tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1052423616384287462024-03-12T21:06:36.915-04:00Dubious ProspectsOccasional polemics and pictures.Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.comBlogger1064125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-30106290401149037892025-01-01T10:54:00.005-05:002023-01-28T15:11:42.290-05:00Where to get my booksUpdate 2022-12-31: Is there a next book planned?If I get it written, I will publish it as I have bene publishing these books. Whether or not I get it written depends on the Everything and the state of my health. For my health, so far, the trend is recently positive.Where to get my booksThere are two options; Google Play, or the Draft2Digital publication targets.
Google Play isn't Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-36024807847031835012023-06-03T11:41:00.000-04:002023-06-03T11:41:05.730-04:00There are no structural solutions in the ablative layer There was a recent post on Mastodon talking about this year's 0.4 C increase in sea surface temperature and why this is grounds to freak out.I read it, and wished with my whole being that people would start applying science to the whole of the problem.The ocean temperature data is the best science; international, interdisciplinary, broad in its data sources and consideration, actively and Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-21213295570762319082023-03-01T15:54:00.003-05:002023-03-01T15:54:38.934-05:00Absent friendsVia an anonymous and appreciated comment way down in the timeline:I'm sorry to report that Shirley Allan passed away, quietly in her sleep, at 02:30 yesterday [2023-02-27], Royal Terrace, Palmerston ON.Shirley was a mainstay of online Commonweal discussion and will be sorely missed.Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-17571399826092232762022-11-11T09:01:00.000-05:002022-11-11T09:01:02.248-05:00Should Ontario mandate masks? No.We know that surgical masks aren't sufficient against Omicron; maybe 50% effective in practice. Do not burn credibility on stuff that isn't effective, because pretending something is effective when it isn't burns credibility fast and there's already a deficit. (Yes mask wearing has a statistical effect even with inadequate masks. Not likely enough, and not likely Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-59337272068598729652022-11-02T00:58:00.001-04:002022-11-02T00:58:21.904-04:00An Ontario observationOntario health care policy under the Ford government is driven by a belief that there should not be any such thing."Privatization" is "give some guys access to a captive revenue stream", but none of Dougie's owners are old money who own insurance companies. They're new money mammonites, generally developers, and they've decided that the revenue stream from taxes constitute their money. Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-10507246491365316652022-09-10T22:47:00.003-04:002022-09-10T22:47:52.944-04:00Miscomprehension of scaleSo the Globe and Mail discusses someone trying to arrange for policy to support the success of an investment. This looks like part of a general push against the federal fertilizer emissions cap.I am unable to decide if that push is cynical or deluded or arises from a sincere mammonism where profit is an arbiter of wisdom.But, anyway."I wish to become much richer, and for my descent to Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-39771522417898303712022-08-28T01:02:00.004-04:002022-08-28T01:02:54.379-04:00End of the Englightenment? I've seen this come up a few times lately.Somebody synthesized perfluorocubane recently. ("fluorinated esters as starting materials with dissolved fluorine gas in a perfluorinated solvent at low temperatures".) Methodological naturalism is fine. The philosophical framework of a knowable universe is fine, too.A whole bunch of other things are not at all fine,Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-86490793133577840582022-07-26T00:37:00.001-04:002022-07-26T00:37:10.488-04:00The four significant numbers, repriseThere's been some bits of "people don't trust the mainstream news" going by, and well, of course not.There's a lot to say about structural problems, the "it's not justice if it's not general" issues and the "this is the wrong status quo and has been since the 1970s but the money will not acknowledge that" issues, but those are fundamentally secondary.News is, by the philosophical necessities, Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-22583641889306444542022-07-23T01:25:00.001-04:002022-07-23T13:29:11.841-04:00Mamonite political capture and health careThere's a number of news stories about impending health care collapse, closed ERs, and so on.We know with some lamentable certainty that the politics of every province in Canada (with the possible partial exception of Quebec) has been captured by mamonites. It's been painfully obvious in the way pandemic policies have focused on protecting revenue streams over people. (Something that Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-89316340812749844982022-07-17T11:17:00.003-04:002022-07-17T11:17:55.044-04:00Insecurity and absolutism First thing—if you're in Canada, you may find https://covid19resources.ca/ of use. It's the collective effort of a number of people with specific expertise, and while they cannot magic good information out of non-reporting provinces, they've had a remarkably effective record of successful extrapolation. It won't improve your state of mind whatsoever but better Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-61194012267292543782022-07-11T23:31:00.000-04:002022-07-11T23:31:13.404-04:00The purpose of the system… So there's this simple graph:(Which I got from this tweet.)Ontario Public Health's PACS—Post-Acute COVID Syndrome—percentage for "persists for at least six months" is also 20%. We don't know what's "long COVID"—not being able to clear the disease and having flare ups due to viral reservoirs—and what's lasting damage. This is something we'd need years more data about, and we're Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-83183976857933100262022-07-02T01:30:00.000-04:002022-07-02T01:30:11.189-04:00Scale mattersAs an abstraction or a concept or something, money is this superposition of a medium of exchange and a store of value. It has value because it is exchanged; if it stops being exchanged, the value goes away. If it doesn't have a sovereign to protect it—to guarantee a certain predictability and consistency of exchanges against all comers—the value goes away, too, quite possibly because Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-32818542381110680232022-06-25T15:08:00.000-04:002022-06-25T15:08:02.709-04:00Agency contestToday, food is extensively dependent on fossil carbon; the stylized fact puts it at ten to one by mass. Every tonne of food required ten tonnes of fossil carbon as fertilizer and pesticide feedstock, in shipping the fertilizers, in powering the tractor, in making the tractor tyres, in shipping the food, and so on. (Don't neglect food processing! A bag of raw wheat kernels isn't all Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-33860800092770814892022-06-20T22:49:00.003-04:002022-06-20T22:49:45.629-04:00Not the best news It's a preprint.Whether or not you are vaccinated, subsequent COVID infections add risk of harm, and the degree of risk increases with each subsequent infection.The short, simple summary is not "COVID hurts you every time you get it" — quite factual, but insufficiently clear — but "Every time you are infected with COVID the way it harms you makes the next time more likely and worse."NoGraydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-14025496976007965982022-05-28T11:42:00.000-04:002022-05-28T11:42:06.402-04:00Try to solve the problemHaving people about their lawful occasions get shot is intolerable.We're doing a poor job of dealing with it. (I mean Canada. The US is actively not dealing with it.)Right now, in Canada, "gun control" is understood to mean "this thing makes the RCMP nervous and they don't want you to have it".That's a terrible basis for policy.Right now, in the US, "gun control" is understood to mean "Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-41909856572141428452022-05-24T23:04:00.001-04:002022-05-26T12:36:33.799-04:00Stay at home 🟨🟨 The three things you need to know:the more long-distance travel there is, the more aggressive a pathogen can be and not go extinct by killing all the hosts it can reach what with being able to reach more hostsif you keep adding long-distance travel, there's an abrupt transition between extinction being unlikely and extinction being nigh-certain for the host population. We know this point Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-75116941174046881812022-05-21T12:41:00.006-04:002022-05-21T12:41:45.800-04:00The difficulties of enoughElsenet, Brad Delong is struggling with an elevator pitch for Slouching Toward Utopia.(I am writing this at noon, and it is dark enough for the street lights to be on; storm front coming through and I can just barely see the red stop lights two hundred metres away. None of the buildings on that street are visible.)I am sympathetic; my book summaries are notoriously unhelpful. Still, I thinkGraydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-61376300826217075972022-05-05T17:49:00.002-04:002022-05-05T17:49:47.411-04:00No slaves The United States' progress towards naked theocracy has ratcheted up.It seems the opposition doesn't understand what they're opposing; or at least, there isn't much in the way of evidence for it.Somewhere, Fred Clark — Slacktivist — notes that the reason for abortion as a political issue was to recover the white evangelical position of moral superiority after they were publically and Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-62195391320431182692022-04-27T22:35:00.001-04:002022-04-28T23:49:54.665-04:00That the good do nothingThat bit about the triumph of evil is a cognitive trap.Good and evil, as ideas, are a cognitive trap.Trying to be good will fail. Always, at all times, in all things.Morals can function on very small scales; sometimes individuals, maybe immediate family groups, just possibly some kind of voluntary association with few people. Otherwise, the belief that one must be moral produces Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-32846218927854414382022-04-24T15:09:00.001-04:002022-04-24T15:09:07.172-04:00And the shape of the world is changedWe are going to stop using fossil carbon. (Maybe intentionally, maybe as a consequence of collapse, but one way or another, fossil carbon extraction is going to stop.) Presently, fossil carbon is the foundation of all power; the global hegemon is the Oil Empire and the global economy is comprehensively dependent on fossil carbon inputs for everything.Thwaites Glacier is going; the seaGraydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-50310584719596903522022-03-26T15:49:00.004-04:002022-03-26T15:49:45.590-04:00Plague timeReproduction causes evolution. COVID is reproducing in billions of hosts, and as a result keeps evolving.It's important to know that very small biochemical changes can cause large changes in how transmissible or how lethal a virus is; you get those by luck, but the more reproduction, the more opportunity. At this point, it feels like it's only a matter of time.The other thing that's aGraydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-563664178087602912022-03-20T23:10:00.001-04:002022-03-20T23:10:39.343-04:00Blockades go slower than you thinkAlways.Everybody expecting relatively quick Russian collapse in Ukraine from logistical self-asphyxiation is forgetting this.Yes, truck maintenance has been dire in the Russian army. Yes, they're stalled. Yes, they're plausibly going to be completely out of trucks in a month, give or take. That doesn't mean they're not going to do everything possible -- including commandeering civil Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-86234141874680744582022-03-12T08:11:00.002-05:002022-03-12T08:11:50.261-05:00Short Supply There's been some online muttering about housing shortages, taking care of the existing homeless, and so on, due to the announcement of an open visa program for Ukranians who wish to come to Canada.There's a political answer -- housing, in all its multifaceted glory, is a provincial responsibility; ask your premier what changes they're making -- but there's a systemic answer, too.After the Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-59165280339106659222022-02-21T09:13:00.000-05:002022-02-21T09:13:28.342-05:00Your life expectancy is dropping Yes, really.Whether or not you personally have had COVID-19 in any of its variants.Whether or not you personally shall ever have COVID-19 in any of its variants.Of the things we can alter (the past we cannot alter, which is where both what's already happened to you and your genetic inheritance reside), life expectancy sits on public health -- clean water, restaurant kitchen inspections, Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105242361638428746.post-71269000318286122682022-01-29T17:03:00.002-05:002022-01-29T17:03:12.030-05:00Wear your maskThe pandemic is an insidious threat -- you cannot sense its presence -- and there's no instrumental means of detection (unlike other common insidious threats like electricity and methane). All the indicators are lagging indicators; we can know where it was, not where it is.What that means is you do not know -- you cannot know -- what your risk is. It is by-definition impossible to Graydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09839374676813519438noreply@blogger.com9