that means you could blow it up remotely, too.
Thursday, September 19, 2024
i'm trying to understand how israel might be behind the pager attack in lebanon and coming up blank. i think a more likely suspect is the chinese, and it opens a can of worms. could they do this to american devices?
the media is speculating that they planted bombs in a production facility. that sounds ridiculous. it's a plot in a james bond film.
it is physically possible that they might be zapping them with a satellite using gps, which is why everything in the area is blowing up rather than specific targets. they would essentially be shooting out a frequency all across lebanon that causes devices of the sort to do something like vibrate, or overheat. this would be an application of quantum physics, rather than some kind of sneaky production sabotage. the israelis are currently working on replacing and expanding their iron dome with a laser system. a high frequency audio attack isn't crazy at all.
muslims tend not to keep dogs as pets, but are there stories in lebanon about dogs freaking out at the time of the attack?
i'm more likely to lean to the idea that it's something the chinese are dropping into all kinds of devices, probably including chinese made chips and phones. the pentagon has been warning about that kind of thing for a while. if so, it's a positive signal that the chinese aren't going to tolerate terrorism in the region.
the problem with the democrats right now, and this might be a long term and structural problem, is that they can't figure out who america's friends and enemies are, because they're basing their foreign policy on domestic policy rather than vice versa. this is what happens when an empire permits immigration from societies that want to destroy it from the inside.
the democrats want muslim americans and chinese-americans to vote for them, which fundamentally fucks up their foreign policy to an unworkable mess and functionally makes them unelectable and renders them incapable of governing.
america needs to be able to fight it's enemies, and it can't do that if the natural governing party relies on them as a part of their voting coalition.
this is one way that empires collapse. it seems oddly similar to how christianity destroyed rome from the inside.
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
do you dispute the obvious truth that hezbollah will eventually be destroyed by nato?
then you agree that it's now or later.
and it's better to do this as soon as possible.
the mistake that was made by committing to ukraine makes this difficult to impossible, which is harming our would-be allies in russia and emboldening our arab and chinese enemies.
i'm going to say what i said previously.
a broader war against hezbollah is clearly morally and strategically justified and i'd like to see nato come to israel's defense. unfortunately, nato is bogged down in a pointless war in ukraine, which has no strategic value to the united states or to europe, and which is a conflict that is even directly against europe's self-interest, and is wasting billions of dollars and screwing up all kinds of economic efficiencies attacking the russians, who want to be our friends, when those funds and resources could be spent securing a more strategic area, namely the middle east, and destroying people that hate us and want to fight us, namely muslims. this is the catastrophic and backwards mess biden has created, which the next president will need to clean up so that nato can more easily defend it's interests in strategic reasons like the suez canal and red sea, a well as the persian gulf, instead of wasting money and time fighting in eastern europe, which is useless, and creating enemies out of would be friends.
hopefully, joe biden is the last hurrah of the cold war and the end of the 20th century and the last idiot trying to fight the ruskies and the next set of leaders just pick up his entire foreign policy disaster at an arm's distance like a soiled diaper and throw it in the bin, in an attempt to start over fresh from scratch. we'll see.
so, a broader war against hezbollah is justified and i think america should be taking the lead in fighting it.
as it is, unfortunately, it might not be very smart for israel to try to do such a thing alone, even it is morally and strategically correct. they need to find some allies somewhere in order to do this. that may require waiting for the united states to elect somebody that realizes the wisdom in pulling out of ukraine and more efficiently allocating nato's strategic resources to more valuable areas, first.
bc has long been in a weird scenario where it had a liberal party that was supported by people that were conservatives, because the urban/rural divide in the province is so dramatic as to build a very clear dichotomy in a two party system. it's hard to define a workable dialectic in bc, when you've got rugged outdoorsmany conservatives on one hand and effete urban elitists on the other. you just get squeezed.
the conservative plurality in bc has, for decades, hated voting for the liberals.
it is consequently likely that support for the new conservative party is being exaggerated by enthusiasm for a blue option on the ballot. i've posted a few times about how david eby seems to be an odd duck in the ndp, and that he may be facing the opposite problem, namely a lack of enthusiasm from his base, as he tries to moderate specific positions, which is overdue and required and should not be reversed regardless of the outcome. the bc ndp's position on drug legalization was insane and had to be re-evaluated.
i have also been vocal about the need to force addicts into treatment if you want to help them at all, or basically stop pretending and let them die on the streets.
but i can't support this. this isn't the right way to do this.
this is a very scary change in the law that could result in your kids getting rounded up and thrown in asylums and would hopefully be struck down immediately as unconstitutional. this is going from one unacceptable extreme to the other. we cannot be allowing doctors to make consent decisions, or forcing care decisions on people, even if they're crazy. bodily autonomy and the right to security of the person is and must remain paramount.
rather, drug addiction is an issue that needs to be dealt with by increased policing and a return to charging drug addicts with criminal offenses and throwing them in jail, where they can get treatment options while incarcerated. british columbians should be extremely frightened by a government that wants to argue for the removal of requiring consent to treatment, rather than just going back to putting drug addicts in jail cells where they belong.
ukraine cannot defeat russia. the idea is retarded.
what america wants is a long, drawn out war that costs russia a lot of money and what russia wants is to fight that war in ukraine and against ukrainians instead of in russia and against germans.
this president's legacy will be as a war mongering incompetent buffoon stuck in the ideology of the 20th century.
are trump's tariffs going to lead to inflation?
that would be a very free market position, which thinks all tariffs are bad, and which has little to do with any actual existing free trade agreement. it's a talking point amongst right-wing politicians, but it doesn't reflect any existing economic policy anywhere.
the discourse reflects the attempt by kamala harris to position herself to the right of donald trump on economic issues, which everybody can see is the empirical fact.
it is not the case that tariffs always lead to inflation. in practice, politicians tend to use tariffs when local economic factors favour foreign production as more cost effective, so it does lead to inflation. this is politics, not economics.
tariffs are supposed to help domestic production by increasing the costs of foreign goods, which is supposed to help domestic producers compete. that will lead to an increase in costs in the short term. however, if the tariffs actually work, the domestic producers begin to outcompete the importers, and costs come down via economies of scale. in the long run, there is no inflation, but there is an increase in local production and an increase in local jobs.
in order for the tariffs to actually work, the underlying economics have to work. that is the question to ask: can american producers scale up production in such a way that they can offer locally produced goods at a cheaper cost than foreign producers, or do the foreign manufacturers have a comparative advantage in the production of these specific goods that makes it impossible for local manufacturers to compete?
as everybody knows, the major input factor has long been and remains the cost of labour. it is difficult to make trump's economics work, and the result will probably be more inflation and less local production. however, there's a caveat to this, and it is prison labour.
yeah. prison labour is legal in the united states, and it allows local firms to compete with chinese manufacturers. that's not what those union workers are voting for, but it's what they're going to get, and it makes sense if you're the pentagon, as it brings production of sensitive materials home and harms the export economy of your most serious global opponent. much of the "reshoring" that has occurred over the last ten years is using prison labour, which requires capturing blacks and mexicans into the prison-industrial complex. that is what trump's tariffs are really about, and why they're likely here to stay.
the united states is becoming more like china every year.
tariffs on developing industries is also a good idea in general as it helps them develop without facing pressure from outside competitors.
the way to get what american workers want is actually to build organized labour movements in asia. the uaw and other big unions should be sending agitators to china and vietnam to do the very difficult job of organizing union movements in very oppressive workplaces. american intelligence agencies should be working with the unions to do this, as it is in america's strategic interest to develop organized labour movements in asia.
you won't get that kind of thinking from trump.
tariffs are neither bad nor good. tariffs are hard. trump won't get the outcome he's marketing, but he is likely to get deep state and systemic support, if he focuses on specific items of national security. it's up to union workers to understand what they're voting for.
i'm having a lot of continuing lingering issues with these stupid religious people, who refuse to allow me the right to self-autonomy in choosing my gender and sexual orientation but want to decide it was determined by "god".
there is no such thing as god. it's a dumb, primitive idea that has no place in the 21st century. we don't need god to explain the universe. the idea creates more questions than answers and is no longer a useful way to understand the world.
but, that's just the point - this issue about gender and orientation isn't a debate amongst atheists, who understand these are all choices and all exist on a spectrum. "born this way" is a religious position, it's not based on any kind of science, and this is a debate that exists strictly in the religious community, where on one side you have biological determinists that insist god made your gender and heteronormality is baked into it and on the other hand you have religious inclusionists that want to argue that god made everybody equal and we need to love each other how we're made.
i don't take either position.
i vehemently reject the existence of god as stupid and primitive and childish.
i take the position that evolution is random and unguided and that i've somehow evolved cognition and we've somehow developed medicine to the point that i have the ability to do what i want to my body and therefore have the right to because i own it. i wasn't born as a transgendered person. there is no biological condition called "transgenderism"; it is not a genetic condition, it is not genetic variation and it is not some kind of disease. it is an arbitrary, harmless and meaningless choice that free people can make to modify their body, as transhumanists, in a free and secular and liberal society.
so, i want to get out of this bullshit. i'm not interested in the debate, as it has been framed by the religious left. i own my body and want the right to do what i want with it and the right to fuck who i want, when i want, however frequently or infrequently, in the way i want. this is about free will. this isn't about god, which is an intellectually bankrupt idea that needs to be aggressively forgotten.
i would imagine that, in a free society of the future, people will modify their bodies as they choose, arbitrarily, without being constrained by archaic anachronisms like gender identity theory.
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
there were a number of possible outcomes in lasalle, but the bloc win was the most likely. what is my analysis as to why that happened?
quebeckers are fed up by being overrun by refugees - even english quebeckers, and even montrealers.
it is very likely that that fact will define how quebeckers vote in the next election.
i don't like nate's models. they are less conservative than the models at his old site, but they are still too conservative.
these two sites are useful in that they collect polls and present links to them, not in their aggregators. i advise against using aggregate methods for election forecasting and suggest using snapshot polling instead.
nonetheless, what these methods (which are designed to measure and track corporate branding) are good for is capturing shifts in the electorate after they've already happened. you'll note consistency in minnesota, wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. i would suspect you'd see the same movement in washington, new york, ohio, illinois and oregon, but only oregon is maybe in play right now.
i think trump has a very good chance of winning minnesota.
you'll also note that the democrats are trending positively in georgia and nevada, which is predictable and probably correct.
i still think that harris will win michigan by mobilizing black voters in metro detroit and that she should be favoured in georgia and arizona as well. but the decrease in support from white voters in white states was predictable and is real and something the democrats are going to have to accept and deal with.
the liberals are actually broadcasting that they want an early election, probably because the ndp have recently crashed.
the national popular vote may look decisive, but i don't think it translates into a change of government. i'm going to predict that the outcome will not substantively change, but the ndp and liberals may lose seats, while the conservatives and bloc may gain seats.
trudeau needs to take direct responsibility for parachuting in a candidate rather than allowing for a nomination process and the party needs to stop meddling at the local level and drop the corruption and nepotism.
the way that canada's electoral system and landscape is, the most likely outcome of an election remains a liberal minority, perhaps with a strengthened bloc.
it doesn't help the liberals to swap the ndp for the bloc. however, it might be good for the country, including the west, which might find itself getting more of what it wants via bloc influence over the liberals.
as an ontarian at the terminus point of the windsor-quebec corridor, i wish i had a bloc quebecois candidate in my riding.
i want to clearly articulate my position on marijuana use amongst adults.
i understand that this is perhaps a very gen x position, but i'm a very gen x person, and i'm not interested in the perspectives of young people, which, in canada, are undergoing some kind of depraved level of gramscian conditioning to encourage them to smoke drugs when they're over the age of 21. it's an experiment doomed to fail. i predict that canada will re-criminalize marijuana within the next 10 years and that it will likely actually become a populist issue to do so. it is the liberals that legalized marijuana, but support for legalization is higher in the libertarian right, and they all support either the ppc or the conservative party in this country. liberals in canada tend to view smoking as a serious public health issue that needs to be stamped out with stricter restrictions. it will be a liberal government that gets a popular mandate to recriminalize marijuana along with the criminalization of tobacco (these things will happen together for the same reasons), and the conservatives will oppose it.
my position on marijuana use is that it's something people start doing when they're between the ages of 12 and 14 (as pre-teens. it's not even a teenage behaviour, it's a pre-teen behaviour) and that they will tend to smoke drugs at house parties when they are teenagers, when somebody's parents are away for the weekend, and may think they're cool and think they're having fun when they do so, while not realizing that most people think they're gross losers, and not really being cognizant that they're largely being avoided by and excluded from the social in-group.
then, things tends to happen. they might fail a course. they might lose a job. they might lose a boyfriend or girlfriend that is annoyed that they're stupid when they're stoned and smell gross all of the time, which makes intimacy a barrier.
generally speaking, what happens, then, is that people stop smoking marijuana around the ages of 18-24 or so. the person continuing to smoke marijuana after the age of 25 is then what society calls a loser.
still, these losers do persist past the age of 25, but they slowly fall off. marijuana use will decrease sharply after 22 or 23 and nose dive after 25 so that, by the time you get to around 30 or so, the only potheads left are the unemployed and the unfuckable. after 30, anything more than exceedingly spare marijuana use at concerts or birthday parties becomes a marker of social ineptitude, economic failure and absolute loserdom.
this graph from a 2017 paper uploaded to researchgate confirms my life experiences and social perceptions:
there remains a place for adults to smoke extremely small amounts of marijuana a handful of times a year in extremely social situations. however, at 43, i have absolutely no patience for lingering habitual marijuana use in my peer group, especially not in residential spaces, and especially not in isolation. smoking pot at any age by yourself is pathetic, but is pitiful in your 40s. that's something i haven't dealt with in 20 years and i'm not interested in, remotely.
Monday, September 16, 2024
i would imagine that if the cia was trying to kill trump, which is not impossible, that they wouldn't have failed twice.
rather, this is the result of irresponsible fake left propaganda about trump being a fascist dictator, and a reaction to the fact that the united states did in fact come very close to dictatorship very recently, after the 2000 election, which actually was stolen.
it would have been justified to assassinate bush at the time and a lot of people realize that now. so, if you could go back in time and kill bush before he got elected, would you do it? what if you had the chance to do it today? it's not a grounded or fair analysis (biden and harris are more similar to bush than trump is), but it's rooted in a real desire to do what should have been done, to set history right, and to avoid the mistake they made 25 years ago.
the democrats need to take a look at the nature of their social media networking and tone it down.
however, trump isn't helping himself, either. there is no convincing evidence that trump is the threat to democracy that george w. bush was, but he would help himself if he would also tone it down and often just shut the fuck up, as well.
Sunday, September 15, 2024
trump has become strangely protective over rfk, jr. it's unclear why, beside the endorsement, although the protective behaviour precedes the endorsement.
while it demonstrates some level of mental short circuit, his bizarre dog eating comments at the debate are clearly intended to project and distract from the suggestion that rfk, jr is a dog eater.
it's like the apocalypse. it already happened.
as an atheist, you might expect me to write that stuff off as a lot of nonsense, but i have actually read all of it (when i was quite young) and i realize that the eschatological part is a fairly poorly written piece of greek drama (there's a literature of this type of writing, and this is probably the worst extant example of it) but the bulk of the "prophecy" is really just base geopolitical analysis that is largely pretty rational and really anybody could have come up with.
if you're standing in jerusalem, at almost any point of history since cyrus, the beast from the east is obviously iran. one might note that most of russia is to the west of jerusalem.
the apocalypse, as described, is a relatively straight forward projection of the greco-roman/persian conflict that went on for centuries and came to an end in 628 ce. the last phase of the conflict saw the iranians capture jerusalem in 614, then the romans launched the first known jihad to recover it, in 627. this last war completely devastated both empires (imagine germany and russia after world war two), and actually resulted in a mass depopulation of roman palestine, as everybody fled or died. what happened next was the bubonic plague hit the devastated persians in 627-628 and persia was then outright conquered by the arabs in 633.
this is the conflict described by the geopolitical analysis in the bible, and you're left to draw your own conclusions about 1000 year reigns of antichrists and whatnot.
but my point is that it's not some brilliant foreseeing of history, it's just an obvious projection of an inevitable outcome, standing between these giant warring civilizations. some deep reckoning was inevitable. and it did in fact happen, in the 7th century.
if the bloc win lasalle, trudeau should resign as pm, resign his seat, resign from the party and go spend the next ten years hiding in hungary in abject shame.
for those looking in on the outside, losing lasalle would be like the democrats losing california. it would suggest they're completely dead in the water.
this will also be the second time in less than a year that the liberals will need to learn the lesson to let their constituents nominate their own candidates and stop parachuting candidates in.
the world should not have allowed the issue in yemen to fester to the current point. that these barbarians in yemen continue to exist is very pointedly a symptom of a lack of american leadership in the region.
a coalition similar to the one that defeated isis needs to be reassembled to entirely eliminate the houthis from the face of the planet.
these operations need not last forever. however, they need to continue until the enemy is destroyed. this should have been done years ago, and needs to be done now. those arguing otherwise should be dismissed as cowards and failures.
unfortunately, i don't think that either candidate for president has the leadership qualities to assemble a coalition of this sort to eliminate this enemy and we will have to deal with several more years of terrorist attacks until this threat is neutralized and destroyed.
you may have heard older people or history teachers make the claim that "we'd all be speaking german" if world war two had turned out differently, which, if i may intervene, is extremely unlikely. hitler had an easy enough time invading a couple of weak neighbours, but you have to realize that most of them actually didn't fight. the british and french didn't actually fight either, at least initially. it was called the phony war.
the russians fought, because the alternative was being turned into soap for lebensraum. the nazis really planned to exterminate the russians, but they probably would have just absorbed the british.
as soon as the nazis faced a real army, they collapsed. as they were landlocked and didn't have colonies, they had difficulty with things like access to oil. they didn't stand a chance in the long war. the british empire, including america and australia, was simply superiorly positioned. it was just a process of fighting it out, which they tried to avoid because they knew it was harmful and dumb (and because they liked the idea of arming the nazis to fight the soviets).
yet, the truth is that, at least in the anglosphere, we already speak german because the brutal invasion of britain by german speakers that is being imagined hasn't just already happened, it's happened several times, from several angles - vikings, danes, saxons, angles, jutes, normans, etc. if you look at a map, anglia and saxony are regions in the german-speaking continent.
there's been some recent historical revisionism that suggests that the germanic speaking barbarians may have been invited into the region to overthrow the romans (there's a curious historical event called The Great Barbarian Conspiracy, which is recorded obscurely, but seems to be exactly that), who were seen by the british as a colonial invasion force, and that the celts may have willingly adopted a germanic identity for that reason, as the germans were the freemen (this is actually more like braveheart than marx) fighting the declining empire and winning. if you've been struggling against an unwanted colonial power for centuries and somebody starts winning, it's enticing to want to join them. that's probably the actual reason why we speak german - because the germans beat the romans (going back to the battle of teutoberg forest, which is a fun story to read if you don't know it, even if it's half legendary), and the celts got slaughtered by julius caesar in one of the worst genocides in human history.
it is a little unconventional, but, for this reason, i consider the uk to be a part of scandinavia.
if that hadn't happened, we'd all be speaking brythonic (brittanic, or british, which is what they used to speak in britain), breton, cornish and welsh.
Saturday, September 14, 2024
does canada export a substantive amount of ammunition to the united states? seems backwards.
i interpreted it as a meaningless and in fact truly foolish political decision by ms. jolie who, like other fake left and actually very conservative politicians who have recently made the mistake of sympathizing with hamas, may be in for some political consequences for her foolishness.
i would advise the americans against making much of an issue out of it. i mean, look at the actual numbers. they can't be substantive.
i have stated repeatedly that the uk's primary concern here should be to prevent german rearmament, not to contain russia.
germany has attacked britain a great deal many times over the last two thousand years, including the premise of the shakspeare play hamlet and accounting for the fact that the british people today speak a dialect of german. also, world wars one and two.
the closest thing to a war between russia and the uk was the crimean war, which involved the uk attacking russia. rather, the uk and russia are historical allies when things get tough, and they usually align against the damn germans.
what's happening now - germany rebuilding it's army to fight an aggressive war in ukraine against russia - puts britain at imminent threat of danger from it's primary recent historical antagonist. for that reason, the british should be seeking to wrap this up like a cupcake at tea time.
hamas is not a rational actor. that should have been obvious from day one, and you'd have to be pretty fucking stupid not to figure it out immediately. you don't treat hamas with respect or as an equal or as a rational negotiating partner. you have to step on it's throat until it coughs.
i consequently have a different suggestion to israel, at this point, and it's probably overdue.
if the previous offer of negotiation was to release the hostages immediately or face complete annihilation of your city-state, hamas has chosen complete annihilation, and the people that live there are overwhelmingly in support of it. that's reflective of a low level of education in the region (and the culture..) but so be it. you can't fix stupid.
israel actually needs to escalate, in response.
israel should start executing palestinian prisoners daily until the hostages are released, and the number killed per day should slowly increase until the hostages are released.
that's how you deal with hamas. that's what hamas understands.
Friday, September 13, 2024
this was my oral arguments for the eviction hearing on may 27th, which will be basically what
i'm going to present in divisional court, but reframed to address the issues at law on appeal.
i'm going to post it here for the public interest, if you like to read a good argument.
the judge at the board was a retard and wouldn't let me read me most of it. there are just bad judges and this was just one of them.
Thursday, September 12, 2024
i got an updated number of $1055, but the city registry is also denying that the program is being offered this year. i'll see what the email i sent out says.
$1055 is not close to market rent for a one bedroom. at all.
still, the math becomes 1370*.3 - 1055*.9 = $538.50
538.50 + 582 = 1120.50 and adding $538.50 to the 1370, which is inevitable at that amount, is $1908.50. if add the $70+, it's very close to $2000. the cheapest apartments for rent are in the $1250-$1400 range and these are going to be gross buildings full of potheads that i don't want to live in. at that range, i'd have to move into another basement apartment, which i want to desperately get out of. i want an actual apartment in an actual apartment building.
i've found one at $1325 that i could move into if they let me. that would leave me with $2000-1325 = $675 which is about the same as right now, give or take. but the place would.
yeah.
let me try to apply for this.
if i can.
the city of windsor is trying to argue that the average price of a one bedroom apartment in this city is $1000.
that is not remotely close to accurate. it is closer to $1500. i would not be able to find a one bedroom anywhere at all for less than $1200 + utilities. rooms run in the $800+ range and bachelors are consistently over $1000.
i'm going to pursue this, but the city appears to have set up a program and then not applied it's own definitions correctly. the frustrating thing is that the extra $500 isn't enough to open the market up, because it's still $100-200 less than the cheapest apartments.
it makes the program essentially useless, but i'm waiting on an email for an updated average price.
i think i found a better answer to get out of here. i had to get on priority status first, which i am, so this wasn't a waste of time.
there's a city run program called the wehb:
i'm waiting for clear answers from the office, but i believe average rent in windsor is currently $1683, according to google, which would entitle me to a subsidy of:
1370*.3 - 1683*.9 = $1103.70.
the maximum shelter amount from odsp is $582. i should be able to then add that to the wehb amount to get to:
1103.70 + 582 = $1685.70.
the way it works is that they will claw back whatever is leftover from that, after calculating actual rent & utility costs. so, if i can get an apartment for $1500 + hydro + internet, and it comes to around $1600, then i'll actually get the $1600 rather than the $1685.
this would then leave me with $1370-582 = $788. my rent is currently a little less than $800, and i pay $40/month for internet. i don't pay hydro. so, i have around $530/month. $250/month is a lot of money when you're poor, and it means i could actually get a real apartment in a real apartment building, if the program has reasonable turnover times.
with the extra $70 from the province, that would give me around $850/month to spend, which is a lot for me, but the exciting thing is that it's maybe a way out of this hell-hole i'm trapped in.
if i wait for actual subsidized housing, which i may not be able to do, what they do is set your rent at 30% of your income, which for me comes to $411. it would be officially non-smoking, but they would likely expect me to live in studio apartment or a small one-bedroom and may ask me to move around based on the needs of others. i may have to tolerate neighbours that are criminals or....people that don't understand western cultural values and aren't interested in them. i could further cram internet and hydro into the $582 amount, but they would reduce the allotment by whatever is left, giving me a maximum of $788 after the process, until the inflation boost next august.
this is a better option for me, especially if i can get into the system and find a nice two bedroom or large one bedroom for $1400ish.
there is apparently a higher vacancy rate in the high rises along the waterfront (which is what i want) at that price range that is just out of what i can afford without this program.
let's hope this is the way out of here and i can do it fast.
i'm sorry if i'm confusing people, but it's because you legitimately, honestly, truly really don't know what socialism is at all.
socialism is not about peace and love; socialism is about conflict. socialism is about history, and it's a theory of history that describes historical change as a process of violent class conflict. it is an algorithm for the violent overthrow of the state.
the hippie bullshit is actually burkean or voltairean conservatism, or in some cases actually buddhist woo, it's not socialism, and socialists are constantly annoyed and frustrated by people that won't fight for their interests or that won't acknowledge the perpetual class war.
smart socialists know you need to pick your allies (hint: not stalin) and you need to pick your battles so you have some chance of winning. running around amok in africa and ending up in jail for decades doesn't demonstrate much of a useful theory. however, socialism is still always a violent theory of revolutionary overthrow, it is not a peaceful one of co-existence or harmony.
if you want the peace and love, you are really a conservative and should be looking at the literature in the other pile, although there is a sneaky point, in that marx himself often supported conservatives over liberals, despite calling himself a liberal.
the media coverage of the debate is nonsensical and ridiculous and exactly what was obvious and should have been expected by everybody, but it demonstrates what the sad actual truth is - democrats really just wanted their candidate to be as rude as trump, so they could start winning again.
the best line of the night was when trump offered to send harris a maga hat.
i'm endorsing the green party as i usually do, except in the extreme situations of 2004 and 2016, but i'm not repeating the same mistake i made in 2016. the vote against bush in 2004 was worth pushing for. otherwise, there's no use in voting for democrats, because you never get anything worthwhile.
but, he's right.
what democrats have wanted these last ten years is their own trump and harris is the closest thing they've managed to put forth to it because biden just didn't have it in him to be so blatantly and transparently full of shit the way harris does.
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
i want to post an update on the status of this site and my writing, video, music and other art projects, in general.
i've been pointing out for roughly five years that somebody was trying to hack my sites and decided it was probably a government. i've restricted my suspects to the canadian, american, russian and saudi governments, but have long decided that the most likely suspect was my own government in canada, and that they may be trying to make it look like the russians or saudis as a decoy.
my house was purchased in the spring of 2023 and it took a few months for me to become certain that the house was bought by somebody connected to the state trying to take over my sites. they have also been trying to detransition me.
i am in a legal battle with these battle that i am trying to direct into a ticket into subsidized housing. i moved to windsor from ottawa in 2013 to seek a lower cost of living. this started to break up a little around 2018ish and by the end of the pandemic, it was clear that there was nowhere in this country that i could afford to exist in and live the lifestyle i want to live. i need to get into subsidized housing. i don't have any other solution.
in the mean time, i have a team of professional hackers sitting upstairs trying to break into my sites. they have literally broken into my apartment and stolen my passwords on several occasions. they have repeatedly drugged me with testosterone.
i am not going to be able to do anything in relation to any of these art projects until:
1) i'm able to get into a situation where i'm no longer being drugged. i can't function in any capacity when i'm under the influence of the drugs they're giving me.
2) my network is secure.
so, unfortunately, everything is on pause until i can shake these shitheads off, and i don't know how long that's going to take. moving is a necessary but perhaps not sufficient condition.
for this reason, i am hoping there's a change of government in canada as soon as possible, even if it's not in my economic self-interest in the long run.
it is disgusting and immoral to talk about negotiating with hamas, to propose making a deal with them or to suggest israel make concessions or consider a truce or ceasefire with them.
the correct language that the media and political negotiators should be using is "unconditional total surrender", not "cease fire" or "deal".
whatever you think of donald trump's involvement or lack thereof in the capitol hill storming (i don't think he committed any sort of crime and that the supreme court has been correct to throw away the lower court rulings), there's no question that richard nixon posed a far greater threat to democracy than trump has or ever will. claims that trump is the greatest threat to democracy since sliced bread are hyperbole and not based in evidence or facts.
i watched part of the debate and fell asleep half way through.
both of these candidates are peddling in conspiracy theories, half-truths and outright lies. the media will correctly tell you these things about trump, and not mention that they are also true about harris. the harris campaign has apparently picked up some kind of weird qanon type internet conspiracy called "project 2025". i believe trump when he says he hasn't read it, because trump doesn't read much. and these people are not trump people. frankly, most heritage foundation types would be more likely to vote for kamala harris, although they wouldn't have been likely to vote for joe biden.
there is one thing i'm picking up that is different about kamala harris and it should be substantive if it is your ballot issue. hillary clinton was not pro-choice; in fact, she supported a constitutional amendment to restrict roe v. wade. biden has clearly never been pro-choice, even as he has put on a facade as a pragmatic necessity, as a democrat. biden is old enough that he was elected before roe v. wade. i think a lot of young people don't even know that liberals and socialists that are today over the age of 80 are largely not pro-choice, but rather overwhelmingly consider abortion to be immoral. for example, have you ever heard chomsky talk about abortion? it's disorienting, to say the least, and this is chomsky - the captain of the self-ownership team. biden's positions on abortion are out of touch, and he knows it, so he kind of talks around it.
obama was also very wishy-washy on abortion rights:
kerry was personally opposed to abortion as a moral issue, but supported abortion rights, legally and politically. if you're pro-choice, do you find that convincing?
gore was outspokenly anti-abortion at one point:
harris is clearly pro-choice. no caveats. no subtleties. as far as i can tell, she is the first (major party) candidate for president that is clearly unambiguously pro choice, with no second-guessing it.
i have previously suggested to people to be careful about voting for democrats if your ballot issue is abortion as you might get something you're not expecting if you don't do your research. this is still true, at any level. but, harris is different than previous democrats on this issue, as she is believably pro-choice, and unambiguously so.
on every other issue, what i saw was a mess of lies and contradictions, and they both came off as unelectable.
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
my ears are fucked but they're getting better.
hey, maybe it's covid. really. as far as i know, i never had it, and i never got vaccinated at all.
i suspect i was actually one of the first people on the continent to get it; i think i picked it up at a plaid concert in detroit in december, 2019 [plaid having come to the us after a european tour], and that i unknowingly took it to toronto with me the next week. i initially thought it was the six paper joint handed to me as a persie at the armed show the night before, but now i think it was covid.
i think that was the last time i got noticeably sick at all. this is weird; sore throat, plugged ears, no cough. it's like being sick without being sick.
Monday, September 9, 2024
i wish i didn't have to do this, but every once in a while i get some stupid right-winger try to go after me about my comments about hitchens being misunderstood, and just prove my point in the process. there's a general argument and a specific one, and i try to argue at the level of the general because the level of the specific is so dubious, given that much of what hitchens published at the time was factually wrong and from dubious sources, indicating he kind of lost his mind. it's also frustrating to see how aggressive the right has become in trying to claim hitchens, given how upsetting his position at the time was.
i distinctly recall watching amy goodman outright balling and sobbing after listening to him speak c. 2002/2003. i was only barely old enough to really get it, but it must have been devastating to experience.
so, there is a specific argument that hitchens picked up from some bad sources, parrots the propaganda on the issue and isn't really very important. i don't want to argue about that 20 years later; it doesn't matter. what's more important is to try to argue why hitchens took this extreme shift, and to do that you have to really understand his underlying ideology, which was trostkyism.
i've pointed this out repeatedly: you don't get hitchens because you don't get that he was trots. in response, they tell me to read some bullshit article he published at world net daily or something, and i can't get through to the retards. why did he do that? because he was trots.
"but read this article that has this specific factoid that says...."
no. why did he write the fucking article? he was a fucking communist.
if you really hold to trotskyism, seriously, honestly, you want to support worldwide revolution at all times, and that is what it was about. hitchens decided that the worldwide revolution meant supporting the overthrow of saddam hussein. now, that wasn't thought through - not through a filter of engels and not via an analysis of reality on the ground - but that's what he did, and when pushed on it, as he was, he retreated to arguments along the lines of "well, democracy is messy. they need to figure it out.", which...
my argument is that he would have been right about iran. but, anybody and everybody saw this was not a correct analysis of iraq.
it is true the hitchens then published a lot of bullshit, most of which i did read but no longer remember, and most of which has no real historical value and should be and will be forgotten as a mistake at the end of his life. that doesn't matter. it doesn't matter where zarqawi slept in the years before 9/11, and it doesn't mater if there was yellow cake. hitchens was just in solidarity with his side and willing to jump on what advanced his argument, because he needed to be on a team.
his actual argument, and the actual reason he supported this, had nothing to do with that, it was about the perpetual revolution, and what he saw as a regime that, if overthrown, would allow for iraqi self-determination, because he was not a racist at all but in fact gave the arabs far more credit than they deserved, and far more credit than anybody else, including myself did. and he was wrong to give them that much credit, as they promptly proved him wrong.
he might not have been wrong and, in 100 years, maybe events will unfold in an unpredictable way that suggests he was on to something.
right now it looks like he was wrong and that iraq needed and still needs somebody to fill the vacuum left by saddam hussein and come in and mop up the islamists in the name of arab secularism, then hold the state like a leviathan until the iraq people are ready to move to the next stage.
the correct lesson from hitchens' great mistake is this: don't put your engels away so quickly.
Sunday, September 8, 2024
as i've pointed out repeatedly, the fundamental problem is that biden thinks he's solving the larger israel-palestine issue (ala camp david more so than oslo) rather than dealing with the particular problem in front of us, which is destroying hamas. he had a predefined plan in place when he took over office and has resisted the need to change it to reflect shifts in facts and reality. as a result, he's creating problems, not solutions.
he has consequently defined "success" as getting a peace treaty, which might have been fine even two years ago, but makes no sense after october 7th, which changed everything and which he's not reacting to.
the goal of the white house should be destroying hamas, not getting a peace deal between israel and gaza, and trying to aggressively enforce a pre-oct 7 reality on a government dealing with a foundational shift in reality should be and largely is being seen as disgusting.
this is some evidence that he's maybe accepting the new reality. but the best thing that the united states can do is speed this up by helping israel get to the finish line, and stop slowing it down by aggressively seeking this illusory peace deal.
what biden wants as an outcome - a solution to the broader conflct - is not going to happen before january but will require the elimination of hamas as a prerequisite.
the ndp are stepping away from the liberals and they are pointing to stalled legislation, which ought to be a good reason, but the reality is that ther polling is cratering, as they're seen as being a part of an unpopular government.
this is tricky in a three party system.
generally, a decrease in ndp support most benefits the liberals, and if you're familiar with thinking in the ndp, you might realize that a primary purpose of the coalition agreement was to prevent an election the conservatives would win.
had trudeau just fucked off years ago, the liberals might be in a better position. currently, there's no foreseeable outcome but another liberal minority, and a decrease in ndp support would indicate that they should call the election now and not wait.
the actual reality is that the leadership of the ndp would approve of that.
i think this is a more realistic map and i'm posting it for a reason.
if i were to predict an outcome today, it would be this:
even if harris wins all of the "sun belt" states, and even if she wins michigan, which i think is very likely, she still has to win one of {minnesota, wisconsin, pennsylvania} to win.
should harris focus on north carolina instead?
i woudn't advise it.
it's worth noting that kamala harris chose to release an endorsement by corporate ceos on the same day that biden signed an executive order on labour standards, undercutting the ability of these corporate ceos to hire illegal labour under the table.
it's as though she finds the idea of standing with workers to be embarassing and had to do some damage control, which is the status quo ante in the contemporary democratic party and in the liberal party of canada as well. if these workers were smart, they'd be managers and worth standing in solidarity with. right? who cares about dumb workers. they don't fund the party.
it sends a pretty clear message, if you're listening.
Saturday, September 7, 2024
broadly speaking, republicans and democrats rarely differ in their israeli policy and if biden has institued an actual shift of policy on israel it would be unlikely for any republican to overturn it. this is where the institutional reality of the two-headed monster is most real. when the policy shifts, it's not driven by partisan political considerations and doesn't reverse based on political objectives.
israel is a ballot issue, but it is generally outside of the political control of elected american civilian leaders and in the hands of centcom and the pentagon.
that said, i do not think that biden has created a real shift in policy but will be seen historically as an anamoly and frankly as an aberration. the role of the next president, whoever it is, is going to be to undo the foriegn policy mess that biden has left, not just in israel but throughout the world, and is going to rely heavily on the direction of the pentagon to do it. they may not even know this yet, but it probably doesn't matter, the policy will be virtually identical.
i would advise that american jews look at other ballot issues.
Friday, September 6, 2024
i want to get out in front of this.
the issues that and i others like me are dealing with are complex. i admit i signed up for this and am evading capitalism intentionally; i don't want in, i want out. i've made complicated choices designed to remove myself from the economy as much as possible, to boycott capitalist slavery as much as i can. others have had less choice.
out of control immigration is unquestionably a dominant factor in not just the cost of rent but the lack of availability of rental options. i want to be clear that the issue isn't just that the prices are so high, it's that the availability is so low. i have few to no options because there's almost nothing for rent because there's way too many people.
immigration is not the only factor but it's a gigantic one.
i don't blame this on immigrants, especially not poor people coming to work. i'm a little annoyed by more wealthy migrants coming here to buy property and jack up the rent, but we let them do it, and we created the situation for it.
rather, my scorn and contempt is for the political class that created this mess by deregulating the immigration system due to their faith in the religion of neo-liberalism, not the immigrants caught up in that scheme to lower labour costs. they're suffering from the over-population, too. don't blame the mexican guy over there that you've been forced by the government to compete with for food, blame the liberal party of canada for mismanaging the situation.
we are not likely to see the type of riots taking place in the uk, yet, but it's perhaps not far away. it's not just a right-wing backlash against weird customs. i'm a leftist that is pretty concerned that we're getting swamped by conservatives in ontario and doug ford, who was elected primarily by immigrants, is exhibit a. the riots in the uk are not rational but they are in response to a right-wing extremist from a foreign culture attacking some kids on a feminist rights issue. it should be leftists rioting in the streets over being swamped by conservative immigrants that are changing the culture for the worse, not right-wingers.
rather, what's potentially about to blow in canada is something more similar to the kind of riots you see in venezuela or india, which are just legitimately about over-population and the cost of living and legitimately about bad governance and government corruption.
you can buy a car in ontario without insurance or a license so long as you don't drive it.
like, say, if you park it in a parking lot and hang out in it all of the time.
you can get something that just barely works for under $1000.
i'm exploring contingency options surrounding how i can wait for subsidized housing without renting an apartment if i get evicted from this one. i'd have to put my items in storage for $~200/month. a car with doors that lock and heat that works is not the worst way to wait it out. you could leave a few things in there. like a fridge. maybe?
i would need to continue actually biking around with a bicycle as i can't drive, except maybe to move the car around the corner once in a while to evade the cops.
just don't tell anybody.
or you could send me money via that paypal donation link so i can think about a downpayment on a cheap house. i kind of need it right now.
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
the claritin was useless. i had to try. i should just throw it out.
but my ear is slowly unclogging. it was better this morning.
oddly, the fluid coming out is entirely odourless, indicating it probably isn't bacterial. so, what clogs your ears and eyes up, gives you migraines, gives you a sore throat and makes you exhausted besides strep throat?
- second-hand cigarette or marijuana smoke would do that but there's no enough of it
- or it's from meth manufacturing
ugh.
i have never done meth intentionally, although i suspect i've been drugged. why did i get targeted for this bullshit?
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
i'd rather see an online tool that can be accessed from everybody's phone and presents shelf prices for all items in a certain radius, and have the government mandate participation. this will take prices down.
if i want tropicana grapefruit juice in metro detroit (or windsor, on), i would enter it in the search field and it would tell me the up to date price of the item in all stores in the region.
not participating would attract heavy fines or loss of retail license.
i rarely take any kind of medication for anything. i really hate taking drugs. they prescribed me t2s (codeine) after the surgery to remove my testicles, and i didn't even fill the rx. i bought the over the counter tylenol with caffeine in it instead, because caffeine is more my thing. i have avoided cocaine like the plague because i know i'd like it but i hate feeling dopey and stupid. i'd rather just drink coffee like it's water and keep the effect toned down. i even take those caffeine tylenols for the brutal migraines i get (aura. aphasia. they knock me out for days.), when i've been offered narcotics for them, as well. fuck opiates; rape them and send them to hell. but, i could get an rx for a dozen habit-forming drugs with a phone call, and there's something horribly wrong with that.
i have a package of 10 capsules of normal claritin (i made sure i got normal claritin, not the creepy stuff with fucking meth in it) that i bought in 2017, which expired in 2019 and which had eight capsules left, until this morning.
it's not dangerous to take expired loratadine, right? it might not work as well. that's a good thing. i hope it works enough that it stops hurting but it's been building up for a while and i am truly a little worried. i also got some rx eye drops a few weeks ago to deal with some conjunctivitis and the fact that the drops worked indicates it was bacterial. a nasty bacterial infection that gets both your eyes and ears suggests it's potentially in your brain. i did some research on the eye drops and they're apparently toxic in your ears, but i may try to swab the outside.
i don't currently have other symptoms; my eyes were gunking up for a while, i had a sore throat a while back and now my left ear is so clogged it's wired shut, which is exactly what my eyes did. there's some strep going around, but i'm inside all of the time.
rather, i suspect i'm suffering side effects of the meth lab upstairs and i just want to document it for civil reasons. i need to get out of here, but it's very hard right now.
stages of grief:
1. denial
2. anger
3. bargaining
4. depression
5. acceptance
the israeli protesters are somewhere in stages 1-3.
from wikipedia
Bargaining – The third stage involves the hope that the individual can avoid a cause of grief. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. People facing less serious trauma can bargain or seek compromise. Examples include the terminally ill person who "negotiates with God" to attend a daughter's wedding, an attempt to bargain for more time to live in exchange for a reformed lifestyle or a phrase such as "If I could trade their life for mine".
from the article:
at the service of Almog Sarusi, a 27-year-old who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, his mother said: "You were sacrificed on the altar of defeating Hamas, of Rafah, of the Philadelphi Corridor. Enough, no more. Only a deal!”
does mommy have a proposal for hamas? what does this unelected woman want to offer to hamas to save her son, on behalf of the israeli state?
in truth, she does not. she is demanding that the israeli government wave a magic wand and save her son from death at the hand of extremist subhuman terrorists seeking to extract unrealistic concessions. her demands are unreasonable and irrational, but in fact they don't even exist. she doesn't have a plan. she is merely experiencing grief and unable to process the trauma of it. biden is, unfortunately, stringing her and those like her along, because he wants to remove netanyahu from power because he's a conservative. it's a terrible policy driven by the most cynical type of partisan politics.
the united states should be bombing gaza and helping israel to destroy hamas, itself.
hamas is the criminal and the cause of the deaths, but biden is the cause of the problem. for biden to even suggest that israel should make any concession to hamas at all is outrageous and disgusting and it really makes you wonder if he's selling weapons to iran or not.
netanyahu is on the right side of history. biden will be recorded as one of the worse presidents of all time and his disastrously stupid policy in the middle east will be a primary reason for it.
it's just a few more months before the idiot president is removed from office and while he should go directly to jail for negotiating with terrorists he certainly won't. let him die discredited and humiliated and alone, at the least.
Monday, September 2, 2024
generative music algorithms are not something new. brian eno was somewhat of a pioneer in the idea in the 1970s, but his own ideas have roots in the ideas of composers like iannis xenakis in the middle of the last century, which come out of serialism. musicians have been trying to destroy the book on music theory since the day after it was written.
i have used algorithms to create music as well, most prominently on this record, released in late 2000:
https://jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything-lp-4th-record-sample-free-instrumental-remaster
the last track, acidosis, features live performances (piano, guitar, bass, organ, synth, mandolin, flute) and algorithms generating sound via midi sequencing (drums, synthesizers, noise generators) and is very much a collaboration between myself and the computer.
my high school music teacher in the mid 90s was fond of a computer program called "jazz in a box" that would generate midi patterns using ai algorithms. how real it sounded depended on how real the sound fonts were, not on the underlying computer program.
i would be more concerned about midi sequencing + sampling technology taking the jobs of session musicians for instruments outside of standard band instrumentation. as a composer, i can afford to tell a computer to play a violin part, but i can't afford to hire a violin player. maybe i could find a friend that would do it for free. if i was a major production studio, i would be able to afford it but wouldn't want to if i didn't have to. sampling is a more serious threat than ai, but it's also progress in the sense of maximizing compositional flexibility and creative options in real-time spontaneity during the composing process.
no, i am a realist. i like facts, truth. and i'm brutal, yes. i'm not interested in magical thinking or prayer or hope or faith.
the volume of water in the glass is equal to 50% of the total volumetric capacity of the glass, presumably at room temperature and at sea level (nobody ever specifies that).
and hamas is a bloodthirsty terrorist group that only a fool would try to negotiate with.
there's not going to be a deal to release the hostages and pretending that there is going to be one is just wasting everybody's time and putting the lives of those that remain alive in greater danger of ending before they can be rescued. the reality is that they are going to be exploited for maximum profit and then killed by their captive murderers, unless the idf can get there first and release them.
the real narrative is that the idf is faced with a race against time to rescue them before they are killed. there will be no "negotiation".
this is why it is against the law in the united states to negotiate with terrorists and why biden should be impeached for negotiating with hamas.
a small percentage may be lucky enough to get rescued. most will not be.
this is the actual choice facing the israeli government in terms of what they are actually able to do: to make decisions allocating resources expended on rescue operations, to determine what is feasible and what may backfire.
it may turn out that these six people were killed because the idf was on it's way there. that just demonstrates the point - there is no way out other than through special operations by the idf, when they are feasible. they were never going to be released. they were always going to be killed when it was most beneficial for hamas to do so.
it's not a question of trying to prioritize a hostage deal vs fighting hamas, as though hamas is willing to just hand back the hostages if you were to ask them nicely. this is a false narrative being irresponsibly presented by the media.
the nature of hamas' demands makes a negotiation virtually impossible. they are demanding things like the release of mass murderers (and what are they going to do if you release them? kill more jews. that would be a losing interaction) and the recognition of a sovereign state in gaza, which is a ridiculous proposition.
everybody wants the hostages released but so long as hamas holds to absurd demands and insists on trying to extort concessions the process is a nonstarter and the outcome is impossible. it is a more realistic tactic to get the hostages back by forcing hamas to surrender via the use of overwhelming force than it is to expect them to release the hostages in exchange for one of their nonsensical demands.
history will understand this; that's not a real choice, it's a false narrative that doesn't actually exist.
i'm not exactly a bassist; in fact, i've been (by far) the best guitarist in every room i've ever been in when i've been asked to play bass, which is just the point. you know a guitarist is capable when they can also play bass. a guitarist that can't play bass should be told the truth, which is that they need to go back to guitar school. i'm not ashamed of repeatedly playing bass in scenarios where i'm in a room with five arrogant macho loser guys that claim to play guitar, and of which none of them know what an augmented chord is.
but this idea that nobody cares about bass players is bollocks.
bass players people have cared about:
- paul mccartney
- brian wilson
- roger waters
- blixa bargeld
- geddy lee
- mike watt
- lemmy
- kim deal
- kim gordon
- tony iommi (sorry.)
- jack bruce
- sting
- flea
like, i'm just getting started.
"nobody cares about the bassist" is a legit stupid comment. in rock music, especially, bass is incredibly important and it runs across sub-genres. even most pop bands that everybody agrees are driven strongly by their singers (like nirvana or green day) would be essentially unlistenable with less talented bassists. people might not know it if they don't understand music, but they would not have gotten anywhere without their respective bassists. kurt cobain would have been a mail order gigolo without krist novoselic writing riffs for him.
if anybody ever tells you that to their face, take their beer out of their hand and dump it on their head for me, then tell them jessica told you to do it.
Sunday, September 1, 2024
what netanyahu needs to do is buy hamas a pony. then they'll let the hostages go.
there's a point where the stages of grief lift and logic reasserts itself and these people protesting in israel are having a great deal of difficulty getting there. hamas is demanding things it can't have and then killing people when it doesn't get it's way.
there's only one entity here that is responsible for these deaths and it is hamas.
marijuana is entirely legal in canada, and be careful what you wish for.
first, the quality of the legal pot is horrific. marijuana is supposed to be fun; the stuff you get in the store here is genetically engineered as a pain reliever to replace codeine or something stronger and it just makes you numb and exhausted. it's not any fun at all. it's just a sleep aid; you just fall asleep.
worse, you can tell it's designed to be more addictive than the street variety. just trust me on that point.
i've smoked quite a bit of pot in my life. really. but i like to keep it out of the house. marijuana should be smoked at concerts and bars with friends or strangers, not in your living room by yourself. it's a party drug; smoking pot by yourself is disgusting and pitiful and lame. there's nothing more disgusting than putting a book down at 2:00 pm on a wednesday afternoon and realizing your neighbours are smoking a bong that smells like a skunk being anal raped and just overwhelms the whole room. it's utterly disgusting, and if it's legal there's nothing you can do about it.
what we did wrong in canada is that we legalized it without passing bylaws minimizing or outright banning municipal use. i don't think you should be allowed to smoke anything at all or even have a barbecue in a residential neighbourhood. tobacco, marijuana, steak, whatever - it's all smoke and none of it belongs in a residential space. go to a park or a party or a bar or something.
we've also let the marijuana industry get out of control and, like the tobacco industry before it, it's going to end up liable for a lot of cancer deaths resulting from a product that is designed to be addictive.
i consequently think i agree more with trump, from what i can see.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)