this is closer to the operating mindset that the government should be adopting in dealing with the demographic problem.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/genymoney/geny-millennial-employment-jobs-canada/article34867183/

again: i'm in favour of a pretty open free trade deal with the united states (not nafta. a free trade deal.), but think we need trade realism with mexico until they reform their system to allow for labour rights - and would support policies designed to coerce them into doing so.

we can't have a bilateral free trade deal with mexico. it's incoherent, in it's face.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-withdrawl-from-nafta-is-back-on-table-wilbur-ross/article34934318/

but, i'd rather see them abolish the tax exemption than write laws that restrict political activity. how can a charity not be political? and, how can a church not be political?

of course, if you take a look at who was affected by the conservative law, what you see is a lot of things they were opposed to. they didn't just go after environmental groups (who are universally disappointed with this government - don't think this is helping friendly parties. this government is getting sued from every direction for carrying on the policies of the previous one.), they also went after overseas abortion providers and were particularly harsh on pro-palestinian groups.

so, i don't oppose lifting political restrictions on charities. it's hardly an issue i'm passionate about, but whatever. but, i am in very strong opposition to the idea that donations to charities should be tax exempt.

here's the thing: when you make donations to charities tax-exempt, what you're doing is evading social responsibility for your policies, and making it contingent on a set of ideological principles. so, you end up perverting anti-poverty work into religious proselytizing. and, you allow people to divert what should be redistributed tax money into institutions that are potentially oppressing people.

i've made life choices for myself that have left me in perpetual poverty; there's a trade-off on this, in that i never need to be anywhere in the morning. i'd rather be poor. and i don't currently need to use food banks. but, i shouldn't have to deal with a religious person in order to eat - in whatever abstraction that is. these kinds of services should be run by secular groups and open to everybody without any basis of coercion.

this is an extreme example, but i've heard stories (primary sources.) about religious compounds in haiti literally exchanging food for conversion. don't think this kind of coercion is a scare story. it's a reality in the developing world. and, it's only possible because the secular society isn't doing what it needs to be doing in order to prevent it.

of course, charities can also be used as money laundering fronts...

....but i'm really more interested in ensuring that these resources end up collectivized, and directed by popular consensus, rather than left up to the individual whims of wealthy donors, who may or may not be acting in the public good.

http://www.torontosun.com/2017/05/08/charities-too-political-under-trudeau

the more i think about it, i have to point out that it seems like the laptop was already damaged before i opened it.

to begin with, it had been emitting a foul odor for quite a while. the smell was like burning dust, though, so it wasn't clear if it was blown or just dirty.

to be clear: the fan needed to be cleaned, i knew it needed to be cleaned a good while before i actually opened it and when i did open it up i took out a huge pile of dust that was clearly preventing it from spinning. in fact, i may have exacerbated the problem by running a lysol wipe over the vent, thereby dropping the dust off the vent and down into the fan. what i'm thinking is that i may have been too late: the clogged up fan may have already damaged something before i opened it up.

i was also dealing with some strange issues around the usb ports on that side, and what seemed like a possessed touchpad. i actually suspected that i might be dealing with some kind of cia keylogger that was trying to force me to use the touchpad to navigate. see, i use a usb mouse, because i'm old enough that i'm not touchpad-native. well, it's a term, now. it's not just that i'm old, it's that i spent a very large amount of time typing as a teenager and really held to it. at this point, i'll never get used to any kind of mobile device: i need a keyboard and i need a mouse. this is non-negotiable. i'll throw the thing through a window before i start using a touchpad...

if the cia were using some kind of windows backdoor, it would probably be written to utilize the touchpad driver, which is for both typing and pointing. so, my insistence on a usb mouse may have accidentally broken their surveillance software.

i fixed it by disabling the driver altogether. but, it's just as easy to conclude that the hardware was malfunctioning due to faulty wiring.

but, the usb port on that side also got sticky when it was hot. this was repeatably demonstrable, too: whenever it warmed up, i would need to push the usb connection upwards. that's an obvious electrical short.

the fact that the fan stopped may itself have been at least as much of an electrical problem as it was a dust problem.

so, it's hard to say how long it would have remained functional had i not opened it, or if it was even functional at all at that point in time. and, i'm not retreating from the claim that the design is horrific - nor am i the first to make the claim. but, on closer introspection, i think it's obvious that the thing was already in rough shape, and if it wasn't already broken, it probably could not have survived any disassembly at all.

i need to reiterate that i knew what i was doing and did not do anything that should have led to a short. it was either already broken, or impossibly fragile - or, potentially, both.

i need to spend the rest of the day getting documents together.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1159404#answer-966458

i can imagine a row of preachers lined up on a fast rising coast line, and citizens walking towards it, in single file, and carefully volunteering to be baptized - before they are thrown into the crushing current.

they're not dying, they're just going to the next life!

a helicopter pan zooms upwards, to reveal the gulf of mexico full of floating dead bodies.

the lord works in mysterious ways.

as the flood waters rise in the american south, they will stand in the water, knee-deep and bible in hand, and question imaginary creatures in the sky as to what it is that they did that created such wrath.

they will not consult the science. they will not mitigate. they will not adapt.

what they will do, instead, is pray.

some will pray for forgiveness, whereas others will welcome the end times, comfortable in their own self-righteousness and awaiting a future of eternal life. all of it as the byzantines did centuries earlier, as the barbarians closed in from all sides.

such is the inevitable downfall of a society rooted in faith.

and, if there is somehow a god, such stupidity is truly worthy of it's wrath and contempt.