how's bernie polling in vermont right now, anyways?

....and, while i will often cite dawkins and hitchens, i have actually never read anything by sam harris, who i've actually accused of being a fraud (he's not an atheist.) and a cia agent.

i seek a post-culturalist, post-racial, post-religious, post-capitalist society.

and, my offensive statements here are either about religion or about class, they are never about race.

the fact is that bernie is losing, and he's losing because he's doing everything wrong, and he's doing everything wrong because he's getting terrible advice.

and, at the end of the day, he'll be lucky to finish third in the south, anyways. he's going to need biden to drop, to start with.

no.

it's disingenuous.

if you want to beat trump, south carolina offers you nothing of any value. the reason is twofold. first, the democrats have no chance of swinging the state. second, the party can take at least 90% of the black vote for granted.

if you want to beat trump, you need to focus on states you can actually win, like nevada, iowa, new hampshire, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania...

...and winning those states means the party needs to perform better with white voters.

so, you need to make that choice: do you want to win or not? campaigning against white supremacism in south carolina is just tilting at windmills.

bernie's made his coffin, he can lie in it.

and, it does not matter who wins the south carolina primary.

at all.

this is just a periodic reminder that race is not actually a scientific concept, and anybody rooting their politics in race is consequently performing pseudo-science.

it's really long past time that america left the idea of race in the past. it has no place in the modern world.

i'm a typical nerd: if you give me a complicated differential equation, i have an array of tools to utilize, but it took me three months to find the p-trap in the cleanout.

we're all like this. really.

well, it seems 100% better, so far.

it seems too easy, though.

this has actually been going on for months. it took me the longest time to even realize where it was coming from. but, everything is clicking at this point.

so, maybe my landlord isn't cooking meth after all.

actually, i think i just needed to understand how the system worked a little bit better. i went to university for a long time, but i'm not a plumber, and i don't actually know anything about plumbing. but that's how you learn, right.

so, there's a p-trap beside the cleanout (i think i said dugout previously) and apparently it can evaporate, thereby releasing sewer gas. and, the guy upstairs likes it cold and dry, so he was no doubt running a dehumidifier down here. and, i like it hot, at least, even if i'm struggling with the dry air. so, the conditions for evaporation were present.

what you're supposed to do is fill it up with water, so i untaped it and then i did that.

but, then i taped it back up again to try and lock the moisture in. maybe i can put a ziplock bag over it or something; crazy glue the tupperware.

i still need to lysol the fuck out of it. and we'll see if it even works or not. but this at least makes sense.

then, why did running the water stop the smell? i guess it must have been blocking the gas from coming back up the trap.

if it works, i'm probably at least mostly right.

ok, so, i left the fan on for groceries, but turned the water off, and i came home to the most disgusting stench i've ever smelled, distributed over the entire space. i had to open up the closet and see what the fuck is going on in there.

is it the gas after all? well, i started by turning it off and draining the tank. what i was experiencing was that the smell came back after i turned the water off, so what happens if i turn the gas off?

there does not appear to be any odor coming from the heater, but there's a dugout beside the main that is just rank. i suppose that the right answer is probably that there is in fact something rotting in there, like i thought in the first place. but, i can't just run the hot water 24/7.

what i'm going to try and do as a stop-gap is just tape the dugout up and lysol the space. if that doesn't work, i'm going to need to get the landlord to call a roto-rooter....

is marijuana legalization actually....

....population control?

listen, i just want the ability to choose when i'm stoned and when i'm not. that's what it comes down to. and, that should be a fundamental right.

and, i shouldn't have to send a thug with a gun after you to get you to respect that, either.

i tried to turn the water off a few hours ago and i just got swamped. *shrug*. so, i've got something up at reddit asking what it means when the water from your your water main reeks and running the hot water flushes out the smell. i mean, it's almost like a crude boil water. is it just a function of the bad water supply? is the water here really that gross?

but, now that i'm starting to get a better grasp of what's happening, i can hardly turn the water off and deal with it.

fwiw, it did rain here early this morning, which is when i'd have been trying to enjoy the overnight. and, they're officially calling for rain this evening @ 90% certainty. i'm actually kind of relieved about it as i don't think i'd have that much fun at villain's. and, that means i'm officially staying in, and hoping it clears up for tomorrow.

i've started on october, as well, and i think it's likely a pretty quick job, relative to the last few. that's not to say that it's less data, overall (it might be more), but that most of it is already done. and, that should be the norm moving forwards, too. if i'm in for the month, i could get through 2013 before september 1st.

so, i'm going to step away, take a quick grocery run before the rain hits, make some eggs and then hop in the shower. if it doesn't clear up tomorrow, that might be my last step outside the house this month. at the least, i'm planning for a long slog through the rebuild.

i guess i have two modes. and, i'm potentially swinging back to hermit mode, now, as i push back into getting some work done.

"marijuana cures cancer".

riiiiiight.

https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/throwback-thursday-when-doctors-prescribed-healthy-cigarette-brands-165404/

you know they told you cigarettes were good for you too, right?

they even had studies that backed it up.

small sample sizes. small scale studies. industry money. it's exactly the same thing.

it's funny that he doesn't realize that marijuana is just the next entry in the list, though.

when we get the data in on cancer rates for "medicinal" users, a lot of people are going to have a lot of egg on their face.

"fool me once..."

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/20/15328384/opioid-epidemic-drug-legalization

but, like i say, i'm kind of fucked. even if i was sure about it, it would not be in my self-interest to call in.

i mean, i've pointed this out before.

the police are there to moderate the drug trade, rather than shut it down. and, at the end of the day, they're also there to protect the drug dealers from the wrath of the anger in the community about the effects of addiction.

so, there's this weird thinking on the libertarian right that removing the state would lead to a society that is more lax on drug use. but, i'd rather argue that, in an actual anarchist society, when the police are no longer there to protect the pushers, what would actually happen to people pushing hard drugs like meth, crack or heroin is that they'd be strung up in a tree by an angry mob.

and, if you were the fucker that sold my daughter her last hit before she overdosed, and the cops weren't there to protect you, i can tell you that i'd be looking for your head on a pole.

it was genesis p'orridge that pointed out that heroin is only less dangerous than capitalism. and, you really can't make sense of hard drug use outside of a capitalist paradigm - only a society rooted in the naivete of free markets would allow for such a thing.

see, i'm in a shitty situation.

i would not hesitate to call a meth lab in. the stuff is literally poison, and if he's cooking meth then he definitely belongs in jail. i categorize meth with opiates, and i have zero tolerance for it. how many kids has he killed or otherwise damaged for life? i'm actually really not very "liberal" when it comes to drug laws - i'm a socialist before i'm a liberal, and the fact is that the far left has really never had much patience for this kind of thing. and, i actually think we need to be writing very strict bylaws around residential marijuana use. if this confuses you, check your strawman.

but, if i call in the narcotics squad, they're going to seize the place, and i'm going to end up homeless. nor do i want to approach him about running a meth lab.

what i need is for the fucking oversight body to get the report in already so i can launch my legal action, get my settlement and get out of here.

i'm stuck, until then.

but, he's not going to like the cost of his water bill.

the guy has gone to work like five times in the last 10 months.

i'm giving him $750/month, granted. but, he surely has a mortgage. how is he paying his bills?

yeah, i guess the unavoidable conclusion is that there is something in there. bacteria. a blockage. even a broken pipe. i don't know.

running the water gets rid of the smell, so what does that mean? if it was a partial block, you'd think running the water wouldn't be very effective. so, do i just try to use more bleach?

the other thing is that it was fine, yesterday. so, why did it come back today?

i'm going to let the hot water run for a long time and periodically run the rest of that bottle of bleach through.

but, i'm starting to more seriously suspect a meth lab upstairs, and am beginning to wonder if that's what his no smoking lease clause was really about, given that he does seem to smoke. i mean, i've been wondering why the fuck somebody signs a no-smoking lease, then starts smoking. that might be the answer....

maybe it's coming from under me because he's dumping something into the water table via the pipes.

yeah. so, the bleach didn't help in the long run.

if i run the hot water for a while, the smell goes away, but then it comes back. if i run the bathtub, the hot water runs out. so, i'm going to try to run the sink instead.

it might be sewer gas backing up, then, rather than bacteria in the pipes. i don't know if that means something is broke or what....

so, if there's a late party in detroit tonight, i can't find any evidence of it - which isn't to say it isn't happening, or even that i don't know the spot, but just to say that i can't confirm it. there's the usual options at the goth club and the gay club, but i'm not feeling it, really. or, at least, not yet. the gay club is the more likely option but i think it's pretty remote...

there's another possibility i could try, which is an after hours club not far from here, but i'm not even sure they still exist and, if they do, i suspect it's fucking dubstep. that seems like such an obvious option, i know, but i really just don't like the genre. there's also something at villain's, but it's almost certainly going to be people sitting and chatting rather than dancing and grooving, and i tend to find that kind of thing painfully boring. i don't want to sit and chat. sorry. i might drop in for a beer once in a while, but villain's is kind of a bourgeois place. i'd actually bet that most of the regulars are going to go to the comic book convention.

(i've never "read" a comic book in my life.)

i'll check the weather in a few hours, and if it looks like tomorrow is a wash and tonight is nice, i might flip the thing over and do the villain's/x bit after all. but, for right, now, i'm looking at this:

13:30-14:30 - oopapada @ ripe records. grosse pointe. free.
14:30-18:00 - bike to hamramck, and get a beer somewhere.
18:00-20:00 - tomato fest @ outer limits. hamtramck. free + cost of food.
20:00-???? - prog & math show @ ghost light. hamtramck. $10 + cost of beer.

the last sunday bus is 00:30. if i miss it, i guess i'm hanging out until the morning.

so, i mean, i would prefer a system where you let the immigrants buy the new houses, and let the white people stay in the poor areas. and, i'm actually even happy to let the housing decay, if it reduces the cost of rent.

but, that means you need to cut the number of refugees coming in in favour of more wealthy immigrants, so they're not creating all of this pressure at the margins.

and, no, the answer isn't to build more new houses and then try and push people up "the ladder".

i am a white person with a decent education, and i don't want to own a new house in the suburbs with a picket fence, where i need to spend hours of my time in a car to get back and forth from downtown. i reject that vision of western civilization. what i want is a small, affordable apartment in the heart of the city, where i am within bicycling distance of everything i need, and can rely on public transit in a pinch. that means i want a space in an old building in a centralized location, not a new house in the middle of nowhere.

in that sense, i'm happy to let wealthy immigrants come in and buy up the new housing, although i might criticize them on their carbon footprint. what pisses me off is when i'm forced to compete with a bunch of refugees for basic shelter, which should be my right as a citizen of the country.

so, the point that the liberals aren't grasping is that these policies that are designed to clear white people out of the low income areas by moving them into middle class areas in order to make way for refugees in the low income areas are running into the basic problem that we're living in the low income areas because the kind of class mobility being hinted at requires lifestyle choices that we don't want to make. i'm an artist. i don't want an office job. i don't want a trade union job. i don't want to buy a house or to be in the middle class. what i want is cheap rent in the slum and the freedom to create. and, if i have to compete with people for that as a consequence of some liberal politicians' vision about class mobility, i'm going to get pissy about it.

they're focusing on the refugees, but i care more about low-income canadians. and, it's a circular problem: the more you increase demand without addressing the supply issue, the worse the problem gets.

i'll state what i've been saying for years: if the government wants to admit all of these refugees, it is going to need to build the infrastructure for them. and, if it won't build the infrastructure, if it's just going to let the market deal with it, then it's going to face a backlash.

so, do you blame it on the government? do you blame it on the refugees? at the end of the day, it's the mismatch between the immigration policy and the housing policy that's at the root of the problem. but, when some poor white person - be they a struggling artist or a heroin addict - points out that the cost of living is rising because of market forces being driven by immigration policy, they're not wrong, and the political spectrum needs to get their head around it.

so, we're not 'full'. but we lack the infrastructure and need to cut immigration levels until it catches up. it is true that it is in the benefit of low-income canadians to focus more on a housing strategy, and that's what the thrust of the policy ought to be about, but we need a two-thronged policy if we want to really get rents under control.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/homeless-newcomers-refugees-canada-studies-1.5242426