and, as soon as i mention that the smoke clears out, it starts back up again.

do you know what i honestly think? i think that there's a cop up there with a fucking pathetic attitude towards life (not to mention a really fucking shitty job) that is so worthless to the world that they enjoy harassing me.

and, i also think that that worthless, piece of shit cop up there should put a fucking bullet through her own worthless, piece of shit head. the world would be better off.

the air's cleared up a bit since this morning.

for the sake of pointing it out somewhere, is $1000/month a gimmick? yes. that's not going to accomplish anything, whatsoever. you'd might as well just pass a tax cut for landlords, which is where the idea, as he's promoting it, really came from.

i've talked a lot about a gai in the past, but i wouldn't want to implement it as a dividend like that. so, no, i'm not in favour of sending everybody the money, that's just going to create inflation. the post-work anarchist position has little patience for these arguments about labour being an escape from poverty (that's hilarious. really.) or this idea that you just need to send people to school to eliminate poverty (i don't want a bourgeois office job, dammit!), but it doesn't see the idea as a dividend. it's more just a way to rebrand welfare as a livable subsidy by having it swallow things like disability payments and artist's grants.

i don't reach much friedman, so i might be getting the idea wrong, but the gai as a negative income tax is more along the lines of the way that post-work anarchists see this implemented. so, you'd do your taxes at the end of the year, and if your income is below a certain level then you get a top up to the minimum.

so, let's set the minimum to $30,000. if your taxable income is $30,001, you'd get nothing. if your taxable income is $15,000 you'd get a $15,000 subsidy, either in a lump sum or via monthly payments. and, if your income is $0 you'd get the full $30,000 in subsidies.

so, the idea is that (1) you make sure that the minimum is livable and (2) you give it to everybody, whether they have a job or not. it's a literal guaranteed minimum amount of income, whoever you are. further, you'd have to tie it to inflation to stop the landlords from cashing in on it.

just sending everybody $1000 is pointless, and the unavoidable conclusion is that the candidate is either using it as a gimmick to win votes the way that many candidates float around tax cuts or legitimately doesn't understand the point of the policy.

he didn't go to work last week, and it doesn't look like he's going to work this week, either.

he's mentioned that he's "depressed". well, maybe he should stop sitting around smoking pot by himself during weekdays, then? i don't get it...this reinforcing pot habit, it's just flat out stupidity. you're depressed, so you take a drug that science is very clear increases depression. then, you keep complaining. because you're stupid, ok? that's the fact of it - you're just a fucking retard.

what i "get" is that i need to get away from here, because you can never trust an addict, and because i don't have the patience or mental stability to handle being around them.

i took a good initial run through, and i don't actually see anything obvious happening for the rest of the month.

so, if i end up staying in for the month, that means i'm not smoking for the month. and, i expect that the lease obligations - obligations - be properly upheld, or i'm going to flip.

my habits outside of the property have absolutely no legal, moral or logical consequence on the lease that was signed, or my legal rights around having those lease obligations properly upheld. i didn't sign a non-smoking lease by accident. it wasn't a coincidental request. it was the only important part of the agreement.

tell yourself i have a split personality if you can't get your head around it, but social smoking is a real thing, and i completely reject arguments of hypocrisy around it. it's not a moral issue. i'm not compromising myself. i've organized the situation this way because it's how i want it, and i'm not going to be shy about enforcing it, when the time is appropriate to do so.

and, i'd better get that fucking oiprd report this week, too, so i can start planning around getting out of this fucking place and getting away from this guy upstairs and whatever he's addicted to.

i have never smoked inside of any place that i've ever lived.

ever.

in my whole life.

i have always been an outside smoker.

it's disgusting to smoke inside. period.

so, even if i was smoking, i'd still demand you go the fuck outside.

that's not something that's changed. that's been a constant my whole life: i can't deal with inside smoke, and i've never been able to, and so i've always sent people outside.

i wouldn't even let my girlfriend smoke inside, when we lived together, and we both smoked. i sent her outside in the fucking blizzard. she tried to smoke in the basement, but i wouldn't stand for that, either.

i have no tolerance for this at all, and i never have.

it's exceedingly frustrating.

i wanted one thing: a non-smoking living space.

there is one important part of the lease: a non-smoking living space.

i am not compromising on the point, and i am not relenting on it. he will be forced to compensate me for the suffering he's causing me, in due time.

in the mean time, he can enjoy the fan running, because i'm not turning it off until the air clears in here.

why don't these fucking idiots get the point?

i smoke when i'm out, drinking, at the bar, where it's dirty.

i do not smoke when i'm at home, in my space, where it's clean.

do you understand?

so, no. the fact that i smoked four packs of cigarettes on the weekend - when i was at the bar, drinking - does not give the fucking idiot upstairs a listen to smoke inside when i'm at home, sober, and clean. nor will i be smoking again until i go back out to the bar, where it's dirty.

and, yes, i can smell it.

and, yes, i'm going to sue him for it as soon as i get done with the previous case.

whether you're talking about burlesque dancers or lap dancing or strippers or even just twerking or anything else like that, it's just an "ew. gross." type reaction.

burlesque.

listen - i don't care what you do. really. like, at all. i don't care about you one bit. but, i can't stand being in the same room as it.

i don't find it emancipating at all in any remote way. and, i just don't see where the question of morality even arises, in context; it's just not a relevant analysis. rather, i just find it sleazy and gross, and i'm going to get up and walk out every time.

i can understand it as a reaction, though. if i had grown up in a conservative christian or muslim household, maybe i'd be more attracted to the rebellion of it. but, i wasn't raised in a conservative household, and my reaction on that level is consequently to point to it as an example of why we shouldn't have conservative households. this is how religion warps the minds of your kids, and what they turn into if you raise them in guilt.

so, yes: i don't get it. or, i don't get it on a guttural level, at least. and, the way i'm going to get it on an intellectual level is just to deconstruct it.

which isn't to say i don't think you should do it, just to say that i'd rather not watch.

ok, that was a hard crash and i needed it.

i'm actually going to spend the morning looking ahead to next week, first.

i don't expect a lengthy journey, and frankly don't even want one. but, i need to do a survey, first.

is there an identity politics of intelligence?

or is that a contradiction in terms?

i'm starting to think that the problem may be that cory booker's vocabulary is too large for his plotted path.

again: i broadly don't like his policies (i'm ten degrees to his left), but he has an ability and habit to very effectively project himself as the smartest person in the room, and if you're going to reduce the process of this to just picking the best brain because you don't agree with any of them on anything anyways, then he kind of rises to the top of the list, for me. he does stand out in the field. but, i don't think that's what his target audience really wants.

he may want to start carrying a thesaurus, so he can start using smaller words.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/cory-booker-white-supremacy/595684/

male life expectancy in the united states is that you die before you turn 79 77.

and, that number is a hard fact, not a suggestion or a social construction.

the criticisms of biden's record on women's rights are more substantive and more real, and i'm not sure what the right analysis is on it.

i'm not old enough to remember, and i won't pretend i was, but somebody that this argument comes up around quite a bit is john lennon. it's easy to point to certain pieces of evidence and argue that he was a misogynistic piece of shit, and it's not even like i want to argue with you. but, the fact is that almost all of the men of his generation were misogynistic pieces of shit, because the culture was inherently misogynistic and inherently shitty. and, despite being an asshole himself, lennon was also responsible for helping to reverse the situation. so, do you nail him for what he did in his youth, or do you praise him for what he did in middle age (and wonder what he'd do in old age)?

in a sense, it's kind of like criticizing an abolitionist for inheriting slaves. you wake up in a culture, and things are the way they are; it's not like you decided that they'd be that way, and if you inherit something then it becomes yours, whether you like it or not. but, if you're supporting abolition eventually, even if it takes you until the age of 50 to see it, then you're fighting for the end of the oppression. cusps are complicated, like that.

the truth is that biden lived through a change that most of us take for granted at this point (and really shouldn't) and that he had to adjust to it as it was happening. so, you have to analyze how he adjusted rather than where he started from. and, sure: maybe he's even still adjusting. maybe he'll never really let it go, in the end.

debates don't like subtlety...

i think it's biden's responsibility to do two things to help younger people that have never known the world he grew up in through anything but black and white movies and assigned novels in schools understand what living through the cusp of women's rights was actually like. the first thing he has to do is acknowledge the past, and maybe he does that by actually explaining it. and, then he has to carefully point to things he eventually did right, while acknowledging the things he did wrong.

but, i think that the actual problem for biden in these exchanges may be less when it comes to female voters explicitly (in a primary, you also have rural and southern democrats to appeal to, and the women are not so pro-choice or so pro-labour, something senators from new york and california might not be as cognizant of as they should be but senators from delaware might have a better understanding of) and more about how blockfooted he seemed on the response. he looked like a deer caught in headlights, but it was an expression of a broader mannerism. sanders is old, but he hasn't really aged in 20 years. he's "grumpy", but he's not slow on the response, and he's not adopting the body language of a toddler the way that so many older people do when they get past a certain point. biden has slowed down a lot, and you can really tell, it's visibly obvious in the footage. the exchange made him seem past his prime in more ways than one.

and, i need to really state this pretty assertively: it's not "ageism" to argue that somebody in their late 70s and that is showing crystal clear signs of decline should be at home and preparing for end of life with his loved ones, rather than parading around running for president.