there's an old saying, "wouldn't even harm a mouse".

i have some rodents in my ceiling. they appear to be eating out of the kitchen in the apartment upstairs and nesting in the crawl space behind my laundry area, which i can't really get at, and which has a tremendous draft. rodents are pesky, and i can't say with certainty that they aren't coming in here, but i have all of the food sealed quite tightly and i haven't seen any traces of them in here. i've only seen the droppings in the laundry and i only hear them in the ceiling. there's no signs of chew marks on anything, and there's nothing missing.

i have gotten a few glimpses of them crawling around in the ceiling; i think they're large mice, but they might be small rats. i don't know. i'll have to catch a few to be sure.

however, if it's a mouse, and i think it is, this mouse is not afraid of me. it runs right by the taped over hole in the ceiling when i'm in the bathroom and seems to be nesting exactly where i spend the most time. it even squeaks when i come in to the bathroom, as though it's happy to see me. it seems to think i'm it's friend.

this is making me wonder where these rodents came from, as they seem more like domesticated mice than sewer rats. or, maybe it's a psy-op jedi mind trick by the sneaky rat, to trick me into thinking it's a cuddly wittle mouse, so i won't kill it. whatever the truth is, i have to get them out of here.

i'm unhappy about this. i don't want to kill them; they aren't brainless roaches or mind-hive ants, they have some level of intelligence, as i'm experiencing. but i have no option. they're truly disgusting, filthy creatures.

would i not even harm a mouse? the mouse seems to think so. and i wish i could just scare them off, but that's not going to work.

there are some glue traps set in two places and i'll probably know what i'm dealing with in a day or two.

trump just bought a fusion company.

is that based on insider information?

this demonstrates the problem in letting market advocates deal with carbon pollution.

there is no market or corporate friendly solution to the climate crisis. you have to make rules and order businesses to follow them.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/methane-regulations-canada-9.7017132

i am not an expert in psychohistory.

there is no such thing as psychohistory.

it was clearly a tactical/strategic mistake for canada to avoid levying export taxes on the united states in an attempt to appease them. our liberals are appeasing donald trump. why would anyone have expected otherwise? we might have had leverage to trade something with the united states, to gain concessions and preferable outcomes. now, we have nothing to trade, so they're just going to bully us around and tell us what to do, instead.

carney has bent over backwards to do everything trump has ordered him to do, including changing domestic legislation, and it has had no effect on donald trump at all, other than to embolden him.

but, if we just give them the sudetenland, like they ask for, they'll surely behave more reasonably.

as the old saying goes, it appears as though we've been playing checkers, while the americans are playing a game of chess against us.

we don't just look weak and easily manipulated. we look stupid. 

and we don't even realize it.

it's not too late to levy export taxes in an attempt to gain leverage, but it won't have the same effect, it will look weak and desperate.

that being said, there is a smart analysis, here. what does donald trump want out of this? i think that if you're careful in your analysis of his behaviour, it's to conclude that the outcome isn't really the goal. trump is not driven by results. that is the part of this that the too rational liberal party can't get it's head around. if we're rational why isn't he rational, too?

logically, you ought to be able to give a lion hunks of meat everyday, and have a happy well-fed lion, but it won't act that way. the lion needs to be a lion; it needs to hunt.

for donald trump, this is all performative. he doesn't care if he gets the best deal for america, in the end. it doesn't matter if carney does everything ordered of him. trump wants to negotiate. that's why he likes the arabs so much, under the facade.

i am highly critical of middle eastern religion, and i am also highly critical of market economics. in fact, these things go hand in hand. it was carthaginian markets that ruled the mediterrannean before the romans showed up and burned them down. the romans intentionally destroyed their history, so we know much less about this than we should, but we know that if you show up at a market - a bazaar - in northern africa even today and you offer to just buy something at an advertised price, they will throw you out. paying an advertised price for something is insulting. no - they want to barter, they want to negotiate, they want to trade, they want to make a deal.

we need to stop appeasing donald trump and start arguing with him.

if we give him a good argument, a good tussle, a good fight, a sporting competition, but to be clear are sure to let him win in the end, we're much more likely to come out of this ahead than if we show up and prostrate ourselves and make ourselves look compliant and weak. 

trudeau's mistake is that he won the debate. carney's mistake is that he's not debating with him at all.

we have british liberals as our natural governing party in this country but we're not taking advantage of it and don't even realize that that's what donald trump is. we need to look at it like a good sprightly dog hunt.

send them john manley as the new ambassador and tell him to play his surname up a little.