Friday, August 29, 2025

in response to trump's attempt to fire people he has no authority to fire, people with no authority to do so should fire donald trump, and then aggressively enforce it.

you're fired, donald. 

you have ten minutes to get out of the white house.
this is to update the catchup list:

my normal salsa is prepared for nachos and for eggs and consists of:

- one lime
- one beet
- 1/2 tomato
- 1/2 red pepper
- 2 big cloves of garlic
- one avocado
- 1 tbsp cumin
- 1 tbsp paprika
- 1 tbsp oregano
- 1 tbsp cayenne
- fresh dill
- pepper
- frank's hot sauce

i am skipping the salsa for the egg meals while i go through food bank food, so i doubled it up in a large serving bowl and expanded it into a meal by adding 

- a can of kidney beans
- ceasar dressing
- nutritional yeast
- hemp seeds
- ten slices of grated cheese. 
- two extra avocados (from catchup)
- 50 g broccoli (from catchup)
- 25% grapefruit, 75% orange juice (from catchup)

- june 16th: doubled up salsa with chick peas, cheese, spices and vitamins.
- june 17th: onion soup bacon poutine
- june 18th: basic doritos nachos and french onon soup with bacon
- june 19th: doubled up salsa reprise
- june 20th: caesar salad without subs
- june 21st: 2nd onion soup poutine with onion soup and last chance salad
- june 22rd: 3rd onion soup poutine with onion soup with beets
- june 23rd: caesar salad without subs
- june 24th: caesar salad without subs
- june 25th: bacon and eggs without subs, no salsa
- june 26th: bacon and eggs without subs, no salsa
- june 27th: ad hoc pad thai
- june 28th: broccoli soup
- june 29th: fridge-clearing meal (oranges & garlic bread)
- june 30th: kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 1st:    kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 2nd:  kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 3rd:  10 packages of instant oatmeal, in 5 installments. spaghetti-os + spices & vitamins (cumin, cayenne, pepper, oregano, paprika, sunflower seed, hemp seed, nutritional yeast, frank's).
- july 4th:  a can of stew and a can of corn, plus spices & vitamins.
- july 5th: a package of jasmine rice i had put aside as a quinoa sub (it probably isn't), with a can of peas and a can of tomato soup, plus spices and vitamins.
- july 6th: a can of beans cooked in a can of vegetable soup, plus spices and vitamins.
- july 7th:  two cans of chicken noodle soup, plus spices and vitamins. tim's xl double-double coffee in morning. two builders protein mini bars in evening. 7-11 coffee with jalapeno taquito late at night.
- july 8th: food bank junk food eat through - two bags of "real vegetable chips" (one big, one small), a bag of goldfish crackers, one mini crispy crunch, some strawberry licorice, prime energy drink, two tim horton's donuts, little ceasar's pepperoni pizza with unlabelled chocolate milk product.
- july 9th: another prime energy drink with another unlabelled chocolate milk product, unlabelled food bank ginger bread (two loaves)
- july 10th: pasta with minor subs (1), third energy drink, sour cream n cheddar chips
- july 11th: sour cream 'n' bacon, sour cream 'n' onion chips
- july 12th: more licorice, pasta with minor subs (2)
- july 13th: jalapeno cheddar chips, pasta with minor subs (3)
- july 14th: 10 baby cookies, pasta with minor subs (4)
- july 15th: i ate most of the 14th pasta on the 15th and followed it with the remaining baby cookies (which are actually french butter cookies, not baby cookies. they look like baby cookies). i did not make pasta for the 15th.
- july 16th:.  pasta with minor subs (5)
- july 17th:  pasta with minor subs (6)
- july 18th (on the 19th):  pasta with minor subs (7)
- july 19th (on the 20th): cereal (one bowl of vector and all bran with paprika, flax, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds and soy, as per my normal diet and one bowl of instant oatmeal with a little real milk and an apple)
- july 20th (on the 21st): pasta with minor subs (8)
- july 21st (on the 22nd): pasta with minor subs (9)
- july 22nd: cereal day 2 in cycle 2 (final cycle 2 cereal day): one bowl of vector and all bran with paprika, flax, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds and soy, as per my normal diet and one bowl of instant oatmeal with a little real milk and two apples, one in the oatmeal and one standalone.
- july 23rd: cereal day 1 in cycle 3
- july 24: pasta with minor subs (10)
- july 25: cereal day 2 in cycle 3, same as 22 and 23, with the addition of 6 mini apple sauce containers.
- july 26: pasta with minor subs (11)
- july 27th - guac with white rice and canned corn. two pieces of white bread with plum better.
- july 28th: pasta with minor subs (12)
- july 29th: guac with white rice and canned corn. two pieces of white toast with olive oil margarine, and then two pieces of white bread with plum butter after. four more pieces of white bread, with plum butter and strawberry jam. 
- july 30th: pasta with minor subs (13), including fried chicken for salami.
- july 31st: a larger piece of fried chicken alone. pasta with minor subs (14), including a mix of buffalo and chicken for salami. six pieces of white bread for peanut butter and strawberry jam.
- aug 1st: four pieces of white bread and the rest of the peanut butter. quinoa without subs (on aug 3rd).
- aug 2nd: four marshmallows, two bananas and a chocolate bar. quinoa without subs (on aug 3rd).
- aug 3rd: pasta with minor subs (15), including the buffalo/chicken mix for salami (on aug 4th). two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 4th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (on aug 5th)
- aug 5th: pasta with minor subs (16), including the buffalo/chicken mix for salami. two pieces of toasted italian bread. (on aug 6th)
- aug 6th: guac with yellow pepper, homemade hot sauce and canned corn (on aug 7th).
- aug 7th: monterrey jack tuna salad melt with bowl of cilantro lime monterrey jack rice (on aug 8th).
- aug 8th: pasta with minor subs (17), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (on aug 9th). . two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 9th: guac with yellow pepper, homemade hot sauce and canned corn wth cilantro lime monterrey jack rice (on aug 10th).
- aug 10th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (on aug 11th)
- aug 11th: pasta with minor subs (18), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (early on aug 12th). two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 12th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (at midnight on aug 13th)
- aug 13th: pasta with minor subs (19), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (early on aug 14th). . two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 14th: potatoes with gravy, cheese, sour cream, bacon and dill (early on aug 15th). no av.
- aug 15th: onion soup + side salad (as posted) (late on aug 15th). no av.
- aug 16th: potatoes with gravy, cheese, sour cream, bacon and dill (early on aug 17th). no av.
- aug 17th: onion soup (mid day on aug 17th) and side salad (as posted) with two pieces of toast (early on aug 18th). no av.
- aug 18th: pasta with minor subs (20), including bacon for salami (early on aug 19th). no av. no juice. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 19th: pasta with minor subs (21), including orange/lime for pineapple and bacon for salami (early on aug 20th). no av. no juice. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 20th & 21st: cereal day 1 & 2 from cycle 4 together in one big bowl. (mid-day on aug 20th)
- aug 22nd: pasta with minor subs (22), including orange/lime for pineapple and chicken for salami (early on aug 21st). no av. no juice. no broc. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 23rd: pasta with minor subs (23), including orange/lime for pineapple and chicken for salami (early on aug 22nd). no av. no juice. no broc. no red pepper. no hot sauce. i had the rest of the italian bread, and four extra pieces of brown bread with cheddar cheese, on the morning of aug 23rd and otherwise didn't eat on the 23rd. this is the bread for use with cycle 7, eaten early. 
- aug 24th: pasta with minor subs (24) (early on the 24th). this was the last of the penne and shifted the pasta source to a box of kd, for now. no av. no juice. no broc. no red pepper. no hot sauce. no pineapple. no salami. no caesar. no dill. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. one xl tim's double double.
- aug 25th: (early on the 25th) is going to be a tomato sandwich one from cycle 2 and an instant meal chicken "sidekick". no av, as it's not ripe yet.
- aug 26th: pasta with minor subs (25). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. no av. no broc (forgot).
- aug 27th: second tomato sandwich meal from cycle 2 with a package of (cooked) chinese noodles.
- aug 28th: pasta with minor subs (26). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine.  two avs.
- aug 29th: doubled up salsa with kidney beans, cheese, spices and vitamins. cycle 2 salsa. four avs. juice. 50 g broccoli.

- aug 30th: pasta with minor subs (27). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. two avs.
- aug 31st: first cycle 2 quinoa, with lentils subbed for quinoa and a can of kidney beans. two avs.
- sept 1st: pasta with minor subs (28). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. two avs.

i will need to do some more groceries at this point, if i haven't moved yet. 

missing items to be distributed through meals in the next two weeks: 

- 11 avs (4 poutine onion soups, 6 pastas, one tomato sandwich), but reduced back to 10 after aug 28th pasta meal uses two and 8 after aug 29th uses 4 (regular, 2).
- 150 g of pineapple to be used in upcoming meal, as required
-  6 glasses of juice - 4 used in unlisted meals (two poutines, two cilantro rices) = 2 glasses of juice, minus 1 after aug 29th meal.
- 2*0.5 = 1 red pepper
- 3*25 = 75 g of broccoli - 50 g of broccoli for guac last cycle (as accident) + 25 g after skipping on 26th (forgot) = 50 g of broccoli, used in aug 29th meal

Thursday, August 28, 2025

because trump is more clinton than clinton.

i could imagine watching the get blown up on tv and laughing. in canadian uniforms, of course.

where's your allah now?

eh?
there is one singular upside to this idea of sending canadian soldiers to get blown up in ukraine, and it's that maybe we can get rid of some people of faith that way.
i was just informed that a member of the raging grannies was recently removed from the group for fraudulently claiming to be a grandmother.
The committee said employees have a right to work in secular institutions and children need to be protected from religious pressures.

that's very french and extremely unamerican. good.
right. this come up over and over again. he is articulating the issue almost verbatim.

this muslim guy is seeking an american concept of secularism, as articulated most famously by thomas jefferson. the americans sought to prevent christian denominations from oppressing each other, and were mostly reacting to the wars of the post-reformation period in europe. american settlers were overwhelmingly protestant. american secularism is about preventing the state from interfering with "religious freedoms".

quebec is enforcing a french concept of secularism, which is the one i prefer and the one that i would seek be enforced through the rest of canada, that comes out of the french revolution and seeks to aggressively restrict religion from operating in society. this was as a reaction to the despotic rule of the catholic church in france, the overthrow of which was at the core of the french revolution. the french did not seek to prevent laws about religion, as the americans did, but rather sought to ensure that any sort of oppressive faith system could not enforce it's rules on the general population.

i would tell this muslim guy that if he wants american secularism, he should go to america. this is not america, and our laws are not jeffersonian in origin.

i agree with this. public prayer is not acceptable in a secular society. tell them to go to private property to pray.

secularists and real leftists need to organize together to get similar laws passed in ontario, and i hope the rest of the country takes quebec's lead on their very forward-thinking approach to secularism.

the police are out of control in this country. we need immediate reform to place restrictions on what officers are allowed to do, and force them to ask the court for permission to wipe their own ass.
this is another example of thuggish police officers acting with little to no understanding of the actual laws of the country, which explicitly allow for flag burning. this is exactly why police need to get warrants.

i hope the individual sues the city and wins a financial reward for being dragged through the court by a bunch of stooges.

i strongly oppose building any sort of infrastructure to export natural gas. the world is moving away from fossil fuels. this will end up being an expensive waste of money.

let the natural gas companies pay for it, if they think there's a market. 

the hypocrisy from the right on this issue is overwhelming. it's ok, apparently, for the government to get involved in the natural gas business, so long as they can socialize the cost of infrastructure. that's bullshit. send them the bill for the costs of their infrastructure.

the reason the infrastructure doesn't exist is that it's not cost-effective, but these corporate welfare bums living off the system won't stop with their pipe dreams of begging their nanny state to pay for their pipelines.
the reality is that the american auto sector is reliant on these giant gas guzzling vehicles - suvs, trucks. they cram these devices down people's throats because they're profitable. this way of life is dying, and has to die. it would be justified to fight a war to shut this industry down forever.

banning the chinese evs is not what it looks like on the surface. it's not about protecting jobs. it's about protecting an absurd industry, and the profits it generates, on the back of the planet's sustainability.

separating ourselves from this destructive industry and this nonsensical business model should be a national priority. we shouldn't be kicking and screaming about this and trying to stop it, we should be taking the initiative in trying to get out.

the asian vehicle makers from japan, korea and now china give consumers what they want and give the planet what it needs to survive - compact vehicles designed for inner city use with good fuel economy. that's the future; that's the present.

by tying ourselves to an increasingly backwards american business model, we risk falling even further behind.

i was making different arguments two years ago, but trump has shown us the worst possible outcome of american decline, domestically. we need to move on.
if canada had elected stephane dion, and taken serious steps to build an ev industry 20 years ago, it might be in a better position to compete in the ev market, today.

we didn't do that.

we elected stephen harper, who wanted canada to be a petrostate. trudeau was really harper in disguise, and carney just ripped the mask off to expose harper redux.

this boat has sailed. we're way too late.

if our idea is to stay linked to nafta auto integration, and the americans are abandoning evs, we need to go with them. that's a shitty deal - it's a bad idea. worse, they're trying to cut us out, anyways. we can obfuscate and slow the process down, but maybe we should get the hint and pull out.

we're probably better off abandoning the auto pact and inviting the chinese to help us assemble evs in canada for the canadian market, in exchange for lifting the tariffs on our produce. if the americans want to keep buying our oil to fuel their dirty cars, there's not much else we can do but get up and move on and hope they call us to reconcile some time later in the future.

if the americans want out of the auto pact, they'll get out. we're not helping ourselves hanging on to a broken marriage, or putting up obstacles to finish the divorce. we need to walk away with our heads up and move on. if they want to call us, they have our number.
the right reason to put tariffs on chinese evs would be to help protect a developing canadian ev industry. unfortunately, from what i can gather, china has an absolute advantage on canada in this sector, and no amount of tariffs will ever make canadian evs competitive with chinese evs outside of canada. we would only ever be producing for domestic markets. so, we'd have to determine whether we think the consequences - tariffs on canola - outweigh the benefits. that would be choosing jobs in ontario over jobs in saskatchewan. can farmers produce something else? can ontario manufacture something else? or is this even suggestive of a failed state?

that's not why we're doing it.

the reason we're doing it is to align with american policy. 

why are the americans doing it? because they want americans to continue to use carbon-emitting vehicles, which canada also benefits from financially, at the expense of the world's climate. as such, we're essentially aligning with a pro-carbon policy, in an attempt to save our automotive sector, which is moving in the opposite direction.

the gamble is that trump will be replaced by somebody less pro-carbon, and that wants to align the americans with a reasonable economic and climate policy. however, that doesn't really resolve the issue. the americans will likely still maintain tariffs against the chinese evs, and we're tied to them when they do. saskatchewan will have to take the hit, at an unclear benefit to ontario workers.

the optimal outcome from canada's perspective would be to convince chinese companies to assemble their vehicles in canada. this would be a break from the americans, but likely in the direction they're eventually heading in.

it is difficult to argue in favour of the utility of blindly holding to american policy with no clear benefit to ontario manufacturing, at the expense of the country's farmers.
avocado's mole.



i am currently finally eating the last pieces of bread from the july food bank run.

i will be eating the tomato sandwiches with prepared chinese noodles. do kids still eat this stuff raw? that was never my thing. i am making my chinese noodles the same way i made the other prepared noodle and rice packages:

- fresh dill
- five slices of cheddar (sliced)
- one tbsp of nutritional yeast, hemp seeds
- caesar, franks
- the olive oil margarine and bacon grease left in the pan (from the tomato sandwich)

this was stirred so that the cheese melted and is kind of like a chicken soup. however, i used too much water the first time. there are three more packages to get this right with.

i was able to eat the first of many avocados yesterday. they were on sale. they're always on sale. the price is not too onerous, really. the right is exaggerating this. i need the b5.

i have made a few cups of coffee with the espresso grounds, and i have to point out that the single use coffee machine by black and decker actually works better with espresso than regular coffee. when you put regular coffee in it, it always makes a mess inside the machine, and the grounds always end up in the cup. i have to use a basket from a broken machine to strain the grounds out. however, when you use espresso grounds, it actually works cleanly - no mess in the machine, and no grounds in the cup.

the reason it makes such a mess is that the machine operates at a higher pressure than a normal full pot coffee machine, partly because it's smaller. i suppose this is an engineering mistake. they probably used parts meant for regular coffee machines, and didn't bother adjusting. so, i guess it's actually the same pressure, when it should have been adjusted down, making it a higher relative pressure. is relative pressure a defined scientific idea? putting espresso grounds in instead is in some ways taking advantage of this. it's not as intense as an espresso machine, but it's more intense than a regular coffee machine. there's not a full foam, but there's bubbles on the top.

i use an ice cream scoop to get the grounds into the machine. for regular coffee, i fill it up, which is three scoops, but it doesn't pack as densely as the espresso. i tried it with one scoop of espresso and it was too watery for me. i've tried it a couple of times with two scoops now and it's actually pretty good. it kept me awake. i would need four scoops to fill the bowl up (because it packs more densely), so i'm going to try it with three. maybe i'll try four after for fun and see how many days i'm awake for, or how many heart attacks it gives me. i usually use chocolate soy, but they didn't have any, so i bought vanilla soy instead, so these are chocolate or vanilla soy lattes, with the ratio inverted. 

we shall call them ettals.

the difference in weight also means that a scoop of espresso weighs less than a scoop of coffee, so you can't really do a direct comparison. you'd have to do some kind of molar mass calculation to do an accurate comparison. what is the molar mass of espresso grounds compared to the molar mass of coffee grounds? don't bother - have an avocado, not an avogadro. the fridge is full of them. that beady-eyed motherfucker looked like his head was an avocado, anyways. poetic binomial nomenclature. let's change it to avocado's number. after doing an ad hoc compensation for weight without doing the organic chemistry analysis, i'd guess that 2 scoops of espresso is roughly half the weight of three scoops of coffee. i could weigh it directly, but i don't have any coffee (that was the point).

if that actually works out, i'm getting twice as many cups from 250 g of espresso as i would from 250 g of coffee, so buying 250 g of espresso is like buying 500 g of coffee; or, 500 g of espresso is equivalent to a kg of coffee. that would mean that $10 of espresso is equivalent to $10 of coffee, under pre-tariff pricing.

canadians should brace for the hard truth that prices might never return to pre-tariff norms. so this might be cheaper in the long run.

i could potentially get used to this, but it is reliant on having this weird coffee maker that was engineered wrong, and accidentally works well with espresso grounds. 

- june 16th: doubled up salsa with chick peas, cheese, spices and vitamins.
- june 17th: onion soup bacon poutine
- june 18th: basic doritos nachos and french onon soup with bacon
- june 19th: doubled up salsa reprise
- june 20th: caesar salad without subs
- june 21st: 2nd onion soup poutine with onion soup and last chance salad
- june 22rd: 3rd onion soup poutine with onion soup with beets
- june 23rd: caesar salad without subs
- june 24th: caesar salad without subs
- june 25th: bacon and eggs without subs, no salsa
- june 26th: bacon and eggs without subs, no salsa
- june 27th: ad hoc pad thai
- june 28th: broccoli soup
- june 29th: fridge-clearing meal (oranges & garlic bread)
- june 30th: kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 1st:    kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 2nd:  kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 3rd:  10 packages of instant oatmeal, in 5 installments. spaghetti-os + spices & vitamins (cumin, cayenne, pepper, oregano, paprika, sunflower seed, hemp seed, nutritional yeast, frank's).
- july 4th:  a can of stew and a can of corn, plus spices & vitamins.
- july 5th: a package of jasmine rice i had put aside as a quinoa sub (it probably isn't), with a can of peas and a can of tomato soup, plus spices and vitamins.
- july 6th: a can of beans cooked in a can of vegetable soup, plus spices and vitamins.
- july 7th:  two cans of chicken noodle soup, plus spices and vitamins. tim's xl double-double coffee in morning. two builders protein mini bars in evening. 7-11 coffee with jalapeno taquito late at night.
- july 8th: food bank junk food eat through - two bags of "real vegetable chips" (one big, one small), a bag of goldfish crackers, one mini crispy crunch, some strawberry licorice, prime energy drink, two tim horton's donuts, little ceasar's pepperoni pizza with unlabelled chocolate milk product.
- july 9th: another prime energy drink with another unlabelled chocolate milk product, unlabelled food bank ginger bread (two loaves)
- july 10th: pasta with minor subs (1), third energy drink, sour cream n cheddar chips
- july 11th: sour cream 'n' bacon, sour cream 'n' onion chips
- july 12th: more licorice, pasta with minor subs (2)
- july 13th: jalapeno cheddar chips, pasta with minor subs (3)
- july 14th: 10 baby cookies, pasta with minor subs (4)
- july 15th: i ate most of the 14th pasta on the 15th and followed it with the remaining baby cookies (which are actually french butter cookies, not baby cookies. they look like baby cookies). i did not make pasta for the 15th.
- july 16th:.  pasta with minor subs (5)
- july 17th:  pasta with minor subs (6)
- july 18th (on the 19th):  pasta with minor subs (7)
- july 19th (on the 20th): cereal (one bowl of vector and all bran with paprika, flax, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds and soy, as per my normal diet and one bowl of instant oatmeal with a little real milk and an apple)
- july 20th (on the 21st): pasta with minor subs (8)
- july 21st (on the 22nd): pasta with minor subs (9)
- july 22nd: cereal day 2 in cycle 2 (final cycle 2 cereal day): one bowl of vector and all bran with paprika, flax, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds and soy, as per my normal diet and one bowl of instant oatmeal with a little real milk and two apples, one in the oatmeal and one standalone.
- july 23rd: cereal day 1 in cycle 3
- july 24: pasta with minor subs (10)
- july 25: cereal day 2 in cycle 3, same as 22 and 23, with the addition of 6 mini apple sauce containers.
- july 26: pasta with minor subs (11)
- july 27th - guac with white rice and canned corn. two pieces of white bread with plum better.
- july 28th: pasta with minor subs (12)
- july 29th: guac with white rice and canned corn. two pieces of white toast with olive oil margarine, and then two pieces of white bread with plum butter after. four more pieces of white bread, with plum butter and strawberry jam. 
- july 30th: pasta with minor subs (13), including fried chicken for salami.
- july 31st: a larger piece of fried chicken alone. pasta with minor subs (14), including a mix of buffalo and chicken for salami. six pieces of white bread for peanut butter and strawberry jam.
- aug 1st: four pieces of white bread and the rest of the peanut butter. quinoa without subs (on aug 3rd).
- aug 2nd: four marshmallows, two bananas and a chocolate bar. quinoa without subs (on aug 3rd).
- aug 3rd: pasta with minor subs (15), including the buffalo/chicken mix for salami (on aug 4th). two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 4th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (on aug 5th)
- aug 5th: pasta with minor subs (16), including the buffalo/chicken mix for salami. two pieces of toasted italian bread. (on aug 6th)
- aug 6th: guac with yellow pepper, homemade hot sauce and canned corn (on aug 7th).
- aug 7th: monterrey jack tuna salad melt with bowl of cilantro lime monterrey jack rice (on aug 8th).
- aug 8th: pasta with minor subs (17), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (on aug 9th). . two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 9th: guac with yellow pepper, homemade hot sauce and canned corn wth cilantro lime monterrey jack rice (on aug 10th).
- aug 10th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (on aug 11th)
- aug 11th: pasta with minor subs (18), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (early on aug 12th). two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 12th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (at midnight on aug 13th)
- aug 13th: pasta with minor subs (19), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (early on aug 14th). . two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 14th: potatoes with gravy, cheese, sour cream, bacon and dill (early on aug 15th). no av.
- aug 15th: onion soup + side salad (as posted) (late on aug 15th). no av.
- aug 16th: potatoes with gravy, cheese, sour cream, bacon and dill (early on aug 17th). no av.
- aug 17th: onion soup (mid day on aug 17th) and side salad (as posted) with two pieces of toast (early on aug 18th). no av.
- aug 18th: pasta with minor subs (20), including bacon for salami (early on aug 19th). no av. no juice. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 19th: pasta with minor subs (21), including orange/lime for pineapple and bacon for salami (early on aug 20th). no av. no juice. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 20th & 21st: cereal day 1 & 2 from cycle 4 together in one big bowl. (mid-day on aug 20th)
- aug 22nd: pasta with minor subs (22), including orange/lime for pineapple and chicken for salami (early on aug 21st). no av. no juice. no broc. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 23rd: pasta with minor subs (23), including orange/lime for pineapple and chicken for salami (early on aug 22nd). no av. no juice. no broc. no red pepper. no hot sauce. i had the rest of the italian bread, and four extra pieces of brown bread with cheddar cheese, on the morning of aug 23rd and otherwise didn't eat on the 23rd. this is the bread for use with cycle 7, eaten early. 
- aug 24th: pasta with minor subs (24) (early on the 24th). this was the last of the penne and shifted the pasta source to a box of kd, for now. no av. no juice. no broc. no red pepper. no hot sauce. no pineapple. no salami. no caesar. no dill. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. one xl tim's double double.
- aug 25th: (early on the 25th) is going to be a tomato sandwich one from cycle 2 and an instant meal chicken "sidekick". no av, as it's not ripe yet.
- aug 26th: pasta with minor subs (25). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. no av. no broc (forgot).
- aug 27th: second tomato sandwich meal from cycle 2 with a package of (cooked) chinese noodles.
- aug 28th: pasta with minor subs (26). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine.  two avs.

- aug 29th: doubled up salsa with kidney beans, cheese, spices and vitamins. cycle 2 salsa. two avs. juice. broccoli.
- aug 30th: pasta with minor subs (27). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. two avs.
- aug 31st: first cycle 2 quinoa, with lentils subbed for quinoa and a can of kidney beans. two avs.
- sept 1st: pasta with minor subs (28). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. two avs.

i will need to do some more groceries at this point, if i haven't moved yet. 

missing items to be distributed through meals in the next two weeks: 

- 11 avs (4 poutine onion soups, 6 pastas, one tomato sandwich), but reduced back to 10 after aug 28th pasta meal uses two.
- 150 g of pineapple to be used in upcoming meal, as required
-  6 glasses of juice - 4 used in unlisted meals (two poutines, two cilantro rices) = 2 glasses of juice
- 2*0.5 = 1 red pepper
- 3*25 = 75 g of broccoli - 50 g of broccoli for guac last cycle (as accident) + 25 g after skipping on 26th (forgot) = 50 g of broccoli 

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

do i think the us government should own a part of intel?

the collapse of intel would be very bad news for the united states. the government should ensure that does not happen.
i'm a socialist, but this isn't socialism. socialism is when the workers have control of the means of production. that's not what this is at all, it's the opposite of that, it's letting the government take control away from workers.

trump's economic system is not anything resembling socialism. what it is is an old tory economic system called mercantilism, associated with the british and canadian tories. 

canada used to have a fair amount of state owned industry, and it was mostly set up by the old tories. this was sold off in the 80s and 90s. i agree with the elder trudeau, who vociferously argue this was a tremendous mistake canada would live to regret.

i don't think there should be limits on the amount of force a person uses in self-defense, and i don't think there really are. it's not really about reasonable force, so much as it's about proportionality. you may need to shoot somebody in the face several times to defend yourself, and a court should let you do that, and would.

however, there's a difference between self-defence and assault. if you're not defending yourself anymore, it's no longer self defence. this would be things like shooting at people that are trying to flee.

my take on the issue in kawartha lakes is that the charges by police are unjustified, and the individual will likely have the charges dropped, or be acquitted. that looks like self defence to me. this is why we have courts - cops are quite often very dumb people, and frequently don't understand the law very well.

in context, the officer should have sought a warrant for the individual's arrest. that is the step that police skip too often, and need to be retrained to do instinctively. police officers should not be making decisions like this independent of the courts. the courts should be doing all of the thinking; the cops are just dumb muscle, sent out as enforcement. they aren't paid to think, and should be explicitly forbidden from trying.

i doubt a judge would have approved a warrant in this case, and that would have been the end of it. as it is, i hope the process of acquittal is not too long or too inconvenient.

the media commenters have apparently all forgotten that the individual is innocent until proven guilty, and entitled to due process of law.
what i'm thinking about is trying to bring the party back from the dead via a series of entertaining debates during the nomination process. it's more about generating headlines and raising profiles. this of course isn't building a worker's movement, but real life can sometimes confuse cause and effect. it's probably a better idea, right now.

if you think you can participate and have some free time, sign up.

if engler does win unopposed, you can forget about the ndp. they're done.
a series of yves engler v naomi klein debates could itself save the ndp. i mean, people would pay for that.
the trotskyists are pretty no-bullshit. they don't bother with pretenses.

this is pretty accurate:

yves engler isn't saving this party from ruin. 

naomi klein might do it, though.

i just can't fathom settling for yves engler when we could have naomi klein, instead.
naomi!

naomi!

where art thou, naomi?

well, fuck. let's make this interesting. and that would be interesting.
is yves engler going to run unopposed for ndp leader?

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

lavrov has been relatively clear about why a meeting between putin and zelensky cannot happen, and why putin sought a meeting with trump, and why zelensky would need to meet with lower level officials instead of with putin directly. this is not being reported because it's not understood.

in the old language of international law - and putin is an old timey conservative, like a disraeli or a churchill, although this is even older than that - dignitaries need to meet at the proper levels. this is actually why the american presidents, before trump. wouldn't meet with putin. they were spitting this back in his face.

emperors meet emperors
kings meet kings.
governors meet governors.
mayors meet mayors.
diplomats meet diplomats.

putin, as an emperor, demanded to meet with an equivalent dignitary in the west, namely the president of the united states. obama and biden both responded by refusing to meet with putin, in an attempt to enforce the idea that russia and the united states are not at equivalent levels, that russia is a subservient state and america is the hegemon. putin could meet with john kerry, or anthony blinken. the russians rejected this as inappropriate.

putin, as emperor, could not possibly meet with zelensky, who is at best a governor and perhaps merely a mayor. zelensky would need to meet with an undersecretary below lavrov. that would properly enforce zelensky's status.

zelensky, by demanding to meet with putin, is essentially being uppity.

the russians won't tolerate that. zelensky must meet with his equals, at a lower level of function, as is the convention in the lost world of hierarchy that the russians continue to exist in, and which the rest of the world barely remembers or understands.

there was no possibility of this ever happening, and trump's insistence on it was either ignorance or dishonesty.
when the slavs fought wars against the tatars and other muslims, they were literally fighting for their freedom.

and they won.

it's a feel good story.
fwiw, the indigenous people of the crimean peninsula were a proto-iranic (proto-slavic) group that the greeks called the tauri, three proto-iranian groups called cimmerians, scythians and sarmatians, in sequence, and probably peasant slavic groups first identified by herodotus as scythian farmers. slavic is a weird language. it is a satem language, making it more similar to iranian than to german in some ways. herodotus indicates the ukraine had a peasant class of farmers and a ruling class of mounted warriors and they were slightly different ethnic groups. it has long been thought that the slavs were there the whole time, as the underclass to the iranians, but that it was not well recorded, except by herodotus. the cimmerians are the earliest known group from the crimean area, as recorded in contact with early semitic texts, but when the greeks showed up and started building settlements, the people they met, also iranians, were named as taurii. they did not know that the region had been inhabited by indo-european and proto-indo-european speakers for many thousands of years, but they did note the presence of a slightly different group of farmers along the dnieper (borysthenes), in addition to the ruling class of mounted warrior kings. 

you might imagine the greeks might have had some interaction with assyrian history during the period of persian hegemony. in fact, the greeks famously found the ruins of the assyrians when they entered the area behind alexander, and they did not know what culture the ruins belonged to, or what they had found. grecian curiosity of course found the answer. the assyrians were forgotten under persian hegemony, due to their cruelty. nobody wanted to remember them; everybody wanted to forget them. it took a lot of effort to remember them.

the persians left us no writing of any sort, which is bizarre. we know they could write, and appeared to prefer to write in aramaic. while there is no clear historical record of it, it seems that the arabs must have systematically burned anything related to persian writing, during the great translation event. anything the persians might have left us about assyria was lost in this process. the last persians appear in history as kurdish scholars during the pax arabica in baghdad, which was further destroyed during the mongol invasions. it is possible that some ancient persian writing was converted to arabic by kurdish or other scholars, and then burned and forgotten; there is no record of this. we simply have no surviving writing of any sort from thousands of years of persian civilizaton, and future historians will be forgiven for concluding they must have been illiterate, which is false.

this is a greek map, c -500.


you might try to build a map from scraps of stones found in assyrian ruins, but the archaeology in ukraine itself is more useful:


the greeks called the area the cimmerian bosporus and set up a greek client state which was half greek and half iranian. the greeks were replaced by the romans, who were driven out by iranic groups and then colonized by east germanic groups (the goths). the huns then swept into the region and killed everybody, generating waves of germans and iranians to the west, where they invaded the roman empire. it's not widely understood that there was substantive iranian migration into france during this period; the name alain is iranian in origin, and france has tons of iranian place names.

the huns were the first turkic group into the region, and their migration into it is well documented, if a little blurry. they were followed by other turkic groups like bulgars and khazars. these people are not indigenous to the region, but violently displaced the indigenous iranian people and then held on to their conquests for a few centuries.

the khazars were defeated by a confederation of swedes, who set up colonies in the region to trade with the romans, and indigenous slavs. the old legends claim that the slavs actually asked for the swedes to rule over them. i can believe that the slavs may have sought an alliance with the swedes to expel the turkish groups and, together, the two of them did. this new confederation, called rus, took control of most of modern ukraine in the 9th century, including crimea. the greeks, however, had come back and set up new trading posts. something akin to antiquity reasserted itself, with the swedes as the new royal scythians, the byzantines as the new greeks and the scythian farmers, the slavs, continuing as they always had. after the schism between catholics and orthodox, italian traders took over for byzantine traders in crimea. the populations continued to speak greek under italian control.

the mongols destroyed russia in the 13th century, and took control of the crimean peninsula in the process. this is where the crimean khanate originates from - a recent migration from east asia. however, they had a hard time maintaining control of the greek cities on the coast, who kept revolting. eventually, those cities were conquered by the ottomans, and the tatars became a client of the turks.

the scythian farmers of herodotus, the actually indigenous slavs, had since regrouped and had begun to expel mongols and turks from their homeland. they were eventually usurped by a german-speaking ruling class, a new royal scythian, and this new german-slav confederation moved south to reclaim crimea from the usurping turks a second time, this time in the 18th century. the new slavic mega state reincorporated the conquered regions - which correspond closely to the regions putin has recently reclaimed  - as new russia.

the tatars were tolerated to an extent, as conquered and absorbed turks were elsewhere in the new slavic megastate of muscovy, but it should be remember that the slavs were expelling a violent occupier. the crimean tatar economy for centuries was based on capturing and selling ukranians to turks as chattel slaves. this is where the name ukraine comes from. if the indigenous slavs wanted to enact some level of revenge on their cruel overlords, they had every justification to do so. 

slavic history is attractive to a marxist, or an engelian (?), because it has so much process. an enslaved, oppressed indigenous group (the slavs) rose up and overthrew it's cruel rulers (the turks), expelling them from their land and reducing them to tribute. eventually, stalin just shipped them back to mongolia, where they came from, and while that might have been an overreaction due to a perception that hitler tried to take advantage of them, who can blame him for it, really?

the narrative that tatars are indigenous to crimea is not merely historically wrong, it is grossly offensive. the tatars were a vicious, oppressive group of invaders that enslaved the actual indigenous people, the slavs.

this is western propaganda at it's worst.
i don't support a full russian annexation of all of ukraine. what i support is the legitimate expression of democracy in the half dozen former soviet provinces in question.

this is the maximum extent of russian annexation that i would support on purely democratic grounds:


however, this map would be impossible for russia to defend from an attack by germany, which is their justified concern. hitler and napoleon both tried the same basic thing, and they both failed. if the russians don't have a way to protect the massive flat land they exist on from attack by germans or franks, it will happen again.

a better idea - and i haven't talked about this in a while but i've been through it - is to try to split the country off at the dnieper. this map has this major river running through it:


the river is not impenetrable, but it provides a natural barrier. i'm reminded of mccarthy starting the korean war by getting too close to the yalu river, which the chinese told him not to do. mccarthy got too close, and the chinese pushed him back. the russians could conceivably use the dnieper the same way.

this would require occupying an area of ukrainian speaking territory and abandoning an area of russian speaking territory, but the next river is the vistula and while that might be better, it's also impossible.

if the russians were to hold the areas of ukraine east of the dnieper, it could arrange population transfers, like was done between greece and turkey. the greeks left ionia and went back to attica. russian speakers could transfer to the east of the river, and ukrainian speakers could transfer to the west of it.

the major reason the russians haven't been able to do this is that they won't bomb out the bridges over the dnieper. the ukranians have bombed the bridges to prevent a russian advance. the russians refuse to bomb the bridges that the ukrainians are using for supply lines. if the russians would just take the bridges out, ukraine would be unable to supply it's troops on the other side of the dnieper, and this would end very fast. my understanding is that the russians refuse to do this because they think it's barbaric, and because they think they don't have to.

this would be over by now if they had done that. without supplies, ukrainian defenses would quickly collapse and the russians could move to occupy the area east of the river with relative ease. ukraine would have to surrender. that also means the russians couldn't get over the river to take the rest of the country.

these considerations should no longer be seen as realistic. barbaric or not, if the russians don't take these bridges out soon, they could be dealing with a substantive counterforce intent on using them not just for supplies but for soldiers. they should have done this years ago. they no longer have a choice to pretend they don't have to - yes, they do have to.

this is a realistic way to actually end this. ukraine will need to accept the reality of heavy russian fortifications on the dnieper. however, the flip side of that is that ukraine itself doesn't need to be in nato to act as a further disincentive against russia. the fact that there is no geographic boundary west of the dnieper until you reach the carpathians and the vistula, both in nato, is good enough.

the next step would need to be the russians pulling nato out of poland, first. it would be pointless to continue a war against the western part of ukraine, with no geographic boundaries in ukraine that can provide them with position. the position they seek is the dnieper.

if the russians were to keep pushing further west than the dnieper, i would join the side arguing they need to stop. but, they won't.
must be chinese carp.


donald trump is entertaining, on a certain level. it's kind of my idea of entertainment.

as i immediately suspected, because it was obvious, he's targeting democrats that he suspects are running for president in 2028. that is why he targeted california, illinois and maryland. 

Monday, August 25, 2025

this is the liberals' analysis:

“[The Premier] can eliminate development charges, right now. He can streamline approvals and harmonize zoning across the province right now."

right.

because you fix a market failure by modifying trivialities. 

there are bigger, more fundamental problems here rooted primarily in immigration that are not going to be solved by changing zoning laws. 

the market has failed. it's time for government to intervene to fix the problem.
this is a market failure.

it is solved by government entering the housing market and building houses.

this will ensure that when they arrest you for j-walking, you are a now a captured slave, and can be sent to work in a factory, rather than released to have a ticket thrown out by a judge.

these are the results of the oct 30, 1995 referendum in quebec:





should canada have merely abandoned the red areas?

no, we should have sent the army in to occupy them, and if quebec wanted to fight back, we should have told them to go ahead and try.

i cannot understand how our government doesn't see the parallel or the precedent in international law that it is trying to advance when it's so glaringly obvious.

but, the west only uses international law when it's convenient. when it's not convenient, it just fills the airwaves with lies, and tells them to you with a straight face and a shit-eating grin. we'd be supporting any breakaway region from russia we could find, even if it was led by a nazi dictator, against the will of the populace. and, we'd call it "democracy" when we did.
this narrative is completely ridiculous, hollywood nonsense.

all empirical evidence indicates that the people in the regions occupied overwhelmingly support reunification with russia.

the premise that ukraine is fighting for democracy is an absurd, malicious lie. ukraine itself is a kleptocracy, and not a democracy in any meaningful sense. the political system in ukraine is the same as the political system in russia. the democratic will of the people is to join russia - and it's been expressed repeatedly. the occupier is ukraine, not russia.

canadians should understand this. imagine if quebec declared independence from canada (which is similar to ukraine declaring independence from russia, except that ukraine and russia have almost identical languages and share a similar cultural background, which is less true about quebec and canada). if you lived in montreal or gatineau, you would oppose that - you would vote to go back to canada. that is the situation that crimeans and residents of what the russians call the donbas regions found themselves in after ukraine declared independence - they were a part of a country that existed geographically, but not culturally, and they resented it and wanted to return to the country they wanted to live in. they didn't vote for independence, it just happened. 

the event in 1991 was not a democratic process. a handful of people made a decision in moscow to dissolve a confederation, and the borders of ukraine (expanded by khrushev to include historical parts of russia) poofed into existence out of no historical process, and with zero democratic legitimacy.

i can imagine being a montrealer waking up in the country of quebec on november 1, 1995 - which, unlike ukrainian independence, would have at least been a democratic process. i can imagine welcoming a canadian invasion to reclaim gatineau and montreal as being liberating forces, to overthrow the new found occupation of montreal by quebec. i can imagine the new country of quebec kicking and screaming and throwing a fit and demanding it's territorial integrity be respected, and it would be wrong to do that. the canadian government would be doing the right thing in sending the military in to take back strategic regions by force.

this government's cluelessness of the precedent it is setting - which is that quebec is indivisible, and trying to reclaim canadian-identifying regions that overwhelmingly want to stay in canada would be some kind of war crime - is baffling, and irresponsible. canada should be in 100% support of the right of russian speaking regions of geographical ukraine to self-determination, if for no other reason than to prevent itself from an inevitable collapse into a failed state, on the eventuality of quebec independence.

but this is the fucking dumbest country in the world.

is carney trying to compete with the united states?

i don't want to be the united states. i don't want to conquer the world. i don't want to be the hegemon.

i want to see the ndp campaign aggressively on cancelling all of this. this money should be spent here in canada on canadians.

the reality is that, as the climate warms and canada becomes more habitable while america sinks into the sea, few countries will be better positioned to usurp global dominance than us.

if the pentagon figured that out and are reacting to it, they're absolutely right.
my sources tell me that the search of john bolton's home failed to find a single fake mustache.
no. they don't get it.

mexico is not seen as a competitor, but as a client. canada is seen as a real competitor. this is the fundamental problem that isn't being understood: some spook in the deep state behind trump has (probably correctly) identified canada as america's dominant threat in the upcoming 50 years.

mexico isn't seen that way, so trading with them isn't a problem.

i put my "sidekick" in a bowl with the following items

- fresh dill
- five slices of cheddar (sliced)
- one tbsp of nutritional yeast, hemp seeds
- caesar, franks
- the olive oil margarine and bacon grease left in the pan

this was stirred so that the cheese melted and is kind of like a chicken soup.
if kate middleton wants to be blonde, she should act like one.

she's too british to be blonde. too stiff an upper lip. doesn't suit her.
i would support reparations in the colonies, that benefited from slavery, but i don't quite see how it makes sense to ask britain itself to pay for reparations, except perhaps to ireland.

i'll say again that the expectation of pride in this context should be to criticize palestine and other muslim countries for their ongoing criminalization of homosexuality.

that's the issue that is of relevance, in context.

pride otherwise has nothing to do with the israeli-arab conflict, and it should say that.

i don't stand in solidarity with ukraine at all, i stand in solidarity with canadian workers who are about to get laid off to fund this ill conceived foreign adventurism.

i wasn't able to load the usb key in gparted at all. it's an old version of gparted. i haven't tried from arch yet. 

it took all day just to get out to do some groceries, but i'm almost done, and i need to do some laundry. i bought a small container of fresh hot sauce and we'll see what happens. i should point out that i did eat the rest of the chicken and the results are inconclusive; while it didn't generate unwanted erections, and i have been waking up completely limp, it did create some weird reactions while defecating, some weird sensations and a minor spike in unwanted hair growth, although you also saw the amount of progesterone in my system. i can't make a clear determination which is more true. the 100 g of chicken, in two 50 g chunks, would have produced a minor outcome, at most. however, i have to take note of it, even though it was barely noticeable and passed very fast.

meat on it's own might generate a minor testosterone boost in men that have testicles, but that doesn't make a lot of sense in my case, because i don't. the only testosterone i produce on my own is adrenal, and it's not influenced by vitamin d or by zinc, the way that testicular testosterone is. that idea should be scratched out.

...except that the effect was so minor, that maybe that was all there was to it.

i haven't touched the bison. there's also a pile of fresh chicken breasts that are frozen. so i still have a lot of meat to eat, but i bought some bacon, for now.

the tariff that is pissing me off the most is the one on coffee. the cheapest brand is $15 for a standard sized tin (it's cardboard, though) of coffee, and you won't find it cheaper. that's 50% inflation, overnight, due to the tariffs. there's no canadian source of coffee, and currently no way around going through the us, like there is with orange juice. i did find a sneaky approach, though, which was to buy imported espresso from italy.

the cheapest coffee was $15 for 925 g. the espresso from italy, however, was $5 for 250 g. espresso is more powerful than coffee, so if you put espresso in a coffee machine you should use half to a quarter. so this is really $5 for the equivalent of 500g of coffee, minimum. that would be $10 for 1 kg, which was the standard price in canada, previously. the italian espresso didn't transit through the united states on it's way to canada, so it didn't get taxed.

but, this is absurd. imported italian espresso is supposed to be more expensive, per g. it's not supposed to be cheaper to buy espresso, which is a luxury good, than normal coffee. i like strong coffee, and i make it in a single cup brewer, so i might even switch over to this permanently, if i like it. i'll just use one scoop instead of 2.5. 

i want to update this again so i can add up the skipped items from this week:

- june 16th: doubled up salsa with chick peas, cheese, spices and vitamins.
- june 17th: onion soup bacon poutine
- june 18th: basic doritos nachos and french onon soup with bacon
- june 19th: doubled up salsa reprise
- june 20th: caesar salad without subs
- june 21st: 2nd onion soup poutine with onion soup and last chance salad
- june 22rd: 3rd onion soup poutine with onion soup with beets
- june 23rd: caesar salad without subs
- june 24th: caesar salad without subs
- june 25th: bacon and eggs without subs, no salsa
- june 26th: bacon and eggs without subs, no salsa
- june 27th: ad hoc pad thai
- june 28th: broccoli soup
- june 29th: fridge-clearing meal (oranges & garlic bread)
- june 30th: kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 1st:    kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 2nd:  kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 3rd:  10 packages of instant oatmeal, in 5 installments. spaghetti-os + spices & vitamins (cumin, cayenne, pepper, oregano, paprika, sunflower seed, hemp seed, nutritional yeast, frank's).
- july 4th:  a can of stew and a can of corn, plus spices & vitamins.
- july 5th: a package of jasmine rice i had put aside as a quinoa sub (it probably isn't), with a can of peas and a can of tomato soup, plus spices and vitamins.
- july 6th: a can of beans cooked in a can of vegetable soup, plus spices and vitamins.
- july 7th:  two cans of chicken noodle soup, plus spices and vitamins. tim's xl double-double coffee in morning. two builders protein mini bars in evening. 7-11 coffee with jalapeno taquito late at night.
- july 8th: food bank junk food eat through - two bags of "real vegetable chips" (one big, one small), a bag of goldfish crackers, one mini crispy crunch, some strawberry licorice, prime energy drink, two tim horton's donuts, little ceasar's pepperoni pizza with unlabelled chocolate milk product.
- july 9th: another prime energy drink with another unlabelled chocolate milk product, unlabelled food bank ginger bread (two loaves)
- july 10th: pasta with minor subs (1), third energy drink, sour cream n cheddar chips
- july 11th: sour cream 'n' bacon, sour cream 'n' onion chips
- july 12th: more licorice, pasta with minor subs (2)
- july 13th: jalapeno cheddar chips, pasta with minor subs (3)
- july 14th: 10 baby cookies, pasta with minor subs (4)
- july 15th: i ate most of the 14th pasta on the 15th and followed it with the remaining baby cookies (which are actually french butter cookies, not baby cookies. they look like baby cookies). i did not make pasta for the 15th.
- july 16th:.  pasta with minor subs (5)
- july 17th:  pasta with minor subs (6)
- july 18th (on the 19th):  pasta with minor subs (7)
- july 19th (on the 20th): cereal (one bowl of vector and all bran with paprika, flax, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds and soy, as per my normal diet and one bowl of instant oatmeal with a little real milk and an apple)
- july 20th (on the 21st): pasta with minor subs (8)
- july 21st (on the 22nd): pasta with minor subs (9)
- july 22nd: cereal day 2 in cycle 2 (final cycle 2 cereal day): one bowl of vector and all bran with paprika, flax, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds and soy, as per my normal diet and one bowl of instant oatmeal with a little real milk and two apples, one in the oatmeal and one standalone.
- july 23rd: cereal day 1 in cycle 3
- july 24: pasta with minor subs (10)
- july 25: cereal day 2 in cycle 3, same as 22 and 23, with the addition of 6 mini apple sauce containers.
- july 26: pasta with minor subs (11)
- july 27th - guac with white rice and canned corn. two pieces of white bread with plum better.
- july 28th: pasta with minor subs (12)
- july 29th: guac with white rice and canned corn. two pieces of white toast with olive oil margarine, and then two pieces of white bread with plum butter after. four more pieces of white bread, with plum butter and strawberry jam. 
- july 30th: pasta with minor subs (13), including fried chicken for salami.
- july 31st: a larger piece of fried chicken alone. pasta with minor subs (14), including a mix of buffalo and chicken for salami. six pieces of white bread for peanut butter and strawberry jam.
- aug 1st: four pieces of white bread and the rest of the peanut butter. quinoa without subs (on aug 3rd).
- aug 2nd: four marshmallows, two bananas and a chocolate bar. quinoa without subs (on aug 3rd).
- aug 3rd: pasta with minor subs (15), including the buffalo/chicken mix for salami (on aug 4th). two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 4th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (on aug 5th)
- aug 5th: pasta with minor subs (16), including the buffalo/chicken mix for salami. two pieces of toasted italian bread. (on aug 6th)
- aug 6th: guac with yellow pepper, homemade hot sauce and canned corn (on aug 7th).
- aug 7th: monterrey jack tuna salad melt with bowl of cilantro lime monterrey jack rice (on aug 8th).
- aug 8th: pasta with minor subs (17), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (on aug 9th). . two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 9th: guac with yellow pepper, homemade hot sauce and canned corn wth cilantro lime monterrey jack rice (on aug 10th).
- aug 10th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (on aug 11th)
- aug 11th: pasta with minor subs (18), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (early on aug 12th). two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 12th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (at midnight on aug 13th)
- aug 13th: pasta with minor subs (19), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (early on aug 14th). . two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 14th: potatoes with gravy, cheese, sour cream, bacon and dill (early on aug 15th). no av.
- aug 15th: onion soup + side salad (as posted) (late on aug 15th). no av.
- aug 16th: potatoes with gravy, cheese, sour cream, bacon and dill (early on aug 17th). no av.
- aug 17th: onion soup (mid day on aug 17th) and side salad (as posted) with two pieces of toast (early on aug 18th). no av.
- aug 18th: pasta with minor subs (20), including bacon for salami (early on aug 19th). no av. no juice. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 19th: pasta with minor subs (21), including orange/lime for pineapple and bacon for salami (early on aug 20th). no av. no juice. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 20th & 21st: cereal day 1 & 2 from cycle 4 together in one big bowl. (mid-day on aug 20th)
- aug 22nd: pasta with minor subs (22), including orange/lime for pineapple and chicken for salami (early on aug 21st). no av. no juice. no broc. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 23rd: pasta with minor subs (23), including orange/lime for pineapple and chicken for salami (early on aug 22nd). no av. no juice. no broc. no red pepper. no hot sauce. i had the rest of the italian bread, and four extra pieces of brown bread with cheddar cheese, on the morning of aug 23rd and otherwise didn't eat on the 23rd. this is the bread for use with cycle 7, eaten early. 
- aug 24th: pasta with minor subs (24) (early on the 24th). this was the last of the penne and shifted the pasta source to a box of kd, for now. no av. no juice. no broc. no red pepper. no hot sauce. no pineapple. no salami. no caesar. no dill. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. one xl tim's double double.
- aug 25th: (early on the 25th) is going to be a tomato sandwich one from cycle 2 and an instant meal chicken "sidekick". no av, as it's not ripe yet.

- aug 26th: pasta with minor subs (25). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine.
- aug 27th: second tomato sandwich meal from cycle 2 with a package of (cooked) chinese noodles.
- aug 28th: pasta with minor subs (26). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. 
- aug 29th: doubled up salsa with kidney beans, cheese, spices and vitamins. cycle 2 salsa.
- aug 30th: pasta with minor subs (27). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. 
- aug 31st: first cycle 2 quinoa, with lentils subbed for quinoa and a can of kidney beans. 
- sept 1st: pasta with minor subs (28). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine.

i will need to do some more groceries at this point, if i haven't moved yet. 

missing items to be distributed through meals in the next two weeks: 

- 10 avs
- 150 g of pineapple
-  6 glasses of juice - 4 used in unlisted meals (two poutines, two cilantro rices) = 2 glasses of juice
- 2*0.5 = 1 red pepper
- 3*25 = 75 g of broccoli
- i used extra bacon on aug 19th, because i thought i'd be out the next day, so the skipped bacon was accounted for.
- i subbed the caesar for kd sauce on the 24th meal.
- extra dill and hot sauce can be forgotten about, as it is nutritionally useless. i used extra cayenne for the missing hot sauce. it was missing a zing, but good enough.

let me update my pasta recipe, to where it's at right now:

pre-prep
- on a large flat plate add -  one tomato (preferred) or four-five mini tomatoes or 100 g of canned tomatoes or 85 g of arrabiata pasta sauce or 85 g of dried boxed tomatoes or 85 g of canned pasta-style tomato sauce, one half a red pepper (diced), one avocado (diced), two cloves of garlic, one carrot, one beet, one tbsp of oregano, one tbsp of thyme, one tbsp of basil, some fresh dill (chopped). add one tbsp of processed pesto (includes italian cheeses).

- chop 150 g of fresh pineapple into small squares on a small plate. i purchased four actual pineapples at reduced price at the grocery store across the street because they were ripe, which is a good thing (who wants crunchy pineapples? it's better if they're a little soft.). i should get around 900 g 750 g of usable fruit per pineapple. i've eaten 3 of 4 of these ripe pineapples and am about to go to pineapple 4 and they are in fact nice and soft. somebody at the store really didn't get it.
- peel and segment one lime. chop each segment in half. put on same plate.
- if you can't find pineapple, you might sub with one orange and one lime, each segmented and with each segment cut in half, as i did for the week of aug 18th.

- slice and chop up 50 g of salami into small squares (i'm using spicy genoa sold in a 600 g amount). i finished the salami at pasta plate #12.  the food bank also gave me an unusual amount of frozen meat, which includes fried chicken and ground bison. i combined these for meals 13-16. i took these out after pasta meal #16 and used bacon for meals 17-21, and then tried just the chicken for meals 22-23. 24 was meatless. 25 will be bacon, again, until i am 100% certain my hormones are stable. 
- i fry the salami in olive oil margarine until a little crispy. i am cooking the bison the same way. the fried chicken is pre-cooked and i'm microwaving it. i cook the bacon in olive oil margarine as well.

- chop off the top of 25 g of broccoli florets and place on a small plate. place any stems in a bowl in the freezer, which is cumulative. this will eventually be used for broccoli soup.

- grate 100 g of marble cheese. i did use mozzarella for the week of aug 18th.

- weigh 110 g of dry pasta, preferably fettucine, but i will not be using fettucine for the foreseeable future. i went through three days of egg noodles and four days of fusilli. day eight will be half fusilli and half penne. i ate through two 900 g packages of penne from day eight to day 24, which was half kd. i will be eating through 5 or 6 boxes of kd, next. i still have several packages of spaghetti, after that.
- cook to al dente in a covered pot.

preparation:
- add pasta on top of vegetables, right out of the pot. flatten pasta.
- add 1 tbsp of olive oil margarine on pasta.
- add pineapple and lime on top of that. flatten fruit.
- add salami or other meat on top of that. flatten meat.
- add 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast, 1 tbsp paprika, 1 tbsp hemp seeds, 1 tbsp sunflower seeds (or just chomp the last one). distribute these items evenly.
- add a lot of ceasar dressing (this is the pasta sauce), and bunch it up in the middle.
- add 1 tbsp of processed pesto
- add the grated marble cheese

- microwave for 2:00

- sprinkle crushed broccoli florets
- add frank's hot sauce, black pepper, a tbsp of cayenne pepper (sprinkled).
 
served with
- serve with some bread and olive oil margarine. the food bank gave me a lot of bread, including garlic cheese buns (first up), a baguette (second), a loaf of unsliced italian bread (third) and a loaf of brown bread, which i'm finishing up with cycle 7.
- serve with tall glass of 25% grapefruit, 75% orange juice

tomato sandwich meal

my tomato sandwich recipe is as follows:

- put two pieces of quinoa/flax bread on plate
- use olive oil margarine first
- put one clove of garlic on each side
- put a half an avocado (diced) on each side
- put a tbsp of nutritional yeast, a tbsp of paprika, a tbsp of hemp on each side
- slice five pieces of cheddar cheese on each side
- put two pieces of bacon on each side
- put caesar dressing on each side
- put half a tomato, sliced, on each side
- franks & pepper
- served with 25% grapefruit/75% orange juice

i also did not explicitly type out my bacon and eggs recipe. i usually eat it with salsa, but have split the salsa into a separate meal while i eat through the food bank food:

bacon and eggs (no salsa)

- put two pieces of quinoa/flax bread on plate
- use olive oil margarine first
- put one clove of garlic on each side
- put a tbsp of nutritional yeast, a tbsp of hemp on each side
- slice five pieces of cheddar cheese on each side
- put two pieces of bacon on each side
- put two fried eggs on each side (four eggs total)
- you can add caesar or pepper as you desire. i usually don't.
- served with 25% grapefruit/75% orange juice

i need to eat first, then clean up in here then maybe do laundry.

Sunday, August 24, 2025

while the idea that we live in a computer simulation is worth thinking about for fun, a serious analysis quickly concludes that it is thoroughly debunked by the work of kurt godel. the easy way to understand godel is that it breaks the idea that the model is reality, which was disappointingly pushed heavily by stephen hawking even after godel. hawking shouldn't have made that error, but it's basically his fundamental philosophical position, and it's entirely incoherent in a post-godel framework. that said, godel really just proved what the platonists imagined thousands of years earlier (but godel didn't realize it. he hated plato.). if we live in a simulation, then the simulation is a model; it's a computer program, so it has to be inconsistent or incomplete. this is different than what godel proposed, which is that any theory of reality is inconsistent or incomplete. godel proved that you can't build a consistent and complete model of reality. but, that is exactly what a computer simulation of reality would be, so it couldn't possibly exist.

even if you could find breakdowns in space time that you could prove you can't prove exist or don't exist, and yet can observe empirically anyways, which is what would be required to exist if we live in a simulation as per godel, it still wouldn't be enough to save the idea, because the model - the simulation - could never describe everything that exists. due to godel, if we did live in a simulation, there would necessarily have to be components of reality outside of the simulation that the simulation cannot describe, which is a contradiction in terms.

you should move on from the idea. it is easily mathematically debunked with basic predicate logic.
this is more like world war one.

and i'm not dying in a fucking ditch.
the liberals seem to think this is world war two. i think they need a history lesson.

in world war two, we were aligned with the russians in a war against the germans, not the other way around.

if these pieces of shit try to conscript me, i'll burn down the fucking parliament.

i strongly disagree with this policy, and i severely reject the use of taxpayers money on killing people in eastern europe, when the government is bitching about the size of the public service. this is mismanagement on a treasonous level.

not one person should lose their job in canada to pay to fight a war in europe.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-ukraine-carney-zelensky-independence-day-kyiv-defense-funding/
the pmo is apparently upset that they weren't invited to the ukraine thing last week. they sent the foreign minister to chat with little marco, which resulted in a phone call between carney and trump.

the purpose of the meeting was to sell weapons to ukraine by using european financing. canada wasn't invited because we had no role to play in the transaction.

did canada's government really want to help finance the ukrainian military that badly?

our government is constantly utterly clueless. we keep showing up everywhere thinking we're the real hegemon, not the americans, and we're constantly making ridiculous fools of ourselves. if the problem with trudeau was a lack of political experience and knowledge, replacing him with a complete rookie that had never run for office was hardly any sort of rational solution.

it's going to take a very long time to undo this.

trump should take note that baseball caps are known to contribute to hair loss.

Saturday, August 23, 2025

everybody knows canada has the best comedians, but that doesn't mean we have a deficit of scholars. it doesn't mean we look to them for wisdom, or vote for them, or ask them for advice.

what's next?

bob and doug's accounting advice youtube channel?
tariff time! excellent!

we're really this stupid. really. 

the true north dumb and bleak.
The population of Baffin Island was 13,039 as of the 2021 Canadian census. The island, which is the largest in Canada, has one of the lowest population densities in the world, with only about 0.03 people per square kilometer.
the canadian north is a giant, barren wasteland that will cost untold billions or trillions to defend.

it's not worth it.
i want to change the narrative around "arctic defence" in canada.

the tory media is increasingly telling me i need to sacrifice things to save the arctic from russia - things like health care, and a functioning civil service.

can you explain to me why, exactly, i would give a fuck if russia conquered baffin island? because i'm struggling to care.

i think we should call the yankees' bluff on this one and keep defence spending down to focus on heathcare and education instead. if they want to protect the arctic from russia, let them do it. i don't give a damn. 
the counter-tariffs were not smart. they backfired. it was predictable. we need to adapt.
this is tricky.

the liberals are correct in pointing out that the counter-tariffs are stupid. putting tariffs on the united states is not a reaction to protect workers. counter-tariffs are also an attack on workers, or most of them are.

it is in our self-interest to determine which counter-tariffs are a shot in the foot and remove them. that is the correct thing to do - not as a concession, but because it is hurting us and it was a stupid reaction in the first place. i don't know who consults austin powers for economic advice.

however, the americans will interpret it as a concession and push back harder. that is also true, even though it isn't a concession.

tariffs are hard, and justin trudeau's not a smart guy. this is what happened.

my legs are sore from squatting yesterday. 

my workspace isn't set up and probably won't get set up here at all, so i have a tabletop on the floor where my workbench should be. i had to squat to fix the windows 98 pc. it's booting into windows 98, i just have a few more minor tasks to finish before i can put it back where it was. this is a major relief for me. i actually had a god cry when it didn't boot, but i'm under a lot of stress.

last night was so disgusting it triggered my asthma, even with the windows open. i slept all day. i'm waking up limp like i should, but i can also hear them talking when i wake up, tricking themselves into thinking their therapy was successful because i stopped yelling at them, and it's extremely disconcerting.

i had a lot of things to do this week. after i get the studio area cleaned back up, i'll need to take the gparted cd (which i was taking out of the windows 98 pc. it sits in there because the machine does have a windows xp partition, and i find the best way to dual boot is to go into gparted and change the boot partition. the only other way that i know of is to install grub in a linux partition, but i'm actually using a pata hard drive (it's a p3b-f. this is a very good asus board from the late 90s. it has ide channels, no sata. so the dvd players are ide, too. it has a floppy connector.) and it's only about 80 gb. the triple boot with a linux partition might make sense if i had a larger drive, or wanted to use two drives. but my old psu couldn't handle two hard drives and two dvds at the same time. it doesn't matter. i need the machine to run the soundblaster live! with the input bay, which i need to finish period 3 recording projects. it will need to hold out at least that long.) back to the windows 7 laptop and see if i an get my usb key back.

i need the xp partition because windows 98 has difficulty reading usb keys. it can barely read dvd players. the board has two usb 1.1 slots on the back.

i need to get out to do things this weekend, hopefully. i am feeling and looking better, i just need my hair to behave.