that install was supposed to be temporary; it never registered. you have to wonder if windows scrambled the file system or something.

ok, i'm actually feeling better and am going to try to do some work.

the mft on my laptop drive, which i have plugged into my desktop, also seems to have just randomly crashed on me. weird. the chkdsk is recovering large amounts of the drive, and we'll have to see if it's enough.

this has happened to this drive before and it usually comes out fine, but i think it might be time for a reinstall.

i guess it's time for california to build some field hospitals, huh?

https://deadline.com/2020/07/los-angeles-coronavirus-hospitalizations-record-fourth-day-in-week-1202990045/

so, you all realize that when trump argues that mail-in ballots are going to rig the election, what he means is he's going to rig the election with mail-in ballots, right?

it's become a standard deflection topic - they tell you how they'll cheat, then project it to their opponents.

you might want to get a jump on this now if you want to uncover it.

as an aside, though, you would expect crime rates to decrease with a guaranteed annual income as it would eliminate a type of base desperation.

so, you might want to be extra careful to avoid cops right now, because they're likely to be looking to cause shit.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/lower-than-normal-windsor-crime-stats-continue-during-covid-19-times

if the samples are from may and june, i would expect very low transmission rates just about everywhere outside of toronto and montreal. so, when you take data over a wide area and are only concerned about a very small area, what you do is water down the data.

so, if you get 10% in toronto and .01% west of sudbury, that balances out to 1% overall - while distorting the actual findings. and, i suspect that's what you're seeing here.

so to be clear: as canada was last in, it will be last out and i would not expect to see high levels of antibodies in the canadian population in the may-june period, even in the quebec-windsor corridor. if they had found higher prevalence, overall, that would indicate much earlier spread than previously thought. but, the numbers are smoothing out regional hot spots, blurring the reporting accuracy. and, eight-ten week old data in a pandemic is of minimal use in understanding where those numbers are today.

it's like they got in right before it happened.

we're going to find out if toronto got over that 20% hump or not soon enough. and, i think it's clear enough that montreal probably did.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/early-antibody-tests-suggest-few-canadians-had-covid-19

in fact, the ruling has almost no relevancy to the roxham rd crossing at all. under international law, we will continue to need to allow refugees that set foot in the country to make a claim when they get here, and this will still be seen as a way to circumvent the process. people that have weak claims will still avoid the official border crossings, where they can still be denied immediately for any number of reasons, under the understanding that they will be barred permanently once their claims are denied; if they go to roxham rd instead, they'll still be able to actually get in first, which increases their chances of winning their case increase dramatically.

we also have to accept the reality that, normally, people can cross into the country with little to no justification if they show the right documents and then make their claim once they're in. the border, official port of entry or not, isn't exactly locked down.

it's not these little, bureaucratic changes that are going to have much of an effect on the flow of refugees to the country, but rather broader push and pull factors. people want to come to canada, and they're going to get in if they want to. what's more important is ensuring that we have the infrastructure to deal with it.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-federal-court-ruling-could-mean-the-end-of-roxham-road-border-crossings

this is actually a great example of science defeating "common sense", and i'm happy to see it for what it is.

i'll admit that i'm a little bit skeptical that this person could pass the test, and would expect the end outcome of this to be that this person will be unable to return to work. however, you can't just assume a priori that a person with one really good eye is less capable of driving a vehicle than a person with two average eyes. you have to perform the experiment, because you might actually be wrong.

it is certainly true, for example, that a one-eyed person is likely to have issues with stereoscopic vision, and consequently is likely to be at risk of accident in their blind spot. however, it is also true that individuals with two eyes may have issues with stereoscopic vision for some other reasons, and in either case the veracity of the statement has to be demonstrated with actual testing. further, the relevance of the blind spot needs to be assessed in the context of driving a vehicle like a bus.

i do wonder if there may be some kind of easily fittable device that could act as a false eye, in context. i presume she probably has a glass eye. so, it would be easy enough to wire the data in, in principle, depending on how badly damaged the nerves are in the region connecting the eye to the brain.

but, it needs to be the testing that determines the fitness of the driver in the end, not assumptions about their ability based on physical characteristics. the common sense mafia will no doubt scoff, but the ruling is really quite correct in it's deference to empiricism over deduction.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/one-eyed-bus-driver-wins-discrimination-case-judge-nixes-ontario-licence-rule-1.5036487

the five countries with the fast-growing coronavirus rates are:

brazil
russia
india
united states
south africa

seems like the brics have been replaced by the brius.

ok.

so, i just went for a walk and realized the temperature has come down a lot outside. again. that's before some warmer weather kicks in tomorrow.

so, i can't complain it's cold inside if it's cold outside, or at least not in the summer. i have no grounds, just right now.

i guess i'm really complaining about the weather.

i need to temper myself. i don't actually want to move, i want to find a way to counteract the air. filing a t2 is a last resort....

i slept all day, and there's a high chance i could sleep all night.

i've at least managed to get used to it (which is very sad, to me. i don't want to get used to it. i want to continue to react to air conditioning with revulsion and dread. i hate it. i don't want to coexist with it. i don't want to acclimatize to it.) enough to be able to avoid shivering with the following:

1) socks
2) shoes
3) a sweater
4) two blankets

that's what i needed to stop shivering in the air conditioning in my apartment, in july - in a unit that i've made repeated complaints about being cold in. worse, i know that all i will get back if i complain further are lies.

"it's just the fan."
"my thermostat says 23."

he's just pathologically dishonest, that way. and, there's no function of communicating with a liar. i'm not wasting my time debating with a liar.

so, it looks like i'm going to be spending the weekend struggling with my metabolism as much as anything else. when a person can barely generate enough heat to stop shivering in the cold, i guess they're going to end up very tired once they eventually do manage to adjust. and, that's the reality, here.

worse is that i'm hungry. that's the other thing about the heat - it suppresses your appetite, meaning you can waste less money on food. when it's cooler, you have to actually eat, and that's expensive. my budgeting relies heavily on cutting food-related expenses by up to 75% over the summer months, but i can't do that if i have to eat every day to generate enough heat to stave off hypothermia. i can normally only eat every 2-3 days in a nice, proper heat wave.

and, i'm not going to eat more, in the end - i'm just going to suffer myself through the cold.

it must be costing him a fortune, as well. i guess it's his priorities as to what he wants to spend his money on, but if i can't figure out something soon, i'm going have to file a t2 app over it to get out.

the last time, i could fix it by opening the windows. right now, this is actually worse than it was in the first basement :(.

so, i managed to get some sleep this morning after several days of shivering and i'm not exactly happy about the process around getting there. it had been several days since i'd slept more than 2-3 hours at a time...

i took a look at the weather forecast, and it seems like it may be reasonable to expect a cooler august (that happened last year, too). so, i decided to take my chance while i could get it sort of thing and bought some more pot.

i actually got an eighth of a berryish blend called subway scientist that seems a little weak, at this point, but i want to give it some more time. i haven't been sleeping, after all. but, it knocked me out for a few hours this morning, before i woke up again shivering around 5:30.

i just went straight into the shower, and sat in it for about an hour. that, combined with the sun coming up, was enough to warm me up enough to get some sleep.

but, i woke up in a cold sweat and had to take another shower around 10:30. i'm hoping that gets me through the day, at least - but i could find myself back in the shower in the evening.

i've repositioned my fans, and i think it is helping somewhat. instead of having them point directly towards the window, to keep drifting smoke away from my bed, i've got them blowing air from outside into the unit. it seems to have made a difference to start, but it remains to be seen if i just trigger the air to work harder.

i'm in a difficult point, in that i can neither work nor sleep when i'm cold, and the only thing that's really working is to go outside for a walk and come back every few hours. but, that's only helping me sleep, it's not helping me do any work.

so, i don't know what to do.

seriously, though.

if your argument is "god made me do it", then i need pics, or it didn't happen.

(i think this was a video of a murderer claiming god made them do it, but i don't explicitly recall, and cannot find a reference to the link)

so, do you determine that the church is not guilty due to insanity?

well, it's a tort case. negligence doesn't require mens rea, in most cases. or, not in that way, at least.

if they try it though, i want to see some evidence.

this is a court of law, after all.

i mean, did they get god on the phone?

did they text it?

sext it?

send it an email?

that argument has no place in a court room, except in determining the fitness of a mentally ill person to stand trial.

she should sue for discrimination and be given compensation for wrongful dismissal, like any other employee of any other corporation would. this institution should not be given special treatment; it should be forced to follow the law, like any other corporation should.

and, i think this is actually pretty obvious and an open/shut case, not something that is particularly controversial or difficult. "god told me to fire her" is not a legal argument - it's actually kind of comical when presented in a legal context.

there's no double standard, no ambiguity - it's just straight up discrimination in an employment context, and the existing remedies should be applied with zero modifications.

that said, note that the vote was 48%-52%, at a baptist church. the headline here ought to be about how much progress exists within such a close vote. perhaps a large percentage of that 48% will see through the absurdity of "god told me to do it" and apostatize from baptist corp. if she succeeds, however accidentally, in shattering the faith of this congregation, or otherwise holding up a mirror and helping people out of the cult, that is a massive accomplishment.

i also hope that the issue puts her own career decisions in perspective, and helps her realize the fallacy of faith.

so, she should get a check, yes. i don't know what the going rate for this tort is. a year's salary, perhaps? well, they save a lot of money in not paying taxes, you know.

but, there's a lot of positives to pull out of this, actually - if people make the right choice, and move on from this so-called moral institution that decided to try and justify discrimination with the incredibly weak excuse of "god made me do it".

i mean, if it was a criminal trial rather than a civil trial, the church would need to plead insanity to pull something ridiculous like that off.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/transgender-pastor-fired-1.5657371

even in recent history, it's a stupid statement. you had the southern strategy underlying nixon, which carter tried to co-opt, and reagan eventually inherited. reagan was frequently openly racist; remember the welfare queen? the first bush, on race issues, was actually maybe the high point, here. or maybe he was just inconsequential, as president, all around. clinton was vicious in his policies, and obviously ridiculously racist in his pandering, which sadly often worked. dubya was frequently accused of racism in his response to disasters like katrina, and also in his foreign policy. and, like it or not, the wealth of the average black household actually went dramatically down under obama's presidency, indicating that many of his policies, in the end, had dramatic racial inequity consequences.

is trump particularly different? well, compare the rapist mexican trope to the inner city superpredator scare mongering and ask yourself if it's that different. trump campaigned on building a wall, but obama campaigned on being deporter-in-chief; that didn't come out of nowhere, that was a campaign promise from day one. it's degrees of the same messaging, and different more in terms of business interests. it's like construction v prison-industrial. really, it's that trivial, in terms of actual messaging.

and, biden will just carry through with the same legacy. the poverty rates will move sideways, at best; i guess it depends on what kind of control wall street gets, in the end.

see, and it's not like biden needs to have this debate, either. he's wining black voters by a comfortable margin. this, as usual, was an unforced error. they build up, in the end.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-says-trump-is-americas-first-racist-president/2020/07/22/867017e8-cc4b-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html

ugh.

they just both keep getting worse every day.

if you're going to put troops on the street like this, it's an invitation to start a fight. but, that's just it; if people take the bait, it frames his message.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-operation-legend-federal-authorities-american-cities-1.5659139