when i was a kid, i went to meet a guitar buddy of mine amongst a group of neighbourhood riff-raff, some of whom i went to school with, playing ball hockey on the road, as young people do in canada. i'm not a hockey fan; i have no memory of playing hockey, of any sort. i can't skate.

the kids had hit a seagull with a tennis ball extremely hard. it was bleeding profusely. it was twitching. there were brains all over the road.

they didn't know what to do.

i ripped one of the hockey sticks out of one their hands and went and sawed the head of the bird off. it stopped twitching. 

then i went and smoked and joint and played guitar in a dank basement for a few hours.

this may be true for this specific example, but i'm not going to spend time fact checking and i don't think it matters.:

https://nationalpost.com/news/hamass-propaganda-war-israel-battles-famine-allegations

i'm not here to challenge the premise that a genocide is occurring, in slow motion. i'm not here to prop up the israeli state. the genocide in slow motion is something i've been arguing for 20 years. my position in recent years, since oct 7, is that israel should speed it up to get it over with and move on, because it's inevitable that the genocide will finish and the world will be better off when it finally does. dragging this out isn't fun. it's not something to revel in or take pride over, it's just necessary because it's inevitable. you should approach it like pontius pilate, without the woo. it is primarily israel that is slowing it down and stopping it from finishing, right now. they won't do it - they won't do it under netanyahu. 

they might have done it under sharon. not bibi. he won't do it. his hands are tied. he's actually stuck.

but, while israel is the dominant factor preventing this genocide from finishing, it's not the sole or even primary cause.

the reality is that gaza is a developing country. it has no economy, and impossible unemployment levels. those impossible unemployment levels make the premise of statehood ridiculous. gaza is under siege by egypt, and has been for a long time, longer than the war with israel. the egyptians screen aid from coming in. the aid gets stolen by a corrupt political system. the arab family model is problematic and needs direction from family planning agencies; they have too many children, they can't support them and the weakest die. this is cultural and normal, and ancient. at least they don't sacrifice the weak ones to the harvest anymore, and they did - there's a story in the bible written to teach them not to.

the region is not very fertile. low crop yields are not unusual. there are other areas in the region reliant on food imports that have less instability and that can outcompete gaza.

this is complex. there are natural causes and artificial causes. some of the artificial causes are local, some are international. a very small amount of this can be blamed directly on israel but, as mentioned, israel is also the factor that is preventing it from being even worse.

it's easier to blame the jews, and we're conditioned to blame the jews, so we do. if the facts supported that overly simplistic analysis, i would at least acknowledge it. even if i supported it. i don't have any interest in christian morality and i'm not afraid to poke holes in the eyes of christian values. if the facts supported it, i might argue that the jews are responsible for the genocide and they should finish the job.

the facts just aren't there.

the facts are clear that the issue is complicated and that while the jews do contribute nominally, they're also the most important factor keeping palestinians alive.

this is really not acceptable and shouldn't be accepted by the rest of the world.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/30/trump-brazil-judge-sanctions-bolsonaro.html

canadians are weird when it comes to temperature.

most places in the world think 30 degrees is a nice day and -10 is an emergency. in canada, -10 is a nice day and 30 degrees is an emergency.

the climate has already changed and we need to readjust our metrics so that they are more normal. it's been 30+ degrees here almost every day since mid june, and that's not some kind of emergency, it's just summer. yet, we send out heat warnings at 30 degrees. that's ridiculous. we should be happy we're getting nice weather like the rest of the world does when it's 30 degrees.

heat warnings should not be sent until there's three days in a row above 35 degrees.

this shift in mindset will normalize our perceptions about heat so they are more in line with the rest of the world, and re-establish a heat event as something rare, rather than just normal summer weather, which we should be enjoying, not complaining about.

the fed should be trying to stimulate the economy with a giant rate cut and not pretending it can slow down tariff-generated inflation.

yeah, i know.

that arnold palmer bit's been beaten off like a dead horse.

it's kfc. but, apparently, kfc doesn't pre-cook, so it must have been kfc off the rack.

i wish i had realized that, i wouldn't have frozen it.

it's frozen, now. so, i'll take it out in 50-75 g chunks for pasta.

i assumed this chicken was precooked because it was battered. then i googled it, and apparently that's a bad assumption. my ignorance is overwhelming. 

let me check.

(swedish chef sounds)

i have returned!

it's cooked.  i can just zap this.

Today, a staggering 87 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza believe that the PA is corrupt, 78 percent want Abbas to resign, and 62 percent believe that the PA is a liability.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/how-palestinian-authority-failed-its-people

the palestinian authority, like any corrupt political entity, represents it's donors.

it's donors are gulf elites. it works to advance their interests.

that's what happened yesterday, and it needs to be dismantled, not upheld.

i have a 454 g slab of bison meat that's been in the freezer since july 9th. at around 20:30 last night, i put it in a sealable plastic bag that was initially used to package ground cumin and put the bag in a tupperware container and put it in the fridge, with the intent of breaking it into nine 50 g portions, each placed in a used single use apple sauce container and a sandwich bag, and put back in the freezer.

i don't know much about this because i very rarely (like, never) cook with raw meat. the little meat i eat is always something precooked or pre-pepared, liked salami or chicken balls. they gave me this slab of what is basically bison hamburger. i'd have never have bought this. but my understanding is that i don't want to let this thaw too much, or it becomes a food poisoning risk. i want to wait until it's just soft enough to break into portions and put it right back in the freezer, then take it back out one at a time as i need it.

they also gave me a pile of chicken breast, but i shouldn't have to portion it like this, i can just take out what i need to when i need it.

unfortunately, it's still frozen harder than arnold palmer upon noticing that he's being eyed by donald trump. it's not going to thaw by 6:00 am, which is when i need to clean up, at the latest.

so, i'm going to need to put the bison meat off for a few days, then. in addition to the chicken breasts, they also gave me some pre-cooked battered chicken. it smells like kfc, and it might be, although there's a number of kfc-like competitors recently, and i couldn't tell the difference. i can't remember the last time i ate something at kfc and i don't think i've ever eaten at popeye's or any of the other more recent chicken joints.

i'm going to need to go with a couple of chopped pieces of that, instead.

the problem was that joe biden wanted to turn the clocks back to the oslo accords. biden has this problem on virtually every foreign policy file, he just wants to undo whatever happened recently and make it the way it used to be. he doesn't adjust to new facts, he doesn't adapt, he doesn't change.

macron appears to want to bring sleepy joe back.

and here we are.

it's not intellectually honest to claim that you're standing up for an oppressed group, whatever you think of that designation, and then assign representation to that group to an entity that is at war with it.

the palestinian authority is at war with it's own people and has been for almost 20 years. it does not represent the palestinian people. it is the group that is most responsible for the oppression of the palestinian people, and the entity that most needs to be ejected from the equation in order to arrive at a real solution.

if you were honest about what's in front of you, and actually concerned about what you claim you are concerned about, you would realize that and act on that.

there needs to be an election in the west bank. yesterday. that election is being postponed and has been being postponed for 16 years because the palestinian authority knows it's unpopular and will lose. it's a corrupt, fascist dictatorship. the first order of business needs to be getting rid of it, not handing it control of a state.

some religious muslims will certainly come here and look around and deduce that they don't belong here.

that's a correct deduction.

they're right - they don't.

their options are to change or to leave. the society isn't going to adjust for them.

well, i'm sorry lady, but a large percentage of canadians don't agree with you on this, so if it makes you feel like you don't belong, you'd better go ahead and fuck off back where you came from.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/israel-hamas-war/article/lack-of-action-on-gaza-erodes-muslims-sense-of-belonging-in-canada-envoy/

mr. trump,

after analyzing the situation carefully, i believe your reaction to the agreement signed yesterday should be to give the palestinian authority 30 days to schedule immediate elections, or have all funding immediately withdrawn.

jessica

i have a better idea: the entente cordiale of anglo-french-canadian colonialism in the middle east should be organizing immediate elections in the west bank, to replace the palestinian authority with a body that has democratic legitimacy and is not so corrupt that it's own people have declared war on it.

what this also is is a reformulation of the useless, failed biden foreign policy, which we got rid of and nobody wants back.

i've said this many times before: the french need to fuck off, and macron needs to sit down and shut up.

the palestinian authority has absolutely no legitimacy as a ruling body in gaza, whatsoever. it's an entirely illegitimate body.

if macron got what he wanted, the outcome would not be the end of the war in gaza, but an expansion of the war into the west bank, and a civil war in palestine.

this is extremely unhelpful and provides no clarity in generating any kind of direction forward, whether you support the concept of palestinian statehood or not (and i don't). most of the palestinians are jews that converted to islam; some of them are recent invaders from yemen, and a large percentage of them are descended from slaves that arabs imported into the region from africa after the 7th century. people just don't know the history of the region very well, and have often been mislead or misinformed. this idea doesn't make any sense. it's like splitting england into catholic and protestant regions, and doing so in a complicated web based on allegiances on the ground. that's not what most europeans think, because most europeans don't really understand the region very well, and have been confused and mislead by a lot of propaganda over a long period of time.

the reason that hamas is in control of gaza is in the first place is that the palestinian authority is extremely unpopular. it was some time ago, but the pa lost the last round of elections to hamas. hamas then took control of the assembly entirely democratically, and refused to allow for further elections. a civil war then erupted between hamas and the pa, which resulted in the pa being expelled from gaza by the people that live there.

the pa is not welcome in gaza. if they try to move back in, they'll got shot at by the civilians in the region. this is going to extend and reignite the civil war.

the problem with the palestinian authority in the eyes of a large majority of gazans is that they're decadent and corrupt. they don't represent the interest of gazans, but rather represent the interests of elites. they steal taxes, they steal foreign aid and they're often even in kahoots with "the occupation", itself. yet, despite being widely seen by gazans as an extension of israeli rule, israel will not work with the palestinian authority, because it interprets it as just as bad as hamas.

what this resolution is is essentially a power grab by gulf elites to try to force their way back into gaza, under the cover of anglo-french colonialism, which canada apparently wants to resurrect the ghost of pearson in order to sign up for. the israelis will reject this on it's face. the people of gaza will reject it as undemocratic and react violently to it if israel surprises everybody and enforces it. it indicates a level of cluelessness by the french, and a level of corrupt disinterest by the gulf elites, who are not interested in any sort of serious resolution, but are just trying to get boots on the ground before trump gets shovels in it.

the solution to hamas is not clear. a un peacekeeping force might be a good idea. a deeper israeli occupation might be what they need. the turks or egyptians might be the best force to put boots on the ground, probably via the un. or it might actually make the most sense to send the us marines in.

whatever the right answer as a temporary occupation to finish the job and restore order actually is, it is not the palestinian authority, and any serious analysis will begin with that understanding. any attempt to put the pa back in control in gaza cannot be and will not be taken seriously by serious power brokers and serious actors.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250729-qatar-saudi-egypt-join-call-for-hamas-to-disarm-give-up-gaza-rule

russia is such a gigantic, diverse place. the russians have a very large number of geographic regions at their disposal. 

my understanding is that kamchatka is something like the mountains in bc, and no more populated. it's about as far from moscow as you can get in russia.

it's a great place for underground nuclear testing, like the kind that was recently attacked in iran.

there's been a lot of earthquakes in kamchatka this month. it's an observation, nothing more.

earthquakes do happen in clusters. that's true. aftershocks tend to follow big earthquakes, so you might keep an eye out for that.