i understand that certain assholes want to ensure that politicians don't do things to reduce rent or take down property values, but there are real world consequences to that kind of greed.

i need to move.

i can't. there's nowhere to move to. 

this is creating a serious conflict between myself, my landlords and would-be tenants that want to move in and also have nowhere to move to. it's resulted in police calls. it's tying up the court system, with no end in sight. i've had to lock myself inside the house, while people sit upstairs and wait for me to leave (so they can change the locks), under threat of illegal removal. it's a mexican standoff that's been going on for over a year and could linger on for up to three or four more.

i've never missed a month of rent, and i'm legally allowed to be in the unit i've signed a lease to, the landlords just want to double it and are aggressively trying to throw me out.

it may not be much longer before these kinds of pressures lead to violence or unrest, as frustrated people need to find some way to let out their anger. we can't go on like this, something has to break.

i would have assumed a meth overdose.

https://windsorstar.com/entertainment/celebrity/richard-simmons-apparent-cause-of-death-revealed-by-los-angeles-fire-department

in most cities that i've been to, the downtown core has multi-purpose and multi-level buildings throughout itself as a defining architectural decision. so, for example, some of the places i rented in ottawa had pizza pizzas or chinese restaurants on the main floor, and apartments upstairs.

that essentially doesn't exist in windsor, where all of the buildings are either company-built skyrises (like the chrysler building) or they are single floor commercial spaces. the latter takes up a disproportionate part of downtown windsor, which robs the city of prime real estate.

if they built apartments on top of these businesses, i can promise you people would move in. i'd much rather live within walking distance of the tunnel, night clubs, etc than have to transit in to downtown, which is a pain in the ass, but the only places to live downtown are condos, corporate high rises (of which there are very few) or subsidized units. there's no normal affordable housing.

one of the biggest safety problems in downtown windsor is that nobody lives there. homeless people outnumber residents, and people just go downtown to access services or to go to bars. most of the buildings downtown, where so many people want to live, are subsidized housing. you have to go way out of town to rent a traditional apartment building in windsor.

while there is a 45% vacancy rate in the city's commercial sector, there is a 1% vacancy rate in the city's residential sector. what that tells me is that large amounts of the city are not zoned correctly.

the days of office spaces in a small city like windsor are likely over, and that's ok.

they should convert these offices into apartments. it solves several problems at once.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/windsor-boasts-canadas-highest-downtown-office-vacancy-rate

the houthis are barbarians, and that region of the world has been beset by barbarism for centuries.

the israelis should flatten the place.

there is another candidate that can counter trump with young men, but he'd have to run as vp rather than president, and that is barack obama.

there's a number of articles up trying to determine what kind of difference the debate made in polling projections and comparing harris or biden to trump and trying to draw conclusions from a 2% difference in a 5% margin and an almost certain bradley effect.

i'm going to say this once and without an in-depth analysis.

right now, voters demonstrate no preference between biden and harris and the debate has had no demonstrable empirical effect on the democrats' polling numbers, which is rather being driven by the weak economy, as measured in terms that matter to working people, rather than terms that matter to stock brokers. this indicates that people that want to vote democrat are voting for the party and not for a candidate. it basically doesn't matter who the face on the party is.

there is currently no empirical evidence to support the idea that harris will perform better than biden, except with black voters, but it is marginal. there is some evidence that harris will perform worse than biden with white voters, but it is marginal.

further, trump is doing extremely well with young male voters, which is a key democratic voting constituency. the swings you are seeing towards trump in key states are happening in the micro-demographic of men between the ages of 18-35, which is a demographic that any democrat needs to win if they hope to secure any election.

by keying in on young male voters, trump is basically pulling the rug out from under the democrats' feet. 

harris needs to focus on winning back young men, or she's going to lose states that nobody currently expects are even in play. 

the only politician that the democrats have that can counter trump in this key demographic is bernie sanders. harris, conversely, whatever you think of her as an individual, is just about the worst candidate possible to pair against trump.

are the democrats....stupid? it would appear so, kent.

friendship is impossible in capitalism.

it's why i avoid making friends.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/21/biden-allies-drop-out-column-00170131

the media is wondering if some of the status quo governors - some of whom are actually very unpopular, like gavin newsom - might try to take a run at kamala harris.

what would be the point of that? they're just different faces on the same set of pro-corporate policies.

i don't think joe biden was a very good president, but he seemed to have a relatively close relationship with bernie sanders, whether it was cynical or practical on biden's end. there's a good argument that bernie is next in line, and not kamala harris.

i'd like to see sanders take a run at the nomination, even if it's just to put some better ideas on the table, because the reality is that people didn't like harris very much in 2020 because her ideas weren't very good, and that's just going to get worse with more power. the media will like kamala harris but she's going to have a very hard time mobilizing base voters in places where she needs to win, like michigan and wisconsin, because those voters aren't going to be enthusiastic about her policies, which are going to be more "centrist" (that is, conservative) and pro-corporate than biden's.

somebody needs to take a run at her from the left and try to mobilize traditional democratic voting constituencies or trump is going to steam roll her in the end.

bernie will be more popular with younger voters than harris will be, and probably across the board, in almost every demographic. there's a reason for that and it is policy based. 

her politics suck.

running harris against trump is going to be 2016 all over again, except worse, as harris doesn't have the entrenched base that clinton had.

if you're not following this, listen to the third act of frank zappa's quirky weirdo 1979 classic joe's garage, which i need to present in two videos.

listen to this first:

and then this:

if you think you can handle it, you could try the whole record, but it's a pretty big bite to chew off:

did i get to joe?

i don't know.

i don't know how i could know. there are known unknowns. you know, that was actually a reasonable analysis. we should skip the lesson in kant, for now.

i know that this site doesn't have much of a real audience, but has generated the attention of certain spooks, and there have been several times when i've wondered if very powerful people in both of the countries on this continent were tuning in. i still don't know who has been stalking me, who bought my house to get to me, etc. it's not some dumb kids in muscle cars.

when i read the news reports, i thought there was going to be a final speech from joe, but it turns out that it was a statement posted to twitter. 

does anybody think that joe biden resigned by posting to twitter and instagram?

is it even a prank?

we'll find out when joe wakes up in the morning, at roughly the crack of dawn. gotta start your day nice and early, gotta make the best out of life. is this real, or did somebody resign for him? if so, that's going to go down as one of the best pranks of all time, and will consequently justify itself as trending on youtube.

or, maybe joe is preparing his final epic speech.

remember joe: the white zone is for loading and unloading. if you want to unload, you go to the white zone.