's what i am. and, i wonder if i shouldn't undo the mistake made in my genome's recent history, and get these genes back into the climate they were adapted to.

they're not proliferating up here, in this igloo carved out of the side of a glacier, that's for sure. i'm not evolved for it, and the other genomes seem to realize it.

it would help if i could figure out where the genome needs to go to get back home, to the adapted latitude.

for now, we should get some more summer-like temperatures this afternoon. as it is, i'm basically forced to put the day on hold and sit inside until i stop shivering. and, i'm feeling a tad better as i'm typing...

so, i found some more brand name meds. hopefully, this is dealt with soon.

i'm not going to tell you where yet exactly. i'll tell you when i get back.

if the entire world knows you won't use your superpowers, then you're not actually a superpower, are you?

they have this fixation on carter.

listen. i'll be 40 in a few months, and jimmy carter had been removed from office before i was even born. it's a matter of days, but it's true. that means that nobody under 40 has the slightest recollection, and you'd really have to be pushing into your 60s...

is that the point, though? is this really about older voters? it's a playbook that's running thin, to say the least. they said clinton was just like carter, and to an extent he actually was, but it didn't help them win (ross perot, notwithstanding). they said obama was just like carter, and he won twice on the back of a youth vote that probably largely couldn't tell the difference between carter and clinton if you held up pictures of them - something that is only more true now. if this is the best they got...

it's not. it's a lazy article, and that in itself may be reflective of something.

honestly? if i was a hawk, i would pick biden. trump's decision to not bomb iran at the beginning of the year really turned him into a paper tiger. he's not remotely scary to anybody, because everybody knows that he bluffs 100% of the time, and folds 100% of the time. he's actually probably the most predictable commander-in-chief, ever - and the predictability is around the reality that he's both an isolationist and a pacifist.

biden, on the other hand, like clinton one may recall, is getting the endorsement of neo-cons and interventionists more or less across the board. he's not likely to base his foreign policy on bluffing, and he's far more likely to actually utilize the substantive hard power at his availability, to advance the interests of his clients (who is whose client, really, though?).

it's a very hard choice, if you're standing outside the country and primarily concerned about international issues, including global warming and foreign policy. nothing i said should be meant to even suggest that trump won't cave and do something stupid at the last minute. an invasion of the faulklands, or maybe grenada if they can't even figure out how to get by the argentinians, is increasingly seemingly less like satire - it's exactly the kind of surreal theatre that this administration would see the upside in.

but, despite being abominable on the climate, trump's track record and general demeanour seems like the less scary option, in the long run, if you're looking to seriously minimize war over the next 4-8 years. he's the isolationist, here; biden's the internationalist. and, i hope the country at least understands the decision it has in front of it, if this becomes a ballot issue, which it likely won't.

the election is probably going to mostly be about the virus, and in the end may largely reduce to a referendum on forced distancing measures and mandatory mask use. the talking heads may not even get a microphone, this time - americans are going to have more pressing details directly in front of them than trying to sort through an altruistic decision about empire-building.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/12/biden-is-wrong-choice-lead-west-through-cold-war-20/