bald men who OWNconvertibles

bald men who own convertibles brought to you live from my shell casing 2010

[apoemaday]

The Voice of God

by Mary Karr

Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you could be cured with a hot bath, says God from the bowels of the subway. but we want magic, to win the lottery we never bought a ticket for. (Tenderly, the monks chant, embrace the suffering.) The voice of God does not pander, offers no five-year plan, no long-term solution, nary an edict. It is small & fond & local. Don’t look for your initials in the geese honking overhead or to see thru the glass even darkly. It says the most obvious crap— put down that gun, you need a sandwich.

[apoemaday]

Death Pastoral

by Virginia Konchan

Sometimes, naked, I don’t feel naked. Sometimes I feel naked when clothed. What if all our incredible futures are still just bound for misery?   A thing breaks, and we are on fire with rage. Was it supposed to enjoy eternity, like us?   Before Trojans were mascots or condoms, they were warriors. Before non-sequiturs were digressions, they were songs. The universe is an echo chamber of discordant matter. Heaven is a fraudulent quorum of marooned demigods. I am detached from narrative, history, identity: whip out a dictionary and tell me what that means. On the days the stars conspire against me, I will conquer and overcome my ugliness. Today, I saw the sun rise into a bank of clouds. I want to be strong, and I want also to not have to be strong. I left the windows open. Is it raining now? The shadow is a mouth that baptizes. The shadow is a lover who won’t call. You die and die and die then live. I think of the small white moths orbiting the garden. Because they are beautiful, because they barely exist at all.

[neurosciencestuff]

The future of mind control

Recently, Charles M. Lieber saw a live brain surgery for the first time. He, along with Jung Min Lee, a postdoctoral scholar in his lab, and Shaun Patel, a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, watched up close as neurosurgeons prepped to remove a piece of their patient’s brain tissue, hoping to prevent future epileptic seizures.

As the surgeons made their final incisions, “we observed a really striking thing,” Lieber said. With each heartbeat, the brain swelled almost a centimeter up through the opening. “A huge amount.”

The brain undulates every time blood flows and the body moves. But the degree of this shift confirmed Lieber’s long-held suspicions. For over a decade, the Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor has dedicated his life and lab to designing smaller, more flexible electronic brain implants that could move with brain tissue instead of against it. His mesh electronics mimic the size, shape, and feel of real neurons, enabling his team to stably record, track and modulate individual neurons and circuits for up to a year or more.

Implanted neural devices already help alleviate symptoms like the intrusive tremors associated with Parkinson’s disease. But current probes face limitations due to their size and inflexibility. “The brain is squishy and these implants are rigid,” said Patel. About four years ago, when he discovered Lieber’s ultra-flexible alternatives, he saw the future of brain-machine interfaces.

In a recent perspective titled “Precision Electronic Medicine,” published in Nature Biotechnology, Patel and Lieber argue that neurotechnology is on the cusp of a major renaissance. Throughout history, scientists have blurred discipline lines to tackle problems larger than their individual fields. The Human Genome Project, for example, convened international teams of scientists to map human genes faster than otherwise possible.

“The next frontier is really the merging of human cognition with machines,” Patel said. He and Lieber see mesh electronics as the foundation for those machines, a way to design personalized electronic treatment for just about anything related to the brain.

"Everything manifests in the brain fundamentally. Everything. All your thoughts, your perceptions, any type of disease,” Patel said.

Scientists can pinpoint the general areas of the brain where decision-making, learning, and emotions originate, but tracing behaviors to specific neurons is still a challenge. Right now, when the brain’s complex circuitry starts to misbehave or degrade due to psychiatric illnesses like addiction or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, or even natural aging, patients have only two options for medical intervention: drugs or, when those fail, implanted electrodes.

Drugs like L-dopa can quiet the tremors that prevent someone with Parkinson’s from performing simple tasks like dressing and eating. But because drugs affect more than just their target, even common L-dopa side effects can be severe, ranging from nausea to depression to abnormal heart rhythms.

When drugs no longer work, FDA-approved electrodes can provide relief through Deep Brain Stimulation. Like a pace maker, a battery pack set beneath the clavicle sends automated electrical pulses to two brain implants. Lieber said each electrode “looks like a pencil. It’s big.”

During implantation, Parkinson’s patients are awake, so surgeons can calibrate the electrical pulses. Dial the electricity up, and the tremors calm. “Almost instantly, you can see the person regain control of their limbs,” Patel said. “It blows my mind.“

But, like with L-dopa, the large electrodes stimulate more than their intended targets, causing sometimes severe side effects like speech impediments. And, over time, the brain’s immune system treats the stiff implants as foreign objects: Neural immune cells (glia cells) engulf the perceived invader, displacing or even killing neurons and reducing the device’s ability to maintain treatment.

(Image caption: A traditional deep brain stimulation electrode (top panel) provokes an immune response in the brain while a mesh electronic interface (bottom panel) does not. The size and rigidity of the DBS electrode result in chronic inflammation causing glial scarring between brain tissue and electrode, degrading the neural interface. Mesh electronics evade the immune response due to cellular and sub-cellular features and bending stiffness resembling the brain itself. Credt: Shaun Patel and Charles Lieber)

In contrast, Lieber’s mesh electronics provoke almost no immune response. With close, long-term proximity to the same neurons, the implants can collect robust data on how individual neurons communicate over time or, in the case of neurological disorders, fail to communicate. Eventually, such technology could track how specific neural subtypes talk, too, all of which could lead to a cleaner, more precise map of the brain’s communication network.

With higher resolution targets, future electrodes can act with greater precision, eliminating unwanted side effects. If that happens, Patel said, they could be tuned to treat any neurological disorder. And, unlike current electrodes, Lieber’s have already demonstrated a valuable trick of their own: They encourage neural migration, potentially guiding newborn neurons to damaged areas, like pockets created by stroke.

"The potential for it is outstanding,” Patel said. “In my own mind, I see this at the level of what started with the transistor or telecommunications.”

The potential reaches beyond therapeutics: Adaptive electrodes could provide heightened control over prosthetic or even paralyzed limbs. In time, they could act like neural substitutes, replacing damaged circuitry to re-establish broken communication networks and recalibrate based on live feedback. “If you could actually interact in a precise and long-term way and also provide feedback information,” Lieber said, “you could really communicate with the brain in the same way that the brain is communicating within itself.”

A few major technology companies are also eager to champion brain-machine interfaces. Some, like Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which plans to give paralyzed patients the power to work computers with their minds, are focused on assistive applications. Others have broader plans: Facebook wants people to text by imaging the words, and Brian Johnson’s Kernel hopes to enhance cognitive abilities.

During his postdoctoral studies, Patel saw how just a short pulse of electricity—no more than 500 milliseconds of stimulation—could control a person’s ability to make a safe or impulsive decision. After a little zap, subjects who almost always chose the risky bet, instead went with the safe option. “You would have no idea that it’s happened,” Patel said. “You’re unaware of it. It’s beyond your conscious awareness.”

Such power demands intense ethical scrutiny. For people struggling to combat addiction or obsessive-compulsive disorder, an external pulse regulator could significantly improve their quality of life. But, companies that operate those regulators could access their client’s most personal data—their thoughts. And, if enhanced learning and memory are for sale, who gets to buy a better brain? “One does need to be a little careful about the ethics involved if you’re trying to make a superhuman,” Lieber said. “Being able to help people is much more important to me at this time.”

Mesh electronics still have several major challenges to overcome: scaling up the number of implanted electrodes, processing the data flood those implants deliver, and feeding that information back into the system to enable live recalibration.

“I always joke in talks that I’m doing this because my memory has gotten a little worse than it used to be,” Lieber said. “That’s natural aging. But does it have to be that way? What if you could correct it?” If he and Patel succeed in galvanizing researchers around mesh electronics, the question might not be if but when.

[onetwofeb]

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

— Frank Wilhoit

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“All those nights looking up at the sky, wanting to be there Away from the grief of being here”

— Charles Wright, from “To Giacomo Leopardi in the Sky,” The Other Side of the River (Random House, 1984)

[wizardshark]

YOU HAVE TO VOTE FOR THE NDP IN THE ONTARIO ELECTION. AND HERE IS WHY.

AMERICANS: YOU /MUST/ REBLOG THIS POST. THERE ARE A LOT MORE OF YOU THAN THERE ARE CANADIANS, WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT, JUST LIKE WE SUPPORTED YOU IN 2016, TO REACH THE CANADIAN AUDIENCE.

In just NINETY DAYS, June 7th 2018, Ontario will hold a provincial election. We, You, MUST vote in this election.

You can see if you are registered to vote here: https://www.elections.on.ca/en/voting-in-ontario/voter-registration.html

You can ALSO register to vote with a valid ID right at the polls! https://www.elections.on.ca/en/voting-in-ontario/id-requirements-for-voting.html

You can register to vote if you are 18 years old or will be by the day of voting. 

This election is going to be chaotic no matter what, but the way to avoid destroying the province is a leftist victory by the NDP (NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY). We can make that happen. The Liberal party is too right leaning for many leftist voters, but it seems to be the only option in beating the Conservative party. This is not true. The NDP is a far more left leaning party than the Liberals, AND has an already large voter base.

You’ve heard this a million times, you will hear it again here. 

YOUNG PEOPLE VOTE LESS THAN ANYONE ELSE. Unsurprisingly, younger people also tend to be left leaning. If young voters come out en masse, in a provincial election that already gets less votes by young people and in general than a federal election, WE WILL TURN THE TIDE OF THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT. Even “safe” seats are often only decided by a few thousand votes. 

Why is this election going to be so paramount to the future of the nation? The conservative party. They are an enormous threat to the province. 

Under the current voting system, “First Past the Post”, the Conservative party can win a majority of the provincial seats, without a majority of the votes. In the 2001 BC election, the BC Liberals got 51 per cent of the vote, and 97% of the seats. 

Right this second, with a 48% disapproval within his own party, and a 60% disapproval rate amongst all parties, Doug Ford could STILL easily become the premiere of Ontario with a majority of the province’s seats.  This article goes into some detail on how exactly this would end up:

https://globalnews.ca/news/4077130/ontario-pc-party-doug-ford/

In summary:

“If an election were held today, 44 per cent would vote for the Tories, while the NDP would get 27 per cent and Liberals would come in at 23 per cent … that would translate to the PCs earning 84 of 124 seats in the June election. The New Democrats would form the Opposition with 29 seats, and the Liberals would hold onto just 11 seats.”

Why don’t we want that? If you’ve read this far you presumably already are interested in knowing why to vote for the NDP so I’ll make this part brief.

Doug Ford Sucks, Here’s Why

If you don’t recognize the last name already, Doug Ford is related to Rob Ford, the notoriously garbage Toronto mayor that made big news years back for all kinds of drug based scandals.

Doug Ford does not support the carbon tax plan, an integral part of lowering greenhouse gas emissions nation-wide: http://torontosun.com/news/provincial/furey-doug-ford-pledges-to-tackle-carbon-tax-find-efficiencies-and-send-insiders-packing

More than that, “The Green Energy Act would be one of the first things to go, he has said.”The Green Energy Act, as you might imagine, is a way for Ontario to bring more renewable energy projects into the province.
He wants to repeal the sex-ed curriculum: https://globalnews.ca/news/4021329/doug-ford-promises-to-review-sex-ed-curriculum-as-part-of-education-platform/

He has compared the Liberal’s sex education plan to ‘Liberal ideology’ instead of ‘facts’ “It includes things like teaching students about gender identity, consent, mental health, sexual health, and different family types (such as gay and lesbian families).”  (source: https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/03/12/pc-leader-doug-ford-promises-to-scrap-the-liberals-sex-ed-curriculum.html)

(As someone who grew up on the old curriculum, which only taught “condoms, this is a penis, now go forth my children”, the new curriculum is a god send)

Ford has also promised to freeze Ontario’s minimum wage at 14$ an hour (the living wage in Ontario is, at the very lowest in Brantford, $14.85, and at the highest in the Halton region, $17.95): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWKOSRs1-iE Here he is saying the minimum wage increase is a tax grab.

He has also promised more corporate tax cuts, “We have to be business-friendly here. We are not business-friendly. We have layers and layers of red tape and bureaucracy that we have to cut. We have to make sure that businesses thrive in Ontario, we don’t tax them to death. “http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/reevely-doug-ford-promises-business-subsidies-by-another-name

Ford thinks that kids should get permission from their parents to get abortions: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ford-abortion-debate-pc-leadership-1.4562035

[transcription: a tweet from Toronto City Councillor Josh Matlow reading: “With Doug Ford as leader, there’s no “Progressive” Conservative party of Ontario. It’s the Ford Party- out of touch, turning its back on its own moderate members & in constant turmoil. He is repeatedly Trump-like dishonest, nonsensical & divisive. Doug wins, Ontario loses”]

And he is Trump like: 

Pastors Who Preached Homophobic and Anti-Semitic Views Endorse Doug Ford For Ontario PC Leader: https://pressprogress.ca/pastors-who-preached-homophobic-and-anti-semitic-views-endorse-doug-ford-for-ontario-pc-leader/

In fact:

[transcription: a tweet from CP24 reading: “On Trump, former councillor Doug Ford said he agrees a wall should be built between U.S. and Mexico.”

In summary, Ford is a great gateway to the alt-right fanaticism growing in the US and Canada. We can all agree on that.

So why not the Liberal party?

Well before we even get into this let’s cut the snake’s head off. Trudeau is a colossal mess of terrible right wing ideologies. You cannot idolize him. He is not a progressive Premiere. Don’t think about Trudeau in regards to the Ontario Liberals.

Here’s a summary:

Trudeau government allowing huge deal with Saudi Arabia despite human rights abuse concerns

Trudeau Accused of Betraying First Nations After Permits Granted for Controversial Site C Dam

First Nations in northern B.C. worry Site C dam will obliterate their heritage

‘It is our Standing Rock:’ First Nations announce legal actions against feds, Kinder Morgan

Trudeau breaking UNDRIP promise brings warning of twenty Standing Rocks

‘He’s a liar’: Why the Left Coast may be writing off Justin Trudeau

Ottawa’s methane gas delay a ‘real blow’ to Canada’s climate targets

Trudeau abandons electoral reform, breaking key campaign promise

Despite Trudeau’s Promise, Liberals Haven’t Made a Dent in the First Nations Water Crisis

Indigenous leaders give Trudeau government failing grade on delivering promises

Canada has spent $110,000 to avoid paying $6,000 for indigenous teen’s orthodontics

Federal government failing to comply with ruling on First Nations child welfare: tribunal

Feds get failing grade from environment commissioner on climate change prep

The Liberal party is a Center-Right party. They are only leftist in comparison to the Conservative party. Knowing all that, let’s move onto the Ontario Liberals.

Now referring to a quote from earlier, The Ontario Liberals currently have a TWENTY THREE PERCENT APPROVAL RATING, with their rating still in freefall!

The Ontario Liberal Party SOLD Hydro One to private corporations, which controls the GTA and beyond’s electricity. http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/guest-column-liberals-sold-out-ontarians-when-they-sold-hydro-one?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#link_time=1518913365

This sale only benefits corporations and bankers. The wad of cash was said to help pay for needed infrastructure, which is false because it would have been cheaper via other methods detailed in the article. After the election, the loss of provincial income will bleed the province dry, inevitable resulting in a cut to public services.

The Ontario Liberal Party has protected sexual assault from their Members of Parliament: https://globalnews.ca/news/4029090/ontario-liberal-minister-accused-of-sexual-assault/

The Ontario Liberal Party has stood behind candidates reprimanded for “misleading, harassing, and threatening” conduct to collect debts” http://allthecanadianpolitics.tumblr.com/tagged/ontario%20liberals

The Ontario Liberal Party has gutted their OWN affordable housing policy: http://spacing.ca/toronto/2018/01/17/lorinc-wynnes-liberals-gut-affordable-housing-policy/ At the behest of the development industry’s lobbyists.

The Ontario Liberal Party wants to repeal the ban on PRIVATE FOR PROFIT HOSPITALS: https://opseu.org/news/bill-160-latest-attack-ontarios-public-hospitals

The Ontario Liberal Party is allowing water bottling companies to take water without permits: https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/ontario-allowing-water-bottling-companies-to-take-water-on-expired-permits-1.3694558 Specifcally, Nestle. You know, the guys who said “access to water is not a human right”

In November, the Liberal party passed legislation forcing an end to a 5 week college faculty strike (striking against such changes as being forced to work 14 hour days, part time and new faculty earning barely minimum wage): http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/strike-end-1.4409483

And speaking of Rob Ford’s tax cuts, the Liberal government gave one to businesses just this past November, removing a 3.5% tax on a first 500k down to just 1%: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-small-business-tax-cut-fall-economic-statement-1.4401555

And good lord that’s not all. Here’s an article aptly called “8 billion reasons not to vote liberal” http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/wallace-8-billion-reasons-not-to-vote-liberal

This includes such information as 12 years out of 15 running in a budget deficit, Hospitals over crowded and overworked, abandonding the mentally ill to the streets, HORRIBLE traffic congestion, job growth exclusive to Toronto and Ottawa with 75,000 manufacturing jobs lost elsewhere.

When Kathleen Wynne lead the Ontario Liberals she lead on a front of a “fresh face” that will end cronyism and blah blah. 15 years later, she has become the same old same old that people demand change from.

And they’re demanding it bad. Let’s go back to those polls numbers.

“Polls by three different firms in recent months suggest that just 13 to 16 per cent of voters approve of the job Wynne’s doing. One pollster, Forum Research, called it “the lowest value we have ever recorded for a sitting premier.“” http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/kathleen-wynne-polling-ontario-approval-rating-1.3932298

[transcription: Image of a tweet from Kevin Dorse reading “I’m just gunna throw this up here again See ya in 88 days, Ontario. #PCPOLdr #onpoli” with an image showing Andrea Horwath (ONDP) with 30% favourable, 30% neutral, 17% unfavourable. Doug Ford (PC) with 23% favourable, 24% neutral, 38% unfavourable. Kathleen Wynne (OL) with 16% favourable, 15% neutral, 62% unfavourable.]

Oh and by the way, for liberals wanting NDP supporters to strategically vote Liberal, it has been found that strategic voting don’t work: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/11/02/canada-election-2015-strategic-voting-lead-now_n_8452212.html

But of course the Ontario Liberal Party isn’t all bad. They recently passed legislation to provide free medication to those under 24 years old. They have passed a minimum wage increase to 15$ an hour by 2019, they’ve (attempted) to provide affordable housing and other social services to the province. That’s good right?

Well sure, but the NDP does it better. And actually, take another look at that picture above. The Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath is polling HIGHER than Conservatives AND Liberals. More than that, in recent polls: http://dartincom.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Provincial-Preference-Release-March-7-2018.pdf

The Ontario NDP is polling HIGHER than the Liberal Party! By a full 5% even.

Let’s take a look at that now.

Why You Need To Vote NDP!

Let’s put this out there again. News articles are going to make it seem as though Ontario, and Canada in general, is a 2 party system. This is false. The NDP exists and is a strong contender now more than ever.

Currently the NDP party runs British Columbia, and Alberta. Already they’ve done amazing work such as:

$1.8M investment to support women in trades: https://www.cheknews.ca/b-c-government-announces-1-8m-investment-for-pilot-projects-to-support-women-in-trades-426814/

$7.7M investment to support young adults out of foster care: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-foster-care-funding-1.4551450?utm_content=buffer168e7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Restore timber harvest rules to revive forestry dependent communities in rural BC: http://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/business/ndp-plans-to-restore-timber-harvest-rules-premier-says-1.23180958

Reducing the extreme Vancouver and surrounding areas real estate price crisis: https://thinkpol.ca/2018/02/24/home-prices-fall-73-metro-vancouver-bc-budget-begins-bite/ Including “declaring war” on upscale luxury real estate: https://pressprogress.ca/bc-liberal-mla-complains-bcs-ndp-government-has-declared-war-on-upscale-luxury-real-estate/

All this from a budget explicitly ignoring elites and focusing on those who need help: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/bc-ndp-ignores-elites-and-tables-budget-for-those-who-need-help/article38061351/

Meanwhile in Alberta

Calling on Ottawa to fix the crisis of indigenous representation on juries: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/alberta-calls-on-ottawa-to-fix-system-to-increase-indigenous-representation-on-juries/article38198228/?cmpid=rss&click=sf_globe

Lead a program to help abuse survivors escape violent homes: http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/safer-spaces-program-helps-nearly-400-survivors-leave-violent-homes-in-first-year?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#link_time=1518132015

Pulled the Alberta job economy out of near disaster: http://calgaryherald.com/business/energy/varcoe-stellar-jobs-report-puts-wind-in-finance-ministers-sails

Increasing minimum wage to 14 dollars by October 2018: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/alberta-hasnt-suffered-for-raising-the-minimum-wage/article37517324/

Investing in Wind Power (despite being a fossil fuels heavy province): http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/renewable-energy-program-electricity-alberta-bidders-contracts-1.4446746

IN ADDITION TO ALL THAT

The BC NPD and the Federal NDP have been at the front of a push to change the voting system to proportional representation, a change that despite the federal Liberal party’s campaign promises, have been shelved away and decided against.

The NDP is the leftist party that everyone wants when they talk about how the liberal party is too centrist. The NDP is the leftist party that so many americans want away from their Democratic party.

Let’s look at the Ontario NDP’s platform. Just looking at the table of contents on their platform document you can see good news:

source: https://www.ontariondp.ca/sites/default/files/VisionDoc-ENG-111517.pdf

In Summary:

the Ontario NDP wants to increase the minimum wage, and reduce the cost of living, stating “polluters pay the biggest price”: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/02/17/news/ndp-leader-andrea-horwath-says-ontario-pcs-are-race-bottom

The creation of a provincial pharmacare plan (which ill note the Liberal party has decided against): http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ont-ndp-1.4081827

Reversing the privatization of Hydro One, a mental health action plan, a focus “on young people and their opportunity for the future”: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-election-2018-andrea-horwath-interview-1.4459359

Supporting women against misogyny: https://globalnews.ca/video/3987117/we-cannot-allow-this-culture-to-continue-andrea-horwath

And of course, a colossal focus on clean energy and a sustainable energy infrastructure, across the entire NDP party, not just Ontario.

So what hope does the NDP have?

Even if they’re polling well, it’s going to be a difficult fight. Even finding these articles for the NDP has been hard because the news does not focus on them.

And that’s why I come around to this guy:

Remember in the 2016 US election when the news would barely report on Bernie Sanders? 

Remember how his rallies went from this:

TO THIS?

THAT IS BECAUSE WE TALKED ABOUT HIM.

I sure as hell had no idea who Bernie Sanders was at first, but social media rallied with him, posting about him, talking about him all over the place, making sure people knew that HE WAS AN OPTION.

And we can do that again with the Ontario NDP. If we post about them! Talk about them everywhere! Let your friends and family know that there IS A BETTER OPTION than the Liberals or the Conservatives!

So AGAIN to Americans, and anyone else who has read down this far. REBLOG THIS POST. Share it on Facebook, and Twitter, let everyone know that the NDP in Ontario not only has a chance, but has a GOOD chance of winning the provincial election. The Liberal party will not. They are polling too low, their leader is too disliked, they cannot win against the conservative party. But the NDP can and WILL.

REGISTER TO VOTE HERE: https://eregistration.elections.on.ca/en/home

You HAVE to vote this provincial election. IT IS IN LESS THAN 90 DAYS. We have to make the NDP the one to win. Get all of your friends and go out to vote together. You are allowed 3 CONSECUTIVE HOURS, legally, to go and vote on election day.

And oh hey by the way, come the FEDERAL election next year, vote NDP there too. 

[lookatthesefreakinghipsters-dea]

I, for one, do not want Doug “Make Ontario Great Again” Ford, aka, alleged former drug dealer Doug Ford to win. I do not want to live in a province run by that man and that party. The Liberals will not win. Their policies and energy have run their course. They are not progressive and throwing a few scraps towards progressiveness this close to the election (OHIP+, raising the minimum wage) is frankly insulting.

The only actual progressive, left-wing party in Ontario and in Canada is the NDP. And they are the only party with a chance of stopping the oncoming train wreck that is Doug Ford.

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (Griffin Dunne, 2017)

[weil-weil-lautre]

Every lynching, every degradation, every social persecution and every proscription, every Jim Crow humiliation, which the Negro masses suffer in this country is the result of the fact that the Negro millions are in the position of an oppressed nationality. They are subjected to a more intense, a fiercer exploitation on the land and in the factories. While the white workers are miserably exploited by the capitalist robbers, the Negro workers are especially exploited and persecuted. They are super-exploited. They are given the dirtiest jobs, the longest hours, and the least pay. They are the last to be hired and the first to be fired. They must work under the foulest conditions. It is an absolutely undeniable fact that today, nearly 70 years after they were supposed to be ‘freed’, the Negro masses are in slavery, producing super-profits for their capitalist landlords and bosses. Concentrated on the land of the Black Belt, more than three-quarters in the South live in indescribable  poverty, crushed by debts and starvation. Every year, after the 'settlement’ with the landlord, hundreds of thousands of Negro croppers, penniless and owning no land, find that they are toiling hopelessly in peonage, changed to the landlord by debts which no toil can wipe out. The only way that the capitalist class can preserve this extra exploitation of the Negro masses is to keep them an isolated, degraded group, subject to special persecution. For this they have created a hideous system of social persecution and Jim Crow segregation against the Negro masses, forcing them to live in squalid Jim Crow ghettoes. They teach the white workers and their children that whites are 'superior’ to Negroes. This is the typical method used by a powerful capitalist country to drive a wedge between 'its own’ workers and the workers of the oppressed nation. This serves a double purpose. It cripples the resistance to the oppressed nationality by isolating it. And it blinds the 'superior’ workers to the fact that they are being robbed by the same capitalists as the 'inferior’ workers.

Harry Haywood, “Lynching” (via weil-weil)

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Globe and Mail has officially published Canada's worst headline of 2016

The Globe and Mail published a headline comparing the controversy surrounding author Joseph Boyden to a "lynching."

“Lynching?”

Nope, you didn’t wake up in an alternate reality – this is a real headline that ran in the Globe and Mail on December 29, 2016:

On the same day that a new poll reports two-thirds of Canadians agree Indigenous people in Canada face discrimination, the Globe and Mail decided to publish a column comparing the unfolding controversy surrounding well-known Canadian author Joseph Boyden’s Indigenous identity – sparked by an investigative report by award-winning investigative journalists at APTN, no less – to a “lynching.”

Globe columnist Konrad Yakabuski, who points out he once read Boyden’s The Orenda and found it personally fulfilling, claims Boyden is the victim of a “confederation of aggrieved minorities”:

Continue Reading.

[under-snow]

some context: joseph boyden is an award winning author who writes leaning heavily on first nations themes, characters, issues, and himself claims first nations/aboriginal identity. he’s arguably won a certain level of recognition & acclaim in part due to this identity - he’s won a few indigenous awards, even. however, he is not first nations. at the very best he misrepresented himself, but really, he lied. the aptn is the aboriginal peoples television network. using “lynching” in any context is inappropriate and wrong due to its racialized history of violence and white supremacy, but it is incredibly inappropriate to use it in connection with a first nations organization that has rightfully taken an imposter to task for exploiting an indigenous identity and profiting from an extreme case of appropriation. this is just fucking gross.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

When this story broke I was away from my computer (and so I didn’t post about this topic until now) so now’s as good time as any to post more context about it.

Here’s some further context on the whole deal with Joseph Boyden, and why many indigenous people are upset with him:

The original APTN story that started it all:

Author Joseph Boyden’s shape-shifting Indigenous identity

And 2 more articles by respected indigenous Canadians:

Canadaland: Why I Question Joseph Boyden’s Indigenous Ancestry (By Robert Jago)

Joseph Boyden, where are you from? (By Hayden King)

[jabocorp]

Joseph Boyden also entangled himself in the Steven Galloway controversy a few months back by penning an open letter in defense of Galloway (who had been accused of sexual assault). Needless to say he received a lot of backlash for the letter–in addition to its insensitivity to survivors it was also divisive.

A rumour was sparked that Galloway himself had indigenous heritage (as if that somehow exonerated him from any of the allegations). I’m not sure if Boyden had anything to do with this rumour, but he did attempt to deflect the conversation by chastising people for getting upset about Galloway’s indiscretions instead of focusing on missing and murdered indigenous women. Though that is important to focus on, I got a very Gross feeling that he was using the issue as a prop to palliate the negative press Galloway was receiving.

https://sec.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/how-the-steven-galloway-scandal-sparked-a-canlit-civil-war/article33049536/?service=amp

https://twitter.com/marshalederman/status/802238105327517697

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

— Roland Barthes, tr. by Richard Howard, selected entries featured in “Mourning Diary,”

[fyp-psychology]

For years mental health professionals taught people that they could be psychologically healthy without social support, that ‘unless you love yourself, no one else will love you’ …The truth is, you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation.

Bruce D. Perry, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog  (via khanos)

[adidassler]

As Detroit techno moved beyond its early (Juan Atkins-dominated) phase in the mid- and late-eighties, particularly with the release of Derrick May’s Nude Photo in 1987, Europeans consumed the music in much more substantial quantities than audiences in Detroit, New York, or Chicago. Simultaneously, rap gained increasing prominence if not validity in the music industry. Techno and house had a few top-40 hits and dedicated local audiences, and for many musicians it was possible to make a living in the American Midwest. However, neither genre was ever commercially comparable to hip hop in the United States. For techno and house artists, larger crowds and higher record sales were increasingly likely to be reached abroad. Atkins, May, and others have attributed this to two factors. The first is the reluctance of the media to showcase black music which its commentators and editors perceive to prioritize intellectualism. The second is the general disbelief among American audiences which greets the idea that Detroit, a “devastated” area, is the center of an artistic movement. According to Anthony Shakir, “When people think of black kids, they don’t think of computers and books. For me, I’m a black guy and it’s black music to me. But I couldn’t tell that to people [who] just hear what’s on the radio.” Thus Shakir connects the media to the promulgation of an ideology in which intellectual thought and blackness are disjoined. Derrick May further links such tendencies in the media to the deeply ingrained acceptance of devastation in Detroit:        Detroit’s not supposedly one of the forefront leaders of ideas and creativity. So people tend to discount it in the media. They don’t really say ‘Okay, well, Detroit is the focus of the music in America.’ They’ll never let that happen. They’ll never say that a city like Detroit, that is going through so much economic strife, that is a city full of illiterates, at one point, at one level, is the focal point of electronic music, period. They won’t let that happen. They will constantly discount it, and they will act like this didn’t happen.

Ben Tausig

, 

Detroit

Techno: Race, Agency, and Electronic Music in Post-Industrial Detroit

(via

igelahnlich

)

this is so important

(via femmevoid)

[stoweboyd]

The Aridity Line

Naomi Klein, Let Them Drown

In his latest book, The Conflict Shoreline, the Israeli architect Eyal Weizman has a groundbreaking take on how these forces are intersecting.​ The main way we’ve understood the border of the desert in the Middle East and North Africa, he explains, is the so-called ‘aridity line’, areas where there is on average 200 millimetres of rainfall a year, which has been considered the minimum for growing cereal crops on a large scale without irrigation. These meteorological boundaries aren’t fixed: they have fluctuated for various reasons, whether it was Israel’s attempts to ‘green the desert’ pushing them in one direction or cyclical drought expanding the desert in the other. And now, with climate change, intensifying drought can have all kinds of impacts along this line. Weizman points out that the Syrian border city of Daraa falls directly on the aridity line. Daraa is where Syria’s deepest drought on record brought huge numbers of displaced farmers in the years leading up to the outbreak of Syria’s civil war, and it’s where the Syrian uprising broke out in 2011. Drought wasn’t the only factor in bringing tensions to a head. But the fact that 1.5 million people were internally displaced in Syria as a result of the drought clearly played a role. The connection between water and heat stress and conflict is a recurring, intensifying pattern all along the aridity line: all along it you see places marked by drought, water scarcity, scorching temperatures and military conflict – from Libya to Palestine, to some of the bloodiest battlefields in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But Weizman also discovered what he calls an ‘astounding coincidence’. When you map the targets of Western drone strikes onto the region, you see that ‘many of these attacks – from South Waziristan through northern Yemen, Somalia, Mali, Iraq, Gaza and Libya – are directly on or close to the 200 mm aridity line.’ The red dots on the map above represent some of the areas where strikes have been concentrated. To me this is the most striking attempt yet to visualise the brutal landscape of the climate crisis. All this was foreshadowed a decade ago in a US military report. ‘The Middle East,’ it observed, ‘has always been associated with two natural resources, oil (because of its abundance) and water (because of its scarcity).’ True enough. And now certain patterns have become quite clear: first, Western fighter jets followed that abundance of oil; now, Western drones are closely shadowing the lack of water, as drought exacerbates conflict.

Just as bombs follow oil, and drones follow drought, so boats follow both: boats filled with refugees fleeing homes on the aridity line ravaged by war and drought. And the same capacity for dehumanising the other that justified the bombs and drones is now being trained on these migrants, casting their need for security as a threat to ours, their desperate flight as some sort of invading army. Tactics refined on the West Bank and in other occupation zones are now making their way to North America and Europe. In selling his wall on the border with Mexico, Donald Trump likes to say: ‘Ask Israel, the wall works.’ Camps are bulldozed in Calais, thousands of people drown in the Mediterranean, and the Australian government detains survivors of wars and despotic regimes in camps on the remote islands of Nauru and Manus. Conditions are so desperate on Nauru that last month an Iranian migrant died after setting himself on fire to try to draw the world’s attention. Another migrant – a 21-year-old woman from Somalia – set herself on fire a few days later. Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister, warns that Australians ‘cannot be misty-eyed about this’ and ‘have to be very clear and determined in our national purpose’. It’s worth bearing Nauru in mind the next time a columnist in a Murdoch paper declares, as Katie Hopkins did last year, that it’s time for Britain ‘to get Australian. Bring on the gunships, force migrants back to their shores and burn the boats.’ In another bit of symbolism Nauru is one of the Pacific Islands very vulnerable to sea-level rise. Its residents, after seeing their homes turned into prisons for others, will very possibly have to migrate themselves. Tomorrow’s climate refugees have been recruited into service as today’s prison guards.

We need to understand that what is happening on Nauru, and what is happening to it, are expressions of the same logic. A culture that places so little value on black and brown lives that it is willing to let human beings disappear beneath the waves, or set themselves on fire in detention centres, will also be willing to let the countries where black and brown people live disappear beneath the waves, or desiccate in the arid heat. When that happens, theories of human hierarchy – that we must take care of our own first – will be marshalled to rationalise these monstrous decisions. We are making this rationalisation already, if only implicitly. Although climate change will ultimately be an existential threat to all of humanity, in the short term we know that it does discriminate, hitting the poor first and worst, whether they are abandoned on the rooftops of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina or whether they are among the 36 million who according to the UN are facing hunger due to drought in Southern and East Africa.

[waiataaroha-deactivated20200524]

Reading Tsvetaeva on Father’s Day by Chase Berggrun

was smallness what I wanted

was what I wanted small

the sound of the train’s brake, suddenly

memories of my father

the last safe days of my life

what I knew, what I bound with string

a word of hers, repeated

a kiss on the forehead — erases

I lived until I tried not to, then began again

orbiting an offer, never landing on solid overture

if what I wanted was to calmly rot, I failed

I followed a weapon to its wound                                                          

I rose from salt to become a canker

I ate until eating became injury

the dream was Marina & thin, wise — as any creature

my trudge home, urging toward polluted waters

my gait, queer & constantly at risk

a body badly labeled

someone else’s fistful of descriptive clouds

between “boy” & an ontological problem

between “boy” & consistent betrayal

between “boy” & skirt, dress, jacket, jean

the dream was Marina sleeping, slumped over her desk

I was the size of an ocean & I watched nearby

everything was decided for us

I wanted a story I could fit into

a lover, like lemon & sugar, I could sit beside

the skirt of the sun, my sadness swept gently

the light that tastes aluminum in the morning when I am not prepared for it

a fresh, unwed sound

the dream was Marina & then a sharp crack of a match

& something more than I was, something strong, slid out of my chapped lips

story of travel & terror & change

in Northampton Massachusetts I was a mouthful of pills

a cluster of firebird feathers in my predator’s fist

I told two tiny secrets

I swam the whole Connecticut

I jumped from the old bridge

couldn’t shake the feeling when fear touched my shoulder

couldn’t take myself away from the world, the way he did

the dream was Marina, music, my father            

at night I swam the channels between the fifty-four bones of his two hands

his hands on brass & wood & ivory

voice silk with affection

all day, these reminders

they made a whole holiday for this

bedside question, white coat, cold roar

what I recall is carefully curated

his face a changeless anguish

the dream was Marina & she was there with me, time-untouched

a mountain & at its foot I was tender

when I began to climb my excess softened

a mountain is first & foremost what I stand on

my exact worth

let me value myself: one mere coin

let me shake the abacus: so that none may know the number

I relive my younger pains

here in Brooklyn the sky & its comforting rumble

I make comparisons to compensate & cover up

Marina’s daughter’s death, of starvation

I compare in times of fever to my father’s

aspiration of the regurgitated contents of the stomach

leading to asphyxia & coma

extremes functionally identical

look — it’s evening; look — it’s nearly night

I dipped my fists into the sand

waiting for the next wave, collecting stones

left a candle unattended on the altar

there used to be a house, at the end of the street, red & flamingo

I knew a monster when I saw one

the aesthetics that concerned me were abjection & collapse

the body I was told I had but didn’t have

the fumble felt like leaning against a kind of freedom

something I was searching for: I found it, despite myself, crawling in & out of the future

the power to pay attention

the dream was Marina & a prayer of concentration, nude

laid out bare with only two wings to cover me

re-sculpting the undesirable contours of my own torso

obscure center sheltered by a white sheet

the silhouette dancing to an uneven rhythm

this is where I lost myself for good

a nightswim among the living lights, the bay

a laboratory for radical re-appellation

& a selfish song of second chances

between “boy” & being brave

between “boy” & a lump in the throat

between “boy” & the brittle ovals of my eyes

my rebrand made real by extra lashes, booming color

my body my brand new toy

something to keep from falling

the dream was Marina & fishnets, the coastline dripping with scales

the fist of Cape Cod unclenched into the sea

& the memory of me is soon a drifting island

impermanent; I was asleep

I was waiting for war

communicating all this is more akin to midrash than translation

there was a great magnet at the bottom of the well

there was a surge of metal & grime

I pulled up a pailful                        

I drank, drank

I stood in front of the mirror for hours

my shoulders lifting & sagging like scales, I strained to keep them level

one errant bone lingered outward looking to escape

burns scattered like heavy raindrops down one side

I shifted proportions month to month but every insult stayed weighted on my waist

I wanted to belong to the whole sky, in which, perhaps, there is no place for me

to that which I have invented                  

I crawled gingerly into the evening & grew

there, the place between the candles & the expired condoms

everything glittered in the living room like a deep distasteful dream

summer back home, I was green with kale & desire, crowing

there, I was a feral problem

conception happened because of an argument between two stars

those lips, toes bent back as if they wished to be broken

I wanted to be taken but I also wanted to feel healthy

the dream was Marina & a hologram of pain

a black fly danced out of my mouth

sour heat gathered marbles of sweat into a little ocean

the dutiful Jew soaked with remembrance

yizkor prayer pelting down like hail

packed with corpse

Friday shuddered into sky, the opposite of balance

a storm lingered outside my bathroom window like a hungry dog

early darkness tattooed the sea on the scrub pine’s bicep

the leaf of my love had shrunk, folded inward & drooping

           the dream was Marina &            

I was still, unsober                    

in the city, steel rising like gravestone, God swallowed me as green poison

on the spots where someone’s fists learned to love me I drew lips in black ink

I choked on the waning month                                                                          

a sad moon wandered at the horizon

I had been canceled

a log so damp with rot, neglecting burn

I came from heaven carrying a bird’s wing

saying no to all possible futures

when November began to bleed blue

I avoided operating alone the machinery of nostalgia

unsafe with drink

but garbled memory snuck back in

                     the dream was Marina

say this is only dream

for years I sought out an I that slept in the thickness of a man who was not there

who was & was not

the body to which I was born seemed an enemy

& when I finally awoke

between “boy” & the first breath of the morning, the first cigarette

between “boy” & a political nightmare

between “boy” & self-portrait as blaze of glory

at the smell of daylight

I started to glow from the inside out with surprise                      

I was cozy with despair

despair: faint, grotesque in its lightness

I bent before the dawn, crawling in across the sand

the sun’s black stove heated morning                    

every subsequent hour a scream increasing in volume & decreasing in potency

all this chaos colored me ripe, fresher than the warm air

                               the dream was

the ocean, unintelligible

dividing the shape of the plural

what could I use to glue together these thousands of discrete sections

I was parted to the side

a silver bell in my mouth

essentially a radio wave, that kind of body

who shall say I am not the happy genius

measuring the wrecked length of my life

it was too late, spring approached me, Easter, then a bullet

Marina, who did not like the sea

a vast expanse & nothing to walk on

but to me it was delight

I was content with simply sinking

there was no word for me that was not saturated

I was lifting my own body from the water

I could not say it succinctly

I could not say how much this me weighs

but I knew how it felt when I was a body among other bodies

crushed under their wind

those stable bodies secure in their trappings

the idea of comfort was foreign

my vocabulary refused a vocal wisdom

but I discovered how to direct the ink, the smudge

how to emphasize percussion

I scanned the silent space between sleeplessnesses

where the meter sleeps small & fuzzy

a performance of that particular memory

my father on his way out

time echoed off his chest, square & center-stiff

I beheld what settled

his quiet was a mirror reflecting what I had yet to learn about myself

I was his Icarus, embalmed before launch

I pried his eyelid open

nothing was safe or sanitary despite sterility

his body drifted away on a pile of leaves & reeds

though the sound of his sleeping lingered

the hum the ebb the wane

until somewhere inside of me a cord snapped

& in a panic I crawled back into

                                         the dream

where I was pierced by a forked tongue

I split into segments & sewed them back together into something more intentional

in me there is no arbitrariness

though there is a bit of ambiguity

an oversized image of outrage

a stone waiting its turn to be cut

near the end

hunger burned in the usual way

at my desk, I know your grain by heart, I worked on sweet nothing

tending to language, my fickle, failing crop

I was walking in an effort to keep on walking

writing onto the tongue of a man found in bed brain-dead, two days later

writing reckless, traceless & speechless, going down like a sinking ship

it took so long to get here & when I finally arrived

this is how you & I part, bruised & bigger than we began

pushing tired bulks until we reach a bench, a bridge, a place to wait

though I was afraid of the revolving door, I spun through to the other side

I was as solid as I could bear to be

asking myself gently to rework that smallness

a version of self

closing into itself, churning, rushing toward

                                                    the

[stanleykubricky-deactivated2026]

me when i’m in a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation:

[visual-poetry]

»lighght« by aram saroyan (+)

»we can’t afford to lower taxes but we can pay some beatnik weirdo $500 to write one word…and not even spell it right?!« read more about »the most expensive word in history«

[innersalts]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind