if you find yourself smoking so much marijuana that you barely even get high anymore, i'm going to suggest that you save yourself some money and just switch to tobacco.

at least it's filtered.

this is long overdue.

and, the current political climate around the sitting president could very well facilitate this getting through congress.

that 1973 act happened under nixon, remember.

wait.

you're not still talking about the philips curve in 2018, are you?

that was debunked like 50 years ago. which is laffier at this point?

listen: you can't get out of this by boosting interest rates and cutting spending, either. that's even worse. you'll get a recession in no time.

there's no reason for us to be paying interest on government debt.

i've posted about this at length elsewhere, but, just to clarify, if i wasn't clear: the problem that canada faced with the imf in the 90s wasn't actually about debt. it was about interest rates. it's not that we "spent too much" - that doesn't mean anything - it's that we borrowed it from banks at 15-20% interest rates.

then, chretien inherits this ridiculous debt (that ballooned under mulroney, not trudeau). but, the debt was not spurred by spending in the 60s and early 70s, it was all interest accumulated in the late 70s and early 80s...

what this did was give investors leverage over the government, because we owed them their pound of flesh. so, they started thinking they could tell us what to do.

and, thankfully, our government at the time didn't fold. it restructured, and it sold off some assets (oil, planes) but it didn't touch the social fabric of the country. harper would have. i think trudeau will, too, if we get there.

the solution is not to cut spending. that doesn't matter. and, it has it's own negative consequences, too.

the solution is to ensure that interest rates stay low, so we don't build up this external debt. or, if we find ourselves unable to control the rates, to stop borrowing from private lenders.

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/new-research-interest-rate-cuts-dont-shift-corporate-investment/

but, i mean...

i'm in favour of just using the bank of canada to print money interest free. then the market can do what it wants and i don't even care about interest rates at all.

if i was a conspiracy theorist, i might even suggest that the whole interest rate theory is just a ploy by investors to rip taxpayers off.

at the least, that is what actually happens.

trump isn't fixing something that wasn't broken.

he's breaking something that was working optimally.

and, no - a quarter percent modification of the interest rate doesn't lead anybody to change their decisions.

if interest rates have any effect at all - and i'm not even at this point - then it is purely on the level of statist brainwashing. this is gramscian theory, not economic theory.

but, what is bad about high interest rates is that it makes it harder for governments to run deficits, which just contributes to the downward spiral created by removing the stimulus.

liberals are not economic oracles, either.

but, conservatives do not understand economics.

at all.

again: you'll have to wait a few months to see what i'm saying play out. and, something else could happen to negate what i'm saying.

but, two major things happened with the market:

1) the end of quantitative easing, which should plunge the market by tens of thousands of points by the time it's done and is both structural and long term.
2) tax cuts, which should provide a short term burst that fizzles out, relatively quickly.

so, the tax cuts are having this kind of buoyant effect.

but, it's like putting a life jacket on the titanic.

or using an umbrella to protect yourself against a falling piano.

and, this is just what capitalism is.

the area we today call afghanistan was actually once the wealthiest and most advanced parts of persian civilization, rich in irrigation systems, and both at the centre of global trade routes (and perhaps of global trade, itself) and a distant refuge of learning and spirituality. those bamyan statues were perhaps the last relic of what was truly greatness.

white people right?

well, the persians kinda were white at the time, actually.

it was the mongols. they slaughtered entire cities, laying waste to the whole countryside, destroying irrigation systems, raping whatever was left and leaving desolated and expanding desertification in their wake.

it was so total, that it's never been rebuilt.

to truly rebuild afghanistan would be the legacy of a god-king. and, one might hope that that is one of the upsides of the expanding chinese dominance in the region, as they no doubt remember it as it was better than anybody else.

if you're curious, the stress i was under did lead to a nicotine relapse over parts of december and much of january. but, i turned it around at the beginning of february, and it's now been about three weeks since i had a cigarette. i'm comfortable in stating i'm back on top of this.

the last couple of days have been pretty brutal.

i've been unable to sleep for something like a week. an hour or two here and there. i've spent most of the last 15+ hours trying to sleep with no success...

this has left me with a headache and a stomach ache, both of which are being compounded by a large amount of second hand smoke coming up through a hole in the floor, which is going to need to stay open until i can get the plumbing fixed, and it is unclear when that will happen.

i feel like death.

in the mean time, i've been forced to leave every window open in the apartment, and i have no intention of closing them until i can fix the hole in the floor that's exacerbating the headache.

back at the old apartment, i pointed out repeatedly that there was no solution in moving to a different apartment, as i'd just recreate the same problems. up until last week or so, this place legitimately seemed  a lot better, but there appears to be a lot of marijuana coming up from the floors all of a sudden. i think i can fix this by taping over it. but, i have to wait until the plumbing is fixed.

i don't expect to be able to do much of anything useful until this problem is resolved, and it's unclear how long this is going to take.

but, as was the case before, there is no solution in changing apartments - as i've just demonstrated.

i really wish there was a law against smoking inside of apartment buildings...

as it is, i have no recourse but to slowly seal off all of the cracks, until they're all gone.

neither optimism nor pessimism are well defined ideas.

there is rather a choice between realism and delusional thinking.

listen, this is just a policy disagreement, minor in scope if major in consequence, and i'm not about to be bullied into quieting down on it via specious accusations or ad hominems because there are multiple horrific implications to continuing on the wrong direction with this.

hell does not exist.

but, you can follow that road lined with good intentions to it's endpoint of destitute failure, nonetheless.

now, will you acknowledge that this is a grounded, reasonable and obviously correct criticism, or will you stick your head in the sand and call me names?

(i'm aware that the majority of syrian refugees are not religious fundamentalists, but rather have been fleeing religious fundamentalism. but, special care is still required to ensure that the kids are properly integrated. and, the government isn't doing this...)

now, let's just hope their kids secularize properly, which may be difficult given how isolated and ostracised they're going to end up.

looking at the facts would have concluded that these people don't speak english, don't have marketable skills and are consequently not going to thrive here - no matter how much they really, really, really want to.

magical thinking doesn't work, kids.

as we can see...

i guess that, if you can't see that then you can't see that.

history will see that.

this is just another example of how faith leads to irrationality and poor decision making.

....and this is very much at the core of why it's so important to eliminate all religious influence from public decision making.

again: i don't care about what your opinion is, or about how something makes you feel inside. and, you shouldn't either.

what i care about - and what you should care about, too - is what the facts are, and about how the facts should guide you to make reasonable deductions.

i mean, it's nice to pat yourself on the back thinking you did something good, for whatever trivial reason, but it's really only your ego that's benefiting if an objective factual analysis concludes that everybody is worse off by your supposed act of beneficence.

and, a rational agent is just going to conclude that you're all completely insane.

see, i don't have any contempt for these people.

but, i just want you to read the article and ask yourself whether it made sense to bring them here, at great expense, and for little gain.

i'd have rather have sent the assad regime weapons to help them fight isis.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/syrian-refugee-update-1.4545226

do i seem like i want to deal with a fucking character limit?

i have to remind people once in a while that i do not and never did have a twitter account.

that's not me.

sorry.

http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/indigenous-nationhood/2018/02/trudeaus-dance-deception-indigenous-rights

you could even say that i didn't really vote for justin trudeau, so much as i voted for the ghost of stephane dion...

i repeat: the only reason i got up to vote liberal was a vague hope he'd be better on climate change.

spoiler: i endorsed trudeau for the singular reason that i thought he'd be better than mulcair on climate change.

it was a hail mary, granted. there was this infrastructure bank in the platform that has since evaporated.

it's been a disappointing several years. but, i'll stand by my claim that mulcair would have been worse.

i don't see anything i'm opposed to.

more money for science sounds good, but i don't know what that actually means. i doubt that the feminist bit ends up more than pr.

the absence of carbon transition commitments is no longer surprising but is jarring and disappointing.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/02/27/news/budget-delivers-new-conservation-fund-avoids-climate-commitments

collective bargaining is not explicitly protected in the charter of rights and freedoms.

but, it's one of those things - like abortion, in both countries - that is quasi-constitutional in scope.

it had might as well be in there...

i'd like to comment on the janus case, but this is a situation where the american jurisprudence is so different than the canadian jurisprudence that i can barely understand it.

not only does right to work not exist anywhere in canada, but i am not aware of any politician at any level even thinking about contemplating it, for the reason that it would be instant political suicide. it would be on the absolute fringe of canadian politics. in fact, one of the demands that trudeau made around nafta was that the president abolish right to work at a federal level.

put bluntly, i don't understand what free speech has to do with union dues. not even abstractly. i can normally imagine an argument, and debunk it; but, i don't think that free speech and union dues have anything more to do with each other than bananas and sauerkraut - it's just incoherent on it's face.

so, i'd have to start at the very beginning, and walk very slowly down this path. i'm no doubt going to find many, many things that strike me as basic logical errors at the very beginning of the argument, and that even the american left has taken as precedent.

the way i would analyze this, without looking at the case law, would be that taking a job means signing a contract, and that if union dues are a part of the contract then employment becomes conditional on paying them. you can't sign a contract and then pick the parts you like, and then ask a judge to scratch out the parts you don't like, claiming "free speech". you can breach the contract if you like, but that would mean your employer could fire you for breach of contract.

i'm just not able to imagine where the first amendment enters into this, or at least not on my own.

canada and america are close neighbours and everything, but this is really foreign to me.

the only "da toke-ville" i want to hear about is this...

one of these things is not like the other...

....one of these things, doesn't belong...

...can you guess which thing is not like the other, by the time i finish this song?

i've always just assumed that few people really believe the theology, anyways.

so, you can talk about a jew, a christian and a muslim buddhist walking into a bar and getting along, because none of them believe any of it, anyways. it's when they do believe it that they start fighting over it.

but, that's hardly optimal, then, is it? why don't they just drop the bullshit, so we can say "three people walked into a bar..."

https://www.alternet.org/story/149588/no%2C_atheists_don%27t_have_to_show_%22respect%22_for_religion

and, i'm going to say that again: "religious freedom" is a loophole.

i need to repeat: a secular left would be adamant that we are all equal under the law, that we all have exactly the same civil rights and that any faith or traditions one is born into are irrelevant in the face of the law. this closes the "religious freedom" loophole.

a secular left would also uphold the primacy of speech rights, no matter how offensive, over the privilege of security.

and, of course, a secular left is a left, so it would seek to maximize individual freedoms at the expense of state institutions, while balancing out income inequality and fighting systemic injustices, whatever they may be.

maybe we can talk about the means of production, too. one thing at a time...

a secular left would advocate one school system for all canadians, and keep all religion and spirituality out of it.

on immigration, a secular left would follow a strict pearsonian points system that treats race, religion & family unification as inexistent or irrelevant, in favour of much stricter adherence to educational requirements.

a secular left would not be interested in making accommodations for religious minorities, but would rather deflect that kind of thing to the conservative parties.

instead, a secular left would lay down a system of civil rights and expect that the law conform to those civil rights, regardless of whether those laws contradict those texts or not.

what i am presenting is a secular left, and then arguing that it has no common cause with a "religious left" at all, which is in truth just the same thing as the religious right. a trojan horse, if you will.

the secular left is a far less racist choice than any religious left would be, and prioritizes equal rights for everybody, regardless of what obsolete bronze age texts claim, or what internalized systems of heteropatriarchy push down.

so, a secular left is not interested in debates about abortion or queer equality.

what i want to happen is for a competition to take place and voters to make their choice: do they want a secular left or a religious one?

again: i claim you cannot have both, and that the so-called religious left should realign on the right, where it belongs.

clearly, we don't like each other, do we?

so, let's let voters decide which option they like better.

i understand that i will lose this argument with older voters, including most millennial voters. but, i think my arguments will be quite well received by younger voters, over the upcoming years.

you can choose irrelevancy if you'd prefer. what do i fucking care?

but, i mean, like anything else, the real issue here is a lack of consistency.

ask around, and you'll learn that a high proportion of people that opposed bombing isis were in favour of a united nations intervention in rwanda, and sometimes in serbia.

see, i don't believe in morals, but i do believe in rights.

and, we get to make those rights up, too - we don't need a divine source or an objective truth.

but, if we're convinced of their truths, or even their idealistic projection as truths, via whatever argumentation, we should uphold them as best as we can.

yes - that will lead to conflict. this isn't just ok. it's necessary: that conflict will propel us forwards.

leftists, after all, are all about conflict. conflict drives progress...

if you want harmony, your home is on the right.

isis made saddam hussein seem like a boy scout.

there's no contradiction in opposing the initial invasion, and yet supporting action against them.

there's this group of anarcho-pacifists, but they're broadly seen as not getting it.

anarchists are, in truth, usually very dismissive of pacifism. we're radical revolutionaries, at the core. some of us are smarter than others regarding tactics, but we know we'll have to fight the existing structure to build the world we want, at some point along the way.

sorry.

exceptionalism.

supremacism.

same thing...

there are certain segments of the left that would call you paranoid for refusing to walk into a lion's den.

what is really behind this is not arrogance but white supremacism, but it's that kind of peculiar american white supremacism that extends to non-white americans, too: you might be better off to think of it as american supremacism, but you'd be deluding yourself into not understanding it as racism.

so, despite being a brutal fascist empire that is bent on colonial expansion and has already wreaked havoc through central and eastern asia, the chinese could not possibly be a threat to america, for two reasons:

1) as they aren't white, they aren't really threatening. they're just noble savages, really.
2) white america is, of course, invincible, anyways.

you can't win the argument because it isn't based in evidence, it's based on an internalized racial hierarchy that places america at the top - and can never be altered.

america will fall. that is certain. it will be violent, and deeply unpleasant for all. so, the question is in identifying which agents are most likely to bring us to this end point.

nobody with clear vision will pick anybody other than china.

besides, you could always ask them. you might not like what they tell you, or be prepared to hear it...

it's the nature of the statement.

censoring "churchill was a racist" is unacceptable in any context, and downright maddening.

https://crimesofbritain.com/2016/09/13/the-trial-of-winston-churchill/

if churchill were alive today, he would be the most racist member of ukip in parliament.

and, only a buffoon dare quote him without extreme ironic intent.

it's not about how big the armies are...

the difference is this:

- the russians actually want to be our friends. they always have.

- the chinese want us wiped off of the face of the earth.

i'll bite tonight on north korea, but i usually don't pay a lot of attention.

the reason is that north korea is an absolute stalemate. mathemtically, tactically, strategically - there is no move on either side that is possible. and, the truth is that the nuclear deterrent doesn't really alter anything at all.

so, nobody makes any moves, because there aren't any to make.

....except the guy that doesn't understand anything about tactics, strategy or mathematics. that guy thinks he can solve the problem nobody else can, because, by the sheer magnitude of his ignorance, he is the only one smart enough to do it. over confidence is a dangerous trait for a world leader.

in this sense, trump is more jong-il than they are, themselves.

but, that doesn't mean that anybody is going to let trump actually do anything substantive. i'm going to put this down starkly: trump is more likely to get assassinated than he is to succeed in launching any kind of an attack on north korea. so, we just have to be patient about this, and hope that the chinese are wise enough (sorry....) to see the situation for what it is and wait it out.

but, let's suppose that, somehow, trump wins this argument, and the generals let him put the army guys in korea, so he can do his little tour, and pretend he's avenging the other mccarthy - no, the other other mccarthy*. then what?

i honestly don't think the chinese react, or at least not immediately. there's that river. that's the red line. and, if a more competent leader were to do this, they might have to. but, trump? no...

what the chinese are going to do is look at what happened in iraq, and try to emulate it. iran could have never removed saddam hussein on it's own. but, once he was gone, they walked into the power vacuum and have converted an enemy into an ally.

likewise, what the chinese are going to do is lay low for a little while and then take advantage of the situation on the ground. that will include taking advantage of angst from countries like south korea and potentially japan about american recklessness.

ten years after the american invasion, the korean problem will be solved - by annexation.

....and, there may be aspects of the chinese leadership that are consequently hoping he does it....

 ....but i don't expect this stalemate to break any time soon, because there really isn't a way to break it. so, on to other matters.








*the mccarthier one.

fuck this, we should seize it back.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/02/26/real-estate-canada-anbang_a_23371224/

on being beautiful, once

perhaps what this intends to illustrate is the connection between religious fundamentalism, mental illness and irrational behaviour?

i don't understand how you can relate with the male character here, at all. this is is just insane behaviour, all around. and, this man needs to speak with a mental health professional.

you seem to be mostly coming from jewish or christian backgrounds. but, this story is more important in the muslim tradition, where it informs one of the eid festivals. the narrative in the muslim tradition is a little different as well: in the muslim tradition, this is meant to celebrate abraham's faith - which, in context, presents the idea that he might actually do it as the most supreme act of righteousness possible. abraham is presented as a hero, here, and his faith as something to emulate.

i've never been able to interpret this as anything more or less than simple crazy talk. and, the only lesson i get from the story or ever did get from it when i read it as a child is about the dangers of faith, and how it can lead to poor decision making.

when i first heard the song, it reminded me of trump's campaign slogan: make america great again. but, i remember thinking that the irony wasn't cognizant in his mind. he didn't realize he was making the exact same error, or that that kind of thinking would have the exact same outcome. this is common in people of faith, that can't see through this two-way mirror, and often don't realize it's there.

after watching the video, i'm not so sure anymore. because, this can be seen as an indictment as easily as it can be seen as anything else. and, i guess that kind of ambiguity is what defines a lot of art as what it is.

mmmm....

bacon....

i mean, you could say the same thing about not eating pork.

if you lived in the desert before the invention of refrigeration, pork was probably going to make you really sick. so, that's a good rule for bronze age nomads.

but, nowadays, you can just throw the bacon in the fridge.

well, if you have electricity, anyways.

fwiw, what is my take on the origin of the story?

well, there's this interesting idea running through roman history that the carthaginians practiced child sacrifice as a part of their religious rituals. the carthaginians were a semitic people that colonized the coasts of north africa and southern spain, from home bases in modern day lebanon. the romans successfully wiped them off the face of the earth like jagmeet singh's beard must eventually be wiped off of the face of the earth, leaving nothing much at all but scattered traces and broken latin translations of their science, but it is well understood that they were the most advanced civilization of their period.

both the phoenicians and the hebrews came from cultural canaanite origins. and, it may be that this ritual of sacrifice was widespread in the areas that judaism eventually evolved in.

the timelines are very rough, but fit with a broad hypothesis that this story was meant to end an endemic practice of child sacrifice in society. the important part of the story may consequently not have had much to do with faith at all, but been more about the ram that was presented instead - the lesson being to kill the ram, not the kids.

(and, what do we call young goats?)

some caution is required, as i'm basically arguing that the ancient jews were baby eaters, and i'm aware of the path i'm walking down. but, i'm going to flip this over: the accusations are as old as history is. and, we do actually have archaeological evidence that does seem to suggest that child sacrifice is something that happened in pre-roman canaanite civilization. as far as we can tell, this is something that happened in the mists of history, even if there isn't any evidence that it has happened since.

as is the case regarding much of the bible, if that is true then it was an important lesson in the bronze age, wasn't it? how many children's lives did the story save?

but, it would also follow that the lesson we are to learn today is one of distancing ourselves from faith.

https://www.philosophybro.com/archive/kierkegaards-fear-and-trembling-a-summary

my official take on the existential literature is that i haven't spent the time exploring it for the reason that it would feel like i'm reading my own thoughts.

i know that i have an exceedingly deep connection to this - to the point that i don't feel i'd learn anything from reading it.

it's basically innate to who i am; instinct, almost.

so, i'm aware that i sound like i've read mountains of camus and kierkegaard and the rest. in truth, i've only explored it at a very cursory level.

my brain is just wired to make the same deductions, independently.  

i will get to it, eventually.

i mean, maybe that's a tactic we should be more aware of, and maybe this is one of the ways that we defeat religion, in the end. it's their own tactic. christmas, as we celebrate it, is more pagan than jewish; that's no accident, it's what the church did to convert people.

so, why don't we take their stories and turn them back around on them?

this particular story really is a powerful parable, and it really does have an important lesson about the irrationality and dangers of uncritical faith. so, let's get that lesson across to our kids.

there is an excellent parable in this story. i remember learning a lot from it - it was one of the stories that made me question the value of faith, and taught me that faith can lead to poor decision making....

so, i don't think this story should be forgotten, or that it's pages should be burned.

but, none of the religions draw the right conclusions.

the way that religion teaches this story is really a good example of the blind leading the blind.

the idea that abraham was some kind of role model is psychotic.

and, there's serious rational grounds to fear people who would suggest otherwise.

as i've said before: if somebody told me they were hearing voices, and god had ordered them to kill their child, but reversed those orders at the last minute, my reaction is going to be to call the police in hopes of medical intervention, not to throw a feast to celebrate their faith.

sorry.

i think, in the long run, we're going to realize that the big bang theory is a way to "scientize" religion, rather than truly objective or truly correct science.

as i said a few years ago, it's not a question of if an explosion happened. we can be absolutely certain that the explosion happened....

...but, it requires a leap of faith to conclude that this explosion was special, or even that it resulted in the creation of anything.

as mentioned, i tend towards this idea in m-theory that new universes are created all of the time. but, it could have very well just been something exploding.

i want to temper criticism by pointing out that the policy of coming down harder on opiate dealers is not meant as deterrence; i agree that it's not likely to reduce use, and that separate educational programs (for kids....) are required for that.

....although, i'd broadly advocate non-interference for adults. there's a point where you can't do anything for somebody besides locking them up for detox, because they've lost anything resembling free will.

no. this is about retribution.

it's about punishment.

i'd compromise on making the sale or prescription of opiates punishable equivalently to second-degree murder, and a prosecutorial shift to seeking punishment to the full extent of the law.

it depends on the drug. but, i don't think i ever suggested killing them.

a death sentence is always a problem, because we can never be sure.

but, i'll reiterate my claim that public castration is a good idea, when it comes to heroin dealers.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-telling-people-he-wants-start-executing-drug-dealers

wow.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43195977

i've said before many times that preliminary data suggests that i may end up liking the aggregate views of the next generation far more than those of millennials (which i despise) or gen x (which i prefer, but only loosely identify with).

as it is, i find myself most broadly in agreement with the children of the depression. this is my grandparents' generation. i can hardly identify as belonging to it, but these are the views i'm more likely to hold to.

and, likewise, i won't be able to identify as a child of a recession i spent my late 20s and early 30s in. but, it appears to be where my moral support is going to end up falling....

it means i have several more cycles in the wilderness. and, that's ok.

we have to guide the demographics properly, though.

a lot of my pushback is based in the idea that we're throwing away the youth vote to appeal to an unattainable fantasy (not my fantasy) - that the mainstream left is going to wake up one day and realize it's lost the younger generation by pushing this outdated burkean hippie vision of a religiously fluid & harmonious multicultural society, while young people don't even accept the reality of race any more and just don't want to talk about religion at all.

you have to get them while they're young. and, the mainstream left is in danger of permanently losing the culture war by refusing to burst it's own bubble, opening up a space in the spectrum for this reactionary "secular right".

young people may very well prefer what i'm saying to what breitbart is pushing. but, in the end, the bannonesque vision may prove more appealing than some politicized hipsterism fantasizing about a return to the 60s.

so, let's avoid this spectrum where the choice is between bannon and trudeau....

identity politics is cancer.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dont-bet-on-the-emergence-of-a-religious-left/

i'm a canadian and everything, but i would almost certainly vote third party - or not at all - in a biden-trump race.

i can't think of a single issue where biden offers an improvement in policy.

i mean, you can call me an 'uncle tom' for standing up for science if you want, but don't be shocked when i call you an ignorant nigger, in response.

this conflict is unavoidable.

secularism must reclaim the left.

conversely, if i was going to articulate an argument against the existing liberal status quo, it would be about privatizing public resources - this is my big complaint about the sitting government - and not about immigration or race.

i mean, they could fuck that up by supporting sharia courts, or something.

but, kathleen wynne & her party have been absolutely correct in their stances on this, up to now: one law for everyone...

i'm vocal about immigration - because the left needs a course correction - but it's hardly going to be something that's going to decide how or if i vote.

nor would the right present me with an opinion on immigration that i'd support, anyways. i don't think christians are better than muslims, or have some preference for white people.

race does not exist.

...& i'm both a godless liberal & secular humanist and, as i keep saying, very brown.

so, i could name 20 or 30 things off of the top of my head that are more important to me, and will have a bigger effect on how i vote, than that.

sorry.

https://chomsky.info/secrets03/

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence

but, this is a consequence of nafta being flawed.

again: wynne is right. i'm going to sound like a broken record over the next several months.

free trade with the united states, or 'reciprocity', was always a good idea. but, nafta isn't a free trade agreement, as we see happening here.

(this was not only the position of protestors, but also of the liberal party, who got this perfectly right at the time)

under an actual free trade agreement, which is what interlinked economies with comparable labour standards should strive for, none of this would be legal. and, we wouldn't be threatening retaliation, but merely upholding the law.

what nafta always was was an investors rights agreement, designed to benefit the highest levels of capital at the exclusion of workers. and, i would like to see it replaced with or superseded by an actual free trade agreement that either excludes mexico or puts conditions on it that are so onerous that it is forced to rapidly modernize.

in the mean time, we have to retaliate. it's not a choice....

https://www.thestar.com/business/economy/2018/02/21/ontario-will-not-blink-in-face-of-buy-america-policies-says-wynne.html

i guess we'll find out if 30 days is enough time for the russians to consolidate the situation on the ground, and prepare for the next round.

fwiw, i've explained in many places that the accusations against zappa regarding misogyny are simply not well grounded.

zappa does not tend to present women as less intelligent than men at all. in fact, the women in his universe are refreshingly real, in contrast to the women in much of the rest of the counter-culture. in zappa's universe, women have names, they have defined goals, they speak for themselves and they act independently of anybody's authority, often to the frustration of the men in his universe.

zappa also had prominent female members of his band, like ruth underwood.

what zappa's message really was was misanthropic. it was satire, of course. but, the core idea of his early work was not that women were stupid but that hippies were stupid. what critics tended to do was to isolate little pieces of his work, take them out of context and then present them in skewed and unrepresentative ways. it was really a hit/smear job, to the core - because his politics were threatening, and he had a really dedicated cult following.

it is no doubt true that very few of his critics really listened to much of his work. if they did, they'd realize that he presented male hippies as equally dumb.

rock music didn't really let women in as equals until the punk era. you're not going to find much 60s or 70s rock music that is more feminist than this, for example:

but, i'm going to request that you focus less on the female character and more on the satirical attack of toxic masculinity embedded in the male character.

joseph mccarthy was neither allen dulles nor j. edgar hoover

he was never inside; always on the outside.

a loose cannon.

the media was exceedingly critical the whole time; edward murrow's eventual smack down was only effective because it was the establishment position on the matter.

so, the russia fiasco is fundamentally incomparable to the red scare. the red scare was carried out mostly by conservatives at the fringe of the political spectrum, and received little support from the deep state establishment; indeed, the red scare was scary precisely because it was seen as a possible vehicle for an authoritarian uprising - and ignored by most because that couldn't happen here.

the russia fiasco is being pushed by the most resilient members of the deep state in order to take down a sitting president - a sitting president that they installed, themselves.

i understand that "mccarthyite" is more of an english word at this point, with a specific meaning. so, something doesn't have to be much like the red scare to be mccarthyite. but, it's still recent enough to bring up the history in the minds of those that know it.

generally, the cia wants you to shut up and buy shit, not cower in the corner waiting for the apocalypse. the russia narrative is a necessary evil, to stop people from putting together the actual pieces: namely that the cia fed assange the information to prevent hillary from winning. but, it's extremely uncharacteristic.

and, i wouldn't expect a parallel to this any time soon - or even to really find a good one in american history.

but, i mean, i've argued in this space that we ought to abolish parties altogether....

i think that being a card-carrying member of a political party is kind of a comical anachronism in 2018 - almost as comical as going to a religious service every week.

it's just not how people interact with politics.

i'm going to vote for my self-interest, not based on some archaic concept of tribal allegiance.

more people should do what this guy is doing.

that said,  he's not doing this right. if i were to do this, i'd vote for the least electable candidate, which would be tga.

https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2018/02/24/hes-a-green-backer-voting-in-the-ontario-pc-race-should-we-care.html

i'd probably get along with your mom better than i'd get along with you, too.

stated tersely, i believe that the third wave will, in the long run, be seen as almost entirely reactionary.

i'm somewhere in between.

but, i'd absolutely identify as second-wave before i'd identify as third-wave

i'd fall just short of the idea that the third-wave of feminism was the undoing of it. in a lot of ways, it was. i'm not buying into the idea that patriarchy can be relabelled as feminism via the power of magical thinking, so i'm broadly going to reject the idea that perpetuating patriarchy via pretending that you're in charge (which might even be the fucking kink) is somehow some kind of end to it.. i've said this before: it is your mom's feminism, for the precise reason that your mom was a feminist, and you're not. you're not even close to one. but, it's not the case across the board. this theory of "intersectionality" is just burkean conservative rebranded with an orwellian flair, but the premise of needing to expand the definition of feminism beyond the middle class was certainly long overdue.

and, yes, i'm as frustrated as the next transwoman about radical feminism's exclusionary basis, but the fact is that i'd be hard-pressed to find much of anything else that i disagree with radfems about.

i have and will continue to argue these points where necessary. it's too big a topic to lay down without prodding.

but, i'm more critical of the third wave than i am supportive of it. and, all i can say is that i hope that the next generation has better skills of analysis and independent thought in being able to deconstruct the corporatocracy's attempts to reassert patriarchy via popular media, from the truly disgusting catastrophe that is brittney spears to the pawning off of rape culture as entertainment.

why are we still talking about submission as a fetish in 2018?

50 shades of patriarchal bullshit.

don't rot your brain with this nonsense.

and, you wonder why i don't trust this party...

as i suggested months ago, the bc ndp never seriously opposed this pipeline. the ndp does not have provincial wings; the whole thing was theatre, so it would seem like bc would get something from it.

and, alberta can hardly be a large enough consumer of bc wine for this threat to have had any serious substance. it would have been more likely to hurt notley, in the long run.

now, the ndp will almost certainly lose the next election in both provinces; they never had a serious chance in alberta, and they've just stabbed their base in the back in bc.

the greens should pull the plug and force an election as soon as possible.

but, again - wynne is right. as is almost universally the case when she starts arguing with horwath.

the reason i'm posting this is that it demonstrates the point about how little influence the premier has. the fact is that the prime minister has signed a deal that benefits alberta at the expense of ontario, and there's absolutely nothing that we can do about it, here, at the provincial level, except figure out a way to adjust.

if the deal gets signed, the jobs are gone and they're not coming back. so, let's talk about what happens next, not project fantasies to confuse workers with.

and, she has every right to ask the feds for the funds, too.

although, if this keeps happening, we're going to have to start asking how long we're planning on sticking around in this country for, given that the feds are so singularly focused on alberta and simply don't seem to care about our interests here in ontario at all.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/02/22/ontario-needs-funds-to-help-weather-pacific-trade-pact-wynne-says.html

and, yes, we made the right choice in rejecting mulcair, although i would have preferred to see trudeau win a minority government, so that the ndp could hold him more accountable. that's what i wanted to see in endorsing the liberals.

the majority took everybody by surprise, because nobody expected him to sweep the east like that (and because quebec was a shit shoot).

i'm not going to actively fight the ndp in this election unless i have to, because i might need to shift at the last minute.

but, this statement is no doubt true to any left-leaning voter: kathleen wynne is as good of a premier as you can reasonably expect, or are ever going to get. horwath is certainly no improvement, from a left-of-centre perspective. and, the conservatives are always a step backwards. so, any shift in leadership at this exact time is going to lead to you being worse off.

you're probably not a robot like i am.

but, you have plenty of time to work this out.

it would be nice if an ideal option existed, but it doesn't. wynne remains the optimal & most rational choice.

(but, please continue voting ndp in ridings where the liberals are uncompetitive)

the truth is that i just don't know.

http://www.historymuseum.ca/virtual-museum-of-new-france/population/slavery/

i'm really, honesty not any more french than this guy is welsh.

it's like 1/32nd or something. if that. it may have been an adopted name.

surnames are a bad way to guess ethnicity.

https://thehumanist.com/news/national/why-are-the-poor-more-religious

i don't have a moral problem with forced secularization. and, i've said this before: if you could present a tactic to me that i believed would be successful in wiping out religion by force, i would be in full support of it.

but, everything we've tried has failed. religion is truly a virus: the more you fight it with force, the stronger it gets.

so, you need to find some other way to do this.

....not because using force is wrong (given that religion is a violent type of mind-control, i don't think it is; this is really an inversion of the logic used in the spanish inquisition, which wouldn't have been wrong at all if we actually had souls, or hell actually existed.), but because it just doesn't fucking work.

what works is poverty reduction. in the absence of scarcity, religion withers away relatively quickly. so, i promote this instead.

but, it's pragmatic, and not idealistic.

(and, no, i don't have puritanical ancestry; the only ancestry i even have here from the nineteenth century, let alone the seventeenth century, is indigenous. my european ancestors came here looking for work during the later stages of the (second) industrial revolution, not for an escape from reason during the enlightenment. and, it is the former model i would uphold the primacy of: economic migrants, not religious refugees.) 

i believe in open borders, and i don't think we should focus too much on belief in admittance criteria (it should be more about education).

but i simply don't want to be the world's dumping ground for unreformable puritans, or seen as a sanctuary for "religious freedom" in the midst of a world trying to drag these people away from their delusions.

if that upsets you, we'll have to fight about it.

see, and this is what you would expect - it's the same criticisms you hear from westerners rejecting christianity.

what i'm worried about is the possibility that the arab world's muslims may end up secularized before north america's do, because we're going out of our way to present ourselves as an escape from modernization.

in old age, am i going to have to move to iran in search of a more secular society?

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4898/the-rise-of-arab-atheism

listen.

i might be ok with multiculturalism.

but, islam isn't.

Across the country, the Muslim population is growing at a rate exceeding other religions, according to Statistics Canada. It is even growing faster than the number of Canadians identifying as having no religion, though just barely, according to the National Household Survey released Wednesday

that's old news.

but, if you still don't understand why i identify islam as the most dangerous competitor and opponent that the secular left has in front of it....

islam is the primary force that atheism needs to defeat in order to become transcendent.

and, this is the struggle that will define this century, and in which you will need to take sides on: islam or secularism.

make your choice.

i know i've made mine.

i don't want you to think i'm a clairvoyant, or a psychic or a prophet.

i reject all of these things.

i embrace being wrong, and have no intent of hiding or distorting when i was. and, a lot of what i'm going to upload was wrong - from a certain distance. that's ok.

what i'm providing is not prophesy but a logical analysis based on evidence. what that means is that the analysis is only as good as the evidence is, so if the evidence is flawed or out of date then the analysis is, too. it also means that the analysis is going to change as the evidence does.

if you're looking for absolute truth, i'd suggest searching inside your ass. stick your head in there nice and good. you'll find it, eventually. it's in there, somewhere.

is the dauphin really less trudeaumania and more beatlesmania?

you can just imagine him doing a bed-in with sophie for the canada east pipeline, right...

it's not the fucking 60s anymore.

you know, when the beatles went to india, they actually thought that john lennon was a cia agent.

just saying.

you'll see it, though.

this is what conservatives sound like, here:

"my four year economic action plan will create 1,000,000 working class jobs* for ontarians".

how?

"tax cuts!"

what?

"jobs can trickle down too, you know."

see, this is why they don't teach economics in school: so the conservatives can brainwash these uneducated schmucks to vote for them with waves of utterly incoherent nonsense.

and, enough of them will fall for it, too.






















* jobs will only be made available for fairies and unicorns.

my perspective is this...

if you want to run on "job creation" (as though governments create jobs, like this is the soviet socialist republic of ontario), and you think that marijuana regulation and student loan aid are "fringe issues", then you've just broadcast that you have no idea what a government does and have no business running to represent anybody at all.

you'd might as well just wear a shirt that says "i'm incompetent" on it.

these polls that say voters care about the economy are 100% conservative propaganda. and, the write-ups are literally following a fifteen year old template.

we live in a globalized economy.

the government doesn't make four year economic plans.

i mean, it's not like i'm unconcerned. but, i know better than to think that government policy has any effect on the job market...or who i vote for in the ontario provincial election is going to make any difference in the shape or direction of the economy.

it would be less comical if the ndp was pushing it. but, the conservatives are supposed to be about free markets.

"we need strong economic managers to stay out of the economy, and lead the way in teaching ontarians how to get the government off their backs" - average conservative voter

it's not even something you can analyze. it's just incoherent. and, it's been that way for decades.

all they're doing is mindlessly repeating what they were told.

the old adage is that all politics is local, and this is especially true, here.

this is really the reason that wynne has a chance, still - as unpopular as wynne is, the left really, really doesn't trust the ndp.

so, the liberals can hold their base, and hope that they got an opportunity.

https://socialistaction.ca/tag/andrea-horwath/

to be clear: i still think the liberals can win this election.

...because it's becoming clear that no large movement to the ndp is happening.

i'm clearly offside with public opinion: i actually like wynne, and rather dislike horwath. wynne comes off as genuine, if flawed. horwath is an absolute flake. i don't believe a word that horwath says, for better or worse.

the reality is that the liberals have a better record than the ndp does.

but, the fact that the ndp aren't moving means that wynne still has enough of a base to build on. if the ship starts sinking, that will be what it looks like; if she can stay above water, she can strike.

so, if the liberals win, it's going to be because the province makes a last minute and very sober decision to vote for somebody they don't like, but has policies they prefer. that's dangerous. it's rare. but this is a bit of a weird place; this has happened before, here.

polls always overshoot the tories. it's especially bad in this province; i suppose we've all forgotten the last election. and, we still have huge numbers of undecideds...

...but it's getting a bit dire.

if they ran a leadership convention tomorrow, i might even buy a party membership to vote for dion to replace trudeau...

of course, all science is always wrong.

you know that, don't you?

that's we why love it...

this is just a friendly reminder that newtonian physics has been superseded by the theory of relativity. it doesn't matter much on small scales, so we keep using newtonian physics in engineering. but, when you're talking about large scales like those used in planetary mechanics, newton was simply completely wrong.

jupiter's pull on the earth is not large. but, deducing that it is therefore negligible is classical thinking - it's wrong.

rather you want to think of the solar system as a number of objects suspended in a kind of ether. no, i'm not bringing back the ether (einstein disproved the ether.), but it was a useful conceptual idea for so long for a reason. you don't want to think in terms of equal and opposite forces (although they're there). you want to think in terms of plucking a string.

so, imagine that jupiter and earth are connected with a string. it would be a a very thin string, granted. but, plucking it is going to set of all kinds of vibrations, which are going to propagate in all kinds of directions. and, it's the fields that are going to interact - not in terms of how strong the inverse law is, but in terms of what the change is.

so, it's not |g| that's important. it's delta g that's important. and, it's also delta g that's unpredictable.

for, removing even the smallest piece of a jenga tower can take the whole thing down.

my position is that it's an active research topic. you're better off looking it up than listening to me. but, throwing away tidal drag when it is an active research topic is just ignorant.

i merely seek to draw your attention to your ignorance.

do i think the liberals would be leading in the polls if they had switched leaders a few months ago?

probably, yeah.

what about kathleen wynne? does she have a strategy?

no.

i mean, not a serious one. she just has to stay on message and hope for the best. there isn't a policy or an announcement - at least not from her - that's going to change the outcome of the election.

my position, made here, is that she should have resigned many months ago. she decided not to.

the one thing i would request is that you refrain from making deductions about shifts in political directions in this province. her unpopularity is hers - not her party's and not the broader left's.

her policies are actually quite popular; it's the spokesperson that isn't.

i have no real advice for her other than to try and conquer via division.

"so, when are you going to grow up?"

i'm not going to "grow up".

but, i can write you an essay about how the state tries to use time as a coercive mechanism to push down conformity, if you'd like.

"growing up" is just another way to say "selling out". religion used to plan people's lives out for them, in the form of "sacraments" that celebrated checkpoints on the path, as the bureaucrats laid it out. marriage is important because it leads to a new generation of taxpayers. and, the purpose of labour is of course, to pay taxes.

out of all of the things that we're going to need to abolish in order to become truly free, this capitalist concept of "adulthood" that we've erected, which is truly when a human starts to pay out in becoming a taxpayer, is one of the most fundamentally important concepts to jettison, because it is so fundamentally irrational and so fundamentally enslaving.

and, if that kind of talk bothers you, then congratulations: you have been successfully brainwashed to the correct condition.

p.s. you're late for work.

in case i came off as confusing, i'll point out that balcony seats at the dso are only $15 (usd) - less than most of the rock concerts i attend.

and, you know - you're there to listen.

orchestras are the exception for me in terms of larger venues. i wouldn't want to see a rock band at that venue....

the ranking here is uk: 6, turkey: 8.

but, this is due solely to the uk's nuclear deterrent.

look at the actual numbers. it's not even close.

i'll remind all of you closet white supremacists that, despite not having a nuclear deterrent, turkey is, in fact, widely acknowledged as the second most powerful part of the nato alliance - an alliance that includes france and the uk - and a serious standing army, in it's own right.

you've probably heard that california would be the sixth largest economy in the world.

well, outside of nato, turkey would be in the top 5 militaries.

this is a serious, well-equipped force. it's a very large force.

and, the idea that it would have any issues with what it's up against is a joke, if it were waging the war with any serious intent.

and, i reiterate: i have never seen a gun before, and hope i never do.

no, i won't backtrack, i'll double down, and i'll push back for the next thirty years, if that's how long it takes for you to figure it out: a war on guns in america will be no more successful (and not very different from...) a war on terrorism or a war on drugs: it will utterly fail in it's intent, and lead to another flimsy excuse for the mass incarceration of black people.

i'm not prophetic.

i'm just not stupid.

oh, and the media blackout on doug ford is just demonstrating that the elite tory media is completely out of touch with it's base.

but, that's been obvious for decades.

as an aside, ctv has now taken out at least two politicians (the other was stephane dion) in obvious collusion with backroom tory and liberal hacks [i've always believed that it was ignatieff that took out dion, not harper].

as a country, we have a responsibility to treat the organization as untrustworthy, across the board.

this needs to hurt them, in the long run. not because i care about patrick brown. but because i care about journalistic integrity.

and who is responsible for this crisis, caroline?

the shock doctrine was not meant to be a user manual.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/02/23/pc-party-in-crisis-says-caroline-mulroney.html

to clarify: the monkey for a president was bush.

person 1: i feel more open-minded & loose; it 'took the edge off' and helped me relax.

person 2: i feel scattered & unable to focus, like somebody put my brain through a blender, and dropped me 40 iq points in the process.

in fact, these people are describing the same thing, it's just a question of whether they're enjoying it or not.

i like marijuana at concerts.

i don't like marijuana when i'm reading or studying.

yeah.

i think at the end of the day, we're going to conclude that neanderthalensis was no more different from sapiens than a zulu is from an amazonian.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-cave-paintings-clinch-case-for-neandertal-symbolism/

this is what i actually feel like: like i inhaled adhd.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/childhood-adhd-linked-to-secondhand-smoke/

besides negative effects, i would not actually expect clinical trials to show a difference between microdosing and sugar pills.

this is the placebo effect at work.

fwiw, the idea that you don't get hungover from marijuana is a myth.

but, it's a different kind of hangover - not in your muscles, but in your forehead.

i find that the effects of second-hand marijuana smoke, or "microdosing" if you will, are like skipping the high and jumping right to the hangover.

the dso is doing la mer (+ more) this morning, but i'm just not feeling up to leaving the house in the rain.

the neighbour on the one side is smoking skunk weed like incense. it's not every day, but it's annoying when it happens. if it was just an odour issue, i'd spray something back, but the effects of second hand marijuana smoke are not enjoyable: headache and tiredness, without any hint of inebriation.

i will be agitating to have the laws changed so that you're only allowed to smoke outside. this is two nights in a row where i feel like shit in the morning, and am crashing early because of it. and, it's no doubt the ultimate reason why i'd rather go to sleep than go to the symphony.

but, this is one of the most important pieces of music in the history of western civilization. i hope they do it justice...

marijuana is fun once in a while. but, i've never been and will never be a daily smoker. i would rather be sober. and, it's really a crime to take that choice of sobriety away from people by smoking inside.

just go outside with it, people.

orange juice?

no, orange drink.

this could have been done in such a way that everybody had fun....alas....

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/22/us/nyu-kool-aid-watermelon-menu-black-history-month-trnd/

i don't know if my bike is still there or not.

but, i guess i'm bringing it home, next time i'm there, if it is.

this is huge, for me.

https://www.citywindsor.ca/residents/transitwindsor/Routes-and-Schedules/Tunnel-Bus-to-Detroit/Pages/Tunnel-Bus-to-Detroit.aspx

if you live in the world of empiricism, you should quite clearly see that the new york times is a far less reliable source than russia today.

when did rt publish false information designed to mislead the public into war

*crickets*

but, if you're brainwashed, here you go:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/world/middleeast/syria-afrin-kurds-ypg.html

if turkey is serious, it will proceed to completely demolish a bunch of syrian irregulars.

it's like sending the mounties to expel a division of american tanks.

but, the mounties could secure a city in saskatchewan well enough, too. that's what the northwest mounted police were for, right?

so, when the turks don't demolish these syrian irregulars, it should get the point across clearly enough.

this is a successful russian psy-op: they got the kurds to welcome the syrians as liberators.

and, the turks played their part quite well, too.

the only remaining question is whether the tillerson-led state department is dumb enough to believe what the turks are saying, or if they're only pretending to be dumb enough, because they've just given up.

either way, the turks are lost.

https://www.rt.com/news/419604-afrin-assad-demonstration-militias/

"so what if i never graduated high school?

that's just high school.

i have a master's degree in hindu studies!

so, you should take me seriously, when i speak."

you need money to make money....

so, the rich get richer & the poor get poorer.

does that mean you're better off playing the lottery than getting a job?

well, you tell me - how many tickets do you need to buy?

i'll tell you, flat out, that you're not getting ahead through labour. that's the bullshit nonsense that conservatives call the "american dream", and is just a lie to get you to pay taxes.

if you look around, people get ahead though luck, not hard work. it could be the family you're born into. it could be the friends you meet. or, maybe you just have a clover stuck up your ass.

but, i just want to point something out.

what i'm describing to you?

that's how the world works. that's how people make money. that's how banks operate. it's how stocks trade. it's what finance is.

trying to make money from hard work is impossible, and a trap that only fools fall into.

in ontario, you only need to take math up to grade 9.

it's quite depressing.

as a consequence, i am the only (or, hopefully, merely first) person in my extended family that has ever taken math past grade 9.

so, if you have a lottery with 6 numbers, and you play once, you have a one in a million chance of winning.

what does that mean?

that means that the number you picked is one out of the million possibilities that might come out. so, if you play twice, you have a two in a million chance. if you play 500,000 times, you have a 50% chance. and, if you play all million numbers, you can't lose.

so, if you have the money to put down on every single possibility, and the payout is higher than it costs to play every single number, that is free money. if the tickets are $2, and the payout is $10 million, you can win an easy $8 million (minus taxes...) by putting down that $2 million investment.

now, consider a system where you can also win if you get three, four or five of the six numbers right. then, you wouldn't only win the $8 million. you'd also win every way you could win - which, depending on the rules, could, in total, be more than the jackpot. but, those rules would also produce duplicates that you wouldn't need to play twice.

if you were a mathematician with a programming background, you could calculate a collection of a few thousand numbers that you could play in order to give you a greater than 50% chance of winning. that doesn't guarantee a win every time. but, it does produce a positive expected value, if you do it repeatedly, and know when to stop.

this doesn't help poor people, because you would need thousands of dollars to put down. and, unless you have a very technical background, you're not going to be able to do this.

but, a broke musician with a math degree might take advantage of this, should they be able to raise the $5000-$10000 necessary to put down on it.

it might be hard to convince the people around them, though. especially, if literally none of them passed grade ten math.

no, i don't support giving teachers guns; i've been clear that i think this is a cultural problem, that will neither be solved by more guns or less guns (this is all supply-side economics...) but by changing how people think - by modifying demand.

but, america is stubborn. and, frankly, pretty stupid.

so, what are some better ideas than putting guns in schools?

1) apparently, one of the scenarios that comes up often is that teachers end up stuck in rooms, waiting for the shooters to come through the doors. what if they could lock the doors? tightly? wouldn't that help? at the least, it would cost a lot of bullets to get through the door.

2) i don't want cops in schools any more than i want teachers with guns. but, there are ways we can use technology to our advantage. if they had weaponized drones in strategic, but hidden, places, and a couple of trained operators, shooters could be taken out remotely. teachers could have emergency buttons to push that would set off alarms.

3) i've always wondered why nobody ever uses the sprinkler system in this kind of situation. it could very well be enough to neutralize a shooter.

i think what i'm getting at is that it's not hard to come up with better ideas than giving teachers guns...

yeah.

zero fucks.

justin, just get out of the way so the party can salvage the next election. this isn't your fault, really. they should have never let you run.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/feds-use-taxpayer-money-to-fly-celebrity-chef-to-india-1.3814009

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Action.html

in the distant future, people will look back and wonder what the root cause of america's decline was.

and, very few will look to the system nixon created, which was really an effect rather than a cause.

the root cause of america's decline was the anti-intellectualism attached to the hippie movement. and, i don't mean the anti-war movement or the civil rights movements - these were things that might have succeeded (in fact, both failed) had they been attached to a strong union movement with an interest in scientific advancement.

but, the hippies rejected all of that in favour of a mindless collapse into vacuous spiritualism, individualistic selfishness, environmental catastrophism and simple magical thinking, then called it a "social revolution".

in truth, the hippies were the most backwards, reactionary force that the world has ever known. and, they ruined america's chances to have an actual social revolution - not for a generation, but permanently. it was roughly 1970 that we stopped evolving as a society.

zappa was a visionary. and, you should interpret him as a historian as much as an artist; it is his narrative that will survive, as future generations look back not just in horror, but in anger. for the failure of the hippies is historic, given where they existed in time.

they really were the most important generation. but, they blew it.

so, the russians are reporting that syrian troops are in afrin, and there was no turkish attack on them.

this passes my bullshit detectors.

but, i have to admit that i expected the russians to wait until their positions were more secure before they went full bond villain. and, this may actually be an error on their behalf...

if you're curious, i actually think the apocalypse already happened in the seventh century.

anybody standing in the levant at any point between the appearance of the romans and the rise of the muslims would see, as clear as day, that there was going to be a massive battle between the romans (west) and the persians (east) and that it would end the world as they knew it. it's not a particularly deep prophesy.

would you call me a prophet a thousand years from now if i predicted a catastrophic war between america and russia and, in the end, it actually happens?

(and, recall that these texts are not as old as they claim to be)

it boggles my mind when americans try and argue that the biblical east is russia, because, standing in jerusalem, moscow is actually to the west.

the east was always persia...

....and the war already happened.

so, where is the messiah? did we go through 1000 years of hell? please...

but, it happened, and god didn't come back, so can we carry on, now?

i don't want trudeau to lose the next election, so much as i want him to step down before the next election and be replaced with somebody else in the party.

the ndp are worse than a joke, they're so incompetent as to even appear unelectable from the perspective of a far left voter. the greens aren't actually a real party. and, the conservatives are no more of an option than they've ever been.

the best outcome is to replace trudeau.

no, you don't...

i'm not any of your labels.

i'm disenfranchised.

i have been the whole time.

but, it's just getting worse.

i'm going to line up on the side of people arguing that trudeau walking around in indian robes (do indians even dress like this any more?) is akin to some kind of black face.

as is the case with so much of what trudeau does, this isn't just ham-fisted. it's blatantly racist.

there is no end of history; nor does history move in one direction.

you can call it a step backwards if you want, but it's only relative to a contrived scale that only exists in your mind.

there is neither a forwards nor a backwards to step towards, or even an anthropomorphized entity which can take steps.

fuck teleological hegelianism.

http://www.weijingsheng.org/doc/en/comfacism.html

china is even the most accurate representation of corporatism in the actual meaning of the term: more accurate than mussolini, and certainly far more accurate than hitler.

yes, china is a fascist state.

that's the technically accurate description.

russia is a kind of illiberal democracy. and, america is an oligarchy, in the old european feudal sense.

but, china is a textbook fascist dictatorship.

and, i'm sorry if that upsets you, but it's the actual truth.

i am sometimes indecisive, but i do not bluff.

you could say i'm ideologically opposed to bluffing. or, i can just tell you that i simply don't have time for that kind of fucking bullshit. i want full transparency and total honesty, and i'm more likely to just treat you like an insect than i am to "make a deal" if i conclude you're not trustworthy.

and, don't call my bluff, at least not to me. if you think you're calling my bluff, what you're actually doing is increasing the chances that i pull the trigger, because i'm likely to spend less time thinking something through once my sovereignty as an individual is challenged. the act of telling me that you don't think i'll do something is pretty much guaranteeing that i will actually do it.

but, i'm not interested in erecting elaborate plans for self-interest or world domination. i project myself as honestly and as plainly as i can, and i will very quickly escalate to treating you as a non-person if i don't get the same respect in return.

liars aren't people.

the temperature outside has fallen, and the heat is working, but i don't understand what happened well enough to react.

the next time that happens, i'll have to hit the heaters in the hallways immediately in order to do some further testing.

i mean, there's three possibilities:

1) the heat was turned off, building-wide.
2) management turned the heat off in the hallways, and that in turn turned my heat off.
3) a tenant did (2), rather than management.

i had initially assumed (1). but i'm currently leaning towards (3).

what i will say is that i fully expect this to happen again in mid-march or early april, and while i'd rather not wait, i feel like i must.

i suspect that most (all) people that want to legalize heroin have never actually known a heroin addict.

there are two drugs that i have no patience for, and you shouldn't, either, and they are opiates and methamphetamines.

these are drugs that nothing good can come out of, and that the community needs to fight with every tool available.

and, affected communities will tell you that, too. i don't know what communities in canada are particularly affected by heroin. but, mr. singh better bring bodyguards, if he wants to spread his message to affected communities in the united states - and i suspect there are a few in canada that would be just as dangerous.

campaigning on legalizing crack in certain (mostly black) areas of the united states could very well get you murdered by concerned parents, who are just going to look at you like another dealer.

it's pretty much the dumbest, least populist thing i could imagine a politician doing.

if we can get marijuana passed, and i don't think it's happening, we could look at legalizing mdma next. access to safe mdma, which is harmless, would actually save lives, as it is difficult to find; almost all e on the market is some combination of cocaine and meth, which is in fact a deadly combination, and should be done by nobody.

legalizing mdma would be the most substantive policy - more substantive than marijuana, because nobody dies or otherwise gets their life ruined from bad or mislabelled pot.

another drug that could be legalized more or less immediately with minimal negative side effects is psilocybin.

there is a category in between, and it includes cocaine & lsd. you can hurt yourself on these drugs, but you probably won't. that makes them less like pot or mdma (which are less dangerous than aspirin) and more like alcohol. to be reflective of empirical evidence, the level of restrictions around alcohol, cocaine & lsd would need to be a little higher than those around marijuana, mdma or psilocybin.

fine.

but, don't even talk to me if you want to normalize heroin use.

something else i've said is this, and please quote me on it:

the aim of the british empire was to use weapons to open up markets for it's exports; the aim of the american empire is to use markets to open up exports for it's weapons.

i just want to add that america's absent strategy is actually it's strategy: america does not want anybody to win, and does not want peace in the region, but is playing everybody off against each other in order to create instability and fuel further conflict.

the status quo is america's endpoint.

so, don't be surprised if they end up harder to get out of the region than makes any sense, although i'll agree that they've burned so many bridges that they're running out of rivers to cross.

pick your cliche.

the policeman is not there to create disorder. the policeman is there to preserve disorder.

but, i also like to point out that iran is on to something in calling america the great satan. for, this is what satan does, in the mythological literature: he divides and conquers.

and, that's why people find it so hard to get their head around it. america is supposed to be the good guy, supposed to have an end point.

http://www.atimes.com/article/afrin-marks-point-collapse-american-influence-syria/

no, i need to wait - because i need to experiment.

there's four floors in the building, stairways at opposite ends and a heater on each floor at each stairway, which is how many heaters?

i bet 30% of you can't figure that out.

but, i went around and turned them all on. then, the heat comes on in here about a half hour later.

it might be a coincidence. or it might be cause and effect. but, if i can just turn the heat back on in here by flipping the switch in the hallway, that's a lot easier than taking somebody to court.

i overheard somebody talking about their heater being connected to the ones in the hallway.

it also proves wrongdoing on behalf of somebody in the building. but, it expands the number of suspects to everybody in the building. i mean, i could be undoing what another tenant did.

if that's the case, and we can figure out who it is, i could maybe get the building on my side in coming down on them.

as before, this isn't about money. i just want the heat to work...

what i need to figure out is if my heater is connected to the ones in the hallway or not; if it isn't, i'll have to push back. if it is, i guess i have a fight with another tenant on my hands - one i intend to win, but one that is very different in scope.

ok, i've got something coming in the pipes, now. that's an improvement.

i'm going to have to put out a letter of some sort tomorrow, one way or another.

Feb 21, 2017

To The Management of ===================,

On the day of February 20th, 2017, some time between 7:00 am and 2:00 pm, the heat at =============== was apparently completely shut off, building wide. As of the morning of February 21st, there is neither heat in my apartment on the fourth floor nor is there any heat in the foyer.

As you are no doubt aware, provincial legislation on this topic states that heat is an essential service that must be provided from Sept 1 to June 1. As a tenant, I consequently expect to be able to access the heat in my apartment, at will, over this period, as that is what I am legally entitled to.

I do not believe that this was an accident, but rather a cost-saving mechanism.

As such, you have 24 hours to obey the provincial law before I file the appropriate paperwork at the Landlord and Tenant Board, seeking an order that you obey the law along with a pro-ration of my february rent for services not rendered.

Should the situation arise again, I will jump immediately to litigation.

While I do not seek conflict, I cannot accept a management decision to turn the heat off when it is barely 15 degrees outside, given that this is causing me great discomfort and it is simply blatantly illegal to do so. I am concerned about the implications of this policy in the spring and fall. To avoid further conflict, please simply obey the law, moving forwards.

still no heat.

this is what i'm going to do...

i'm going to write a letter to the landlord accusing the building of turning the heat off in february - which is never legal - and explaining that i expect to be able to access the heat in the apartment, at will, between sept 1 and june 1, which is what the law says.

if the heat turns on overnight, this letter will also state that i will file the appropriate grievances to the landlord and tenant board the day of noticing the heat being turned off a second time.

however, if the heat does not turn on overnight, the letter will explain that they have 24 hours to turn it on, or the complaint will be filed on the next day.

i'm willing to put this in the official deathtokoalas platform:

the penalty for selling opiates of any kind, including prescription opiates, shall be to be roundly beaten the shit out of in the public square by a group of vetted volunteers.

yes, it's a public health issue.

no, it shouldn't be legal.

note that i'm stopping short of calling for public castration - which, in this case, is actually somewhat of a good idea.

an anarchist society would not legalize heroin, it would rather round up all of the heroin dealers and communally break their fucking faces in.

and, with that, i'm going to retire my insistence that jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

see, here's the thing: the ndp has a 0% chance of forming government so long as their leader has a beard. it was the same thing with mulcair, who lost for two reasons:

1) canadians don't want a balanced budget amendment.
2) canadians don't trust people with beards.

as somebody on the outside of the petro-state, i would like there to be a competitive option on the left.

the ndp will not be a competitive option so long as that beard is in the way.

hence, jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

but, heroin legalization is a non-starter - and without a serious option to vote for, i probably won't do so in 2019.

so, that's the end of that.

there is no fucking way i'm voting for any person or party that wants to legalize heroin for personal use.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i just want to throw this out there: the conservatives in ontario have a base, but you'll note that the very name of the party - progressive conservative - indicates that this base can at times be rather restive about the party taking centrist positions, and that there have historically been serious revolts amongst conservatives on the right, here in canada.

the biggest example is the reform movement, which revolted hard against mulroney. harper's distance from mulroney really wasn't about those envelopes: his base despised him. what do old reform voters think of his daughter? and, would they vote for her if she won?

(she won't win, unless everybody else gets banned from running)

our conservative parties tend to act more like a hillary clinton than they do like a ted cruz; they reach out to the right in a kind of superficial way by erecting left-wing strawmen and bogeymen, ultimately governing in a kind of corporatist manner, rather than from the back of a bible. they privatize things, cut services and still find ways to run deficits; they run governments into the ground. but, they don't tend to go after minorities or queer people. it's just not cultural, here.

that far right component of the base does exist, though.

so, who is in the spectrum that might take advantage of this?

that's a question, actually. i don't pay much attention to the far right in ontario.

i don't think social credit ever did well in ontario, but it is the origin of the far right in canada. i know that there is a christian heritage party that has historically done relatively well in the rural areas. the thing is that the pcs win a lot of these rural areas by 40% anyways, so it doesn't matter much if the chp gets 20%, when the conservatives get 60% (and the liberals get 15%),

again: doug ford doesn't live in this part of the spectrum. he has far more appeal to urban immigrants than he does to rural farmers. i mean, they'll probably vote for him, sure. but, if you sit them down, they'll probably complain that he's not much of a christian, and they're only doing so because the liberals are so godless.

but, tga appears as though she might. she might even be in the wrong party, really. and, it's an interesting question as to what kind of ruckus she's going to end up causing on the far end of the party's spectrum, as well as what kind of swing vote really exists there.

in a close election that comes down to a few seats, the chp could make a difference.

hey - the socreds once triggered an election at the federal level, when joe clark (in the same ideological camp as the mulroneys) refused to enter into a coalition with them, and couldn't pass a budget.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.