for clarity's sake, i want to make something unambiguous.

i only use marijuana and alcohol in social situations, as a means to eliminate anxiety. i am not an extroverted person, and i don't enjoy being around people. i need the drugs as an escape from social interaction.

further, i don't like house parties; i think they're lame and pathetic. marijuana is not something that should be done in the privacy of your house, it's a social drug that should be smoked at concerts and in large gatherings, essentially exclusively.

what that means for me is that when the pandemic happened my drug use completely dried up and i simply haven't had the opportunity to pick it back up since.

they closed the border in april of 2020 and i wasn't able to get back over again until may of 2023, but then these new landlords showed up and threatened to illegally evict me, which has forced me to stay inside since june of 2023.  i was able to get out to one party in may, 2023 before i had to lock myself inside and wait for them to leave, and i'm still waiting. i have consequently had a single night of drinking since april of 2020, because i have absolutely no interest in getting drunk in my basement, or in somebody's backyard or garage in windsor, ontario. sitting around doing drugs and talking is utterly boring and pathetic to me.

i haven't been to a concert since april, 2020.

likewise, as i think smoking pot out of boredom in residential neighbourhoods is pathetic and lame (put the bong down and read a book instead), i have only had that single opportunity to get out of the house to get stoned.

i got very depressed in june of 2020 when i realized i wasn't going to be able to go out all summer and spent most of the period from june 21, 2020 to aug 1, 2020 smoking pinners and taking walks around the neighbourhood to try to cope with the fascist lockdown. even then, i had to go outside and take a walk. i can't handle smoking anything in the house, i think it's disgusting. i stopped at the end of july, 2020 and haven't touched the stuff since, except at that one party in may, 2023. at all. i came to the conclusion that government pot is a dangerous narcotic and that only homegrown or illegally grown marijuana should be smoked, as the government stuff seems designed to create dependence. normal marijuana is not addictive, but the government pot seemed to be.

even when i was a cigarette smoker, i always smoked outside. i quite smoking cigarettes in january, 2016.

i didn't decide to become straight edge in 2020 and it probably won't last, but i haven't had the freedom to live as i want to, since, and these decisions made by others and enforced on me have had that outcome: no marijuana since aug, 2020 and no alcohol since april, 2020, except for one night in may, 2023, when i was able to get out to a party.

i currently have no interest in drugs at all and i won't until i'm able to go back out to appropriate venues for drug use, which include places like bars and concert halls, not houses and back yards.

we have mandatory retirement for the supreme court in canada, and it's a relatively uncontroversial idea.

biden's proposal, like most of his ideas, strikes me as unworkable and awkward, and perhaps even designed to fail. you don't want your supreme court overturning laws every time a new president gets elected, but that seems like the obvious outcome of his initiative. that's insane, and will turn the country into a legal basket case.

what i'm really getting from this is simply that the democrats are sore losers that want to change the rules of the game because they lost it. they lost control of the court in a fully democratic process and they'll have to accept the will of the people, until they can win it back.

mandatory retirement, however, would be a good way to put a maximum age limit on the justices, to ensure they're not completely out of touch with reality, and aren't senile in office, like the president. perhaps that is the best way to look at this proposal: it is as incoherent as biden is generally these days, and evidence that he ought to remove himself from office.

the christians in the lebanese government should be standing with israel as an ally against hezbollah, which is ruining the country and trying to control it with fear, and not condemning it. this is a very disappointing response from the lebanese foreign minister.

i would call on christians in lebanon to try to replace this guy with somebody that is willing to stand up against hezbollah.

(and, lebanon has a weird government policy, where the foreign minister and most of the army leadership has to be a christian, which is in israel's potential favour)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-beirut-strike-1.7279975

i'm not going to like kamala harris, and i'm not going to like her because she's about three slots too far right for me to consider voting for, which has generally been the case for me with most democrats. harris, biden, clinton, obama, gore - all conservatives. i won't vote for conservatives.

i endorsed kerry, because he was actually a liberal. i did endorse hillary clinton, but i think it was a mistake.

i have otherwise not suggested voting for the democrats at any point since 1996. i usually endorse the greens, but made exceptions in 2004 for kerry and 2016 for clinton because i felt it was actually worthwhile, and i think i was wrong in 2016. in 2024, i am again endorsing jill stein.

however.

i have to acknowledge that, maybe - maybe - kamala harris might be the planet's last chance. we have now blown past 1.5 degrees and are on the brink of tipping into negative feedback cycles. time's up. she has yet to demonstrate as much, but she might still do so. i need to hear her make a very clean break from biden's pathetic and failed climate policy in order to deduce that she is, and i'll tell you what i want to hear.

i believe it was naomi klein that first pointed out that the economics of neo-liberalism were in direct conflict with the kind of of government policy required to address climate change, and that this was fundamentally a baby boomer problem. the correlation between the boomers lingering on past their welcome and best before date (to the point that a senile boomer had to literally be forced to resign at the last minute) and the fact that government has failed to address climate change as a serious issue is not a coincidence. the washington consensus put in place by bill clinton has been an absolute death sentence for the planet because it takes the tools government needs to address the problem away from it.

i read something recently that suggested that biden has succeeded in building seven charging stations. so much for positive tax incentives as a serious government policy. it's a joke. it's been clear for a long time that, in order to get some people in government that are willing to have government actually do things, a complete generational overhaul was going to be required. biden was never going to articulate the manhatten project style economic policies that are required to aggressively transition the country.

i have yet to hear kamala harris present her climate strategy. i've yet to hear her present any policy at all. 

i want to hear her come out and clearly state that she is going to spend trillions of public dollars on transition, and that she is going to go into debt in order to do it and that it doesn't matter how it gets paid for one day, what matters is that it gets done. further, i want to hear her say that she is going to declare the issue a national security emergency (because it is) and use executive orders to fund it if congress is going to remain stupid. if i hear that very specific thing, i might endorse her.

there's not going to be another chance to do this.

this is it.

time's up.