large amounts of muslim immigration concerns me because muslims will want to enforce their rules, and i strongly dislike their rules and don't want to live under them.

but, this is reality:

and it's suggesting we've overdone it and need to pull back before it's too late.

i agree that it's weird.

however, if it indicates some shift in the government to be less muslim or less asian and more european, which is something worth analyzing in terms of recent immigration trends and raw stats, i'll take it.

strictly statistically, canada has been on the path to becoming not very european at all and that was worrying and needed to be addressed. the hindus don't bug me so much, but i don't want to live in a majority muslim or majority black or brown country, and we're on the way there.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/chris-selley-carneys-bizarre-fixation-with-calling-us-european-makes-no-sense

i actually like this weather.

here's a suggestion that might help, if you don't: wear less clothes.

ok.

so, it seems like the chinese flew the payloads out of iran before the strikes on the facilities.

it seems, then, that this was probably a deal between trump and xi to eliminate a problem neither wanted to exist, and the b2 run was mostly political theatre. i might guess that the chinese are taking on some inspection oversight, with iran identified as being in their sphere of interest, which gives the chinese responsibility to deal with the issue. it puts the movement of planes to guam in a different, perhaps defensive, context.

while the signals are that it's uneasy, any level of detente between the us and china should be welcomed, with caution. the americans have to fundamentally understand that china sees america as an empty continent, peopled by an inferior race, to colonize. the idea of peace, however uneasy, is naive. that's a war that will eventually happen, and it must. we should put it off as long as we can, though, even if it means shifting back to this older global order described recently by mersheimer.

this allows trump to tell netanyahu to knock it off, before he starts a war. i support regime change in iran because i'm a radical socialist, but trump has less reasons to actively agitate for such a thing and it's not entirely clear why he'd want it. 

if iran really wants to shut down the strait of hormuz, the americans should help them out by blockading it.

remember oil for food? they don't, apparently.

it is hot in here, no doubt. there was some wind today, but it knocked over my fan and broke it, which makes it that much worse tonight. i need to buy some new fans. the low tonight is apparently 25 degrees with 35 degree humidity. that's very warm for this climate. the high today was 35 degrees.

i slept very briefly last night after i had the soup, and then spent the night organizing the living room, which is the recording space. i am not actually setting anything up yet, i'm just organizing it in place so i can clean and can more effectively get the new couch in, when the idiot property managers replace it. the more i think about this, the more i'm convinced that it's just rank, abject dumb. i'll take the new couch one way or another, thanks.

the thrown out or stolen couch was my dad's couch. i think he bought it around 2005ish, because it smelled like one of my golden retrievers, who had died years previously. he himself died in 2013. i didn't ask for the couch, but my stepmother instantly discards of everything and anything, and is somewhat psychotic about it, often rebuying items she discarded of for no good reason. it was loaded onto the truck and transported to windsor. i've moved it three times, and now it's apparently thrown away. i still have the cushions....

but you can't just throw out my couch. that's ridiculous. you're going to buy me a new couch, the easy way or the hard way. as the couch was about 20 years old, i suppose i'm due for a new one. so, thanks?

i got most of the way done, stopped to make poutine early in the morning (6:00) and fell asleep again, this time until about 15:00. i spent the evening exfoliating again, made some more soup this evening, slept again and now need to get back to finishing organizing the space and cleaning the floor. the very hot, humid weather has got me sweating off piles of dead skin, which is what i wanted. and i'm due for a major shower. there's a list of things i need to do in the next few days that are long overdue.

so, let me get back to this - dishes, coffee, cleaning. i might have the entire space set back up by mid day.

i still don't know why trump assassinated frodo, though.

the harry potter guy better keep an eye out.

it is not surprising for the far right to stand with right-wing islamic extremism. that makes sense.

what doesn't make sense - and needs to stop - is fake leftists siding with the islamic right, which is at it's core a movement for arabic and islamic colonialism, in the ignorant and misguided perception that it's trotskyist. it's not.

when you look at yourself in the mirror, and you see marjorie taylor greene looking back, it's time for some soul searching, kids.

....and, then, marjorie taylor greene proves to everybody that she really is an anti-semitic dark age christian, and a member of the american taliban, by siding with the backwards crazies in the openly fascist islamic "republic" of iran.

put your niqab on, bitch.

no, really. please. you're a prime candidate, to hide the ugly. was your mom so into the dark ages that she had a thing for horses on top of it? you could actually marry your horse back then; just ask nero. america would be better off if this bitch put her niqab on and just went to some cold, dark alley to pray for peace for the next ten years. it's the same make-believe nonsense anyways, right?

the nad--->yamaha system cannot do subsonic frequencies. it distorts badly.

it has consequently had problems with recent peter gabriel records, which are apparently mixed for an audience of elephants (i haven't tried adrian belew yet...), and with a few of my own recordings, which i acknowledge were absurdly built via sample manipulation in cool edit. i took a short piece of music and pitch shifted it in the wave editor to fit specific pitch shifts, like a sampler. this utterly floored the bass frequencies and created a mess, which is intentional, but it means you need to be able to reproduce it or it just crackles and pops.

something like pelican's australasia sounds a little thin, but it does dance music (nin's the perfect drug single) fairly well. it excels at pearl jam, which makes sense - that is the type of music the nad does. ymmv.

i think it's the nad, mostly, and that these speakers have limitations but the nad is struggling nonetheless. i'll have to see how it handles something like "fall of civilizations" coming right from youtube via the chromebook, as there's a direct a/b. the cr-620 drove these speakers quite well. if the nad can't, it's the weak link.

well, they told us they were going to do this.

my understanding is that there were not serious nuclear programs in these facilities, which does open the question: what was down there?

whatever it was, the united states just spent a lot of money on a very sophisticated attack that amounts to a show of overwhelming force. it sends a message to everybody that the anericans still see themselves as the superpower, until further notice. 

the russians know what was down there. my guess is that, whatever they say, they're glad it's gone, too.

this poses minimal threat and minimal harm, as it is. the danger is somebody miscalculating in overreaction, but i think that is unlikely. 

so long as that's it, we'll have to keep wondering what they actually did, but that should be the end of it. i'm more concerned about opposition forces on the ground.

i would have voted against both halves.

but note that what was developed in the new house is a "grand coalition". these are rare in canada, and almost always work the other way around. for example, stephane dion propped up stepphen harper - and got hammered for it.

you might have to go back to the 1960s and lester pearson to find another example of the conservatives voting to pass liberal legislation in a minority parliament.

this is not because the conservatives have decided to be reasonable, it's because the liberals swung hard to the right under carney.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/liberals-conservatives-pass-major-projects-legislation-in-house-of-commons/

i needed to get the gravy off the stove before it started to grow mold, so i made some more onion soup like soup and a general "needs to be eaten up" mega meal, which i used to do more frequently but has become rare since i've moved to the meal plan.

- remaining beef broth

- three strips of bacon

- old cheddar

- mozarella

- white bread crust

- dill

- hemp seed

- frank's

- pepper

- nutritional yeast

- caesar

with two slices of white toast (i never buy and rarely eat white bread) and a last chance salad composed of the last yellow pepper, an avocado, broccoli florrets, the last carrot, hemp seed, nutritional yeast, oregano, frank's, ceasar.

that eats up a few things. 

i'll probably finish the potatoes in the morning.

as for the last few days, it hasn't been as productive as i'd like. i've simply had to waste hours and hours exfoliating, and rehydrating, as i am utterly dehydrated. there's been some drama here that i don't feel like narrating, as it's not what i want this blog to be about. it will come up in time.

i woke up on monday morning before noon with the intent of doing a quick clean of myself and getting to the food bank first, then to pick up an rx and then to get some groceries, but i instead spent all day in the bathroom scraping dead skin off my face, before getting out to the rx at the last minute and pick up some groceries on the way back. i noted my couch was still there when i came in on monday, and hoped to get it in the next day. i made my potatoes when i got in, and fell asleep relatively early. this made sense because i only got an hour or so of sleep on monday morning.

i then spent essentially all day on tuesday in the bathroom exfoliating. i am actually making progress, but this is thick and stubborn. the weeks of hauling items across walkerville in a shopping cart left me utterly dehydrated and somewhat filthy. i have to moisturize it up, sweat it out and scrape it off, which is even grosser, but that's reality. when i get the skin cleared up, i'll need to focus on rehdryating my hair, and then bleaching it when it's rehydrated. i'm a little over due (my yearly bleach job is usually in may. it should get done before july.). i got essentially nothing else done, and didn't get the couch in.

i was woken up on wednesday morning by somebody sent to look for bed bugs in my apartment (they didn't find any). i spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning and exfoliating yet again. still didn't get the couch in.

on thursday morning, i was expecting a plumber. i heard some rumbling in the hall around 10:00, so i went out to check and found an electrician. i also noticed my couch was gone. i was able to determine by the end of the afternoon that the couch had been removed by property management because "they weren't sure who it belonged to".

i sent them an email on june 5th telling them it was my couch and i couldn't get it under the door. they also told me in an email on may 12th that they were ok with me leaving items (like bicycles) in the common area. the only other person on the floor knew it was my couch, because i told him. i'm consequently left to conclude this was retaliation, and i had to file a lawsuit.

i again spent all day friday and all day saturday exfoliating, and am making progress clearing up the filth and dead skin. i have restarted the np list, in the process:

https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/p/np-list.html

i have made no progress in organizing the apartment because i'm prioritizing exfoliating and rehydrating my skin and hair, first. i am going to need to prioritize catching up on email, as well, but rehydration is the primary concern at the moment.

there's a very narrow class of ideological pacifists that can balance this, and i may not always agree with them, but i think it is imperative that they exist. medea benjamin enrages me more often than not, but i strongly support her right to express herself, and think it's imperative that her and others like her continue doing what they are doing, even when they are clearly overwhelmingly wrong and when action is necessary and just. but you have to hold to your pacifism. you have to be rigid. you have to be honest.

...and this point should be made to phony leftists in the west who clam to stand for perpetual revolution, or against colonialism, or for whatever angle they articulate when challenged: you might support the kurds, and avoid being hypocrites. you don't. you stand with regimes that represent, practice and enforce everything you falsely claim to oppose. you make me fucking sick.

i clarified in an earlier post that i'm not in favout of carpet-bombing iran or reducing it to rubble so much as i'm in support for providing air cover for radical left groups on the ground, which i realize is unlikely, unless we help the kurds carve out a bigger area. i would support air support for the kurds, to help them control a larger amount of iran. and i think that might actually destabilize the regime enough to take it down.

i would not imagine that american bombs are going to help.

however, i think that if you let the jews operate freely, as they have been, the result will be beneficial to every actor that i'm in solidarity with, at the expense of those i oppose. i consequently would not support direct american intervention, except with the kurds, or in careful alignment with jewish strategic aims.

the problem is that the americans don't like watching. it makes them look bad in front of the russians. 

my tuesday meal was the red potato bacon-sour cream-dill-gravy-cheese thing.

my wednesday meal was plate two of nachos for this cycle, but without the salsa and in two stages. first stage was the regular nachos recipe, without bacon and without salsa. the doritos were also substituted with the the spicy garlic flavour to try it, and i found it underwhelming. this was consequently pretty basic nachos:

- doritos

- hemp seeds

- nutritional yeast

- cheese

microwave, then add ceasar, hot sauce. that's it.

my bacon was saved for later in the night, and consumed with the remaining gravy from the poutine in something that was similar to french onion soup. remember that the "gravy" is actually beef soup broth. i took my two slices (usually used with nachos) and put it in a bowl with the gravy, dill, nutritional yeast, frank's, hemp seed, the rest of the monterrey jack and the rest of the onion bread. this was a good little bowl of soup for very early on wednesday morning.

the thursday meal was a reprise of the previous salsa meal, doubled up as before, to compensate for the remaining two missed salsas, and with the remaining mising glass of juice.

the friday meal began the next cycle with a ceasar salad without substantive subs (white bread for brown bread. that's it.).

and saturday is repeating the poutine.

there are still 2 pasta meals from the previous cycle before i can move to the next cycle and i still need to make some broccoli soup. i will get a third poutine out of this bag of potatoes but not a fourth.

the britney spears testimony at the puff daddy trial is apparently pretty devastating to everybody. 

i'm the same age as britney spears. exactly. she's a few months younger than me. i wouldn't say i was a fan of hers; i didn't come from a family that paid for expensive cable to start (they probably could have), and i wouldn't have watched cable if i did. i actually recall being rather appalled by the way she was being marketed, as a person the same age as her. even as a 17 year old, i realized this was legal pedophilia, and i wondered out loud if it was a part of some kind of systemic attack on female autonomy by the underlying system of hetero-patriarchy. you could see it coming before it happened. if you think what developed in the 00s was some kind of shock, watch some britney spears videos from the 90s and compare them to something like spice girls. the messaging is pretty disparate, and pretty dystopic.

i had actually finished reading a text called gravity's rainbow by thomas pynchon about the time, and there's a subplot about a trafficked child star named bianca. on naive read, this is empty smut, and somewhat contemptible. however, what he's exploring is how nazi propaganda used pornography, including pedophilia, to try to generate higher population growth for the master race. i immediately related that to the young ms. spears. i may have been the only person my age of either or any gender alive that was interpreting britney spears through the filter of nazi propaganda, as reapplied by hollywood's integration with the cia and with madison avenue. we're not that different. 

i've consequently had a lot of empathy for this woman for decades. when the world was running her through tabloid muck, i realized she was being victimized, because i realized she was victimized from the very start. she has been perhaps the grossest symptom of our sick society for as long as i can remember, for most of my life. and she had no say in the matter, no way out. i got it, because i read that book.

i don't think you can get court audio, but i've seen a transcript, and my understanding is that it's changing people's perceptions. it's better late than never, but it won't matter if we don't learn, and we don't take the steps to understand the depth of continued female sex trafficking in our society - something we don't believe is real.

and, i'm left in the ironic trap of experiencing the same thing for the last five years, because i am being stalked, i'm being drugged, i'm being harassed and i'm apparently being filmed, and i can't get anybody to take me seriously. i wish i had court video that i could send to people questioning me. it might not help me catch the fuckers, but it might help trigger the kind of protective mechanisms i need right now and i can't get access to.

if you can find a transcript or a video, you should read or watch it.

have you noticed that trump and putin are trying to outdo each other on unpredictability? it's reflective of the absurdity of post cold war hegemonic capitalism. in the cold war, everybody was trying to avoid bombing each other. nowadays, both sides compete over who is more deranged, and more likely to push the button first. it's a badge of honour.

you know the world you're living in is beyond insane when you're citing phil collins as a political analyst.

we revel so deeply in our rejection of logic that we celebrate breaking game theory as a tool of analysis. rational actor? what does that even mean?

to the extent that it is true that the russians gave up because reagan scared them into standing down by refusing to behave rationally, which i understand is substantive, the lesson we've all learned is that we get ahead by rejecting logic. success requires an embrace of irrationality. the crazy always win.

if this was the cold war, there would be an attempt to make sure the other side understood what you were going to do before you did it, because the cuban missile crisis was a real event and not a tv show and because one too many bombers got just a bit too close, and because some heroes that have been forgotten made courageous decisions to ignore their chain of command, and were right to do it.

today, trump wants to keep putin guessing, to try to catch him unprepared.

and putin wants to make sure trump doesn't know what to expect in response.

because this is hegemonic capitalism: the triumph of the illogic, madness gone wild.

the basic idea behind what carney just announced is "trump is right, let's follow his lead".

ugh.

see, tariffs are hard and it's easy to be stupid.

if you put tariffs on countries importing steel, they will put tariffs on our exports. exports will decline. meanwhile, if local steel was preferable, you wouldn't need tariffs in the first place. the result is more likely to be recessionary than protectionist. you end up with less exports and less local consumption.

oops.

picking a fight with somebody else to mitigate the issue with the americans is not wise. our issue is with the americans. keep the measures directed.

the reality is that steel is filthy. let the americans do steel if they want. let's put export taxes on them and build houses instead. if we just do keynesian stimulus, we don't need extra tariffs on other countries.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/trumps-tariffs/article/canada-to-adjust-counter-tariffs-against-us-on-july-21-carney/

even those in support of the fascist regime in iran mostly agree that it was not intended to be a monarchy, but it seems like that is what it's become. 

iran remains a very young country. if they actually try to pass power to the current dictator's son, it is hard to imagine iranians accepting that as a valid outcome.

they're a bunch of backwards ignoramuses.

now, that said, if there have recently been hypersonic weapons launched from iran (i think that's unverified), somebody in russia needs to explain how that happened.

eventually, images of iran's top secret nuclear program will be released, and they will look something like this:

oh, great allah

deliver bomb for us

to smite our enemies

the great and little satan

ooga booga booga ooh.

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 24 Iranians across the country on Tuesday morning, bringing the toll since Friday’s surprise attack to at least 224 people dead and more than 1,400 injured, Iran’s health ministry said. 

in gaza, they exaggerate to make israel look bad and warp public opinion. it's well-established.

in iran, they under-report to make themselves look stronger than they are to sway domestic opinion.

i wouldn't be surprised if the death toll is 10x that.

guess they shouldn't have launched that missile attack on israel last year, huh?

hey, remember when iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at israel, and israel sent one strike and then assassinated one guy in response?

i'm just saying.

this is kind of overdue. iran kind of had it coming.

on the other hand, i'm happy to see india and canada normalize relations. that is a positive development.

from what i can ascertain, iranian scientific capabilities (in general) are pretty pathetic, and it's always been that way. iran has at times written some good poetry, and the kurds had their hey dey in the dark ages, but if the iranians had any science at all in antiquity it was utterly forgotten during the islamic invasion in the 7th century, which burned and destroyed everything. from what we can tell, iranian society from the 4th century bce to the 7th century ce was actually foundationally greek after alexander chased off the achaemenids. the achaemenids, themselves, were obsessed with the phoenecians and the jews, and they let these semitic groups take over the administration of their large empire. after the arabs came the mongols, who were worse, and the area has really never recovered from the mongols.

the persians/iranians were good at war, and they were good at economics, but all evidence we have tells us that they have always sucked at science.

i think the iranians would love to build a bomb, and they kind of clearly need one, too. they never will because they can't; they're not able to. this foray into fundamentalism and backwardsness isn't going to help them.

it's a red herring, anyways. their allies - china and russia - would never allow it. more realistic is that the chinese will station bombs in iran or central asia to protect the minerals, which are quite substantive.

i'm more interested in dismantling the iranian state and supporting groups fighting for that on the ground. this might be bullshit, but i'll take it as a way in.

i want to clarify that a full scale invasion of iran is probably a bad idea. well, almost. there are ways to do this. the turks, for example, could lead a nato force into iran. american or european troops would generate the worst kind of backlash, and potentially undo any tentative gains made over the last few years of massive street protest against the tyrannical regime in place.

i would, however, support taking out iranian leaders of all and any sort (it would be a good day for the world if they could take out mr. khamenei) and would tentatively support providing air cover for key groups that the american military almost certainly wouldn't provide air cover for. kurdistan could be due for some major growth. the kurds are a broadly more tolerant style of governance (that's the real reason the turks hate them), and a bigger, deeper kurdish toehold in iran could be enough to get those dominos falling, without doing things that are counterproductive. there's enough people in iran that want out of the islamic state governing model that a parallel state could get some traction, if it can get up and going.

i mean, the other idea is carpet bombing, and that kind of sucks. i'm ultimately in solidarity with secular, socialist and democratic (and white. let's be honest.) groups struggling against the mullahs (and the arabic colonialism in the area). i don't want to blow up iran. i do, however, think that (unlike iraq, which was a brutal secular dictatorship keeping the fundies in check at the butt of a machine gun because it had to, as we witnessed), iran might appreciate some help liberating it, if it's done the right way.

trade irritants aside, what does canada gain by actively interfering with american strategic goals in eastern europe and the middle east?

trump is basically right that the g7 is a waste of time, and that it would be a better use of time if the russians were there. there's been this visceral response in canada that the russians are war criminals, as though the rest of the countries invited (they invited saudi arabia and the uae) are not, and as though that even matters. it's a very juvenile approach to a negotiation process, as though bad decisions made by putin make him less important.

trump is saying "i want to talk to important people with decision making authority and get important things done on a global scale.".

canada is responding "why don't we just hang out and smoke a joint in the rockies and be friends instead?".

and, trump is telling us we're a waste of time for it. he's right.

it actually tastes more like onion soup, with potatoes instead of bread.

cool..

the next thing in this fridge to eat is a large pile of red potatoes. what am i going to do with this?

- fill up a pot of potatoes with cold water

- bring to a boil

- let sit for fifteen minutes

- take each out to a plate, chop in half or four

- dump into a large serving bowl

they're cooked; kind of mashy, but they're red potatoes. i've had these before, at dinners like christmas or thanksgiving.

- dump margarine on the potatoes

- dump sour cream on that

- add a chopped avocado

- add a tbsp of hemp seeds

- add some fresh dill

- add ceasar

- add nutritional yeast

- mix

meanwhile, fry up four or five strips of bacon and add four ox cubes to three cups of water, and dissolve. wait.

- grate about 200 g of mozzarella and dump it in

- mix it up

- turn heat off the gravy and let sit. stir occasionally while waiting for bacon to finish.

- chop bacon and add

 - add gravy

- add pepper

- add frank's

i should get three, maybe four of these out of the bag. it's a good mea.

yesterday afternoon, i tried the spiral beach again first, through just the celestions, and was happy with the output. the next record i wanted to test in the bedroom was sister machine gun's metropolis, as it's another synth record i had around that i know well. it's a record i could test the setup with. the outcome was acceptable and i'm happy with this. i then stopped to eat.

my monday meal turned out to be the salsa i made on sunday evening, which was an expansion of my normal salsa recipe.

my normal salsa is prepared for nachos and for eggs and consists of:

- one lime

- one beet

- 1/2 tomato

- 1/2 red pepper

- 2 big cloves of garlic

- one avocado

- 1 tbsp cumin

- 1 tbsp paprika

- 1 tbsp oregano

- 1 tbsp cayenne

- pepper

- frank's hot sauce

i skipped the salsa for the two egg meals this cycle and also for the first nacho on sunday moning, so i doubled it up in a large serving bowl and expanded it into a meal by adding a can of chick peas, ceasar dressing, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds, dill and some grated cheese. i also swapped the red pepper for yellow pepper and fresh tomato for canned tomato, as both were food bank subs. this was a big bowl of salsa. i'll probably have this again in a few days as a separate meal.

i needed to get the kitchen cleaned up, so i set up the yamahas and nads on my old coffee table, ad-hoc. i listened to the sister machine gun first, as i was cleaning. i was initially not sold on it. disc two to try was the do make say think, and i realized quickly that the problem was that the input was too loud. triggering the low level made the do make say think sound far better, and it got a few cycles to test it thoroughly, culminating in my decisive post early in the morning. the sister machine gun also sounded substantively better on second listen, with the low level triggered.

i was eventually able to: 

- do two runs of dishes,

- thoroughly clean up the space

- get a new cabinet installed up on top of the stove

- clear out a pile of boxes

- vacuum

- scrub

- move to shelving units into the hall for cds

- moving the sewing table into the bedroom

- move around a large pile of boxes from one room to the other

- make some coffee

- do a lot of exfoliating. it's getting there, after a rough few weeks of moving, etc where i didn't have time to wash or shower and the weather has made the living conditions in here extremely harsh and dry. its been pretty gross.

as has become the norm, i got a little sleep in the morning, after cleaning up the kitchen.

i've got the nad set up in the kitchen with the 6 ohm speakers.

it sounds better with the low level button pushed, but i'll point out that my source is currently a dvd player that is probably sending the signal out very loud. i would like to turn down the input, actually. that will be less of an issue when the in is the chromebook, as i can and will turn down the input.

do make say think's country hymn is a challenging record to reproduce and it's doing ok, even with the likely driven input (shouldn't a dvd not do that? maybe that's exactly it, that the device is designed that way by flaw). this is likely more than i will need this amp to do. i think this will work fine.

so, the kitchen system is going to be:

- nad 3020e in low level mode

- yamaha ns-e55 (these are 6 ohm, 50 watt)

- expired lenovo chromebook running in guest mode for digital audio (via usb) or streaming media (audio and video) from bandcamp or youtube. i am able to put a hard drive in this device but it does not currently use one by design and preference. this is primarily for watching the news or documentaries when eating, in the kitchen. through the tuner or tape in.

- it's currently a sony dvp ns-325 as optical drive source and will likely stay that way. this plays dvds, cds and mp3 cds (cds with mp3s). through cd/aux.

- there's a boxed widescreen monitor connected to this system.

- there is also phono input on the amp, and will be an extra tuner or tape in that will probably not be immediately used.

i could send a dvd video out to the monitor in theory, but i have had minimal interest in buying video dvds or bds and only have a few scattered burns. that is likely all i will need in the kitchen.

the bedroom system will be:

- yamaha cr-320

- celestion ditton 110s as primary

- to be purchased 30-50 watt secondary speakers

- cd audio from a jvc 5-disc changer from the 90s, cd only. no mp3 cds.

- i am looking at getting a recent blu-ray player with a usb in that plays flac natively and has an rca out. this will be for digital audio over usb and also for any optical media with dvd, bd, mp3, wav or flac. it should be under $100, as bd is being phased out due to netflix.

- i have a record player and two cassette decks for potential use. it might make more sense to put the record player in here.

- i am not currently intending to watch video in the bedroom, but that might change.

- this device only has four ins - cd/aux, tape 1, tape 2, phono. so, i could not use all five ins and the phono is not usable for anything else. it is not likely that i will set up a cassette deck in here.

the typing pc (the main bedroom pc) does not currently have a soundcard out to connect to an audio system, but does have a legacy altec-lansing system connected to the integrated sound out (1/8th inch computer jack). this system is very annoying, because you can't turn the subwoofer off, but the satellites actually sound quite good, for what they are. it was intended for gaming, not audio. it was purchased with my 90s pc and intended to be for music production, but my dad got badly upsold on that one. as mentioned, the system would be good for gaming, but i don't game, and that's not what it was meant for. i have barely been able to use it at all. i will have this connected on the computer table, but it's just intended for the computer, not for audio.

if i connect a video source to the cr-320, it will be from a laptop and not from the typing machine, which is intentionally kept isolated as a glorified typewriter.

isn't a military parade just a big air show? don't americans love their air shows?

here i am! rock me like a hurricane!

they played that one, right?

i'm not very invested in this, one way or another. is it supposed to scare china? is that it?

whatever.

today, i woke up a little earlier and tried again with the four way system, this time with the windows open. that is real life and both introduces noises and reduces reflections. i also pulled the celestions a little bit closer to me and a little away from the wall.

with the initial four-way setup, the ssris record sounded better with the celestions closer, which is because it turned down the yamahas. i decided to move to a different record, so i pulled a similarly self-produced record by another canadian rock band from the same time period; the record is ball by a band called spiral beach, which no longer exists. i saw spiral beach play a handful of times in ottawa at venues like zaphod's and at festivals like the blues and folk fest. i picked this up used in a small independently run record shop in a doomed mall in the west end of ottawa proper, called carlingwood, that i do not believe exists anymore either (the guy might even be dead). this record is a little more compressed than the ssri record and it was immediately obvious.

running the spiral beach record through the four-way sounded ok, but now the yamahas sounded a little tinny and loudspeakery due to the higher compression, which makes sense. this record sounds better through just the celestions, although i will try again with an 8 ohm speaker as a secondary. i'm probably looking at pioneer cs-x5s for cheap, which are full range surround sound speakers and i think should work well in a reverse surround setup like i'm designing here. the reverse surround is really introducing some nearfield studio monitors right in front of me, while i the bulk of the sound continues to come from behind me, which i'm used to in my bedroom. of course, if i lie down in my bed and put my head on my pillow, it's not reversed anymore, it'd normal surround; it's only reversed when i sit up in bed and am typing. i'll have to test. if not, i have some cheap low watt full range decent quality utility speakers.

i then switched back to the ssris record with just the celestions in their new speaker placement and while i am noticing the absence of the boost in midrange volume from the missing yamahas, it is demonstrating the limitation of the source - which is good.

i'm going to test a few more records with this celestion setup this afternoon and then test the nad with the yamahas tonight.

on saturday, i again woke up around noon. i had a guy that wanted to sell me a sewing machine desk for $20 and drop it off for me. great; done. this desk will fit perfectly in the closet, and i will be able to move the chair back and forth between the sewing machine and the writing desk. i took a shower, i ate the rest of the apples (they were getting a little sweet), which was i think 6, and then ate an entire package of apple sauce just to be ridiculous about it, along with a small amount of jam left in the container. i wanted to make some coffee and sit down and test the speakers while doing this write up, but i had difficulty getting going.

i pulled an ssri record out of a box called effeminate godzilla-sized wind chimes and tried it through the nad, expecting it to give it a bit of a work out. this is the first and last record that the nad failed on, as it was a pretty spectacular fail. this is a largely self-produced record by a couple of kids from bc in the late 00s that has the unusual quality of citing cardiacs as an influence. i picked it up after seeing them play at the old zaphod's beeblebrox in downtown ottawa. if you know cardiacs, you know why i picked this as a speaker workout test; the record has prominent synths, guitars, bass and drums that fill out the spectrum, contains detailed arrangements and production and features multi-part harmonies and complex counterpoint melodies through much of it. i know my jvc could make this record sound good through these celestions (the kefs are better). the nad made it sound like it was put through a compressor-limiter that squished the sound right to death, and this is the kind of record to use to demonstrate this kind of difference, because it wasn't engineered for loudness, and isn't designed for radio and wasn't crushed to death in a pro studio. you should be able to hear the edges on the square-waves on the bass sequencer that opens the record, for example. the nad just completely killed it.

here is the trick to this - most people would prefer the sound of the nad and think it sounds "more correct", including most expensive professional engineers and producers, because they've been trained to listen to over compressed music. and they're wrong. the nad actually sounds terrible.

so, i quickly dismantled that and set up the yamaha cr-320 instead, which quickly returned the record to a more open, less compressed sound - which is how it was actually mastered and engineered and what it actually sounds like. you might disagree, you might prefer the nad, but the mathematical reality is that you're wrong.

i then set up the 6 ohm, 50 watt yamaha ns-e55s, which is what i had connected to this yamaha cr-320 in the last apartment, as secondary speakers and tried the ssri record through a few placements and a few combinations. 

- all four speakers on top of the shelf

- just the yamahas

- just the celestions

- with the celestions down a little, and the yamahas in the shelf

- just the celestions, to the side of the shelves.

the yamahas are full range speakers and their lower resistance makes them louder than the celestions when wired through the same amp in parallel, despite being 50 watts and the celestions being 110 watts. i didn't think to stop to do the math, but i shouldn't have done this at all, as this old amp shouldn't be running at lower than 4 ohms ever and 1/8 + 1/6 ~ 3.5. i don't think any damage has been done, and it could probably handle that in real life at low volume for quite a while before exploding, but i don't want to do that again. this amp is very old - it's older than i am. i can run these 6 ohm speakers by themselves, but not in parallel with 8 ohm speakers, pretty much ever.

what i learned is that i wouldn't want to do that anyways as there's not a way for me to turn the yamahas down and i don't want them to overpower the celestions or the kefs or whatever else they're connected in parallel to. these are secondary speakers, not primary speakers.

however, i also decided that the celestions do sound better when paired with a full range speaker that has more defined mids, letting the celestions work more for their mid lows. i just want to turn them down a little and can't.

before the end of the night, then, i had decided the yamahas would not be being used as a part of any audio system, but would be used for the kitchen tv system. i would need to buy some new 8 ohm full range satellite speakers in the 30-50w range and experiment a little. 

i made some ad-hoc nachos early in the morning with a box of crackers i got from the food bank as a sub for the doritos, and without the salsa at all, as i will be having the salsa separate in a large bowl this afternoon. i was in bed slightly earlier. 

friday, saturday and sunday have been a continuation of this. i was up in the afternoon on friday and took a shower in the evening, then had round two of the salad for my saturday meal, this time with some onion bread (just a few pieces left). i've decided to build my bedroom first, and work outwards from there, which means getting furniture and speaker systems in place. how i organize the furniture depends a lot on how i organize the speakers.

i initially tried to drive my 110 watt celestion dittons (one of which has a broken tweeter that i haven't fixed yet but will fix very soon one way or another) with a nad 3020e i've had boxed for years. i got a bit of a shock from this nad years ago, you see, which i realize now is probably because i tried to overdrive it, and it scared me. when my dad gave me this nad around 2008ish, it was supposed to be as a pa for my pod because it was a clean path. i had asked him to keep an eye out at garage sales for very clean stereo amps with unobstructed signal paths that wouldn't fuck up the pod (he had a good knowledge of vintage stereo equipment and could (and often did) pick the gem amplifier out of the pile of rubble left to a widow that was trying to pay for the funeral, which is something that is maybe tinged with some irony today), and this is what he found for me: a mint nad 3020e for cheap (the cleanest amp he knew) and some celestion dittons, also cheap, which i later learned is because a tweeter was blown in one of them. he suggested the celestions because they're "guitar amp speakers", which has some truth to it - celestion is the company that made the speakers used in marshall equipment. thanks, dad.

this didn't quite work, though. the nad is only 20 w, so i'd have to amplify it. the point was that i didn't want to amp an amp sim because then it's not an amp sim, it's an amp. if i put a sim of a roland cube or a vox ac30 through a 250 w fender bass amp (i have one of those), i'm listening to two amps and defeating the point. you need to amp the pod clean. a lot of people didn't understand that, and it's frankly challenging and expensive to build a system that can do this right, which is why line 6 doesn't exist anymore. the pod is great for recording direct in, but it is almost impossible to reproduce live because you have to amp the amp sim.

i have made use of the celestions, but i haven't needed this third amp, which is only 20 watts. only 20 watts? a lot of people swear that's enough. if you're in a sound proof basement and using brand new speakers at 10 watts max because your wife is yelling at you to keep it down, maybe it is. however, the nad can't drive my celestions and can't drive my kefs - not at the volumes i listen to, not in the spaces i'm listening to them in and not with the music i listen to. it can't do dynamics. it can't do spectrums. it's not good for classical music, for electronic music or for jazz. it has no headroom. it would do 70s butt rock at car radio volumes relatively well. it might be good for some 50 watt yamahas i have, which are 6 ohm and seem very loud, in comparison to regular speakers. it might be good as a tv amp; i'm hoping my chromebook sounds good through i. i need to test it.

i nonetheless tried it out. test one was connecting the nad to the celestions.

the cure's head on the door sounded pretty good at low volume. an outtake record by skinny puppy / lpd side project the tear garden was ok but sounded a little flat. a hey rosetta album called plan your escape sounded very compressed and dolbied, but that was probably the master. this is the kind of album that sounds good through a nad; this setup would sound good if you're mostly or solely listening to over compressed and over dolbied masters at low volumes. sure. however, i didn't think this was what i wanted.

i also wanted to set up a pair of satellite speakers in here (maybe the yamahas and maybe something else) and the nad can't do that because it only has one speaker out. well, it's 20 watts. i'd have to get a splitter on a 20 watt amp. eh.

over night, i did some research on kijiji and ebay for used satellite speakers and found a few things, but haven't made any decisions yet. i'm going to want to pull the celestions down off the shelves in this room because it has more space in it. in the previous space, i was going to get 90% reflections, anyways, so it didn't matter. in this space, the speakers can work better so i should take them down to ear level, which is directed right at my pillow. i'm then going to want to take the smaller speakers and place them facing me from the typing computer desk in front of the bed. this is a "backwards surround" setup. i'm looking at some full range 30, 40 and 50 watt speakers by companies like denon, yamaha, sony and pioneer that were initially intended as surround speakers, or for midrange type ghetto blasters.

eventually, i fell asleep, a little after the sun came up.

my thursday meal was after i woke up, which was afternoonish, and was the salad i skipped out on, initially. i did not alter this except to add some dill and drop the soy.

- 50 grams of kale stalks (chopped like celery)

- a handful of fresh dill, chopped

- one large (not that large) diced fresh tomato

- one huge red pepper

- one smallish beet

- one large carrot

- 50 g of broccoli

- one avocado

- 2 large or 4 small cloves of garlic, chopped

- one tbsp of cumin

- one tbsp of nutritional yeast

- one tbsp of paprika

- one tbsp of hemp seeds

- one tbsp of sunflower seeds

- one tbsp of oregano

- one tbsp of thyme

- one tbsp of basil

- one tbsp of cayenne

- ten slices of medium cheese

- frank's

- ceasar 

- pepper

- with a glass of fortified, sugar-free soy milk (i use natura).

i did some cleaning when i woke up but, as mentioned, spent the night exfoliating. around 22:00, i stopped to make some bacon to clear the stench out. there are again drug addicts in the building, but i think this management company is going to be more assertive in stopping them. the bacon was a part of my "catchup meal", which was my friday meal, and which consisted of the parts of the previous meals i skipped over, mostly in two parts.

1) 100 g of broccoli with cheese sauce. the cheese sauce was old cheddar, an unusually large amount of nutritional yeast (skipped from the eggs - good source of b-12), frank's and hemp seeds. these items had all been skipped in may.

2) 2 leftover fried eggs on onion rye with bacon, yeast and medium cheddar cheese. again, these items had been skipped over.

a little later on, i had a big bag of $1.50 dill pickle chips and four guava, then spent the morning researching cheap furniture options on kijiji before falling asleeep early in the morning. my general schedule in the summer is i sleep in the morning because it's a little cooler and wake up when it warms up. there's two salsa bowls (now three) still connected to the catchup, and two (now one) glasses of grapefruit-orange. i also have my coffee maker working again. so, thursday was spent alternating between washing myself, washing the apartment, typing, googling and eating.

i would like to call for further escalation in iran, actually.

it is the mere existence of the mullahs that has led to constant destabilization in the region since 1979. this is a regime with a relatively weak level of control and that could be knocked over with a good shove. the best way to stabilize the region is to get rid of them, and escalation is likely to end that way.

i was able to get the shape of my bedroom in order on thursday morning, before i took a rest with the sun and slept most of the day. i've spent all night exfoliating, as it's really bad right now. i am exceedingly dehydrated and desperately need to rehydrate. i'm a little behind on cleaning, but i have the place basically set up; planning it out was the time consuming and difficult part.

i've got the bed in the middle of the room, with a row of tables in front of it that will eventually have computers and speakers on it. there's going to be a new item - a tall dresser - placed at the end of the row of tables. i have a relatively large closet, and i'd like to put a small table for the sewing machine inside of it. beside the closet is my my old wide dresser, which was ruined in the last house by sewer gas seeping up out of the closet (this was fixed, but not before the dresser got destroyed), but is still a pretty good writing desk, with a few working drawers. the wood got warped by the gas; i'd have to order new custom-made drawers to save it as what it is and it's not worth it. i found a second wheeled chair for the bedroom that i can put in front of the dresser-desk and wheel around, including to the sewing machine. there is room for another book shelf beside the desk.

on the back wall and the far wall, i will have a row of book shelves split in half by a shelving unit built into the wall, which will have my filing cabinet underneath it and a stereo system in the unit. this system will connect to the celestions, which will be on top of the shelves. at least one of the computers in the bedroom will connect to this system, which should be the (boxed in the last house) nad system. there should be at least three computers in this room.

the aforementioned back row of book shelves will continue on out of the bedroom and into the hall going past the bathroom and into the kitchen. there will be three tall bookcases for cds going out into the hall (or, more accurately, going into the bedroom).

it's bigger than the last bedroom, but set up similarly, although some of the items have different uses, here. the difference is the addition of sufficient walking space, at least for now. that could change. for example, i could put the stationary in here, but probably won't, because the pi is in the other room.

i'm trying to understand why israel would spend so much time stepping on it's own feet, only to strike iran now. i'm wondering if they might have received some intelligence from washington - rather than from tehran - that suggested it should act now.

iran is a russian protectorate. they don't say that in the news, but there are russian defense systems protecting iran, and any sort of substantive attack on iran would result in russia coming to their defense. if trump is trying to make a deal with putin, there is some possibility it could involve turning on or cutting out israel. trump himself, who is somewhat of a closet nazi, would not be that concerned about that. his party - and his base - would be.

i don't want to speculate too much.

the uae is a country that actually uses starvation and famine as a political weapon and tool via it's support of vicious, murderous terrorist groups operating in sudan. the uae is arguably a worse actor than iran at this point, and it's engaged in direct conflict with nato ally turkey in multiple theatres, frequently by deploying chinese military technology.

does canada put sanctions on these murderous uae thugs and terrorists?

no. it invites them to the g7, where they clearly have no place and do not belong, in order to be "inclusive" and appeal to narrow voting constituencies with very conservative political views.

this is the consequence of overwhelming levels of migration from conservative societies. we've utterly lost our moral guidance and have ceased acting on principles, but instead hyper politicize everything to appeal to voting bases of ethnic minorities. it's completely ruined the country.

yesterday started the same way as saturday, although all i had to eat to start was an apple, and i was out after that. 

i took the same walk through town to the same bike store and picked up the walmart bike, which had the brakes replaced and adjusted and a general tune-up done to it. this is marketed as a light weight aluminum frame 700c hybrid, but it is by far the lightest hybrid i've ever ridden, and i'd be more likely to label it a road bike; it will ride best on smooth and paved and clean surfaces, which are somewhat sparse here in the detroit-windsor area but do exist if you know where to find them. this bike is super light and picks up high speeds with minimal effort. it climbs up hills like butter, and faces minimal resistance in the windsor wind, which i often complained about when biking with my much heavier miele*, which is also aluminum but is actually a true hybrid (for example, it has a spring front suspension suntour fork. none of the others do, they all have rigid forks, of various thicknesses and sizes.). in fact, it's so light that the wind knocked it over when i set it down for a minute to wait for a train to pass on dougall last night.

i initially avoided taking this bicycle outside because i was concerned about it's flimsy build, but i had to take it in after i busted one of the brakes on it, just to verify it was set up correctly and there weren't any mistakes in the factory, and i rode it around yesterday after the tune-up to see if i felt like it could handle being outside. the bike store guy explained to me that it might have been the stationary that busted the brakes, and i shouldn't engage my brakes at all when on a stationary. ok. the brakes on the bicycle are working well after the tune-up; as mentioned, it is very light and very fast and very smooth. it seems sturdy. it handles and rides well - good turning, good response. i was able to dangerously weave through traffic on tecumseh rd like i like to rather effectively and able to hit turns and cut through narrow passageways at unrecommended velocities in ways that would frighten the elderly and cause them to yell at me, as has happened at least twice this month (i can't be sure i always heard them, as old people sometimes yell in ways that doesn't actually escape their weakened lungs). great. and i'm not even in shape, right now. so, this should be my new outside exercise road bike, right?

yes, with a caveat.

the gears are clicking, meaning i'm going to need to adjust the gears myself, which is disappointing after explicitly paying for a tune-up. i didn't explicitly say "check the gears" and should have, but that should have been a part of the checklist, too. they did what i explicitly asked for, and oiled it up; i was hoping they'd give it a more thorough examination and try to find problems with it. it seems like they didn't do that. that said, with a bike like this, it's potentially the case that everything is a problem, and you just need to wait for things to break before you replace them. if they had actually gone over it part by part, it would have ended up with a $1000 bill. i get that. 

still, the gears shouldn't be clicking when you take the bike out of the shop.

which leads me to the real problem with this bike and the real reason i'd be careful about riding it too hard, which is the flimsy drive train. the bike cost $340 with tax and the tune-up and brake replacement together cost $166. it will likely cost me another $75-100 to upgrade the drive train, which will likely also fix the clicking gears. i think. that's still under $600 for a bike that looks like it should cost well over $1000. i've consequently decided to:

1) see if i can fix the clicking gears myself. if it's a simple trial and error process involving turning a screw, and i can fix it myself, whatever, it's done. if it's something more than that, i'll have to decide what to do when i understand it.

2) after or if the gears stop clicking, i'm going to ride it until the drive train falls apart and then replace it. i'll get something economical but decent - that's my balancing proposal. i think that if that gets done, this bike will be ideal for hard exercise runs for many years, until i need to do it again. but, as i mentioned a few years ago, bikes are not immortal. you ride them. they break. you fix or replace them. so it goes.

if you're keeping track, that means i have a shopped vintage mountain bike for riding through detroit (a comparably bulky 90s gt palomar (it looks like a hybrid by today's standards because it's a 90s female bike)), a shopped inexpensive road bike (technically a hybrid) for exercising outside (a 2020s walmart hyper 700c, also female), a to-be-shopped vintage hybrid (technically a mountain bike) for grocery shopping and day to day riding in windsor (a light rigid bmx mongoose switchback (a male bicycle)) and a currently disassembled early 2000s miele siena hybrid 700c* (a true hybrid, also female) that i need to clean up and try to reassemble but will either leave inside for the stationary if it turns out to be fragile and unsafe for outside use or reclaim for day to day shopping, reducing the mongoose to a backup and putting me in the market for a cheap light bike for the stationary before november. if i can fix the miele*, the mongoose becomes the weakest bike, as it is old and worn out and not worth spending much on, but it is very useful for a heavy bicyclest like myself to have a general purpose backup bike, and the mongoose does that - i can ride it long distances if i have to, i can use it on bumpy terrain or flat terrain, etc. it could be a temporary exercise/road bike or a temporary day-to-day grocery shopping bike. so, this is what i'd like:

1. exercise/road bike:  walmart hyper 700c with increasingly subbed parts, as the stock parts wear out (technically a hybrid)

2. detroit bike: 90s gt palomar (technically a relatively light female mountain bike)

3. shopping/commuting bike: early 2000s miele siena* (technically a hybrid*)

4. backup bike: 90s mongoose switchback that feels like a heavy hybrid (technically a light mountain bike)

5. stationary bike: i'd like to get something very light. to be purchased second hand.

i then took the walmart bike out to walmart to get my two new coffee makers, and rode them both home. stop two was to the dollar store to get the glass mugs, and to freshco to look for some bacon, which they didn't have (they had some brand name lysol wipes). i then checked the close food basics for similar items, which they didn't have. so, i biked out to the metro because i knew they had nutritional yeast (a scarce item since the start of the pandemic, which has never recovered it's stock here in windsor), and also got some bacon while i was there, but they did't have any flax bread. so, i stopped at the freshco on the way back to get the wipes, dropped the bacon off at home, and then headed out to the superstore to get some flax bread, along with some nivea and a loofah.

that was that, and it should be the end of my shopping run for the month, i expect.

costs:

$180 - movers

$300 - bicycles

$70 - coffee related items

$300 - groceries, toiletries, pantry items

i snuck a double tomato sandwich (because i'm doubling everything this run) into my meal cycle and had one last night before i passed out and then this morning when i woke up around 6:00, along with a big cup of coffee in my new 25 ounce beer mug. the tomato sandwich was supposed to come up last, because i was supposed to make a salad out of the giant tomato that the food bank gave me. however, i decided at the last minute that i should buy fresh tomatoes for the salad and make two tomato sandwiches out of the giant tomato, due to the legitimately excessive giantness of the giant tomato. it was too giant for one salad, but about right for two sandwiches.

i did not need to make subs for my tomato sandwich recipe, except to use one tomato instead of two, which is as follows:

- two pieces of quinoa/flax bread

- olive oil margarine on the bread

- one half an avocado, diced, on each piece of bread

- one large clove (or two small cloves) of garlic on each avocado

- one tbsp of nutritional yeast on each side

- one tbsp of paprika on each side

- one tbsp of hemp seeds on each side

- five slices of medium cheddar cheese on each side

- one piece of bacon (cut in two or three) on each side

- a spiral of caesar dressing on each side

- a half a tomato on each side [due to the extreme giantness of this tomato, we did a 1/4 instead of 1/2]

- frank's

- pepper

- and a tall glass of grapefruit-orange juice

i regularly serve my coffee with chocolate soy, and am currently filling it up with vanilla flax, which was a food bank item.

i have now spent all day researching this miele bicycle, which is not what i wanted to do, and will need to spend the evening cleaning, which is what i did want to do today.

* this miele siena doesn't appear to be what it says. while the branding decals point to a procycle-era miele bicycle made in canada (2003-2004), i can't find any bicycle made by miele that looks anything like this, and it doesn't look like any other siena i can find pictures of. it looks a little more like a tuscana than a siena. more tellingly, there is a sticker on the bike indicating it's made of aluminum alcalyte, which is an alloy specially licensed to a high-end bike company called cannondale. i feel i've done as much research as i can and need to run it by some people with better knowledge bases, but it seems to me that the frame is a 2002 or 2003 cannondale scalpel frame and that somebody built a custom branded miele from that frame as a base. if i can verify that that is the case, i'm going to rebuild it as a 2002-3 cannondale scalpel, with equivalent (not identical) parts. notable is that this bicycle is a 700c hybrid, not a 26" mountain bike, but there are minimal explanations as to how a bike from this time frame gets this sticker on it, indicating it is made of this alloy. it could be that miele had some agreement with alcoa to sell this type of frame in canada, but more likely, i think, is that miele himself built this bike out of his special order factory in 2002 from an essentially pirated part that was otherwise licensed to cannondale, which he had a history of doing in the 80s with bianchi bicycles. the scalpel bikes had similar but more expensive suspension systems, meaning this was probably built to mimic one of those bikes at lower cost. that's exactly what i will do, as well - mimic the 2002-3 cannondale scalpel at lower cost, once i understand what model the frame came from, or how the frame was intended to be adjusted. i will probably need to completely rebuild the drive train; if i'm going to do it, let me do it right. i will still want this to be a hybrid for biking around town, but it's worth noting that this model of bicycle was intended to be a cross-country racing bike, much as the switchback was in the 80s. i don't have any interest in racing or in competition in general.

yeah. now that musk is disposed of, here come the big boys in exxon. do you remember who trump's first secretary of state was?

- kill the high speed rail

- slash the ev targets and emission standards

- start a riot

- aggressively go after the governorship

trump wants to launch a corporate take over of something. it looks like he's not going to take over canada. california would appear to be the new target.

in canada, the fact is that the british crown bought the land. there are treaties for almost every inch of land outside of bc and quebec, which the british conquered - which is considered lawful under european legal norms stemming from imperial roman law. those ideas don't make sense in the context of indigenous law, but it is the europeans sitting in the castles, applying their laws and they make the rules relative to their culture and norms.

it is also true that the government has repeatedly failed to adhere to the conditions in the treaties, and that in some circumstances it is unclear if the indigenous groups understood what they were signing. the treaties sell or permanently lease the land. that is easy for us to understand, but pre-contact north american indigenous groups had no coherent concept of land ownership. so, how can you sell something if you don't agree you own it?

in traditional indigenous cultures, the land is owned by the gods and humans are only permitted to use it. so, they have concepts of land use but not of land ownership. they also fundamentally share hunting and fishing grounds, which they hold as a commons (an idea that germanic culture had as well, and does continue to tentatively exist in british law).

there are good arguments that the indigenous groups thought they were exchanging the right to use the land in common and not selling it outright, but the courts have not really upheld that and the treaties say what they say. that's where ideas like the honour of the crown come in to enforce some kind of enlightened solution on a shitty situation.

but the lands were not stolen in any coherent legal sense. that's just incorrect.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadians-reject-that-they-live-on-stolen-indigenous-land-poll

gavin newsom is again repeating the "republicans are trying to take away democracy" messaging, which has repeatedly fallen flat with voters, who want the trains to run on time - and the looting and vandalism to stop.

if newsom wants to help his successor, he'll take control of the situation and clean up the mess himself. all voters are going to see is that trump is getting the job done and democrats are babbling about democracy.

i'm feeling way better this week.

i was never able to clearly determine if the stalkers were two men and a woman or three gay men, one effeminate or female identifying. if it is the latter, this person's behaviour would disqualify them from identifying as trans. this would have either been a very aggressive and dominant gay man in drag (a transvestite) or some kind of dom female. i've tended to lean towards them being a dominant transvestite looking for a slave, and misinterpreting me as one. i'm an anarchist that roots the core of my being in ideals of self-ownership; i'm not into bdsm, i'm not submissive and i have no interest in playing the role of anybody's slave.

however, they were trying to force me into some kind of gross male performative behaviour and were entirely unwilling to take no for an answer. it is the same people that were trailing me previously, as i have seen them following me around in the same boring, gas-guzzling muscle cars, which they think are "cool" and i'm supposed to give a fuck about.

i'm going to operate on the hypothesis that my entire disinterest in pride last weekend blew them off, which is partially the result of the condition i'm in. i have never had the slightest interest in gay men, and i would not be remotely interested in going to any sort of gay male sausage party. that's not my thing. i may have gone out dancing to a queer friendly venue full of people with mixed gender identities and sexual orientations if the situation were slightly different. i have gone to gay clubs sporadically in the past, but the logic has been that it's a safe place to dance where i won't get hit on by straight men.

i may be able to get out for the end of the summer, but my focus right now is domestic and will be for a while. with the opening of the new bridge, i won't have to find things to do after concerts anymore, either; i can just bike home. that doesn't mean i won't go to dance clubs at all, but it means i can be a little more selective and not need to find something to do from 12:00-6:00 in the morning, as i'm waiting for the tunnel bus to come back up.

bitch went all that way and didn't even get gifted a bagel.

she could've got a bun anywhere.

canada does not need fighter jets at all and should not purchase them at all. bombardier will not actually build anything if you write them yet another blank check. we don't need to funnel money back into europe, like we're reverting back to colonialism, and should strongly resist such a thing.

if our goal is defence and not offence, the money should be spent on norad, on the coast guard and, yes, on missile defense. boats that can accurately launch missiles large distances are more useful than fighter jets, for defense. we should also ensure we have the ability to manufacture drones effectively, but should not choose to actually manufacture them.

my politics in recent years are most closely aligned to the bloic quebecois and not to any of the major federal political parties. i have tended to endorse the green party, but i have rarely voted in recent elections.

i'll take the conservatives seriously on immigration when they acknowledge that jason kenney and stephen harper are the architects of the status quo, not justin trudeau.

the existing system has aided the conservatives at the expense of the liberals, who are losing safe seats due to high levels of immigration from conservative societies, which was kenney's plan from the start. our culture has shifted firmly to the right since 2005 as a consequence of all of this immigration from conservative cultures.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11234497/pierre-poilievre-canada-population-growth/

advocating for two states in 2025 is not a serious policy and is not serious politics and politicians that take unserious positions and advocate for unserious policies should be condemned for politicizing an issue that needs to be approached with great statesmanship.

ms. anand has demonstrated that she is strictly concerned about appealing to a small section of her constituency and not concerned about representing canada on the world stage. she's the wrong person for this important job.

this is horribly embarrassing.

are there sanctions against the terrorists in the palestinian authority and in hmas? the answer is no. canada only sees fits to sanction democratically elected politicians, not murderers and terrorists, and does so by cowardly falling in line behind neo-nazi parties in europe.

anita anand should immediately resign, or be immediately fired.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-sanctions-israeli-ministers-1.7556968

i was able to get some cleaning done this morning in the kitchen and in the bedroom. vacuuming the closet was a small but key thing to do, as i'll have to move everything on the floor into the closet before i can scrub it. getting the compost bags in the kitchen meant i was able to get the items in the fridge separated, which means i can get the kitchen cleaned up and set up. i was able to scrub out the freezer and put a bunch of the bulk items away, then get the green bin items and the garbage back in the freezer, while getting the cans and other recyclables in the blue and red bins, and separating the plastics bags into reusable and recycable, and then get everything off the counter and even do some dishes. i still need to scrub the bottom tray of the stove out so i can get some extra dishes in there, to get some more space in the cabinet. it's a necessarily slow process, especially considering that i need to spend extra time cleaning myself right now because these retards won't go away and fucking kill themselves off.

does canada have the lowest living standards in the world? clearly not, no.

does canada have the lowest living standards in the developed world? parts of it might, sure.

my plan to get my disposable income back on track is working out as intended.

my odsp is going up 2.8% on july 1st, which i won't get until my august 1st check. i think. that's what it was last year. that will amount to about $40.

conversely, as inflation has been hovering around 1% from june 2024 to may 2025, my rent increase on june 1, 2026 should only be about 1%, which will be about $12. the immediate $40/month bump will only be taken down by $10 or so on june 1st next year, and that $40/month will definitely help. a lot. when you're poor, small amounts make a big difference, they're not throwaway pocket change. 

i should be able to convince my doctor to fill out the disability forms for an extra $200/month, although i'm being cautious about this. this amount was supposed to be more widely distributed and for a much higher amount, but the randians in the liberal party got their hands on the legislation and largely ruined it. it's being approached the way it was intended to be by doctors, who are purposefully abusing it in order to react to the financial realities facing disability recipients in this country. we need the cash. that should be within a few months, max. the problem is that the forms are pretty intense, in terms of what you're asking a doctor to fill out. i don't have difficulty dressing myself or eating by myself, but i do have a lot of problems with ptsd-linked trauma, and i may be able to play that angle. am i being stalked or am i hearing things?

i don't think i've been drugged for a few weeks, and i haven't heard the male voices in that time period, although the female seems to still be here. i have blood recs and am waiting until i think they get me again before i go to the blood lab. the key indicator is stomach hair (i have never grown any hair on my stomach at all previously, before or after hormones, and it thankfully immediately clears up when their drugs metabolize. it's just about the most revoltingly disgusting thing imaginable, regardless of gender identity decisions. there is no possible explanation for this disgusting, unwanted change other than that i've been drugged with steroids or testosterone.), which i haven't noticed. as soon as i do notice stomach hair, i'm off to the blood lab to get the key evidence to convict these fucking losers with.

i could tell the last time i talked to him that he's having difficulty processing what i'm telling him, which i understand. i need the physical evidence to convince people. if we were to switch places, i'd be just as skeptical. the cops should be willing to investigate on a complaint and generate evidence, but a doctor needs to get the evidence and needs to be evidence based and should be skeptical about entertaining fantasies without evidence. the blood rec is extremely important, but i have to wait until they drug me again first, if i want to catch them, and they seem to understand what's going on and are waiting. if i can use that to get the doctor to fill out the disability forms, great. in the short run, it's in my self-interest to have him think i'm crazy.

that would also wipe out my remaining student loan, if he filled them out.

inflation should go up soon as well, as a result of the tariffs. i saw orange juice at the store yesterday for $12/jug, which is 100% inflation, due to tariffs. tropicana had better figure something out, because that's not going to sell. if the inflation rate for june 2025-may 2026 is in the 3-4% range overall, the increase on july 1, 2026 should be in the 5% range, which would be about $70. my odsp increases are not capped by legislation.

rent increases are capped by legislation; the rent inflation for 2027 will likely be capped at 2.5% by legislation, which would be about $30 on june 1, 2027. so that $70/month bump on aug 1, 2026 will only be taken down by $30 on june 1, 2027, leaving me with a remaining $40 + whatever the increase is on july 1, 2027, which should be 3%ish minimum and over $40 minimum, meaning i'll get it back almost immediately, and then some, at least another $10 and probably more than that.

however, i'm not going to predict inflation in 2027 at this point. i'll just point out that, year over year, rent goes up by 2.5% max, and odsp will go up by 2.5% min. the minimal inflation this year still resulted in a 2.8% boost. that means my disposable income increases every year i'm here, until i sign a new lease, which i hope ends up being for less (and will be if the tariffs devastate southern ontario).

a lot of disability advocates might not fully understand how powerful this is, but i do. it is true that it doesn't help right now and a lot of people need help right now, but it will balance out over time for people that can stabilize their housing. i've been explaining for years that the major problem is rent, and the solution is to lower rent or stabilize rent costs. the rest will work itself out, if you can actually get disabled people in stable housing and keep them there.

the assholes that bought my house to throw me out and got lucky with horrible and corrupt judges are facing a number of legal actions that they're going to need to pay for, as well. they are refusing to settle, which is just going to hike their costs in the long run. they think they got away with something, but they didn't, they just increased their own bills in the long run. i'll be better off in the new apartment in the long run, as i have more space and it's closer to downtown, which is where i want to be.

that said, the fact that i was paying $800/month in the previous apartment and might be looking at a monthly income of close to $1700/month by the fall is something to ponder. that $900/month for groceries, gear and concerts would have been great, if i wasn't dealing with asshole stalkers that need to go to jail and shithead landlords that need to pay me out. the best scenario is that i stay here and they pay me what it cost to get me here, and that could very well happen in the next few weeks, via one action or another.

there's a t2 in motion that asks for my rent back because they spent two years harassing me to leave; this amounts to about $20,000. the eviction is in appeal, and awaiting case management direction, which essentially has to determine if the possibility of compensation is substantive or not (and it clearly is), given that i'm not moving back into the old apartment. if i win this, they should be ordered to pay me what it cost to move, which would be about $6500, and possibly also pay me a year or two worth of the difference in rent, which would be upwards of another $10,000. there is a t5 coming in the next few days, which would be for the rent difference, and upwards of $10,000. altogether, it could run close to $50,000, but t probably won't. i should aim for $10,000 each, for a max of $30,000. 

yes, they deserve to be ordered to pay this kind of compensation, as the eviction had no legitimate legal basis to it, but was ordered by a retarded religious person operating strictly on jewish moral principles, which have no legal force in this country. i do not intend to allow myself to have some judeo-christian moral principles enforced on me, as i reject them thoroughly, and expect the court system to uphold my right to live in a christian-free society, in the end, even if i have to take it to a few levels up to get there. canada is a secular society and people have the right to live free of religion within it. i demand the courts uphold that right, and they will in the end.

i think i cleaned the physical external button and that it's aligned well, but the internal button itself is kind of rusted and not responding well to being pushed. i was not able to turn it on by pushing it in with a screwdriver.

something i noticed before it stopped working was that the machine would turn on when i plugged it in, without pushing the button, indicating it may have been stuck in the on mode and having difficulty turning off.

i could in theory use anything for the external button. it's just a piece of plastic; i could even rip it out and just turn it on with a screwdriver or a knife. however, if the internal button is broken, it needs to be replaced.

let me let it sit for a few hours, and i'll make the decision a little past sunrise. i will take the walmart bike out for a spin this afternoon to get a coffee machine of some sort, one way or another.

yeah, it's totally dried out and it's just not turning on at all.

i believe the problem is that the contact on the switch is broken. there are no wires or anything on this switch, it just works via pressure. have you ever taken apart a laptop? the switch is more like that - it's a certain distance away from a button on the inside of the coffee maker. if this comes out of alignment or gets bent at all, your machine won't turn back on. ever.

i see no signs of damage - nothing frayed, nothing split, nothing bent. there's some rust and some dirt, which i've tried to clean out, but i just don't think the button is engaging properly.

i'm going to try to get it back in line the best i think i can, put it back together and let it sit plugged into the wall for the night, in the hopes that the electricity "finds it's way through the circuit". we understand electricity pretty well...except the parts that are totally mysterious. there's still an aspect of magic to how these electrons really flow. electronic devices will do weird things. i've had devices "heal" by leaving them plugged in, which i can only explain by the idea that electrons like to find each other and like to solve puzzles, like lab rats.

if i can't turn it on in the morning, i'll have to buy a new one. unfortunately.

google tells me the answer to the question is "it depends".

all i can do is thoroughly dry it and test it. i don't see any circuit boards in the device. it looks pretty simple - just basic wiring. either the water is creating an electrical storm, which might be salvageable, or it corroded something, but i don't see any obvious damage.

i couldn't get the proprietary screw off the single serve coffee maker, but i was able to get the plate out of the way by removing the other screw and spinning it around. i didn't notice an obvious short, but i did learn that there was quite a bit of water in there. so, i'm going to leave the plate off for a bit and let it dry. i do remember washing the coffee machine out before i packed it, and it might have gotten a little too wet, although it was already demonstrating signs of a short (you had to fidget with the cord to get it to turn on).

i don't know the answer to this question: if an electronic circuit is water damaged, is drying it out enough to fix it, or is it permanently destroyed?

if i can't find a clear answer as to the cause, i should replace it, as it might be a fire hazard.

many weeks ago, i wondered out loud what exactly musk had on trump. he must have been blackmailing him with something or other in order to get such overwhelming compliance on issues of no importance, particularly the south african themed policies, which i would expect will now evaporate. everything else aside, the united states should be prioritizing a solid relationship with south africa, as a chinese military base in the horn of africa would be disastrous for long term american shipping interests, especially considering what's going on in yemen. right now, the chinese are winning this fight for global shipping supremacy, and the americans don't seem to even understand what's going on.

it is now clear that the answer is trump's presence in the epstein files, although it's not clear what the lingering concern about it is. he's already been convicted for soliciting a porn star, and he seems to have benefited from it, but he can't run for office again.

musk probably learned this from non-government sources. he probably doesn't have a mole in the fbi, he probably just knows people that know people that know that trump was there. 

but, now that it's out, musk probably has no further leverage over trump and this sad and twisted situation, which we haven't seen in the united states since the 19th century (when rockefellers and carnegies had immense power behind the scenes), is now over.

what trump is focusing on is trying to help the republicans win the 2026 election for california governor, and framing it as a choice between law and colloquial anarchy is the best chance he's got. it worked in the upper midwest after the shooting of george floyd.

if the republicans can swing california, they won't need to rely on dwindling support in other regions. 

the rule against collective punishment, like all rules, has limitations and exceptions.

israel is a collectivized culture. they don't live in kibbutzes right now, but they are a people with an extreme level of collective culture and identity. an attack on one jew is an attack on all jews, and you will get a response from all jews if you attack one jew. they don't operate on this level of rugged individualism inherent in the western european rule against collective punishment.

this is brutal and hard to interact with and vicious and terrible, but it's real life and the message it sends is crystal clear - if you attack any of us individually, we will respond collectively. that is the right message to send and the palestinians need to understand it and adjust to it. they need to be traumatized and frightened and abused to the point that they will not do this again.

there is only one way to end the impasse, and it is for hamas to immediately release the hostages. it must understand that this response is intentionally a collective response, and that it is correct that it is a collective response.

there are still no reports of actual famine; unlike hamas, israel is keeping it's hostages alive, if barely. two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a response in the real world, where right and wrong is not of much importance, in the face of years of bad behaviour by everybody that cannot be undone, but only be mitigated and moved on from.

it's hamas' choice how this ends.

It is misleading to suggest that these limited aid distributions are enough for more than two million Palestinians enduring Israel’s military siege and total blockade for months. Far more must be done to meet even the most basic humanitarian needs.

so, release the hostages, then.

it's a double standard.