if, in the end, the care industry becomes more powerful than the suicide industry, you'll see the opposite outcome - people subtly coerced into continuing to live through their suffering, rather than left to freely choose to decide to die. religious groups may see that as preferable, but i don't; coercion is coercion, one way or the other.

so, the key thing is to minimize profit.

one thing you could do is mandate that the suicide industry remain a part of the care industry, so that there isn't a financial incentive to push one over the other. further, regulating the prices of care and suicide as services via an insurance monopoly (as exists in canada.) can help take away the profit motive. regulating suicide as less profitable than care could help ensure that these choices are being made by people and not by bureaucrats.

i believe this is the status quo, here - you can only get these services in care facilities that have the option to sell you things that will keep you alive, too. that should remain enforced.

i understand this argument - i've made similar ones in regards to prostitution.

so, is it possible that providing for suicide on demand may create a society where you have a suicide industry that overpowers access to services? is it possible that governments might cut services to the disabled and increase funding for the suicide industry, instead?

sure.

with prostitution, you can sort of decriminalize it and look the other way, while rejecting the commercialization of it. and, with drugs, you can bring in bylaws that restrict smoking in certain spaces. so, you can do things to mitigate the effects. we're not doing that for smoking pot, yet, but it's the right answer, and we should get there, eventually.

assisted suicide is a little different, as you can't look the other way and the externalities don't need to be mitigated because they don't exist.

my best response to this - and it's a legit critique and something that needs to be carefully monitored and adjusted for - is that the right to death is one of many rights, and the court needs to uphold all of the rights, including all of the other rights, while maintaining the right to access death. so, if the argument is that the right to death will undo these other rights, i can accept that the concern is valid, and will argue that it's important that we stand up for these other rights - to shelter, to care. 

the canadian jurisprudence is supposed to do that - it's in the precedents. 

but, do i think it's an argument against suicide-on-demand? i don't - and i couldn't imagine somebody erecting a convincing argument that people don't have the right to access death, relative to whatever choice they choose to make. it is an argument to remain vigilant, and ensure that the struggle for access to these other rights continues, and i see little reason to think it won't.

at the end of the day, there are some people that will embrace their disabilities and want to live with them and there are some people that won't. the system can't really change who wants to live and who doesn't, it can only provide equally for both options. 

providing for only one choice cannot become the status quo - and we'll have to make sure it doesn't.

the other thing to ask is if i think this is a realistic concern, and i think my response here is more mixed. it could be. but, it's not an economic inevitability, the way that corporate prostitution is, it relies on a confluence of government and industry aligning in a specific, unfortunate manner. the care industry could become more powerful and profitable than the suicide industry, if the conditions allow for it; there's not any inherent power imbalance, or any inevitable social conditions that lead to the dominance of the suicide industry, over time. and, courts can and no doubt will rule on the rights of the disabled to live as well, whereas they'll never rule on the rights of prostitutes to self-organize.

so, i guess you could say that i think we can handle euthanasia better than we can handle prostitution, at this time.

but, yeah - some careful thought is required.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.5896324/as-bill-c-7-reaches-senate-un-watchdog-raises-concerns-about-maid-for-persons-with-disabilities-1.5897749

i tend to resist nailing politicians for corruption scandals, but this is different - this needs to take this government down, and the government that replaces them needs to come in with policies that brings back the country's economic sovereignty.

so, where did all of this money go, in the end?

who got paid for vaccines that never showed up? who orchestrated this? 

we contributed nothing to the production of the vaccine, and expected to be first in line to take orders.

we resisted calls to participate in production, and insisted on buying imports, instead.

and, we're getting what we deserve for that kind of policy.

but, i've said this a few times - if this isn't the death knell of "free trade" in canada, the country has no future.

if we can't figure out that the alter-globalists on the street were right after this, and realize they predicted all of this, we never will, and we're doomed as a consequence of it.

justin trudeau is ideologically attached to the idea of canada as a consumer of products purchased elsewhere in the world, rather than as a producer of goods. in terms of canadian production, he's only ever indicated any interested in the automobile sector, which includes oil. that's canada, apparently, in the mind of trudeau - a country that builds cars and imports everything else.

so, it's less that he's this rank, globalist elitist - although that's true - and more that he's legitimately ideologically wed to this concept of canada as a link in a set of supply chains, in a global economy dominated by "free trade". i put free trade in quotes, because it's the kind of concept of free trade that you sell naive, dumb union workers in order to advance a mercantilist global order that places investors at the top of the hierarchy. worse, his deeply racist concept of the world inverts to reject anybody that challenges this mercantilist order as 'racist'. he comes from the highest aristocracy that this country has, but he's really a true believer, in ways that are supposed to be reserved for the ruled rather than the rulers. and, you can see this in his life decisions - this is a person born with millions in trust fund dollars, that thought it was necessary to get jobs working as a ski instructor, or a high school teacher. if you had millions in the bank, would you get a job as a ski instructor? 

it says something about the way the guy thinks; he seems to believe the lies that were written for the masses to facilitate the ruling classes to rule with, from the fake free trade mythology to his apparent embrace of multiple world religions, rather than interact with and understand theory from the perspective of a dauphin. if machiavelli were grading our dauphin, he would fail him, indeed - he does not act like a prince ought to, but only has the capacity to understand things the way a slave does.

this is of course the kind of figurehead ruler that the elite wants. but, it doesn't help the rest of us to be dealing with this guy that consistently comes off as a brainwashed agent in an inspector gadget episode. "uh, ok boss."

so, when everybody from every corner of the country yelled at him that he has to ensure local production of the vaccine, if we can, his insistence (via his captured, elitist ministers - that he seems to think he's giving a helping hand to, because they're brown. it's better to give the coloured folks a hand up than a hand out.) to rely on supply chains was rooted in an ideology that was constructed inside of him by the ruling elite, and not on any evidence - and he believed in it, just like all these other low information idiots are tricked into believing it, with the same propaganda intended for the dumbest workers around us. 

the collapse of these supply chains in the building of the virus - which he should have seen with the end of the sinovac deal months ago, at the least. - and the flip-flop in policy towards domestic production, only after we've bought millions of doses from companies that will not or cannot deliver, is consequently a legitimate governing mistake, and a reason to remove this government from office. obviously, you need to produce as much vaccine as you can, and the rest of the world is right to see canada as a laggard for deciding to just let everybody else do the work and buy it from them, in the end.

this is legitimate incompetence and there ought to be electoral consequences for it.

so, i had to sleep today.

and, now i need to wake up and pick up where i was.

i would argue that marxism, socialism and anarchism, as consistent ideologies, are all fundamentally incompatible with collectivism, to the point that they cannot co-exist.

but, you get the exact opposite - from both sides of the spectrum - when you survey people on the question, and, you hear academics speak in equally confused ways about it, too, because it's so culturally ingrained - almost as though it's a consequence of some kind of hegemonic power confusing the idea for it's benefits.

"Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy:  political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority ... a century of Fascism.  For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State."   - mussolini

i know that you can't take these people seriously when they use words that have been translated from different languages. but, mussolini's use of the language was accurate, here.

fascism, as a term, develops from corporatism. and, corporatism itself develops out of the collectivism described in hobbes. this philosophy of the far right - fascism, collectivism, corporatism - is then contrasted against the ideals of the left, which are socialism, liberalism and democracy.

this is an insightful statement by benito mussolini, in truth.

so, how we got to this idea in america where collectivism is thought of as on the left is very strange, but no doubt has to do with the spectrum reversal that took place in the united states, where the democrats became the left, after representing the right since andrew jackson. you get this weird, confused confluence of terms.

but, it's a fundamental point of confusion, in truth.

americans legitimately and readily identify the left with collectivist ideas, rather than legitimately socialist ones. i mean, you hear it all of the time - socialism means big government. right? no - that's wrong, actually. but, it's what americans say when asked over and over and over...

it's important to realize that when marx attacked human rights as "nonsense on stilts", he was referring to ecclesiastical law, in the form of natural rights (something derived by a handful of christian theologians, and that re-emerged as a sort of liberal theology). i mean, i don't disagree with what he said, which was an attack on the idea that rights come from some magical place in the heavens, rather than from human beings. 

that doesn't suggest he was opposed to rights, or thought that the rights of the individual were unimportant; to the contrary, he would have always self-identified as a liberal, and argued that the entire point of socialism is to maximize individual freedom by collectivizing production - that should create more freedom in the end, not less, and that was the idea that bakunin and proudhon and the rest ran with, even as marx attacked them as lacking the organization to get anywhere (and was right.) and they attacked him for being a pseudo-monarchist authoritarian (and were right, too). there's a real underlying connection between marx and the idea of "enlightened despotism", which is counter-revolutionary in scope. he often agreed more with the benthams than the paines.

it just means that he thought that rights were something humans create, and their value is subject to what we assign to them.

unfortunately, this has been misunderstood primarily for the reason that the american left tends to conflate socialism with collectivism or corporatism, without really grasping the contradictions in doing so. mussolini was a true collectivist in the corporatist sense; if we saw that kind of movement here, the first thing they'd do is wipe out any real left (just like the bolsheviks did, too). it's tied into the whole marginalization of economics on the american left in favour of the social sciences, because marx is seen primarily as a social scientist like weber rather than a political theorist like, say, james madison. it's the old cliche about what you like and don't like about marx, which seems to be less about class, exactly, and more about the enforcement of capitalist hegemony in the academy - even marx is stripped of his marxism, and those who study him are stripped of his praxis. it's a silly joke. but, it explains how the left has come to embrace these ideas that the left has always seen as on the far right, to the point it's taken up arms against them - the conflation of collectivism with the left.

if you really believe this stuff, you might want to read up on mussolini; you might find you want the trains to run on time, too.

but, you can't take rights out of the left and call it a left, it becomes incoherent and nonsensical. what's the point if you're not fighting for rights?

i may have to bring back tomatoes for lycopene, in the end. i need to do the research on it, but the sources are pretty obscure, beyond tomatoes...

the white guavas are nutritionally superior, as far as i can tell, but i am skeptical of the claims that they contain lycopene in any measurable amount.

but, i haven't looked into this at all and need to wait.

so, once i get mustard, cayenne & paprika, i'll have the spices i've picked out, except turmeric, which i'm going to hold off on. the basis of adding turmeric is twofold:

1) it's why mustard is yellow.

2) curcumin

but, you can't absorb curcumin, apparently. like, they suggest snorting it. i'm not snorting mustard - don't snort mustard, kids. 

there's nothing else in there that seems useful...and i'm not convinced that turmeric adds to the taste, not until i try a bit, first. if the mustard seed tastes strange and unusual to me, maybe i'll add a little turmeric, for bourgeois reasons. but, to start, it seems pointless.

the mustard is there to mimic the caesar taste, but it should have some b vitamins, too. the cayenne & paprika are for cartenoids, with the intent to replace the hot sauce. i should hopefully get boosts of those other carotenoids as well, stuff like lycopene (lycopene was a bad randomly chosen example. there's a lot of lutein, though). ground capsicum is actually one of the healthiest things you can find, but manufactured hot sauce is full of salt & vinegar, which i'm getting too old to consume casually - i need to cut shit like that out.

i'm still holding off on the anchovies, for now.

and, i need to rebalance the wheat bran source, so i'm getting more wheat bran than all bran, i just want to have all of the data first so i only have to do it once. i think i'm getting enough selenium in the other bowls to balance, for now. 

the other thing i need to do at the bulk barn today is get powdered mustard and powdered cayenne pepper. this will dramatically reduce the amount of vinegar i'm consuming, which is a problem for my teeth.

i picked up some limes this month, but probably won't next month. i'm looking at green beans instead, but i haven't done the research and need to finish the fruit component first.

so, the real reason i was out on sunday was to pick up a small amount of generic estrogen. yeah - generic. here we are...

i should have called on friday, but i knew i wouldn't be able to find anything and instead tried to distract myself from it. i called a few places on saturday, before resigning myself to the reality and asked the spot that had it to package a small amount of generics, so i could get through the weekend and try on monday...

i tend to avoid biking in the salt and snow, so i took a walk on sunday afternoon that worked out to 19.3 km - from here to the pharmacy, to the walmart, to the metro, to the superstore, to the freshco, home, to the food basics, and home again.

the price for the red peppers at the whole sale club wasn't that impressive this time, although it has been previously. i wanted to check the walmart for soy, and they didn't have it; they had cheese and yogurt on sale, though. the metro at devonshire didn't have my soy, so i won't go back, but i got some strawberries at a good price. i wanted limes or red peppers at the superstore and was disappointed; i got both at the freshco, instead. and, then i got some chicken for the eggs, as mentioned - plus the kiwis were on sale.

you're excited.

when i got in at around 20:00, i took a deserved nap, got up and made some eggs and posted a few things on the internet, intending to make some calls..

.....and then fell asleep before i could. grargh.

so, i wake up around 14:00 and start making calls and i've got to the end of the list, now - i have called every pharmacy in the lower peninsula (and bicycled to the outlying towns of leamington, tilbury and amherstburg - something i greatly enjoyed, as it let me see and understand this area, which i didn't grow up in, quite a bit better) and am simply out of usable estrogen. there's no more, and what's left is probably expired.

to recall, the brand name estrace is imported by a company in mississaugua called acerus that buys it from a distributor in britain. that's the only distribution where i live. but, that company in britain has lost it's british license, meaning the drug cannot be imported any longer. due to the sad realities around property rights and pharmaceuticals, this has created a mess that may make it almost impossible to find this drug here for a very long time. what remains is the generic.

"but, the generic should be the same thing, just cheaper, you idiot."

see, i wish that was true, but it isn't in this case.

the generic uses a different delivery mechanism, which means what? well, your stomach acids are a vicious thing, and i'm always baffled by people that don't get this. they think we just absorb whatever we eat. in fact, your stomach acids want to rip everything you give it apart into the smallest pieces possible, where those pieces can either be attached to enzymes and absorbed, or discarded and shit out. so, if you're going to take something like estrogen orally, you want to make sure you give it a protective coating to stop it from being destroyed in your stomach.

bafflingly, the generic lupin-estradiol simply doesn't do that, while the brand name estrace does. so, when you take the brand name, you absorb the estrogen attached to an ester, which splits apart in your liver - and is lost largely on first pass but at least gets there. when you take the generic, it just dissolves in your stomach. it's crazy that they're even allowed to sell it at all.

the way around it is to take it under your tongue (or inject it...), but the thing i liked about the oral delivery is that it's just like being on the pill - you don't get mood swings, you just get constant estrone cycling, until it gets excreted. if you take it under your tongue, it's going to hit a peak fairly quickly and then fall very fast, which is not just a problem for mood swings, but also an increased cancer risk.

so, i've gone well out of my way to find the brand name, but i seem to be out and that's it. one store told me they threw out a bottle recently because it was expired. so, anything i could potentially find in distant rural villas is no doubt already destroyed. 

around 18:00, i finally gave up and had to transfer the rx back to the local pharmacy and just get the generic. it's cheaper, at least. but, now what?

i got some more groceries done as well, which required another 21.7 km of walking, including the last 6.5 km with 15 kg of soy milk on my back. so, that's 41 km (25.5 miles, in backwards culture units) of walking in the last 36 hours. as i'm not going to need to go out to get more estrace until mid-month at the earliest (and potentially next month), i want to get everything done now, excluding inevitable quick mid-month fruit top-ups. so, i've got just about everything i could find - but i'll need to make another trip to food basics & the bulk barn in the morning. when i got in, i took a shower and need to eat an overdue fruit bowl, but i had to send a fax to the doctor:

======

hi.

it's your old fax-sending friend jessica, again, back to write you another essay. muahahahaha. i actually didn't check if the phone works, as i need to get a letter to dr. --------, anyways. i still have a vm at 5199161358 and an email address at death.to.koalas@gmail.com.

so, i'm calling to ask for a boost in the estrace to 16 mg/day, and i'll explain why. 

after bicycling to tecumseh a few times, to leamington, to tilbury (!) and then to amherstburg several times, i have finally run out of options for brand name estrace in the lower peninsula. if there's any brand estrace from here to chatham, it has done an exceptionally good job of hiding itself, as i have called every pharmacy that google can find me. 

it's gone. all of it.

i called the distributor, acerus, as well, at one point, and they explained that the problem is that the british government removed the license for the company that manufacturers it. they had an exclusive license. so, until somebody else licenses it in canada (and i'm not sure they can, if acerus has it) this is impossible to get, due to the actions of the british government. acerus might (and, i think should) win their lawsuit in the end, but even winning the lawsuit won't get the item back in circulation.

and, of course, the border is currently closed.

so, the only option is generic. i'm finally at the end.

i have explained before that i am apprehensive about the delivery mechanism in the lupin-estradiol. estradiol is famously weak, anyways; most of it gets destroyed on first pass, with only small amounts converting to estrone, which then cycles repeatedly before it's excreted. so, the brand name attaches the estrogen to an ester that is intended to help it a least get to the liver, where it breaks in half. the lupin-estradiol does not have this ester, meaning that it doesn't even make it to first pass, it merely gets destroyed in stomach acid. it's as good as a placebo, in practice.

it's been a while now; everybody's in the same boat. have your other patients noticed degrading effects after switching? 

the way around this is to either inject it (i'm the last gen xer; i've watched everybody die of drug overdoses, i don't want to inject anything into me, ever. no needles. no way.) or to otherwise avoid swallowing it by taking it sublingually. but, i don't want to eliminate the hepatic process altogether, because i want to maintain some little bit of estrone cycling.

so, this is my proposal, and it is a large dosage increase, but let's talk about it:

- sublingual application of 2 mg every 6 hours + 

- orally swallowing 4 mg every 12 hours (hoping that the large dosage gets a bit of it into the portal vein, at least - but realizing that this is mostly useless)

that would be 4*2 + 4*2 = 16 mg/day - a doubling of dosage. but, i've just halved the effectiveness. it's not a practical increase, but an adjustment to the delivery mechanism. i'm hoping it just balances out...

obviously, this isn't ideal. when i spoke to dr. ---------, he indicated that i was absorbing the estrogen. but, if i have to go further than chatham to get brand name, i'll have to wait until the spring. and, i'm not convinced it's there at all.

one of the last stores i spoke to was in lasalle, and they indicated they recently had to throw some of it out because it expired. so, any lingering supply may be unsellable, and this is consequently all there is to do.

if you'd like to book an appointment to talk, i have no schedule, so just leave a message at my vm to do so. give me like 36 hours notice or something. i'm empirically driven, so i see the value of testing it and adjusting to it, but i'm exceedingly apprehensive about this, and would rather come on strong and turn it down than come in low and turn it up.

that said, i've learned my lesson and will wait for a response. just please recognize that i can't wait too long for a response.

thanks,

jessica

===========

so, that's what's next.

i need to eat, first. after that, i need to finish my shopping - and also to mail a few things regarding court cases and fippas. and, then i will need to file a few things, after that.

i should hopefully be able to get back to what i'm doing tomorrow or the next day.

but, that was the last few days - 40+ km of walking to get grocery shopping done. and, i've got a few more to finish it up...

you can look at me like an idiot, if you want, i guess. why don't i get a car? or at least order a cab?

see, and i'm going to flip the question around - if you drive your car to the grocery store, what do you do for exercise? well, do you even exercise at all? 'cause if you just drive your car everywhere and sit on your ass all day, don't call me an idiot - go have a heart attack, instead. but, if you do take reasonable care of yourself, how do you do it?

do you spend $100/month to go to the gym? really? and you're calling me stupid?

do you run around in circles like a retarded horse?

this is what you probably do - you get in your car and drive to the grocery store (which costs money and produces emissions) and then get home and run laps like a gerbil, or go to the gym and pay through your nose to look sexy running on the spot. right?

well, if you did what my dumbass self does, you'd save hundreds of dollars a year on gym and gas costs, and help the planet by keeping pollution down - and be in better shape than you are now, on top of it.

in my estimation, running around in circles is borderline retarded, and i can't do it. i need to attach physical activity to functionally useful behaviour, like grocery shopping.

that said, i'd have cut my transit time by 75% if i had a bike, and i hope the weather's cleared up enough to allow for it by this time next month.

i need to eat...

whether english is a pidgin or not is a technical debate that i'll leave to the linguists. but, people that aren't native in it continually complain that it doesn't make any sense, and they're right to do it - it's a primitive, guttural language. it's broken german loaded with loan words from french and currently in a rather pathetic state, truly. 

you can correctly use affect in a sentence, then restructure it and have to use effect instead. it's too subtle, too arbitrary.

effect v affect is one of the hardest things in the english language, and while i reject grammar as a broader principle, i think it's important to maintain the proper meanings of words, too.

i'll get that one wrong, sometimes, because the logic is blurry. it's not always clear what the right choice is, and sometimes it doesn't make sense.

i need to call for a re-evaluation of the english language to root it in proper axiomatic principles, to allow it to be deduced fully from first principles, so you don't have to memorize stupid rules and can figure it out on the fly, instead.

so, i reject the conventions around it's v its and use my own conventions, instead. it's should be both possessive and a contraction; its should only be plural, which is almost incoherent. so, i almost always use it's and will tell you your rules need to be reformed when you challenge me on it. and, i may have to come up with something similar for effect v affect and stick with it.

"cigarettes are food" - frank zappa

i don't know if he was joking or not; he smoked a lot. but, it's obviously absurd.

i guess that if you're going to allow grocery stores to sell alcohol (which isn't really food), you need to pass regulations to ensure that they also have regulations to follow in terms of stocking actual food.

otherwise, it's inevitable - every grocery store becomes a liquor store fist and a grocery store second, because you can markup a bottle of wine by 1000% and have to sell broccoli more or less at cost.

so, you walk into a grocery store nowadays and they're clearly all trying to sell you alcohol - wine, beer, etc. it's expanded from a small part of the store to entire aisles and sections, to the point that it's starting to crowd out other items. are grocery stores going to keep stocking less food and other items, and more alcohol? is the profit ratio that large?

i mean, a freshco or a sobey's is ultimately going to stock the products with the largest returns on them. fresh meat is increasingly rare, which is not such a bad thing, but driven by the economics of it. so, how long before you can't find grapes, because all of the shelf space is occupied by wine? how long before the only way to buy potatoes is via vodka?

the other thing i'm thinking of is how something like this would affect somebody like my mother. i can walk by a giant wine display in a grocery store and not think twice about it. she can't. and, on a bad day, she might just open the bottle in the store and pass out on the floor.

i'm not opposed to the idea of liberalizing the sale of alcohol in principle, but, again, we're seeing what happens when you allow for too much economic freedom in a primitive market society - i just want to blame the problem on markets, and not on freedom. with pollution, you end up with people dying of disease that shouldn't exist, and living with poor qualities of life while they survive. with marijuana, you end up with unlivable and unhealthy living spaces as people act oblivious to the externalities of their behaviour. with prostitution, you'll inevitably end up with corporate pimps pushing the women into conditions of abject slavery. and, with alcohol you're ending up with beer taking over the space of healthy food on the shelves. and, it's all because of the corrupting effects of profit on the general health of a society.

there are going to be some lucky people in a market society that can find some kind of remuneration for some kind of task that doesn't make them want to throw themselves off a building in boredom and disgust, but that's going to be exceedingly rare. and, yeah - you'll find a lot of people that don't have the cognitive abilities to care much beyond the basic labour contract, and are perfectly happy to exchange their freedom for material goods. this is really what the system is designed around and for - people that don't care about how they spend their time, and are just happy to have a job to buy things with - including drugs, and bad corporate media.

but, it's exceedingly difficult to be a legitimately smart person in a market society, because you don't find yourself concerned with whether people think you've succeeded or not, so much as you find yourself up against the impossibility of existing in a way that doesn't make you want to kill yourself. you may have an unending list of satisfying, enjoyable things to do with yourself, but nobody wants to pay you to do them, so unless you have an independent source of wealth, you have no choice but to not have the time to do those things because you have to find some way to pay the rentier class, instead. and, how excited does anybody get about living a life like that?

it's for that reason that the most intelligent people in a market society end up on the fringes of it, while the dumbest end up running the institutions.

if that's efficiency, it's efficiency in the sense of being an efficient algorithm for idiocracy - which is what we have around us, more and more every day.

there isn't a job you could give me that i wouldn't hate, or a labor relationship you could present to me that wouldn't make me loathe my existence, and despise who i am. i admit it would be easier if there was - if somebody would pay me for doing the things that i love. but, i would rather live in abject poverty and exercise the freedom to do what i want than throw everything i love away for material possessions.

and, i insist that's a sign of intelligence - whereas choosing freely to exist in a role you care little for is a sign of a lack of it, regardless of the salary figures attached to it.

so, i always looked at getting a job as giving up on life, and refusing to get one as continuing to resist, continuing to live, continuing to exist.

it would help if i had an income source, granted. but, that can neither be an ends, nor a means to one; it can only be coincidental, adjunct, secondary...

to be free, we must exist to devise our own ends, not to accumulate profit - not for you, and not for anybody else. and, we must be free to be happy...

so, where's gi joe gonna bomb first?

let's hope that's not the answer.

sorry, this is some reference for the previous post:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/world/asia/myanmar-coup-aung-san-suu-kyi.html

myanmar is complicated, and it doesn't help to moralize it, despite the fact that that's what you're going to hear about for the next forever because it glosses over the complexities of the situation, but there's a very introductory crash course to the british partition of india with some fuller context, which you won't get anywhere in the news, here:

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020_09_06_archive.html

i am the source, here.

...which i'm going to repost so it's linear and readable:

sept 6, 2020

but, if involving ourselves slows the process down, it's self-serving and should be resisted.

i don't know what you do in this situation. the countries around them don't want them for various reasons, and (unlike canada, which is a colonial state) myanmar does have some self-determinancy in the matter; there's no valid reason why they ought to be forced to integrate a large group of foreign refugees that are not indigenous to the region and that they don't want, and there's valid accusations of continuing colonialism underlying demands by a country like canada that they should.

it's really the bangladeshis that deserve the higher levels of criticism here for kicking out their own, not myanmar that deserves the criticism for refusing them entry. some kind of proper solution really involves working with the bangladeshis to integrate the kind of population that the country was created to absorb, not pushing continuing muslim and indian colonization of what is a buddhist and ethnically different territory.

perhaps the pakistanis could offer them asylum.

but, if canada's ultimate angle here is that it sees them as a source of migration, then it should just start lifting them out and stop interfering in a legal process that it's just making worse by meddling in.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-myanmar-court-intervention-1.5714246

13:59

that said, i don't think that canada has the infrastructure required to facilitate that kind of migration, at this time.

they'll just end up homeless here, where it's much colder, instead.

14:01

again: the atlantic is not a very good source, but they get the basic point, here.

islam is a violent system of brutal colonization, and it's quite understandable that myanmar is beyond apprehensive about opening the doors - it knows that they will take over, if they'e allowed to, and no educated person can really dispute the point, everybody realizes that truth. so, the indigenous burmese have an absolute right to protect themselves from muslim colonization in the form of bangladeshi encroachment into the region. that's not an act of repression; that's self-defence.

but, you have to work in the various alliances here, as well. while there was some thought that this aung san suu kyi character may provide an opening for the west in myanmar, the country in truth remains under a chinese-backed military dictatorship, which she is mostly playing ball with. so, western support for this group has the effect of destabilizing myanmar for western geostrategic gains, and the canadian intervention may be seen as something less than altruistic when interpreted that way - it's more like we're brown-nosing the cia, which is consistent with the turn we've taken under freeland's foreign policy direction. human rights are just an excuse to curry american favour.

but, i don't think that's our ultimate angle. while everybody else in the world is concerned about overpopulation and carrying capacities, we seem to delusionally want to increase our population levels by bringing in anybody we can. we don't seem to have learned the lesson of ellis island, or the extreme levels of poverty and inequality that such a policy produces. you give us your huddled masses, and they starve here instead; we don't have the infrastructure to be the world's dumping ground.

but, powerful people at the top of our hierarchy want us to be, in conjunction with arab blood money.

my request is that you educate yourself on the topic before you sprout the propaganda that ultimately comes from arab oil sheikhs and bankers pushing for colonization by rohingyas as a way to muslimify the region, at the end of the day - and that we support to contain the chinese, to curry american favour. you may find that the truth is not quite what it seems.

but, we should step back if we're a hindrance to the progress of getting these people a state in the end, even if that state should not be in the geographic area called myanmar.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/rohingyas-burma/540513/

14:18

"what side are you on?"

i'm on the side of the international working class, that seeks to ease nationalist tensions in the overthrow of capitalism on both sides of the pacific.

14:32

there's even an angle with the gambia thing, regarding the struggle between the west and the chinese for control of resource extraction in africa, although the gambians seem to be playing both sides.

there's a link to a video in here somewhere where obama stands in front of a group of african emissaries and states, without blinking, that america does not intend to steal or extract resources from africa. it's perhaps one of the funniest things i've ever seen.

14:40

myanmar was lost to the chinese fifty years ago.

and, we have no business there, and never did - not even to back continued arab colonization in the region.

https://thediplomat.com/2020/01/has-the-us-lost-myanmar-to-china/

15:11

no, listen: i'm firm on this. anybody arguing that myanmar should carve out an islamic state on it's border are on the wrong side of history, here. the burmese have the right to self-determination, and the right to defend their borders.

but, let's take a step back and remember how the region became the way it did, and why it became the way it did, as well.

so, this is a history lesson post...

most people know the british were in india until gandhi threw them out (i'm being facetiously simple). but, let's remember what the map of british india looked like:

british india, of which the british monarch declared itself emperor (and emperess as it may be), was not merely what we today think of as "india", but also included:

1) pakistan
2) bangladesh
3) burma (now called myanmar)
4) nepal
5) bhutan

this is a huge area, with a very large number of people in it.

even back then, the british fought conflicts in afghanistan against the russians and iranians, in an attempt to expand influence into central asia and cut off the russians from the indian ocean - which the chinese are attempting to gain access to through myanmar, today.

when the country was partitioned in 1948, it was very purposefully split into three regions, as demonstrated by the following map:

the partitions were as follows:

1) green is muslim
2) orange is hindu
3) blue is buddhist

now, there are still muslims in india and burma, it is true, but the reason it was partitioned this way was to give primacy to specific religious groups in the various areas.

so, when the country of canada walks into this space and starts undoing the partition, and trying to bully the burmese into opening up an extra space for muslims, they should rightfully be seen as an imperial agent trying to reassert the primacy of british colonialism.

an area for muslims was already cut out - it's the green area. and, if muslims in the blue area want self-determinancy, they should move to the green areas.

15:42

as an aside, comparing what is happening in myanmar today to what happened in germany in the second world war is ridiculous and outlandish and anybody making absurd statements of the sort should both apologize and resign.

15:43

the only thing that the world has seen that is remotely comparable to the nazis is in fact isis, and muslim extremism, in general.

when people assert that muslims are victims rather than oppressors, you should ask them how much they got paid by arab blood money to say that.

15:44

"but bangladesh is poor and overpopulated. they can't absorb this group of refugees."

then they're going to need to breed less, aren't they?

i'd suggest a one child policy.

it worked wonders in china.

16:19

or, they could just wait a few years until they sink into the sea.

solves that problem...

16:20

so, is the cfr a better or worse source than the atlantic? i don't know. that's a pretty daunting insult directed at the atlantic...

if this is the way things are, that is good, as it's also how things ought to be.

again: there's ways to sort of try to blunt the effects on bangladesh by trying to scatter them around a little - to pakistan, to the middle east and, in some small numbers, perhaps to canada, as well.

but, that line was drawn to give the buddhists in the former empire a homeland of their own, and the muslims don't get to encroach on it just because they overbred. they don't get lebensraum by default, just because they're muslims, or because they're brown.

they need to get their population levels under control, not argue that overpopulation gives them some kind of right to spill over into neighbouring regions. and, whatever the solution to easing the existing issues are, they should come with the acceptance that the country was partitioned for a reason, and muslims need to stay out of the buddhist regions.

....at least for now. we don't talk like that on this side of the world, but it's because we've reached a different cultural plateau. and, some level of atheism in the region, an inevitable consequence of higher standards of living, is likely the way to get to a more substantive level of peace.

for now, these religious groups don't like each other, and their various autonomy needs to be respected.

i'd say the same thing if you flipped the situation over.

https://www.cfr.org/blog/what-happens-if-rohingya-stay-bangladesh-forever

19:33

i hope that this government gains a little perspective and pulls back before this becomes an albatross for them.

we are not taking the right position on this; we're just embarrassing ourselves, in a rush to contain the chinese.

19:37

===

got it?

so, you might want to take note of the fact that the chinese did this after obama too, indicating that they have reason to think that this administration is looking to generate instability in myanmar via the rohingya issue, or other issues on the thai border. so, read this as pre-emptive. we'll have to see if it works, or if it's an indication of a starting geopolitical hot point and another pointless war over the next four years.

hey, the guy was bigger than jesus, he knew how to market shit.

despite it's reliance on chomsky, the modern left seems to have no concept of where it came from.

Freedom without socialism is privilege, injustice - socialism without freedom is slavery, brutality - bakunin

stated differently,

liberalism without socialism is barbarism; socialism without liberalism is slavery

and, it's important that the left remembers this constantly, or it will lose over and over and over.

going out there and railing against individual rights isn't going to get you anywhere; nobody wants that, and it misunderstands the theory, anyways.

if you go carrying pictures of chairman mao, you ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow - john lennon

what is ice?

you can't come to reasonable policy until you understand what this is: it's a human resources agency for capital. republicans take advantage of it's role in that context to fear-monger, whereas democrats  (who are the historical party of the types of capital that ice works for) obfuscate and deflect, to make it hard to understand what they actually do - which you will learn is not what you expect, when you look into it and read up on it.

ice does not exist to protect the border and does not exist to protect the community. nor is it carrying out white supremacist policies under the direction of nazis (obama was deporter-in-chief, recall). it exists to do the dirty work of mostly agricultural capital in managing, controlling and regulating the flow and cost of labour.

and, you'll never fix it until you get it.

if i were the state, here, i'd be more afraid about this story getting out - and me writing it, frankly - than about anything i'm posting.

like, they're gifting me the narrative i need to do what they're afraid of me doing.

somebody with a large amount of power that is very close to my life does not want me typing on the internet.

and, it's too fucking bad - i'm going to, and they can't stop me.

so, i had to do some groceries today,...

i mentioned previously that i wasn't sure if my keyboard difficulties were the result of a spill - which did happen, but seemed minor - or the consequences of accidentally installing this "adobe update" that seemed to be pushed down from some kind of intelligence network via the google servers (i'm on a chromebook, so google controls my os via a network domain relationship, which i clearly need to get off of), and was obviously absurd.

see, i spilled a little water on the keyboard and in the process of drying it mashed the keys a little. maybe you've done that - you're more concerned about getting the water out at that point, and you stop worrying about the state of the machine. i should have turned it off, first. nonetheless, i think i ended up pressing one of the shortcut keys to install the update being pushed down. oops - but it might be a big oops, partly because i'm now in the awkward position of being able to point to the spill as occam's razor (you spilled water on your machine jessica, deal with it), when it just doesn't add up as the cause. i fully realize that i sound ridiculous acknowledging that the keyboard stopped working after the spill, and not believing it caused it. but...

first, this seems to be coming from google, so i think it's government that's going after me, and i don't know what level or even what country. that was a few weeks ago. the adobe update - which showed up every time i rebooted and sat in the system tray - has since stopped. chrome banned flash years ago, and nobody's used it for anything in eons.

i mentioned that the keys that stopped working were also curious and showed no real pattern. so, the t button - nowhere near the spill - stopped working, meaning i can't launch crosh. backspace, in the far corner, stopped working, but delete didn't. the refresh key stopped working, so getting to developer mode was impossible. the shift, ctrl & alt keys stopped working on only one side, which seemed like a half-finished job. so, if it was about the local spill, it didn't add up; if it was about the internal logic, it didn't add up. it seemed more like somebody picked specific keys that would stop me from utilizing the machine fully, and also seemed designed to stop me from editing my own writing. 

which means that the entire usb channel from the keyboard in is compromised.

so, i tried to reformat it a few different ways, ran into some roadblocks and put it aside.

when i came in today, it seems like they finished the job. the mousepad doesn't work anymore, the function keys that were working have ceased functioning, both delete & backspace are broken and even the arrow keys are out. i haven't done anything further - and that was all fine before i left. so, if i were to get into the bios on the device, i wouldn't be able to do anything in it. 

initially, the keyboard didn't work at all, but i took the device apart and realized they plugged the ribbon back in upside down. that didn't just happen, obviously.

so, i don't know what to do next. what would you do?

what, exactly, am i doing here that is drawing this kind of attention to me?

is this all really the consequence of being an independent thinker? are they really this fearful of independent thought? or, are they so incompetent that they actually, truly, honestly can't figure out that i'm not a russian spy? 

i couldn't call the cops if i wanted to do; it's the cops doing it.

i have a usb mouse, and am using a usb wireless keyboard. they destroyed the last wired usb keyboard i bought. i guess i will have to buy another one.

in the meantime, i'm going to see if there's anything i can do to try to retake control of this. it's now entirely useless as a mobile device, and i'll have to find a way to get another laptop of some sort, it seems (i do not want a phone - you can't type on a phone, so it's useless to me). but, that's hardly a priority for the moment, given the pandemic. 

it's clear enough what's happening, but i really don't get it.

temporary full january, 2021 backup archive (not source material - to be permanently deleted when pdf uploads)

saturday, january 1, 2022

sunday, january 2, 2022

monday, january 3, 2022

tuesday, january 4, 2022

wednesday, january 5, 2022

thursday, january 6, 2022

friday, january 7, 2022

saturday, january 8, 2022

sunday, january 9, 2022

monday, january 10, 2022

tuesday, january 11, 2022

wednesday, january 12, 2022

thursday, january 13, 2022

friday, january 14, 2022

saturday, january 15, 2022

sunday, january 16, 2022

monday, january 17, 2022

tuesday, january 18, 2022

wednesday, january 19, 2022

thursday, january 20, 2022

friday, january 21, 2022

saturday, january 22, 2022

sunday, january 23, 2022

monday, january 24, 2022

tuesday, january 25, 2022

wednesday, january 26, 2022

thursday, january 27, 2022

friday, january 28, 2022

saturday, january 29, 2022

sunday, january 30 2022

monday, january 31, 2022

the government is not trying to stop the spread of the virus with these measures, it's trying to punish people for trying to escape the lockdown, and not engaging in some kind of self-flagellation, or collective suffering.

it's very religious in undertone.

and, that's deeply concerning - and sort of frightening.

i don't want to live in a society like this.

i didn't have to cancel plans to the caribbean (or reduce my caviar intake due to low supply), but the choice of specific destination seems chosen more out of calvinist frugality than scientific data.

it's a typically right-wing response from this government.

i have my hands full, and this is outside of my class interests. but, somebody (the ccla?) needs to file a s. 6 challenge.

yeah, that at least works.

i wanted to get these posts for august up before i ate, but i'm going to need to stop early, and hope things work again when i'm done.

it's very frustrating that google wants to only allow me to post x number of posts, or wants to stop posts from broadcasting when they get to a certain amount. it makes it very difficult to rebuild blogs in a way that archives them via email. can i post via email, at least?

the question i'm asking is this: who is more right-wing, rachel maddow or tucker carlson?

despite your cultural allegiances, the answer really isn't entirely obvious - because they're both on the far, far right.

if video killed the radio star, the video star is on it's deathbed, now, as well.

and, we can see the construction of an entirely different set of talking heads, as well - even old people like chomsky & wolff, and goodman, who aren't allowed on tv, are legitimate internet stars. it's a different animal, and it's of minimal help to draw comparisons.

my grandmother has never abandoned her radio as her source of information. she can't remember much for more than a few seconds nowadays, but she still listens to her cbc on her ancient, and probably carcinogenic, old radio, which is roughly the same size as her stove and would require multiple large men to move from place to place.

and, despite not having particularly different politics from each other (she's a very liberal old woman, in the true sense of the term), we often had difficulty following each other because we had such disparate framing.

the medium is, in some ways, the message. and, while, i'm not a digital native, i had to go to the computer lab at school to type book reports until i was roughly 15, i've fully embraced the internet as a complete and total source of information, for better or worse.

tv is about as relevant to me as radio is to most of us, and that's becoming a norm that the world needs to adjust to.

but, am i out of touch with reality?

or is television punditry outdated and irrelevant?

when i imagine tucker carlson in my mind, which i don't do that often, but, when i do, he's wearing that stupid bowtie, or on crossfire or something like that.

and, i still can't see stephen colbert out of character.

that's where my brain is, and criticize me for it if you'd like, but don't strawman me about it.

i have never paid for cable tv in my adult life, and i've spent most of it without a television set in my living space at all. i used to watch some tv when i was a kid, but that ceased almost totally in the late 90s - and that is easy to deduce by my cultural references, which are to things like seinfeld and the simpsons, which i understand, and not to things like curb your enthusiasm and the office, or even south park, which i've never seen a single episode of, except at bars or half awake at friends houses.

i simply don't watch television and haven't for half of my life, at this point - and for essentially this entire century.

so, when you talk to me about tucker carlson, i think of this young jerk on cnn who often appeared on gretchen carlson greta van susteran and, yes - seemed to be hiding something. i've never seen his show in more than five minute internet clips for research purposes. i've deduced that he's quite bright (unlike many of his contemporaries), but borderline evil.

nor have i ever watched rachel maddow for more than a few minutes at a time, for research purposes. msnbc is actually kind of heavy on restricted access due to property rights, in canada. i've deduced that she's obviously a cia agent - and i'm not just saying that. rachel maddow is obviously a deep state intelligence operative.

you can see what i actually watch relatively easily because i post it here or comment on it. and, i only bother when i'm eating.

but, i get the general direction that these things are moving in and need to ask a legitimate question, one that maybe only somebody that's as distant from the discourse as i am could possibly formulate:

is the contemporary mainstream liberal press legitimately so unappealing to actual political leftists, that demagogues in right-wing media legitimately are more representative of a genuine left than they are? as an honest libertarian socialist, or left marxist, or whatever you want to call it, must i admit that i really am closer to tucker carlson on the spectrum than i am to rachel maddow? and what does that imply for the legitimate left moving forwards?

but, i am out of your spectrum, and that's all i've ever said for years, now. 

where do i get this stuff from, then?

i'm an independent thinker, believe it or not. i post my sources when it's reasonable to do so, but much of the analysis here comes from nowhere but my own mind. i'm an analytical thinker, but i'm also an artist, a creative type, and that shouldn't be surprising.

and, if i'm confounding you that's fine - it means i'm doing this right.

please approach my arguments for what they are, rather than attempt to categorize me into a misleading corner. that won't pan out in the end, it'll just make you look stupid. trust me.

what is the elite concerning itself with, here?

and, don't confuse yourself - it is and has always been the elite making these arguments.

do you think they care how the democrats advance their agenda?

we hear so much in the media about how to stop the next donald trump.

they're more invested in trying to stop the next bernie sanders - and don't delude yourselves into thinking otherwise.

and, you know that's really what they're imagining banning, right?

the filibuster is a tool, and like every other tool, it can be used for good and bad.

ask wendy davis.

or bernie sanders.

i mean, why not just ban the republicans instead of the filibuster?

well?

we need clear thinking from the most powerful people in the world, not blurry-eyed nonsense.

and, does the filibuster have anything to do with the civil rights movement or opposition to it?

nope.

that's like arguing that you should ban hammers because some idiot can't find his toolbox and uses them to solve every problem.

and, it's even a classic logical fallacy - the kind they teach you about in first year.

thankfully, "progressives" in the senate do not have the votes to end the filibuster.

although, if it was up to me, i'd filibuster the vote against the filibuster.

remember that woman in texas that stopped abortion legislation with a filibuster? i never see the republicans use it, it's a tool used almost exclusively by the left. what do "progressives" have to say about losing a tool that has worked, in situations where nothing else has?

bernie had some weird positions last cycle, but he was right to be cautious about doing away with that, and i'm curious as to how that comes down.

i don't see abolishing the filibuster as a particularly left-wing position....

"biden moves on the nuclear treaty, but it's just a start"

laugh track

it's just a tease, but i need to stop to eat.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KOurFYpzcLV-5PMSaZ3FdqbWhXhh3m_C?usp=sharing

be yourself, or fuck off.

i can sort of grasp that my absolute aversion to being around somebody that clearly tried very hard to be and legitimately wanted to be my friend may come off as galling or unbecoming. i don't fucking care, but i kind of get it.

the thing is that i don't like to be around people that are similar to me - i'm the me in the room, and i don't want to compete with anybody for the space. i prefer spending time with people that are individuals, people that represent their own viewpoints and have their own minds. agreement is boring; i want to debate.

so, if you're just going to insist on being me, i'd rather spend the time by myself.

to the extent that i'd want to spend time with anybody at all, i'm more likely to be attracted to opposites - people that counterbalance my weaknesses, and not people that accentuate my strengths. the latter is just inefficient and pointless.

not only do i not need the affirmation, i don't want it at all.

i've been sorting through the last six months worth of posts tonight, and deciding that i'm going to put this all together into a smashwords download when i'm done. this is going to be a novella-sized book...nutrition science with flair.

you can put it on your coffee table.

first, i'm going to clean up a final fruit bowl post that puts everything together, and it may not post for a while still, but i want it to at least be on the way.

so, i don't have my amino acid posts done - i need threonine, tryptophan & phenylalanine/tyrosine still - but i'm working on something.

my coffee numbers are all wrong for some reason. i think i adjusted some of them to 350 and some of them to 700. i didn't show my work, and i should have - i showed it for everything else - so i can't figure out what i did, sometimes.

so, i need to go back to boron and figure that out, but i'm going to post my sources and calculations here so i can figure it out next time.

boron:

h t  t  ps : / / o  d s. o d . ni h . g o v / f a c t s h e et s /B o r  on  -H e a l t h P r o f  es s i  on  al / #h 7

then, .07*3/3 = 7%. i don't know why it says 3.5%, but i'm fixing it in the next update. i may have halved it accidentally because i was shifting from 700 ml to 350 ml in the chart, but, if that's what i did, it was a mistake.

nitrates:

i took the data for the water and multiplied it by .35 instead of ,85:

3.5*.35 = 1.225 mg

that's correct.

fluoride:

this is data from the water in windsor, which i got from the city.

.125*.35/4 = 1.09%. fine.

sodium

i initially used the same data source as the water:

(((3.86 + 8.58)/2)*.35)/1500 = .145%. 

but, then i changed it to the usda data, and entered the following:

3.56*4/1500 = .949%. that would be correct for 700 ml, but. not for 350 ml, which is nly:

3.56*2/1500 = .474666666%

so, that has been corrected.

potassium:

the number i have is 7.4, which seems to be calculated from the usda data, but incorrectly:

87.2*4/4700 = 7.4%, and that would be fine for 700 ml.

but, for 350 ml, i actually want:

87.2*2/4700 = 3.71%.

so, i'll need to update that as well.

the k:na ratio numbers at the bottom level had to change, then, too.

magnesium

i did the same thing with magnesium, which needs to be halved from 5.08 to 0.02542857142, which i'm going to enter as 2.54%.

silicon

valine

valine is a "branched-chain amino acid" like leucine and isoleucine, and again seems to end up with coA as the end point. i don't see any derivatives or transformations worth measuring separately, and i seem to be getting quite a lot.

water - 0

=============

raspberry - ?. raspberries have very low amounts of amino acids, low enough that nobody bothered measuring it, or that it couldn't be measured. i have not been able to find data, but it's minimal across the board.

guava -  87*.3 = 26.1 mg

banana  -   55

strawberry  -  19

avocado  -  161

kiwi  -  39

soy - 67*4  = 268

ice cream - 217*.825 = 179.025

yogurt - 474*.5 = 237

yeast - 612*5/20  = 153

vector cereal -  

all bran cereal -  726*.45 = 326.7

wheat bran -  726*.07 = 50.82

sunflower seeds - 1315*.08 = 105.2

flax -  1072*.12 = 128.64

algal oil -  1020*.1922*.0517 = 10.1354748

===============

100*(26.1 + 55 + 19 + 161 + 39 + 268 + 179.025 + 237 + 153 + 326.7 + 50.82 + 105.2 + 128.64 + 10.135)/1820 = 96.6274725275

if you didn't see this coming, you're blind.

well, how else do you expect them to pay the bankers?

raise taxes? 

naaah. that's not austerity! what you need to do is sell the cn tower to a group of foreign investors. that's the right way to pay the imf.

so, it seems like trudeau is selling air canada to saudi arabia.

might as well; they already own the wheat board.

how do i get out of here?

we're setting up a society where everybody is wasting their lives serving the elderly.

i don't want to live in it.

i'm singularly driven by the art, and need to get back to it, in some way that makes sense, once i figure it out.

but, that's not why i live.

i live for the adventures - and i don't want to live for anything else.

i hate this.

this is what i never wanted to be.

all that's left is frugality, conservatism, family, labour, religion - meaningless trivialities that are a nice escape to waste time with, but aren't worth bothering with, broadly.

i'm an introvert. i need a lot of time by myself, it's clear....

but, those concerts were really my life. if you take away those fleeting moments of actual meaningful existence, there's not much left to bother breathing for - or not much i'd care about, anyways.

i don't care about the flow of money in the economy.

but, what this shut down has done is completely eradicate any purpose to existence. why bother, when there's nothing worth doing?

i'm getting antzy again, do i even want to finish this?

yes.

now that i'm over the weird hump with methionine & cysteine, let's see if i can get the essential amino acids finished tonight, before i get through some end of the month stuff after that. and, i'm going to have to pick up back where i was, or something - i don't even know. 

i'm completely lost, right now.

i think i had resigned myself to suicide and sort of given up. i was in such a rut. with the complete collapse of any concept of social existence, i completely stopped caring about life sometime in the summer, and sort of found myself lost in setting up a diet, as a kind of way to cope.

if my fruit meal is so great, why not eat it twice a day? well, that's not a bad question, i guess.

i'm horribly depressed about everything and need to get out to a show to exist....this is a life, right now, with everything shut down, that isn't worth living....

there's a line of thinking that the chinese economy is best described as "neo-confucianist", which is actually a kind of casino capitalism with large overlaps with calvinism. the chinese are not the same as us the way that the russians or iranians are, it's an inherently different culture, but the jarring thing about them is how similar they are to us.

and, what he's saying about wages is true, but that's fordism.

also, to tie into previous posts, let's remember that nationalizing the railroads was one of the prime goals and accomplishments of 19th century populism. historians of populism will present it as a farmers revolt against the banks, and i tried to explain that they get the class analysis completely wrong when they do that. wolff's deconstruction of that point is quite useful, here, and backs up my points on the topic.

the other thing i want to point out is that the united states once had 10% growth rates, too, and that it's a function of the development level and technology level more than anything else. really, everything that has happened in china over the last fifty years happened in the united states a hundred years earlier, and if you could find an even less developed economy that needed to be built up even more, you'd see growth rates there hit those levels, too. it's consequently worthwhile to recognize that china's embrace of capitalism has no future but the same thing we saw happen in america; that is capitalism, it undoes itself in the end. as such, it is predictable that rising wages in china will inevitably lead to outsourcing in countries like vietnam, which is contributing to lower growth rates. and, in the end, you'll end up with chinese workers complaining that africans and malaysians stole all their jobs, as shanghai falls apart in post-industrial decay.

you sleep with the devil, right?

so, what wolff has forgotten is that america built it's wealth through state control, as well - not through free markets. chomsky & hudson are better sources on this topic; they'll both explain the point that china got rich by following the example that america followed, not by reversing it. but, they're crystal clear that america was, at the time, a state capitalist economy, as well - something wolff tends to obscure, to try to build them up as a counter-model.

so, is crystal getting married after the show, or what?

now, that said....

i'm not measuring these meat-only molecules - carnosine, carnitine (ok,i am measuring carnitine), taurine, etc - but i'm running up against a choice this weekend, as i get to the last little bit of salami: do i want to do away with this, and go full ovo-lacto?

i've gone ovo-lacto or ovo-lacto-pesco before, and a big part of what i'm doing is trying to figure out if it's actually practical or not. i have no moral opposition to eating eggs (although i wish i could afford to buy them from better sources), and while dairy is kinda iffy, milk is too central to too many things to drop it. it really doesn't seem like i need to eat animal flesh, but these byproducts are not replaceable.

one of the things i've been toying with, though, is whether i want to replace a $10.00 stick of salami with a $10 roasted chicken. the reason i didn't do that previously is that the salami was being consciously utilized as a high-density source of fat in a diet with almost no fat in it. but, i've added things like avocados and, in the process, reduced the amount of salami down to something quite minimal. as that logic recedes, more traditional arguments about the superiority of poultry over processed pork begin to assert themselves. so, while eating chicken as a supplement with eggs opens up some ancient and silly questions in terms of ordering the food preparation (well. which one?), it may be the better option.

you'll note i never added the salami to the chart because i never really intended to hold to it. it's a holdover from the old pasta meal and the days where i mostly alternated between melts and tomato sandwiches and consequently needed a high density source of protein; it's run it's course and should be replaced, or discarded altogether.

i might not stick with it in the longterm, but i'm probably going to do it at least once. and, there's some unassailable logic to it - if i add just a bit of actual unprocessed chicken in the 36 hour cycle, it's no doubt getting me a bit of these extra molecules at minimal to no harm, even if am technically getting enough to synthesize via the high protein onslaught in all three meals. that could be a tipping point, giving me that extra bit of amino acid base to produce those extra anti-oxidants, or those extra neurotransmitters.

so, yes - i think i've proven to myself that meat is not required.

but, i'm still toying with what is optimal and whether that little bit of chicken is worthwhile or not.

methionine + cysteine + taurine + glutathione (sulfur containing amino acids)

Methionine is a nutritionally indispensable amino acid required for the normal growth and development of all mammals (1, 2), whereas cysteine is conditionally indispensable (3, 4). In addition to its required role in protein synthesis, methionine supplies the methyl group for numerous methylation reactions and the sulfur atom for cysteine formation (5–8). Through the intermediate S-adenosylmethionine, methionine is the source of the methyl groups of choline, creatine, and both DNA and RNA intermediates (1, 5, 6, 8). Cysteine is involved in the protein synthesis and biosynthesis of taurine, sulfate, and glutathione (6).

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/74/6/756/4737429

so, the amino acid here that is considered essential is methionine, but it seems like the major purpose of methionine in the diet is actually to act as a source of sulfur (in conversion to cysteine) or as a methyl donor (via s-adenyl-methionine, or sam); taurine and glutathione are actually both derived more directly from cysteine, which is formed by the combination of serine & sulfur (from the methionine). it's really serine that is the precursor here, not methionine. as such, if i'm concerned about synthesizing cysteine, i need to ensure i'm getting enough serine.

serine is apparently primarily converted from glycine, but glycine is then apparently mostly converted from serine, so that doesn't help. rather, it seems like i should aim to get sufficient serine levels directly.

but, then, i should just focus on getting cysteine directly. right? yeah.

so, the main thing i'd want to do with methionine, proper, then, is use it to build s-adenosyl-methionine which is the form that methionine seems to be used as most readily. methionine also plays a role in synthesizing some neurotransmitters (including acting as a precursor to choline, where necessary), but this is a general role for amino acids, and they seem to be converted back and forth fairly easily. i'm actually going to do some more research into neurotransmitters as it's own unit topic, and may add further requirements to ensure i'm generating enough of them. for now, i'm going to assume that the rdis for the amino acids & vitamins, together, are enough to ensure i'm getting enough brain food. if i get extra methionine it could potentially end up as cysteine, but excess homocysteine (the intermediate) should be avoided - which is partly what all the extra betaine is about. b6 & b12 also help in clearing out excess homocysteine. so, i want to get a little extra methionine, but broadly keep it down a little.

so, the two main derivatives of cysteine are glutathione (with glutamic acid & glycine), which is one of the few known antioxidants that actually functions in vivo but cannot be absorbed in tact and must be synthesized, and taurine, which, due to the lack of red meat in my diet, can only be derived from cysteine. i'm phasing taurine out because i just don't get it in my diet, but i'll be working the 100 mg/day requirements into the cysteine requirements as a subcomponent.

rdi:

this is unsettled science, at this point. i've looked at a number of sources and built up the following chart:

eu: 10.4 mg/kg for methionine, 4.1 mg/kg for cysteine 

(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid)

usda: 19 mg/kg total 

(source: https://www.nap.edu/read/10490/chapter/12#674)

di buono 1: 21 mg/kg total + taurine & glutathione requirements

(source:  https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/74/6/756/4737429 )

caveat:

Therefore, the total SAA requirements found in the present study represent the amount of dietary methionine needed to fulfill all the functions of methionine in vivo. However, it cannot be concluded from the present study whether the amount of cysteine required for the synthesis of glutathione, taurine, or sulfate was achieved with methionine intakes at the breakpoint for protein synthesis. This is an important consideration for deciding on appropriate dietary reference intakes for SAAs; additional research is required on this issue.

di buono 2: 10.1 mg/kg for methionine (lower bound) + 10.9 mg/kg cysteine (upper bound)

(source: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/74/6/761/4737434 )

Results: The mean and population-safe (upper limit of the 95% CI) methionine requirements in the absence of exogenous cysteine were found to be 12.6 and 21 mg·kg−1·d−1, respectively. The mean and population-safe methionine requirements in the presence of excess dietary cysteine were found to be 4.5 and 10.1 mg·kg−1·d−1, respectively, representing a cysteine sparing effect of 64% in a comparison of mean methionine requirements and of 52% in a comparison of population-safe methionine intakes. Furthermore, the difference between population-safe intakes with and without dietary cysteine establishes a safe cysteine intake of 10.9 mg·kg−1·d−1 in the presence of adequate methionine intakes.

milk study 1: 36.3 mg/kg total, with a cys:met ratio of ~ 1.25

(source: http://scholar.google.ca/scholar_url?url=https://www.academia.edu/download/49337378/Amino_acid_composition_of_human_milk_is_20161004-5347-1k12hxa.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xMoTYKv8A9KE6rQPgJa78Ac&scisig=AAGBfm3ssHxTHUBS0WRVVxdV8Fi8JhzvgA&nossl=1&oi=scholarr)

milk study 2: cys/met ratio of ~ 1.42

(source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/mothers-milk-amino-acid-profile-from-biological-chemistry.pdf)

further sources:

1) who: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/43411/WHO_TRS_935_eng.pdf?ua=1

2) the survey:  https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/136/6/1682S/4664458

---

that's a messy pile of data. some comments are necessary.

i posted this earlier:

i think a part of the reason this is confusing - and the survey states as much up front - is that the language they're using is often inexact, to say the least. the ideas are not being presented clearly. so, let me work through this and try to get the ideas clarified, first.

their argument is that cysteine can "substitute" for methionine if it's present in sufficient quantities that you can prevent the conversion of methionine to cysteine. but, this isn't actually a substitution process at all. it's more like a blocking process. they should by talking about transsulfuration-blocking, not cysteine-sparing.

they then erect this idea of "total sulfur requirement", which is the amount of methionine you need without any cysteine, and subtract out the minimum obligatory amount of methionine, which they decide is the amount of methionine you need to do methionine things. the argument is that what's left should be the amount converted to cysteine, but, as i've said before, that doesn't actually make any sense, and i'd advise against citing that deduction. i guess you could use that number as a crude upper bound, but you don't actually know how much non-essential methionine gets converted, so you can't actually say anything besides that. the amount of cysteine you need to block conversion could very well be half of that. worse, if you go back to the first study, it mentions that they don't know that the amount of methionine cited is truly sufficient for what i'm measuring - they explicitly poi\int out that that number may be insufficient to produce enough taurine and glutathione. so, you can only deduce that you need some amount that is less than 10.9 mg/kg of cysteine to block transsulfuration from occurring at levels that may or may not be sufficient to meet cysteine needs.

so, what's the right experiment, then, even if i can't find it?

what you should do if you want the answer i'm looking for is measure the maximum amount of methionine that gets converted to cysteine, and base your cysteine requirements on how much you observe your body transsulfurate. so, what you want to do is give the subject massive levels of methionine & serine with zero cysteine and zero cysteine derivatives and see where the breakpoint occurs. that will determine total dietary cysteine requirements, independent of methionine. i'd want to take that number and build an rdi for cysteine on it. then, i could subtract that out from the total sulfur requirements to get a methionine rdi.

the confusion is likely stemming from methionine being seen as essential and cysteine being seen as inessential. that may be technically true, in terms of the chemistry, but cysteine seems to be the more valuable chemical, so it should really be what the requirements are built around. methionine may be indispensable, but only at much lower levels, and only as an after thought, in the presence of sufficient cysteine.

so, i'm taking a giant step back and asking a different question - has anybody tried to measure how much total cysteine your body requires, independent of methionine? let me figure that out first...

so, the way that this has been approached up to now has generally been to look at the two of them as "sulfur containing amino acids" and try to determine the total amount of sulfur required by the body. as methionine can convert to cysteine, but cysteine cannot convert back to methionine, and specifically cannot convert to sam, methionine is labeled as "essential", while cysteine is not. unfortunately, cysteine requirements are then generally approached with the intent to minimize methionine requirements by "sparing" them, which is really a blocking process - what di buono 2 really does is determine how much cysteine you need to take before your body decides it has enough that it can stop converting methionine to cysteine, but it doesn't tell us how much cysteine we need, altogether, if we aim to minimize our methionine intake to methylation and stop transsulfuration from occurring, altogether. so, this is ultimately a very conservative argument that ignores the implication that we may have evolved these pathways - we transsulfurate in only one direction - for a good reason, and that maybe excess cysteine is a better idea than excess methionine because of it. as mentioned, excess homocysteine is bad news for your arteries; loading up on cysteine seems like a better idea. yet, it means that we need to ensure we get enough methionine in it's own right, too, because it remains essential, in the form of sam.

the second question - how much cysteine we need, altogether, if we aim to minimize our methionine intake to methylation and stop transsulfuration from occurring, altogether - is the one i'm seeking an answer to, and it doesn't seem to be a question that has been asked. rather, the question that has been asked is the third one, "what is the minimum methionine requirements in the presence of sufficient cysteine, whatever the latter is",  and we have two answers:

- 10.1 mg/kg (di buono 2 ) & 10.4 mg/kg (eu)

these are relatively close, but let's take the bigger number. then,

methionine: 10.4*70 = 728 mg

to go back to the second question, then, the bounds are 4.1 mg/kg (eu) and 10.9 mg/kg (di buono 2 ). 10.9 is explicitly an upper bound, although they acknowledge that the upper bound may not be sufficient. i've previously calculated that 100 mg/day is a reasonable target for taurine production, so that should be added to the derived upper limit, whatever it's determined to be. so, these numbers are in truth only marginally useful. if nobody wants to ask the question i'm asking, what else can we do?

one thing we could do is look at human breast milk for clues. 

i've found two studies, both of which determine that there is more cysteine than methionine in breast milk, which suggests that humans have indeed evolved these pathways in some sort of complicated manner; it doesn't seem to be an accident that we only transsulfurate in one direction, given that our mothers give us an excess of cysteine, and just enough methionine to act as a methyl donor. the two studies provide ratios of 1.25 and 1.42. while an upper bound of 1.5 is nice and round, i am already exaggerating by using 70 mg/kg, so let's take an average instead. then, (1.25 + 1.42)/2 = 1.335 and, adding in the 100 mg/day for taurine (https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/10/taurine-is-something-that-im-sort-of.html):

cysteine: 10.4*1.335*70 + 100 = 1071.88

in total, that would be: (1071.88 + 728)/70 =  25.71 mg/kg

this number is higher than any of the numbers presented, except the numbers in breast milk. however, note that (1071.88 + 728)/50 = 35.9976, so a more realistic body weight estimate takes me much closer to the sulfur levels in breast milk, which are no doubt way more than enough. at 125%, that's 1.25*(1071.88 + 728)/50 = 44.997 mg/kg, which is approaching the upper limit in the next section; 1.25*(1071.88 + 728)/55 = 40.9063636364, 1.25*(1071.88 + 728)/60 = 37.4975, 1.25*(1071.88 + 728)/65 = 34.6130769231.

after much hair pulling, i believe this is sufficient.

upper limit:

this article sets it at 46 mg/kg:

https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/150/Supplement_1/2606S/5913294

1.5*46*50/728 ~ 474%

.5*46*50/728 ~ 158%

i'm going to use the same ratio for cysteine.

1.5*46*50/1072 ~ 322%

.5*46*50/1072 ~ 107%

so,

methionine (728 mg):

per meal: >50, <158

total: >150, <474

cysteine (1072, includes taurine + glutathione):

per meal: >50, <107

total: > 150, <322

methionine

water - 0

=============

raspberry - ?. raspberries have very low amounts of amino acids, low enough that nobody bothered measuring it, or that it couldn't be measured. i have not been able to find data, but it's minimal across the board.

guava -  16*.3 = 4.8

banana  -   9

strawberry  -  2

avocado  -  57

kiwi  -  17

soy - 16*4 = 64

ice cream - 81*.825 = 66.825

yogurt - 169*.5 = 84.5

yeast - 184*5/20 = 46

vector cereal -  

all bran cereal -  234*.45 = 105.3

wheat bran -  234*.07 = 16.38

sunflower seeds - 494*.08 = 39.52

flax -  370*.12 = 44.4

algal oil -  1020*.1922*.0135 = 2.646594

===============

100*(4.8 + 9 + 2 + 57 + 17 + 64 + 66.825 + 84.5 + 46 + 105.3 + 16.3 + 39.52 + 44.4 + 2.64659)/728 = 76.8257678571

cysteine

the usda has 0 for cysteine in soy milk, but that seems to be wrong. here is a different source:

h ttp s : / / w w w . r e s e a r c h g  a t e . n e t / fi g u r e / D i e t a ry -  so u r c e s - o f - c y s t e i ne _ tb l 1 _2 2 3 9 5 9 3 0 5

water - 0

=============

raspberry - ?. raspberries have very low amounts of amino acids, low enough that nobody bothered measuring it, or that it couldn't be measured. i have not been able to find data, but it's minimal across the board.

guava -  ?

banana  -   11

strawberry  -  6

avocado  -  41

kiwi  -  21

soy - 113*1.6 = 180.8

ice cream - 29*.825 = 23.925 

yogurt - 52*.5 = 26

yeast - 102*5/20 = 25.5

vector cereal -  

all bran cereal -  371*.45 = 166.95

wheat bran -  371*.07 = 25.97

sunflower seeds - 451*.08 = 36.08

flax -  340*.12 = 40.8

algal oil -  1020*.1922*.0062 = 1.2154728

===============

100*(11 + 6 + 41 + 21 + 180.8 + 23.925 + 26 + 25.5 + 166.95 + 25.97 + 36.08 + 40.8 + 1.21547)/1072 = 56.5522826493

methionine + cysteine

met: (4.8 + 9 + 2 + 57 + 17 + 64 + 66.825 + 84.5 + 46 + 105.3 + 16.3 + 39.52 + 44.4 + 2.64659) = 559.29159

cys: (11 + 6 + 41 + 21 + 180.8 + 23.925 + 26 + 25.5 + 166.95 + 25.97 + 36.08 + 40.8 + 1.21547) = 606.24047

tot: 728 + 1071.88  = 1799.88,

(559.29159 + 606.24047)/1799.98 = 0.64752500583

....but i'm not measuring this.