child safety

 well, the "family meeting" yesterday seemed to go alright, but we've no way of knowing how much landed. at the very least, between yesterday evening and this morning, things are feeling much better between us.

in spite of mr smear dragging out his homework for hours (even with using google's translate to help him) when it could literally have taken him a few minutes. he spent orders of magnitude more time trying to get out of writing a couple of sentences and losing more screen-time privileges.

we've reversed ourselves on the "earning" screen-time thing. if we do that, we're left with precisely nothing in terms of leverage.

...

after much drama and finally getting him into bed last night, i drowned in a flood of angry messages from the class parents - they're starting to notice the kids engaging in inappropriately sexual banter, and apparently one of the boys showed somewhat pornographic images to one of the girls.

i quietly lurked until this morning, until i'd had a chance to discuss the situation with mr smear, and then posted the following opinion:

> but neither the teacher, nor the administration, nor the parents know how to handle them

100%. And in my opinion, that's the main thing - the whole world is going crazy, the children are absorbing terrible things from all directions, and even adults can't understand where the boundaries should be and how to set them.

but first of all, we need to be aware that we don't understand exactly what's going on, and exactly where it's coming from, and that this is less relevant than cooperation in trying to protect and vaccinate our children as much as possible.

i tried to understand from my son this morning what happened, but he didn't see/perceive events as documented above. on the other hand, he came home last week and repeated phrases he heard from other children (not necessarily children from the class) and really didn't understand their meanings, and i had to have an unpleasant conversation so that he would understand why it's wrong without conveying age-inappropriate things to him

i think we should have a conversation, maybe in person, and set norms between us and try to find a way to manage the identification and treatment of events when they arise.

let's see if anyone actually wants to do anything about this.

...

right after posting, gd and i watched "get your kids off roblox" - why is the world's largest children's game banning vigilantes? and i immediately felt even better about our decision to ban roblox a few months ago, and set about generating a hebrew video presentation with notebooklm: רובלוקס: שאלה של בטיחות

i hope that lands.

(if you also didn't know about 764? you're welcome)

rage against the machines (and little boys)

 i didn't sleep well, and a meaningful contributor to that was reading aethersmith's message that included the phrase "if someone came to with with the argument you are using re the israel / palestine conflict, would you feel the same way?" right before going to bed.

i took my time considering my response, discussing my thoughts with my family and my coworkers, and this evening sent this in response:

firstly, no. but that's because we're literally fighting against armies of genocidal maniacs who not only want to wipe out me and my family and my people, but have successfully infiltrated western media and academia and are convincing everyone that wiping us out is okay. let's contrast that to "you're stealing my art and hurting my livelihood".

nobody makes art without stealing art, and very few artists in the history of art have consented to their art being studied and practiced and cloned. if your art's good, people are going to want to copy it. up until now the only ways your artwork has been protected has been when the copies are clear attempts at forgery and are being passed off as authentic, and the barriers to entry in producing art being really high. 

you're upset because there's shit art. weren't you upset before?

you're upset because artists are losing work. that's fair, but everything's being disrupted lately, and that's not just because of AI or the current method of training models. and if anyone's livelihoods are being compromised, trust me - us software developers are the first in line for the chopping block.

am i worried about what's coming? honest answer: somewhat. but at the same time, we can choose to embrace and adapt or we can choose to fight.

i do NOT, in ANY way, condone you taking the fight to the users of the new technology and trying to coerce us into boycotting something we simply don't agree with you about. you think it's unethical? that's okay. we disagree. and that's okay too. your fight isn't with me, but maybe i'm just an easier target for you than the AI companies and people who are training their models without compensating artists. maybe you should fight with them about it.

and maybe you'd be more effective in getting people on your side if you showed a little bit of empathy, tried to understand that they're not evil scum because they're on the opposing side of a debate that you've decided shouldn't exist. sometimes it doesn't matter whether you're right as much as whether you're effective, and i promise you you're not helping your cause by gunning for individuals who aren't responsible for the things that are scaring you.

i'm not your enemy, and neither are any of the other end users of this incredible-but-highly-flawed technology.

...

this morning was okay, i walked mr smear to school and then continued on to the post office to return a bunch of stuff we bought that doesn't fit.

thoughts for the walk to and from the post office: the generative ai thing, and "real mean pick up after their dogs".

i cleaned out more crow poop from a windowsill 🤮, then gd and i did some grocery shopping, interrupted halfway by a visit from a friend. i ended up leaving for work a bit later than planned, but it was fine.

it was a busy day. my lead decided to pause the project i've been stressing over the past few work days, which doesn't feel very good but i understand it. a few of us walked to sumsum for lunch, which was nice. my lunch break, which usually lasts about twenty minutes, turned into an hour because someone got me talking about shakespeare's sonnets and someone from each subsequent lunch group caught the tail end of the conversation and then started a new one :P

we had a long presentation on "nonviolent communication", which wasn't very exciting, but had some interesting bits nonetheless. that triggered a political discussion with my lead that got a bit heated, but i think i managed to deescalate effectively.

i left early to pick up a handheld vacuum cleaner because ours finally died. they were out of stock, as was the closest store. [in retrospect, i could have tried their competitors across the road]

oh, yeah - and our washing machine's leaking. so i have to take care of that in the morning :/

i walked home, and tried to get through mr smear's homework with him.

that... did not go well. it went very badly. it went a lot worse than usual. he still doesn't get that this is home, and that he can't escape being jewish, and that refusing to integrate is only hurting him.

and this was all before we addressed the fact that his hebrew teacher sent me a report today informing me that he still hasn't been participating.

we had dinner, while gd simmered with rage.

we tried again with the homework. things got even worse. gd lost it. on the one hand, she was really, really harsh with him. on the other, i believe he needed it. he's developed a bizarrely warped view of how the world works and what's fair and what's not, and it's really not serving him.

hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

i played through inscryption, then responded to aethersmith, and then decided that i didn't have it in me to get any work done so i've been doing minesweeper.online quests while watching youtube videos. i'm starting to fall asleep now. maybe tonight will be the night 🤞

morals and dilemmas

 i'm quite upset right now, and the current upset is triggering an earlier upset and everything's getting mixed up in my head.

[takes about half an hour to trawl the interwebs to see if he's referred to aethersmith by "name" before or determine which to use]

so a couple of days ago i heard about the studio ghibli filter, and i ran our family photo through it. the result was gorgeous, and i'm really pleased with it. today, aethersmith post the following comment on my photo: "this is gross. and shits all over artists." and then tahoma reposted something about how miyazaki is deeply upset by the use of the filter, so we shouldn't use it. 

aethersmith and i have been arguing about generative ai since it became a thing, he's very upset that training models on artists' works without consent or compensation is unethical. he's not wrong.

having said that, though, the use of generative ai is - to my mind - not quite so cut-and-dried. art has been cannibalizing art since its invention, and the only real difference between what ai models are doing and what human artists have been doing is that they're commoditizing it and doing it at a scale that's making us a lot more sensitive to it. imagine banning the sale of painting equipment, or preventing people from reproducing others' artworks... that could never make sense.

i'm sad that miyazaki hates it, but whether he appreciates it or not i see this whole ghibli filter trend as a beautiful tribute to his works. i believe a lot of other people do too.

pandora's box is open, and it's not going to close any time soon. i hope that this is simply a growing pain and that we evolve to a place where we have amazing tools that work for everyone, not just consumers. i believe that we can get there, and i believe that we must get there.

...

and that triggered upset over the brief conversation horseman and i had earlier regarding the zombie apocalypse that's been rapidly emerging around the globe. the hysterical destruction of tesla vehicles and infrastructure by people who believe that climate change is an emergency is mind-boggling. the complete rejection of facts or any level of rationality and fair-mindedness with regards the war in israel is mind-boggling. everyone has finally lost their minds after decades of "active measures" and disinformation campaigns and enemies of the west infiltrating its media and its universities.

gd and i were discussing this morning how a hidden aspect of the trans agenda is self-sterilization, and that there's a sibling component to that in how the west is leaning more and more towards tolerating and encouraging people who don't have children, and in doing so opening the doors to enemies performing a "land and expand" conquest, while convincing themselves that tolerating their enemies' intolerance makes them morally superior and anything else is racist bigotry.

i hope we all wake up from this dystopian nightmare before it's too late.

...

i didn't sleep much last night, and i didn't sleep well. we had some unpleasantness getting up in the morning, but it passed quickly, and after mr smear left for school i took care of a couple of things and then accompanied gd to her dental imaging appointment.

we arrived on time, at the right place, but there was no appointment. i tried getting hold of our dental clinic but there was no answer, and we were in the middle of resigning ourselves to having to go there in person to make a new appointment when the technician (or dentist?) picked up the phone and intervened, taking no prisoners and making it clear to whoever was on the other end of the line that it's not fair that patients are blamed for receoptionists not doing their jobs.

he handed me his phone and my jaw dropped as the woman on the other end informed me that we had an appointment booked, but hadn't paid. when i translated for gd, her jaw dropped too. this is all very literal jaw-dropping, by the way, we stared at each other, mouths agape, because we both remember very clearly paying for the appointment.

regardless, we instructed her to deduct the payment and she released our booking, and five minutes later we were out of there, having thanked the man profusely for going to bat for us.

...

the workday began with a rocket attack, so i took my coffee down into the basement for the first time (previously i'd just hung out in the stairwell, but i was curious).

...

highlight of my day: i helped our security consultants secure authorization for a contract for an important tool. afterwards, i overheard one of them discussing password policies, and i
(respectfully) got into it with him. i was getting some support from his coworkers, but then their Big Boss arrived (he looked vaguely familiar) and he asked him to step in.

he didn't hesitate to agree with my assessment - that password policies should enforce complexity and be easy to remember, not check arbitrary industry-standard compliance boxes that only cause people to behave in counter-productive ways. and any developer will happily accept occasionally using a second-factor authentication method (like fingerprints) over having to regularly reset their password.

after another round or two, they were enthusiastically on the same page and i really hope they manage to figure out how to implement a policy accordingly. as i told them: if they can get this right, every player in the industry will have their backs and be excited to work with them.

...

a couple of us interviewed an applicant in the afternoon. i'd prepared pretty well - though i've learned a bunch of things through the experience - but the actual interview was a bit awkward and it was only when pressed (afterwards) that i was able to put my finger on what was bothering me.

...

i didn't accomplish what i'd set out to, but i did learn a lot. i came home and had barely enough time to get mr smear through a page of his math homework, but he did such a good job and with such a good attitude that i was happy to put on an episode of the simpsons (homer the vigilante) in spite of it being too late for screentime.

after mr smear went to sleep, gd and i resumed watching slow horses. this is because i mentioned to my coworker how disappointed we were with its politics, and he threw me a spoiler that made us want to give it another chance. so i guess we'll see.

...

i've been playing inscryption again (tonight's the first night i've been feeling alright about taking things easy in days). i ended up doing a ridiculous run, with an unkillable geck (x2 thanks to goobert) and a reptile totem with an ant spawner sigil, and then an ouroboros that i was forced to sacrifice that was offered back to me, and then i put a morsel sigil on it, for completely OP combinations.

rewriting history

it's been bothering me for a little while that there're a lot of posts i haven't redacted that are still linked to by my pages - so if you've ever read my post entitled "summary: the vegan hypocrisy", i've just updated it because i was very, very wrong.

zombies: capitalism without the capital

[REVISED AND REPOSTED HERE]

once upon a time it was suggested to me by one of my favourite professors that i turn my theory of zombies into a thesis, or a book. as it's looking less and less likely that that's going to happen, i've decided to scribble it down here in the hopes that somebody reads it and cares. there is an ulterior motive for the timing of this post.

...

it is well-documented that monsters have traditionally served us as metaphors for societal fears. famous examples are of vampires (sexual repression), frankenstein's monster (science and technology), kaiju, such as godzilla (the dangers of nuclear technology), and that's not even getting started on the ancient monsters (from greek mythology and beowulf, for example, those must be interesting to examine).

one monster, the zombie, has undergone much transformation over the course of the last century. the most radical change was ushered in by george romero in night of the living dead, and occurred significantly at the dawn of the postmodern era. some have claimed that the postmodern zombie represents capitalist consumerism, but i find that a bit of a stretch even though it certainly fits what i would consider to be a potential category of zombieism*. but first, let's try to clarify what postmodernism is.

postmodernism, as i would summarize it, is defined by the awareness of the meta-narrative or ideology as the "operating system" of the individual which forms the basis of the subjective interpretation of reality and directs rationale and logic. postmodernism emerged from the glaring failures of modernism's "isms", the utopian narratives that resulted in such tragic movements as nazism, communism, futurism and the relegation of metered, rhyming poetry to the naughty corner. the wikipedia summary is neat as always:

While encompassing a disparate variety of approaches, postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward the meta-narratives and ideologies of modernism, and often calls into question various assumptions of Enlightenment rationality. Common targets of postmodern critique include universalist notions of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language, and social progress. Postmodern thinkers frequently call attention to the contingent or socially-conditioned nature of knowledge claims and value systems, situating them as products of particular political, historical, or cultural discourses and hierarchies. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, subjectivism, and irreverence

my thesis in a single sentence: i have come to believe that zombies represent the newfound fear of dominating ideologies.

1. zombies hunger for brains and infect healthy humans with viral ideas that nobody is safe from.
in their book in praise of doubt, berger and zijderveld explore fundamentalism and conclude that it is a reaction to postmodernism's potential for nihilism and the anxiety caused by an unstable sense of reality. one of the aspects discussed is that once someone has chosen to revert to the comfort and safety of religion, they must avoid all conflicting information and reduce their encounters with non-believers to a minimum in order to maintain their chosen belief. this behaviour is not only evident in religious communities - in particular, fundamentalist communities - but in other ideologies, from atheism and scientism to sexual identity groups to sports fanatics to pretty much anything that can provide a sense of belonging and purpose. our gods and our lifestyle choices and our hobbies are now ways in which we build our identity to the exclusion of almost everything else, and we circulate in our insulated groups while recruiting as many members as we can.

2. they are othered in a terrifying way while remaining so recognizably human that people cannot help but engage with them.
as our differences become more visible in our hyper-individualized western societies, whether in hair and clothing style, body art and modifications, mannerisms, or even social media profile keywords (eg political ideology), we sensationalize and stereotype more and more until the other has become utterly alien and monsterous. we cannot avoid engaging with those others who are close to us, such as our friends and family members, and when those close to us begin to adopt a new ideology they immediately pose a threat to our own existing ideologies.

3. they can only be stopped by attacking the brain.
you cannot win an ideological war with physical attacks, if anything you will only make the enemy more determined. historically, the only two ways to win an ideological war are genocide, an option i hope will remain off the table, and "winning hearts and minds". the latter is far more difficult in today's context, sadly, as it requires intelligent, well-educated warriors and we're living in an age of vast knowledge and very little wisdom.

that, in short and informal, is my theory of zombies.

---* i feel compelled to point out that here (and in most conversations on the topic) the idea of capitalism needs to be separated into two distinct components: capitalism the economic system and capitalism the ideology. the latter is relevant to the topic of zombieism, the former is not. perhaps that's a subject in need of its own post.

ignorance is bliss, facts hurt, suck it up and watch this video

the video is child circumcision: an elephant in the hospital

i wish i'd seen this video when i was trying to research circumcision before my son was born. it pains me to think that if i have another son, i'm faced with either:

a) having one child who was the victim of my ignorance see his brother's difference and in all likelihood resenting me and his brother for it

b) wittingly causing harm to one child to protect the other and then lying to them both

option b is unthinkable for me. i was already hoping that if we have another child it would be a daughter, but now it's practically imperative.

observations

1. i think one of the biggest problems in modern society is that we equate success with job security. instead of working to make our jobs redundant so we can move on to the next thing, we've been trained to perform the same tedious, repetitive tasks and are left worrying about foreigners and robots "stealing our jobs". i know not everyone is able, but i'm talking about general societal values not personal capabilities.

...

the "job market" is premised on jobs being things with inherent value that can be filled and traded. "success" shouldn't be based on your performance doing a specific job, or being an expert, etc.

"success" should be measured by how well one applies one's skills to serving society. when you're doing something that serves society, society will be willing to pay for it.

---2. it's human nature to presume guilt until innocence is proven, because it's a good short-term safety precaution even though we know that for a society it presents long term dangers. the same goes for how we treat animals: we presume they're soulless, consumable objects until they're proven to be intelligent. this is why so many people are up in arms about dog festivals and whaling, but are happy to eat pigs and octopuses who are far more intelligent and demonstrate emotional ranges comparable to humans.

this observation brought to you by octopus - most intelligent animal on earth

meta-ideological stress

there's an article a couple of friends re-posted about fundamentalism being treated as mental illness. this really upset me, and i got stuck into the following long, long argument.

---i'm not sure how i feel about treating fundamentalism as a disorder, it's a perfectly rational response to postmodern anxiety. check out in praise of doubt if you're at all interested, it's a fantastic, enlightening read and it's short.

would you say anxieties can cause disorders (over time)?

well, the definition of a "disorder" in psychology swings between "subject is out of the ordinary" and "subject is suffering". the problem with the first definition is that there's no way to establish normative behaviour or feeling, and the problem with the second is that there's no way to verify a psychological disorder externally.

either way, throwing oneself whole-heartedly into an ideology is not a disorder, it's default human behaviour. there's no difference between religious fundamentalism, anti-religious fundamentalism (atheism is a very active and aggressive ideology) or things like nutrition / lifestyle fundamentalism (veganism and yoga).

okay so let's attempt to define it within the context of the post modern world:
a disorder *could be* a psycho-somatic or purely psychological disease that occurs on a chronic basis at varying degrees of severity.
we'll measure it through the person's experience (bad, imbalanced, closed off, intolerant, anti-social - as opposed to good, content, moderately stressed, social, tolerant, empathetic, open with their feelings and ideas).

basically you nailed it. and not just within the postmodern context, it's generic. things like "social" and "tolerant", however, are external measurements. lots of people are happily anti-social and intolerant, and are not suffering, so no disorder there.

i have the desire to re-frame disorder. disorder is misunderstood and often - as you say - one can be happily intolerant without suffering. yes, without "suffering". there are dozens of conditions in which the subject does indeed suffer. for instance, being so determined that red jellybeans are better than all the other colours that it causes panic and anxiety fairly often (like OCD). unless you stop buying jellybeans. or feeling numb (i.e. depression). and no less than that is chronic intolerance. you can say people don't suffer for being intolerant but i'd argue they do. if you can't empathise with another, you can't connect to them, you can't make peace when they're angry with you. you can't argue your point and feel aligned if they happen to disagree. intolerant, grumpy old men aren't living in bliss and the world be damned. they're miserable and they don't how to escape it.

it's impossible to judge another's happiness. introverts need alone-time, extroverts need social time. a racist who doesn't have to interact with other races might be perfectly happy. this line of argument goes nowhere, at the end of the day only you will know if you are suffering. and if you're suffering because society is crazy or ill - then you're insane, even if you're completely right.

personally, i think it might be a good call to count it as a mental disorder if your thinking is causing OTHER people to get hurt or die based on your opinion on what is right with no solid evidence, but i'm no psychologist.

that's your ideology speaking, and even though i totally approve of your sentiment it goes against what *is* (the study of how humans operate) in favour of what "should be" - that very thinking makes perfect sense to you within the framework of your ideology, but it's exactly that kind of thinking that made stalin put to death anyone who threatened the communist system. those people were hurting society because of their opinions. the difference being that what you're suggesting isn't death to those who oppose, merely medication into submission to a pluralist "socially acceptable" state...

sure, i get your point but what about actual chemical imbalances which can cause extreme thinking, paranoia, violence, disproportionate rage etc?

what have those things got to do with fundamentalism?

anyway, sometimes it's very difficult to ascertain hardware versus software problems, which is why so many kids are misdiagnosed with adhd when it's really, really rare.

everything on your list, though? bad parenting and shitty societies cause those things too, sometimes there's a real chemical imbalance (lack of b12 causes depression and psychosis, for example) but mostly it's psychological and needs to be dealt with psychologically. and living in a pill-popping industrialized society makes it very, very hard to see what's what, all doctors and therapists being subject to ideology too.

if i can be so bold as to suggest *another* book - james hillman - re-visioning psychology is a long, difficult read but absolutely enlightening.

the article talks about "mental illness" which is a very, very broad area. do they mean depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders or addictive behaviours? let's narrow it to something a little less broad but still very broad: an emotional behavioural disorder (EBD) or personality disorder - if only because it also covers anxiety and learned behaviour - two things we see a lot of in religious extremist behaviours from all walks of religion.

btw, i don't think we can keep things purely scientific when science has an incomplete understanding of human behaviour and the mind that motivates it. this is part of my problem with your paradigm and why i'm not convinced i'm being ideological.

so let's define an EBD / personality disorder and see if religious fundamentalism stands up to it:

1. the subject experiences consistent anxiety as a result of their religious fundamentalism.
2. the subject feels withdrawal symptoms if they can't act out in a particular way - see the volume of tragic stories about people who try to leave their religious communities or remain in them as agnostics.
3. the subject experiences consistent conflict with broader society, including the legal system, social codes and post-modernist thought - leading to anxiety and violence.
4. was there physical harm to oneself or others as a result of the fundamentalism?
5. do religious fundamentalists persist despite clear evidence of harmful consequences?

that's how the world health organization and the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders classify personality disorders - and oddly enough "substance abuse", recalling karl marx's rather apt "opium of the people" definition of religion.

you would say - as you've said above - that i cannot assume religious fundamentalists experience anxiety and that people can be blissfully intolerant to others.

but what if i can assume it - and even prove it?

psychological research by prof. clavin mercer (chair of religious studies east carolina university and a clinical psychologist) states from two decades of study: "the fundamentalist is driven by anxiety layered over a fragile sense of self-identity constructed upon a system of beliefs that is both logically inconsistent and highly suspect in light of modern science." other psychologists - valerie tarico in DC and dr marlene winnel in san fransisco - and the british association of behavioral and cognitive psychologists went a step further and coined it "religious trauma syndrome", defined by: 1) immersion in a controlling religion and the 2) the impact of leaving a religious group. having observed CONSISTENT and UNRELATED symptoms of religious fundamentalism they correctly defined it as a "social disorder". as a scientist, you can't ignore the consistency and as a sociologist, you can't ignore the social harm. so i've ticked criteria 1, 2 and 5.

fundamentalist christians, jews and muslims believe theirs is the only true view of the world. they are proudly intolerant and refuse to enter into dialogue - rather referring to scripture, avoiding critical thought. their extremity which puts them at odds with the broader community, and their dogma puts their ideology above humanity - and often the law. they deny medicine to their children (e.g. seven day adventists), murder their daughters and sisters if they've shamed their families (e.g. honour killings) and demonize LGBT behaviour (e.g. all happy clappers, pretty much).

i've now ticked off criteria 3 - my favourite criteria as it happens, because it's the one in which the harm of the "mental illness" is externalised and causes tragedy - and added meat to criteria 5.

i therefore put forward that religious fundamentalism easily meets the criteria to be labeled a mental disorder or an EBD.

first, before citing WHO and the DSM, please read inside the battle to define mental illness - the data from these sources is based on untestable concepts of "normative" and being interpreted by organizations outside of psychological discourse.

secondly, science doesn't have the complete tool-set to deal with psychology, and that's precisely what i'm arguing. you're the one who seems to be trying to label things which cannot be reduced to right / wrong, healthy / sick dichotomies in a "scientific" manner.

thirdly, i used stalin as an example of how protecting one's ideology requires suffocating another's, it's an extreme example but i feel it makes the parallel clearer. we're pretty much doing the same thing with our pluralist ideology when we try to get others to play by our rules of right and wrong. i also think our rules are the best, by the way, but that's because we share an ideology

understanding that we live in narrative / worldview / ideological bubbles is a huge cause of stress and fundamentalism is a coping mechanism, not necessarily a cause of the stress itself. i won't say fundamentalism's not a cause of other stresses, but then we're heading into a vicious circle that shows us there's really no such thing as a life without stress and conflict. it's all a matter of choosing which stresses, conflicts and traumas you're willing to face.

i'd really, really appreciate it if you read the first book i suggested before continuing to argue, because i really, really don't want to (and don't have the authority to) repeat everything that's said in it in an attempt to present it to you in this thread, which would be ridiculously ambitious. and it's an important basis of my argument.

when you say that you aren't being ideological you're doing precisely what fundamentalists are doing, only they're doing it in an extreme form. you see, i'm also living inside an ideological framework that's inescapable, the only difference is that i'm calling it what it is. we can't escape it because it's the underlying operation of our brains, humans can't exist without ideology. and EVERYTHING we do functions through it, including our logic and rationalization. you're not going to get satisfaction arguing with me here! this isn't the right forum, and i'm not the best way for you to get into the discourse to a degree where we're both speaking the same language.
i could suggest tons of reading, like foucault and lyotard and a whole bunch of other great minds, but it's a lot and we all have to choose what we do with our minds and i believe you have other plans.

ironically, i personally hate it when people tell me i need to read stuff in order to argue with them, but that's precisely where we get to pick our battles.

odd bits

i left late yesterday evening, but the universe was still playing nice and even the previous metro was delayed just long enough that i'd make it downtown on time. i arrived at gd's work - she's a stylist - and meeting her co-workers was pleasant and amusing and could have been very embarrassing had i been at all self-conscious :P

we went to p.m. for a delicious dinner, and went back to her place having both eaten far too much.

...

i didn't sleep too well, something about my limbs was uncomfortable the whole night. not in an rls way, i suspect it was something like exhausted relief after the whole pinched-nerve ordeal.

the morning was super-slow, and when i eventually got home i contacted the recruiter that army brat had referred me to. it was super-awkward getting through to her and her not having a clue who i was talking about, i was convinced that army brat had been using an alias or something :P

i finally went to get laundry coins from the supermarket, which took forever because the girl miscounted and i had to wait for a particularly slow customer before i could get my last 25c. *sigh*
at least i wasn't in any hurry.

---i'm amused: a lady at starbucks gave me a lecture about how risky it is to leave my jacket unattended. she then proceeded to question me on my accent, and after making sure that i'd had places to go for passover she and her husband are now making inquiries through their networks to see if they can help me find employment.

oh, canada.

---i've got a couple of hours to be productive before gd comes over and we go to the gym together (she does kickboxing in another one, so she's checking us out). before that, there've been links accumulating and a short family rant brewing. i'll begin with the latter:

i have an aunt and uncle who live with their family in los angeles. i haven't been in contact with them in many years, and to be honest i'm not particularly driven to be so but that's neither here nor there. a few years ago my uncle had a stroke and his quality of life obviously hasn't been the same since, but he was kind of okay and that's cool. recently, though, he fell very ill (i don't recall what specifically happened) and he's now in a situation wherein his family is keeping him on life support and they've just inserted a feeding tube because he's no longer with us.

there is nothing, absolutely nothing good that can come of this. they're keeping him alive for the most selfish of reasons, and it's totally inhumane and cruel. even if he does wake up, he's not going to be able to enjoy the rest of his life. pull the damned plug. life support without a good chance of a meaningful return to health is cruelty.

---the idea of vat-grown vaginas may sound weird, but i find it unbelievably cool tech and it's awesome that these guys are doing such a good job. i'm also impressed that they managed to keep their mouths shut until they had real results to present!

between lifehacker explaining why all our passwords suck and hearing about the possibility that the nsa knew about heartbleed, i'm left feeling deeply uncomfortable about the state of our privacy and security.

i saw "the hebrew mamita" ages ago, even a couple of times, but watching her again yesterday made me emotional. i don't know why.

montreal's getting a vegan grocery store? awesome :)

the first instagram from space is a selfie by an astronaut wearing a firefly shirt. that's frikkin' excellent :D

fuzzy yet solid

it's been quite a week so far! my eyesight's been a little fuzzy lately.

---tuesday:

i woke up multiple times during the night, and overall was just feeling uncomfortable. i spent an inordinate amount of time on facebook (and youtube) following the two events of the day: the mandela memorial, and the israeli media taking up arms against gary yourofsky.

1.
a) the behaviour of the crowd was shameful. while the focus on mandela brings zuma's failings into sharp relief, there is a time and a place for everything and the memorial was neither of those.
b) obama's speech was amazing.
c) the sign-language interpreter debacle: it takes either immense cajones or unfathomable stupidity to do something like that. wow.
my sister informs me that "wackhead" interviewed him. i'd love to hear how that went!

2.
gary yourofsky is a complete nutter, he's an asshole and he's full of shit. it's always bothered me that he's invited to speak in universities and other such institutions. having said that, though, a lot of what he has to say is entirely valid and his comparison of the meat, dairy and poultry industries to the holocaust is sadly quite appropriate and there's no need for him to apologize to the jewish people. the "animal holocaust" is even worse if you think about it, simply because the animals are being bred and it's not just a couple of generations being wiped out as a "once off". the animals are born into suffering and suffer their entire lives. killing animals for food is not wrong, but the suffering most definitely is.
the media's attempts to discredit him are absolutely pathetic, puerile and shameful.

i returned to the repair shop at jarry with my ski jacket to get the zip repaired, was quoted $12 and happily left it with them. i used the mission to determine whether it's faster to switch lines twice or to simply stay on the orange; overall, the latter is more efficient but the former is less crowded. so now i know.

tuesday was a day of laundry, naps, family, and french. then i went to the gym for kickboxing. i was still feeling sore from the weekend, and holding the thai pads for badger meant that my bruised forearm got cracked non-stop for about twenty minutes. however! in spite of that, when it was my turn to throw, our instructor was amazed by how much i've improved after a couple of drill sessions with her and was so enthusiastic he made us all work until our arms failed.

i can't tell you how pleased and proud i am; and a little scared now because i can't slide back :)

at the beginning of the lesson i was talking about my snowboard hurts - there were four of us in the class, one a much older dude. "snowboarding, eh?" he said and pulled his shirt over his shoulder. he has a giant protrusion near his clavicle caused by tearing a ligament in a snowboarding accident many years ago. i took one look at that and decided that a little stiffness didn't really man anything :P

the boxing instructor overheard me talking to badger on our way out the gym... "always excuses, huh? always excuses."
i explained to him that this time it just hurts, that won't stop me from sparring :P

i hurriedly showered and rushed to la panthère verte, but was disappointed to find them closed! so i walked as quickly as i safely could to aux vivres, which was going strong: they even made me the cutest little icepack so i could tend to my bruises while i ate! the service was excellent, the food was delicious, it was all good. horseman joined me, we went from there to the open mic night. on the way we decided that we totally agree on his friend's lyrics... i'm not sure if i'm interested in putting my work on the disc he's working on. and he doesn't appreciate criticism.

the evening was fun and the guinness went down well, but too soon it was last call for the metro time and so we left.

---yesterday:

it was not the best of nights. kinda like the night before. i then started the day trying to convert the list of books i'm trying to sell through pg into a format that could be copy / pasted into facebook. between openoffice and facebook the issues were bad enough, everything took forever and eventually, when i was *almost* done, windows surprise restarted for some upgrades leaving me screaming and cursing helplessly at the screen. even though my recent saves were corrupted when my system finally came back online, i'd already done everything enough times that i got the job sorted out fairly soon afterwards.

of course, nobody seems to be interested now that i've finally put the list up :(

...

i returned to the repair shop on jarry to hear that they hadn't fixed the zip because their repair would likely fail within a few days - i really do appreciate their honesty! i was instructed to try a dry-cleaner, and later my local would give me a reasonable quote so that's done. unfortunately my jacket won't be ready until tuesday, and i kinda need one if i want to hit the slopes...

the speakers on mont royal were playing some seriously creepy sounds. i wondered if they hadn't mixed up the tapes and played carols on halloween or something.

i made up for the previous night's miss by eating lunch at la panthère verte, which wasn't bad but wasn't particularly exciting either. after taking my jacket to the dry cleaner i went to sit in the starbucks for an hour and worked on my comic script. i got some fun stuff done, then headed to the gym.

more and more i'm finding the muay thai classes too heavy on the cardio and too light on the technique. it's good to be in a class that forces me to workout properly, but i kind feel like it's carrying too much weight... for example, we literally just ran around in circles for about twenty five minutes yesterday. ugh.

in both classes, i really tried not to get hit in the head too much. unfortunately, that was an integral part of both of them yesterday; during boxing, one kid was jabbing as hard as he would have if we'd been wearing headgear, and i was so pissed off afterwards that i sat stewing until i was sweating. i want to be good for friday's sparring, dammit! and hitting that hard wasn't the point of the exercise :@

during impact i was being hit pretty hard, and inexplicably relaxed just as my partner landed a liver shot - not cool, brain, not cool at all :(

afterwards i sat stretching my very hurt arm (i'd hit the punching bag hard and at a bad angle) and talking to the guy who'd hit me too hard and the iron-haired women who trains everything (she was chaining muay thai, mma sparring and two boxing classes, that's pretty hardcore). one of the guy's parents is israeli, and after questioning my veganism and my isaraeli experience he blurted: "you're very interesting!"

okay, then. i said.

the woman is a mystery to me: i can't tell how old she is (apparently she's my age, but that's from somebody else) and while she's cute and i think she likes me but i'm not sure if i'm interested...

when the pain in my arm got so bad that i was worried i might faint, i packed up and went home. i had a hot bath and hit the supermarket, then found myself staring at my hands while making dinner when i realized that i was almost enjoying myself. that doesn't happen ever. i ate slowly, but enjoyed it a lot more than usual (when i can't eat after training). after dinner i went to bed.

...

redbull's the art of flight documentary is nice until the avalanche sequence, from that point on it's just sensory overload. i can't tell if liked it.

---today:

i woke up with a sore throat, which feels fine now, after a decent night's sleep. except for the dream i woke up from, which involved my father forcing me to participate in some horrible occult ritual. i don't know if i thwarted his plans on purpose or by incompetence.

...

linguistic revelation of the day: "aktuali" in hebrew comes from french or german, not english!

not the same thing at all, now i have to strike that word off my list of "israeli-isms" that bother me.

...

i ran into the crazy-flexible girl from the gym on the metro and we talked until i had to get off. she has a really interesting history as the child of a brazilian diplomat, and her career plan was so wise that it took me by surprise to hear it coming from one so young. i'm well impressed :)

cafe depot was out of coffee again, this is ridiculous. i managed to make the alternative last longer this time, though, so that's good - the conversation was good, ended too quickly, and i had chinese for lunch before returning home to do laundry, rest and post. now? now some relaxation and more french before training.

can i see your screen, doc?

wired recently published an article on putting sticker prices on the medical industry; it's a bold move with powerful implications for health care that would affect each and every one of us.

bad science posts all sorts of interesting things, but the letter regarding tamiflu is a great synopsis of all that is wrong with corporations and governments not exposing data that would allow for public oversight.

there are very clever things that can be done when industries are forced to operate with a reasonable level of transparency, but we shouldn't need to hack the system, which is what trotter's referral scanning does. not that that's not a good idea.

proper industry transparency (on trials, not on trade secrets) would also give enough insight into the doings of companies involved in GM. food and drugs should be tested responsibly, and at the end of the day even if the results aren't amazing the consumer (and industry experts) would be able to make smarter, better, more personalized choices, which should be in the industry's interests.

colder facts

well, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. -7? i can handle -7. -7 with wind? good lords, i thought i was going to die. it took me way too long to realize that my coat wasn't closed enough, and google maps voided some of the bus timing and i ended up standing and waiting in the wrong place for a while :(

what the hobbit had managed to help me forget came straight back as soon as i got home (i looked at my facebook feed): the massacre in connecticut today. you know, i don't even have an opinion about that. there're so many being flung around and i wouldn't dare to try to frame the reality with anything like an explanation or possible response.

linkage moment

educational stuff for the week, courtesy of just the facts:

cheap new synthetic skin enables product testing without animals
scientists have created genetically modified cows that produce human milk
ten minutes on human empathy that makes a good case for why we need to move beyond the nation state.

cool stuff for the week:

tool artwork for sale
a real (enough) pipboy! (thanks, nystire)

all the sons and daughters - part ii

[... continued]

an afternoon at work in the office - .net and javascript lie!!! they don't delete cookies like they say they do. why can't i hide third party cookies from other third parties?!

veganisms: the long argument.
it was a beautiful morning, and pg and i went to our new local so that i could have another eblt. totally awesome.
late sleeping, again no inclination to get out of bed.

i spent the night / morning in fitful sleep, restlessly dreaming euphorically about solving the issue of the dark mistress' identity using meta-reflexive readings. it was a bit nuts.

---sunday:

ric and i walked and talked, then sat and talked, until rather late.
i didn't forget my umbrella! the long bus ride home seemed short because we talked the whole way.

the wedding was sweet: great place, the ceremony was simple and tasteful, the food was almost all good*, and while they didn't have whiskey they did have rum. the music was a bit bland, though, so i didn't really dance. at least it wasn't bad. it was nice to see the family, weird to see so many south africans. ric and i agreed that it would have been a lot less fun if we'd arrived alone.

* we missed the hors d'oeuvres, and the steak was tough.

the ride to the wedding was longer than we'd expected, but fortunately the event hall was right across from the stop so we arrived on time. the ride was mostly awkwardly quiet.
the veganism argument began online, just before i disconnected from the internet (until the next day). i won't lie, i found that stressful.
work was pleasant.
it was a late, rainy morning.

---saturday:

i didn't get much studying done. i suffered pizza dreams after grabbing a slice from ric's :/

i had a nap, then ric arrived. he's far too south-african polite, and it would take until after the wedding for him to chill out a little.

nystire visited and we had lunch at goocha and frozen yoghurt at tamara's. i was hesitant to tell pg about it because that's a description of our idea of a pretty good date. she was jealous. i owe her :P

---success and ethics

american warehouse conditions

what kind of day was it?

i woke up feeling like i'd slept enough. hooray!

i left my cds for the anime afternoon behind. bummer.

my rollerblades are utter shite, i made it two blocks before it was too painful to continue. F***-BUGGER.

of the three buses that end in 71, i picked the one that goes the wrong way. F***!

late for class. swak.

it was an awesome class wherein we learned about the origins of the minotaur and their relation to a midsummer night's dream. sweet!

not a bad lunch, and time to space out a bit. neat!

having a fellow student point out the lack of hygiene as i finished my meal... *sigh*.

more sonnets, less sanity. nice.

finding the student union's portable speaker available. excellent!

getting serious weight-lifting exercise carrying it around. cool.

an orientation class on mythology, interesting points made in a monotone. meh.

good, crazy anime for an hour and a half. sogoi!

skipping the evening lecture to go to work instead of joining the others for a pre-new year's bash. hooray :/

tons of work and not enough time. *grumble*

mother freaking out because the television interface is in hebrew and she thought she'd buggered something up. aaaargh!

forgetting that pg is staying in a different city tonight. whoops...

long arguments online about fundamentalism and extremism and whether or not it's okay. timesuck. (it's not okay, but it's understandable)

good dinner and rum and liquorice and chocolate in front of the original fantasia. pleasant.

getting ready for bed by sitting in front of the pc. what the hell am i doing?!

summary: the vegan hypocrisy

NOTE: (december 2018): i have since learned a lot more about both nutrition and the environmental effects, and had plenty more opportunity to review the ethical ramifications of the previous two components. i was wrong. very wrong.

veganism has already had a significant impact, even though vegans are still a tiny minority, and the evidence is now pretty clear that we all need to reduce our consumption of animal products or get off of them entirely if we're to avoid the oncoming train of global heating. a whole-food plant-based diet is the optimal diet for the vast majority human beings, it's the only sustainable diet, and it's the only ethical diet.
to make a change, you can start small. find a veggie dish that you really like, and make a point of including it in your regular diet. then find another. the good food will begin to push out the bad. better is better than no change at all.

PETA is still awful, though. i don't take that shit back at all.

[NOTE: i have since learned a lot about nutrition and a lot of what i wrote here is incorrect. about the nutritional aspects, not the political ones. i'm still unimpressed by political vegans. see nutritionfacts.org 

when you turn vegan, you don't magically correct the way that the animals are treated. i promise. if you care about them, then go for the source and stop lying to yourself that your passivity is making a difference.

is killing wrong? go on, deny your humanity. our existence, specifically the quantity of us on the planet, is what's taking more lives than you can imagine. you're no bloody hero because you started yourself on a diet that at best might cause you to suffer malnutrition. eat a steak, then go do something useful like running a farm that treats its animals right.

or start wiping out humans. you probably want to.

vegan is not a dietary choice - it's a highly politicized world-view

the problem with veganism is that it's rubbish. people do it because it's popular and it makes them feel good about themselves, and superior. being a vegan does NOT make farmers treat their animals better, it is NOT a healthy lifestyle and it IS an aggressive political force that spells big trouble if we continue to ignore the issues.

veganism is essentially a form of homeopathy: the less you do the more effect you have...
people will believe anything that makes their lives easier (or that they *think* makes their lives easier).

there is irony in being against milk extraction when it's necessary for the survival of the cows. is there really such a thing as a total vegan?

some proponents are willing to tell the truth.
here are some interesting points to ponder
in particular, there is much controversy surrounding B12 sources.

did you know that a lack of b12 not only means a lack of energy, but also depression? and can lead to psychosis? most vocal proponents of veganism are crazy enough, thank you very much. this link here is from a "how to be a vegan" website.


---
the following is neutral, useful information on b12 for the whole family:

on b12 absorption

deficiency symptoms and fun facts

b12: the numbers


---
fear mongering: heart-disease, diabetes and cancer.

diabetes is not caused by eating meat. there are precisely three contributing factors to developing diabetes: being overweight, not exercising, and aging. if any statistical correlation can be shown then it indicates nothing more than a spurious relation. you see, when you learn how statistics work then others cannot leverage them against you.

cancer? everything causes cancer. there has never been a scientifically run study that shows that meat causes cancer. there has, however, been a rigorous and intriguing study showing that living on a diet consisting of meat, its fat, and NOTHING ELSE has surprisingly excellent health benefits.

we're no longer herbivores, so this makes sense.


---
health benefits of humanely raised red meat

the inuit paradox - high fat, lower heart disease and cancer rates

meat CAN be bad for you, but remember: not all red meat is processed meat!

---
while we're on the topic: ever heard of PETA? animal rights? did you know that their founding intention is to DESTROY all domesticated animals, because they consider them to be unnatural?

the boost

pg and i went to bed early last night, and that didn't make waking up any easier. in fact, i'm prone to assume that all this sleeping has done me nothing but harm - this morning i felt positively ill.

it took so long to get out of bed that i hardly had time to cover the basic differences between java, asp and jsp - but it turned out that i didn't need to know any of it anyway.

---
i arrived for the testing about half an hour late, as i'd taken a severely wrong turn and been taunted by rain in addition to being lost. good thing i wore my ski jacket!

i was briefed (briefly, by a man who can barely speak) and seated in front of a station in a conference room packed with people hunched over their monitors and apparently fretting. instead of jsp, i was offered a choice between c++ and java: considering that i'd interviewed for jsp, i assumed java was the way to go, even though i would probably have handled the c++ more effectively.

first order of business: check message validity according to a provided protocol. aside from getting around java's enum with a regular class (because enums in java *suck*), it was all fairly straightforward... i wrote everything in visual studio because that's what opened automatically, but only once i was ready to compile did i realize that there was another ide available that was actually helpful.
then i got a bit stuck: i'd glossed over a minor detail in the instructions, and it took me a frustrated few minutes to figure it out. no matter! i required regex handling, and java's String class provides!
problem solved.

second order of business:
"okay, so i forgot to tell you that there's a performance requirement. your code runs in 2.5s - unacceptable. if you can just bring it down to below 1s..."
playing with my structures didn't make any difference; it suddenly struck me that i had no idea how complex the aformentioned regex matcher is. i rewrote a highly simplified version of it to see if it'd help me reduce my performance.

less than 400ms. all good.

third order of business: linux ftp, installation, editing and compilation. you have got to be shitting me. it had all the instructions, we just had to follow them. do applicants fail this section? really?!
the challenge was in the fact that one of the virtual machines (thank you, vmware) was so damn slow that the two of us who had completed the first bit were stuck waiting for about half an hour for the system to boot, and it was a half an hour where the "invigilator" wasn't around. at least i had my iphone with me, and i always have reading to do (thank you, kindle app!).

we couldn't even call the guy, because in his infinite wisdom he wrote down the wrong phone number on the board. wtf?! where do all these monkeys come from?! developers need to work with numbers, for chrissake!

last order of business: redesign a ui based on received complaints. all very basic stuff, and the only mistake i made was actually using the simulation software correctly when all we had to do was create something exportable to pdf. i really pulled out all the stops on that one.

everyone shuffled out when he yelled "time!", and i was done. i'm fairly certain i'm the only one who finished.

---
i walked out after almost four hours of testing and not a hint of caffeine, with a massive headache that had been following me since getting out of bed, feeling good about myself and not particularly affectionate towards a company that can make CS graduates feel stupid. one of the guys caught up with me to vent his frustration at not so much as completing the first part, and i explained to him that he's applying for a job programming and that's not what he studied.

i gave him a few pointers, i hope they help. poor bastard claims never to have failed at anything in his life before - i told him now's as good a time as any to begin. you can't succeed if you don't know how to screw up. don't they teach this stuff anywhere?

i walked into work, met with the boss, made myself a quick tuna-mayonnaise sandwich, drank coffee and sat down at my desk to... discover that i had half an hour to get to a mandatory guest lecture that i'd completely forgotten about :S

i ran out telling the boss that, officially, our meeting had been over the phone :P

---
i arrived *just* in time for an argument with one of the vegans in our rollerblading group, then settled down to hear a talk about diderot. it was an interesting talk with an intriguing point: the fact that the virtuous "ME" (or "MOI", if you're reading the french) doesn't push the argument in either direction bears witness to his sense of justice.

at the end of the session i made an ass of myself by having a go at him about his abuse of the word "happiness" and a bad example that he gave, to which he responded fairly well. i was applauded for telling him that i'd like to see him telling his best friend that he's not going to be happy with the woman he's marrying, and for backing that up with an argument that you can't say that someone who claims to be unhappy is wrong.
when his response to that ended with "that could just be self-delusion", i immediately quipped "isn't everything?" - one of the hosts immediately stood up and informed us that we were out of time.

one of my fellow students scowled at me afterwards for my inability to grasp that absolutist moralism is completely correct. what? because mommy and daddy told you so?!

in spite of its relevance, i shouldn't have tried to talk about in praise of doubt. i confused everyone because i couldn't actually put my reference in the form of a question :$

---
i waited for pg for a few minutes, who turned out to be a decidedly bad influence - instead of going to work for an hour, i went home and tried to rest. that was a really good idea. so was the thai food on the way: i see people smiling, and can only assume that they're enjoying the fantastic idea of walking with chopsticks in small cardboard take-away. i know i do.

---
once i'd determined that feeling sick and exercising are not known causes for auto-immune diseases (as much as i could), i re-laced my blades, quaffed an energy drink and joined pg and her mum on the way to the group. it was a good ride, although some of it was spent fighting with pg about the semi-planned ski-trip. unpleasant, but better to sort these things out before arriving there and being horribly disappointed:

i'm big into snowboarding. i don't know if that comes out so much on my blog, but i'm a complete addict and i enjoy letting go and doing stupid things like flying down mountain slopes at silly angles and pushing the experience as far as i can go, mostly less safely than is wise.

pg is happy to just ski, but with me. i thought we were talking about going together, meeting up for lunches and spending the evenings together while the rest of the time we'd be taking classes and going wild... but after some deliberation, it dawned on me that it's a different kind of ski-trip than i'm used to. if it's my money and not a romantic holiday, it's different. if it's hers ('cause i can't afford it right now) and it is, then i'll not only take what i can get but i'll enjoy it thoroughly - it's just a different headspace. it'll still be freakin' AWESOME to be strapped in and sliding, but it won't be about the challenge.

i can handle that.

---
after a pleasant course through the religious city of bnei brak, the lord gently informed us that that sort of behaviour has consequences by opening up the skies on our heads. we slipped and skidded home completely soaked.

---
physical notes for the day:

i've had a headache until soon after getting back from the rollerblading, and on my way into campus the right side of my jaw made an ugly cracking sound and it's been hurting me since.

i think *touches wood* that my helix has healed. i hope so, because i want to put the ring back already! this teflon thing doesn't have the look.

in order to combat dandruff (and i have hair now, so this is an issue) i've been doing the head & shoulders thing for a few days straight. i think it's made my hair breakable.

...

it's now past 4am, i've done most of the readings and i think i'm back in tune with my sleepless reality.