this idea of a publicly subsidized grocery store in new york city is a prime example of socialism for the rich. what this seems to be about is a way to subsidize businesses that don't pay their interns, without relying on the food stamps system used by poor people and blue collar workers, because that system is for poor people. the unpaid interns doing free work for businesses downtown and living in apartments rented by their parents are the educated children of the wealthy; they can't be using the same system of food welfare as the poor. instead, they need a parallel system intended to cater to their tastes, and to ensure they don't have to interact with the poor, or suffer the indignity of getting food stamps.

it would probably be more reasonable to just put them on snap and embarrass and shame everybody into just fucking paying them, but you can't have that in america. there are shareholders to report to.

so, the city has to step in instead. how do you fund such a thing? in the united states, i believe food stamps are federally funded. these grocery stores, if they are subsidized by the city, would have to come from property taxes, as that is where cities generate funds. who pays property taxes in new york city? not the wealthy living in their mansions on the water or upstate whose kids will rely on the publicly funded grocery stores, or people working downtown to pay rent and living in apartments. the answer is blue collar property owners, many of them unionized, and working in trades or services.

and, there you go - you get the blue collar working class paying to feed the children of the wealthy, who are living off government welfare. socialism for the rich.

you'll excuse these blue collar workers, however, if they point out that it seems a little more like taxation without representation than it does like socialism.

my hair just won't come clean, it keeps tangling up in knots. it's utterly disgusting. i may just have to rip it out with a heavy brush.

windsor is not quite as bad, but downtown ottawa on canada day is not recommended, at any age. i have memories as a young child of my dad just fucking screaming at people to grow up...

the city becomes scattered with smashed beer bottles and beer cans, cigarette butts (and i suppose joints, nowadays), turns into a mass public urinal with people pissing everywhere, etc. 

canada day was even worse than a roughriders game.

as stated, i'm not particularly adverse to having a beer in public. however, the type of people that gather in public on canada day, specifically, and the way they behave are things to strenuously avoid. it's peak grossness, truly.

it's been a while due to various reasons (i have barely left the house since the start of the pandemic, as my house got bought right when restrictions were easing and then i spent two years fighting off an aggressive attempt to steal my identity, which appears to be continuing in a new apartment), but i like to go out to concerts, and i have a tendency to drink in public.

however, there are a few days of the year that i generally don't like to go out on because the city gets ruined by drunk idiots, and canada day is one of them.

this just in

mark carney has agreed to give donald trump the sudetenland. that's right - carney is handing over the sudetenland.

after all, america has had socialism for the rich for decades.

this guy mamdani calls himself a socialist, but apparently cuomo actually won all of the core democratic constituencies, and mamdani actually managed to win the election by getting republicans, and specifically wealthy white ones, to vote. it looks to me like a continuation of the march towards white collar upper class control of the democratic party, and the continuation of the party's inability to generate candidates and policies that appeal to it's base.

"champagne socialist" is probably being nice, but we've seen quite a bit of this kind of thing from new york, recently. 

the danger is if unions and other core democratic constituencies get so alienated that they vote republican, and it's certainly possible. new york is actually ripe for that kind of thing.

in the short run, it looks like the wealthy elite in new york got their guy, at least for now.

did andrew cuomo campaign for mayor over powerpoint?

i changed my mind about the kd - it was my monday meal after all. in fact, it was a pretty big bowl and it took me most of the night to get through, which distorted my schedule. i wasn't finished until close to 5:00, when i stopped for a short sleep before getting up to do dishes, vacuum and clean the fridge as broadcast and then get into the shower after the sun came up, and i wasn't out of the shower until close to noon. i was getting tired, so i got out to sleep, with the thought that i'd finish washing my hair the next day.

this persistent film - which i suspect is secondhand marijuana smoke but am weirded out by - seemed to be mostly out, until it started to dry. unfortunately, there's enough of this film left in my hair to bunch it up on the sides, which prevents it from sitting loosely on my shoulders, and is extremely unattractive. worse, when it dried completely, the result was less hairspray and more blow dry, which is even more disgusting. the only thing more disgusting than hairsprayed hair is blowdryed hair. i don't have a shirt that says "$2 slut" on it and am not looking to buy one, sorry. yuck. i'm extremely grossed out by this, and i had never seen it before 2023ish, but i've seen it a few times since and i know it washes out, as gross and frustrating as it is. hopefully, today is the last day, and one more day of long showers ends this disgustingness. 

it does suggest the return of the loser stalkers this weekend, and i have heard them downstairs. it's a weird holiday weekend (tuesday is a holiday) in canada, and that's when these losers show up. what i'm learning from this is that modern psychiatry is as dumb as any other religion, and should be treated by rational people with the same amount of contempt and disdain that all other religions are. there's no other way to put it at this point. this is a bunch of magical thinking, a bunch of complete nonsense. it doesn't have the slightest empirical basis. you'd might as well be mumbling prayers at the wall. they keep coming back and as disgusting and frustrating as the situation is, the only way they can actually hurt me is through drugging me. they can babble bullshit at me when i'm sleeping all they want, so long as they don't drug me it's just as likely to have an effect on me as their prayers are to be answered. there's really not a functional difference between the therapy they're performing and sympathetic magic, as a form of prayer. this is what psychiatry has been reduced to in the absence of empirical direction, empty rituals that require deep faith in specious theory to even comprehend. what a sad display of futility and stupidity.

i have a blood rec that is waiting to go. i'll catch them if they fuck up. otherwise, as much as it pisses me off and makes me want to break their faces, i suppose they can waste their time on prayer and magic all they want. 

....the fucking idiots.

i just wish they'd go pray somewhere else where i can't hear them.

so, i woke up around 21:30, poked around online, tidied up a bit, cleaned my bras by hand in the sink as i do (you needed to know that) and got some more pasta running a little after 23:00. this recipe is a little lighter:

- the 2 cloves of garlic went into the bowl first

 

- i just made the kd in the bowl, next [food bank item]

- add pasta

- add margarine

- add "cheese" mix 

- add 100 g of grated marble cheese  [end of cheese]

- mix

- dump a can of chick peas in the large bowl [food bank item]

- add one tbsp of oregano, one tbsp of thyme, one tbsp of basil

- add 1 tbsp of cumin, 1 tbsp of paprika, 1 tbsp of hemp seeds, 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast, 1 tbp of sunflower seeds

- add frank's

i finished this up about an hour ago and made some coffee. 

without the added ingredients, the combination of cumin and chick peas in the kd makes it taste like hamburger helper, which i haven't had in 20-30 years.

remaining items in the fridge are: chicken bone broth, beef broth cubes, a half a bulb of garlic, a half a pack of hemp seeds, a few tbsps of margarine.

i would estimate i have enough coffee left for two cups.

i do have piles of spices and canned food, and intend to do a big food bank run on friday.

this morning, then, will be the same as the last few days; i need to start with some minor cleaning, get in the shower just after sunrise, keep rehydrating and cleaning the film out of my hair until it's gone and then aim for laundry by the end of the day.

as mentioned, the next step is catching up on email and legal documents.

this is terrible:

Ottawa likes to point to energy efficiency standards. A washing machine made in B.C. that meets the provincial standard still needs to meet additional federal standards before it can be sold in Alberta or Ontario. This new law means the B.C. standard would replace the federal one.

it's a lowering of standards, a race to the bottom.

i strongly oppose the blanket removal of all internal canadian trade barriers all at once, without study or justification. these items should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, and it should require decades of study to determine the ideal approach, which may entail removing some barriers while maintaining others.

removing a 150 year old tariff should require some reasoning, 

as it is, mark carney has taken the musk/trump approach of just breaking it without bothering to understand it, and the result is that there will be winners and losers from the legislation. some companies may benefit from increased market access, whereas others will suffer. 

there will be significant layoffs and substantive job losses, mostly in the smaller provinces and more rural areas. this is going to severely hurt a lot of people, who didn't have the chance to adjust.