look it up.
there is no question at all to her guilt.
tell me that's not an extreme counter-example.
it's the most extreme counter-example i could think of.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
canada does not have the death penalty. anywhere at all. i have mixed feelings about that, and a lot of canadians do. there are rare circumstances where it seems like the death penalty is the correct outcome, but there are reasons we don't do it that are logically sound, and it's generally inadvisable to suggest they are reconsidered for the sake of a few extreme counter-examples.
the united states does have the death penalty, although i realize that many states do not carry it out or have not carried it out in years or decades. i have at times called for the application of the death penalty in the united states, where it does happen, and is not banned, in the context of these rare cases. i would consider both the menendez brothers case and the christa pike case to be the kind of rare case where a sentence of death is justified.
i do not see a contradiction in resisting the application of capital punishment in canada, a jurisdiction where it is completely banned, and supporting it in the united states, where it is not banned. i very rarely make political or legal decisions based on moral considerations. i do not believe in god. should the united states move to ban the death penalty, i would support that, and also resist it's use in the united states, even in those rare cases where it's justified. i understand that this is complex reasoning, but it's logically consistent, because it's a legal question and not a moral question.
in no context would i ever support live streaming a firing squad. that is disturbing and sick. in situations where somebody should die as a combination of the need for excessive punishment, the absence of any doubt as to guilt (including a clear and reliable confession) and the need for public safety, it is something that should be done amongst reflection and sombre attention to the gravity of the decision to extract such an extreme level of legal retribution. it is not a normal punishment. it's certainly nothing to gawk about.
trump's support for this reminds us that he is a reflection of the religious extremists in other parts of the world, including in the middle east, which is why he wants to negotiate with these people instead of wipe them out. you expect something like this in palestine, iran or saudi arabia. you don't expect it in the united states.
i'm admittedly not fully educated about the subtleties of state rights in the american union, but if the congress has the power to ban live streaming of capital punishment, it should. further, streaming sites should take steps to block the state from utilizing their services for that purpose.
there was a time when i supported the icc, but it has in recent years become beset by politicization and corruption and has in the end collapsed into anti-semitism, and should be explicitly dissolved for that explicit reason. history should state that the icc was dissolved for being anti-semitic. the case against netanyahu is beyond specious, it's absurd and blatantly racist in character. no court that would advance a case on such a flimsy set of grounds should continue to exist.
i have presented ideas for how the un should be reformed into a global democratic body. such a global democratic body should have a reconstituted court system with jurisdiction within it's member states and should have a primary mandate to hold international capital to a legally binding international law.
i just want to give you an example of how bad the linq tunnel bus service is, in terms of hours.
i am not going to a show at el club tonight but i might have. i would have likely taken the new bridge if i did. but what is the schedule for the bus?
doors are at 19:00. the show probably starts at 21:00 or 22:00, but let's say i want to get there for doors. then i want to get to detroit for 18:30 in order to bike to el club.
in order to do that, i'd have to catch the 17:00 bus because the next one is not until 19:00. the old tunnel bus would have run either every 15 minutes, every half hour or every hour, depending on the time of day. the new one only runs every two hours. that means i'd get there around or before 18:00 and have an hour to blow before doors.
let's say the show is over around 1:00, which is on the later side of things. it might be over at 00:00 or even at 23:00.
the last bus on sunday nights leaves detroit at 19:40. the old tunnel busses ran until 22:00 on sundays, until 1:00 on fridays and saturdays and until 00:00 during the week.
so, because it's a sunday, i might have missed the bus anyways. but i would have easily caught it home on a weekend if the show ended before 00:30 and on a weeknight if it ended before 23:30.
with the new private bus service, there is no chance i'm going to catch the bus home at night. the last bus on sundays is 19:40. on weekends it's 23:40. on weekdays it's 21:40. the show might not even start until after 21:40 and certainly won't start until after 19:40. it would be very hard to catch a 23:40 bus - the show would have to be over by a hair after 23:00, which is unlikely.
i'd have to catch the early bus on monday morning, then.
it used to be that this wasn't so bad if i could catch an all night party, which is why i ended up at raves or techno parties that ran from 00:00-7:00 am in detroit so often. if the rock show did go until 1:00 or later, as they often did, especially in smaller venues, then i was indeed stuck, and that would have been ok. i just get to the after party for 2:00 or 3:00, do a few drugs, have a few beers, dance a little, catch the bus in the morning. not bad at all. the early buses came as early as 5:00 depending on the day of the week. sunday mornings were the worst, but it was 8:30 and parties could run until 10:00 am on sunday morning. i sometimes didn't get home until the afternoon.
the new busses will pick you up at 7:40 am from monday through saturday or 9:40 on sunday and trust me, that two to three hour difference is brutal when you've been up all night partying and need to crash. you don't want to sit in a diner until 7:15 am. that's awful. sitting in the diner until 4:30 is bad enough, on nights where you can' find an overnight party.
i'd might as well walk or bike to the bridge, which opens at 8:00 am daily year round.
the price for these hours?
$17.50. one way. that's $35 round trip.
at least the bridge is free.
i can still cross before 19:00 until nov 1st, when i'm forced to cross before 15:00. no, it's probably not worth $18 to cross two hours later. so, going to a show in detroit in the winter means crossing at the bridge before 3 pm and coming home at 8 am the next morning; in the summer, it means crossing before 19:00 and coming home at 8 am.
these are ridiculous hours and the bus won't survive unless it runs later, earlier and more frequently, which is going to force it to price itself out. it's gambling that it can make a profit by running infrequently in a reduced schedule, but in the process it's cutting itself off from it's own utility. it's largest user base wants late night or early morning service, not service during midday.
the bus would be better off cancelling trips between 10 am and 6 pm and adding trips between 21 pm and 5 am; it would be more profitable if it only ran overnight. but it's not going to listen to that.
the result is that when the private operator fails the city won't have a tunnel bus at all and that won't be acceptable. only the government can run this at the loss it needs to be run at to be useful as a frequent all day shuttle across the border that services people over the hours that need to be serviced - evening, late night and early morning.
who crosses the border on a bus at noon? why?
that being said, there is a broader problem with regional public transit in this area that should be addressed by the province. do you realize that the greyhound service from detroit to windsor and back has a more useful schedule for many people, at a comparable price, than the privately run tunnel bus?
it's not likely that the private service will last. it's hours suck, and it costs too much.
reliable public transit from detroit to windsor and back could be done through expansion of detroit's rail network, and that has been talked about, but should also be a part of a broader network from windsor to london and from london to sarnia, kitchener, hamilton and niagara. london is the obvious central hub for the region. in 2026, kitchener and hamilton are in the gta and are serviced by toronto buses and niagara's not too far. but it's very hard to get around in southwest ontario, and the region is firmly not a part of toronto and can't be serviced by toronto. it could in theory be serviced by london but it's not. it's more likely that london gets swallowed by toronto than that it becomes the centre of a bigger city, but that would be a maximum extension of toronto for decades. toronto is never going to get to windsor.
it would probably make more sense for the province to step in and take over a tunnel bus as the exit terminus of a broader regional transit that better connects the region to itself and better connects detroit, toronto and buffalo together, as well as toronto to sudbury, ottawa, kingston and montreal. the 400 level highways are there. a similar bus service between niagara and buffalo should also exist.
this is a potential issue for the ndp or liberals to run on in the region in the next election and they should seriously consider it. the greyhound was never replaced fully.
the new sources of revenue generated by charging user fees to access city property for the purpose of subsidizing the tunnel bus should further be used to make the bus run 24/7. i want to be able to get out of the bar in detroit at 2:30 am after a late night acid rock show and not have to wait until the morning to get home. i would support charging christians $20 a pop to go to the lights festival to subsidize that bus service.
somebody might say:
"i don't want to pay a user fee for this. it's why i pay property taxes!"
but that's exactly what users of the tunnel bus are saying.
it's a question of priorities and where they belong. i support subsidizing the tunnel bus because it's good for the economy downtown, particularly the bars and the night clubs. i don't support subsidizing athletic facilities or religious festivals, which bring no real benefit to the city, and are a net drain on city resources. i want to flip the logic. let people that use the athletic facilities pay for them directly, so that the whole city isn't forced to subsidize their use of the facilities. let the religious pay user fees to access public spaces, so that the irreligious aren't forced to subsidize them. and then take the money and use it to pay for public transit more generally - not just the tunnel bus.
i think more people here would agree with me if the argument were to be presented to them in those terms.
and i'd hope the city hall would consider my arguments, but they won't so long as dilbert is mayor. he's already vetoed this once.
i'm not exactly going to endorse fred francis for mayor of windsor. voters should realize that he appears to be a more right-wing candidate than mayor dilbert overall, so if your primary concern is that you're annoyed that dilbert is a right-wing dunce that is mismanaging the city in favour of conservative priorities, francis might not be much of a solution.
but i want to suggest that francis couldn't make things much worse than dilbert has and point out that he does want to bring the tunnel bus back. however, i might find his funding strategies to be frustrating.
i think that the emphasis on what is a drain on resources and what isn't has been misplaced during dilbert's tenure as mayor. dilbert cancelled the tunnel bus because it was expensive, but the cost was around a million dollars. then, he spends millions of dollars on a hockey rink at city hall and a stupid christmas lights festival, and doesn't charge money to access them and rather presents them as benefits to the economy. but neither the hockey rink nor the christmas lights are paying for themselves and they never will, they will always be a net drain on city finances. my perspective, as a resident of the city, is that the tunnel bus was good for the city's economy and should be brought back for that reason (because it brought people downtown to spend money on their way to and from events in detroit and made them get out of their car downtown, rather than just drive through it) and the hockey rink and christmas lights are net drains on the city's economy that should both be privatized or cancelled as wastes of city tax dollars.
i consequently want to flip the logic.
i am not running for mayor or council but would like to see the opposite approach taken.
1. the christmas lights festival should be privatized. it is not an appropriate use of public funds, at a loss, year after year. it brings little benefit to the city and only appeals to a small minority of religious people. a secular-first city hall should focus on defunding or privatizing all religious festivals. if the city thinks privatizing the festival is too far, it should consider charging an entrance fee of $20 per visit to offset the losses and generate revenue.
2. the hockey rink at city hall should not be free, while the city operates it at a massive loss. people should have to pay a fee to skate on the rink. an entrance fee of $20 per visit to use the rink is a reasonable proposal. if the rink is unable to turn a profit, it should be shut down altogether.
3. the tunnel bus should be brought back and funds raised by charging a fee to use the hockey rink and go to the lights festival (or funds raised by privatizing it) should be used to subsidize the tunnel bus so that users are able to use the bus at a reasonable cost. the $5 tunnel bus fee should be brought back, and subsidized with revenue generated by charging fees to enter religious festivals like the bright lights or sporting facilities like the hockey rink.
another source of funding for city hall to subsidize the tunnel bus may be charging a user fee for muslims to use the city grounds for their loud and disruptive religious festivals.
a user fee to enter the farmer's market downtown would be reasonable, as they take up a lot of space and, to my knowledge, don't pay for it.
a busker's fee might be reasonable, to use the downtown area, as they are generating income tax-free.
a user fee for little leagues and schools to use the city parks and other city owned athletic facilities would be reasonable.
etc.
all of these are possible revenue sources to subsidize the tunnel bus, which is a valuable service that windsorites should not have to pay exorbitant prices out of pocket to use, but that the city should mandate lower prices for by generating revenue streams elsewhere to offset it.
is a universal basic income communism?
no.
in fact, the idea was designed by milton friedman, the same hard-right goof that gave us the debunked but impossible to get rid of idea that printing money creates inflation. it's generally brought up by right-wingers when the alternative is actual communism.
i don't exactly support a ubi. i mean, i'll take it; a universal basic income dystopia is a better reality than continuing the endless march of empty, meaningless labour created by late capitalism. however, it's a way to prevent communism - which means overthrowing the capitalist class and taking direct control of the ai - and not a way to get to it.
you have to let the capitalists develop the technology first. that's how the theory works. the question as to whether we have to get through the capitalist stage or not, which has been the major issue on the left for the last 100 years, is becoming irrelevant. the capitalist stage is exiting relevancy.
it's nice to see the united states making an attempt to mend fences with the russians, who will be required as allies to nato in order to contain the enemy of the present, the chinese, but consumers should be trying to avoid buying products that use diesel in the manufacturing process for environmental reasons.
something that this ai debate is exposing is that there are a lot of capitalist slaves out there. this is not the same thing as being a reactionary. bernie sanders is exposing himself as a reactionary, whereas jon stewart is demonstrating that he's a slave to his capitalist masters, but i guess that was already clear enough. stewart is just one example. i could go on. but what i'm interesting is drawing that separation between the reactionary, who wants to fight against a process of emancipation, and the slave that wants to uphold the slave relation in capitalism. the reactionaries require the slaves.
definition
proletariat: the class of people in society that has no choice but to sell their labour.
the coercion is the basis of the critique. it's the reason socialists want to overthrow the capitalist state, because it takes away the individual freedom to live how one decides. that's the point of socialism, it's the basic argument - that capitalism eliminates freedom and takes away the ability of people to make meaningful life decisions, that the "free market" is a system of government defined collectivist coercion (we're seeing this develop in the grocery issue where the state is trying to step in and demand they compete, or else. you vill compete and you vill like it. but it makes no economic sense for that to happen and if the state keeps at it the only result is going to be laws written forcing competitive behaviour when it's not what the industry has determined is optimal. prices will go up and not down. some free market.) that forces people to carry out economic activity against their desires, and in the process destroys meaning and purpose in their lives.
there was a book written not that long ago by david graeber called bullshit jobs that i think is highly relevant in this context, on top of gen x trends like quiet quitting. the graeber text should be picked up by all and people should start quoting it. there is currently a general disillusionment in the quality of labour available to the proletariat that we haven't truly seen in the west since the dickensian period. people aren't getting killed by the machines, physically; they're getting killed by the machines, mentally, instead.
but what i'm going to tell the slaves that want to continue to hold to the capitalist relation in a future where they have the choice to abolish it is this:
if you want to be a slave, don't be surprised if you end up treated like one, in the end.
Thursday, October 8, 2026
i'm aware of no economic or legal theory that supports the idea of maintaining employment via the industry minister of a country aggressively ordering and emotionally demanding private sector companies to maintain full employment, despite decreases in aggregate demand and the subsequently incurred losses that are resultant from that.
when economies go into recession due to decreases in aggregate demand, keynesian economic theory - which the liberal party has supported and implemented for decades and would be expected to continue to support and implement - argues that demand should be generated through increases in government spending.
there's no demand for the product. what does she expect them to pay the workers to do when the company isn't selling anything?
her demands are irrational and the court will probably reject them and side with the company. contracts are not legally binding in canada. the court has the power to dissolve contracts, does and will if they don't make any sense, or lack characteristics defined in contract law. that would appear to be the case.
the basic point is that you cannot sign away your rights, which is what this unreasonable airhead seems to be incorrectly insisting that the company did.
Tuesday, October 6, 2026
let's make a point clear for the slow-witted amongst us, and for those that have not ready many books.
when revolutionary leftists talk about the necessity of carrying out violence to overthrow the state, they are not talking about vandalism to businesses or to schools, nor are they talking about fighting against police on street corners. we are certainly not suggesting that young people should burn their schools down. these acts are not revolutionary at all, and, strictly speaking, they aren't violence, either. this is vandalism, mischief and pointless destruction. marxists and other leftists might approach the situation a little differently than capitalists, but we all agree that vandals and thugs should be prosecuted, just like everybody else does, and we agree that a police force is necessary to protect the personal property of individuals and the collectively owned property of society from vandals and thugs.
violent overthrow of the state means:
- using force to physically take control of the means of production
- using force to physically take control of other instruments of the state, like the parliament
- fighting with agents of the state if they try to interfere with the overthrow of the state
- assassination of bourgeois leaders, when required
marxist theory generally requires a concept of critical mass before such an overthrow should be attempted and before it can realistically succeed. it further argues that the violent overthrow of the state should be carried out by adult members of the proletariat with clear economic goals to implement, not by emotionally driven children that have been manipulated by cynical adults.
these are not minor points.
do you want the children to storm the parliament? do you want the high school debating team in charge of france's nuclear arsenal?
if the answer is no, you must concede that violent revolution is not appropriate, in context.
you're not dealing with marxist youth. you're dealing with stupid thuggish children that have been brainwashed by cynical adults and that will grow up to regret their actions when they better understand them. that is not an algorithm for or a path to revolution and cannot be supported by a revolutionary left. the criminals should be prosecuted like any others.
the kids should be in school doing school work. every day spent marching is a book that doesn't get read. questions as to the quality of their education should be asked and answered by adults, who are responsible for what they are taught.
getting confused about the facts here is not helpful. the most likely path to fascism in europe right now is not in opposition to migration but in support of it. the nazis were pro-muslim and restricted emigration but they didn't restrict immigration from anywhere (if you wanted to move to germany in 1935, which you probably didn't). they were keynesians, in terms of economics. they were in many and most ways a bourgeois liberal party, they just had a weird racial ideology over top of their bourgeois liberalism. this conflation of the historical european far right as being the same thing as the contemporary american right is drastically, historically, desperately wrong. it is the contemporary left in europe - parties like the lfi - that bear the stronger resemblance to historical european fascism, and they are openly cynical in their desire to get far right elements to vote for them.
here's a peaceful march, with no riot cops:
what do you notice about that picture?
this is what the riots look like:
what do you notice about the picture?
what do you notice about that picture?
correctly analyze and observe the facts.
don't walk into this trap that goebbels set up for you to fall into. you'll be rounding up the jews in no time.
the liberal media narrative around what's happening in france is, as usual, unreliable. the liberal media does not make any attempt to report facts, it frames everything in terms of "narrative-building" and is little more than bourgeois capitalist propaganda. the right-wing media is not better but it doesn't make a pretense towards being news and doesn't get indignant when you question it's integrity the way the libera media does. what's important is for leftists and liberals to understand that the liberal media is identical and equivalent to the right-wing media in terms of value as a source, which is essentially zero. it's all just entertainment. none of it is news.
it is factual - true - that the riots began in immigrant communities and that they have little to nothing to do with the school protests. these riots were inspired by the lfi but weren't organized by them and the lfi has tried to distance itself from them without taking responsibility for them, which it should do. while that was happening, much smaller and much more well behaved protests made up of well dressed middle classed white kids were also going on. these are not the same thing and should not be conflated as being the same thing.
it was the right-wing riots in the muslim areas (by conservative muslims) that shut the schools down and that you're seeing videos of online. this is where the riot cops are being correctly deployed.
you can also find footage of media talking to well behaved nice white kids online that say the kinds of things you want to hear, as liberals. they aren't throwing acid on women or trying to kill their teachers. and the riot cops aren't attacking them.
in response, the traditional french left - which is not affiliated with the lfi and which the lfi has continually attacked as corrupt - has attempted to intervene and co-opt the protests with the intent of directing them towards something more identifiable as left-wing. they are organizing more traditional left-wing marches full of mostly middle class white people to try to redirect the energy to the peaceful protest marches. a lot of them likely voted for macron in the last election (which was framed as macron v le pen you'll recall) and some of them might even be le pen supporters. while it's a more traditional left organizing structure, these are also groups that are more middle class and have voted for the bourgeois center in recent elections.
meanwhile, the french establishment is trying to blame the situation on the "far left" when it's increasingly the centre that's marching peacefully through the streets, and remains the far right that's rioting and burning. if anything approximating a left exists at all in france right now, it's watching from the sidelines and planning to vote for le pen as a buffer against the far-right extremists in the lfi.
the situation is clearly confusing. the american media is doing to europe what europe often does to america, which is try to understand it through it's own cultural filters. but france is not a two party system. the system is perhaps more similar to the american system than the british system, but it's not particularly similar, and you can't understand what's going on through this fake right v left false dichotomy that defines everything in american media.
the muslim immigrants that are rioting are far-right extremists that are angry about events in the middle east and are rioting in support of palestinian statehood, not school conditions in france. but an overwhelmingly white and primarily middle class response to this is developing in the centre of the french political spectrum using the organizing structure of the historical french left, which has abandoned the socialist parties, and is trying to co-opt the immigrant protests.
i remain skeptical that this will be successful. bourgeois protests just don't work. the material conditions don't allow them to work. the bourgeois protesters align neatly in single file, stamp their feet, wave their signs and get bored in a few days and go home.
but it's important to understand that the media's attempted to conflate support for the rioting for palestine with support for the kids marching for textbooks is dangerous and wrong. these are two very different groups of people with very different class backgrounds and very different political goals that are going to be voting directly against each other on the upcoming elections, because it's not a two party system and that dichotomy doesn't exist.
if anything, what's potentially developing is an alliance between the parties of le pen (which is closer to a traditional left) and macron (a center-right coalition) in favour of the police action and also in favour of school funding reform and against the far right extremism of the rioting muslim immigrant population, over issues on the ground in historical israel. but this is premature and may collapse in france's famously finnicky and fracture-prone political spectrum.
i suggested yesterday that i could get the side done in one step and i essentially did, although i stopped at most of the way done to sleep this afternoon while i waited for the floor to dry. i tend to sleep mornings in the warmer months and evenings in the cooler months. i'm not sure why. it's how my body tends to adjust to the changes in light. i'm always awake overnight, all year round, but would rather sleep from sunrise until noon in the summer and fall sleep during late afternoon and sleep through supper time in the winter. my body seems to prefer the shorter days and adjust to them by shifting sleeping times through the morning to late afternoon over the fall. that doesn't change with warmer temperatures from climate change as it's a solar phenomenon.
as such, i woke up later than intended yesterday and slept earlier than expected today, meaning i missed the shower last night. i won't skip it this morning. i didn't move everything out until close to midnight, and spent much of the night carefully vacuuming out the dirty furnace room for the first time since i moved in.
i was expecting to find signs of rodents in the furnace area and am actually surprised that the only thing i found was a single dead mouse. there were no droppings at all.
what there was, instead, was an apparent cockroach nest which i vacuumed up. but i only killed one roach that crawled out, annoyed by the vacuum. there was also an apparent hole in the concrete which may have been where the roaches were hiding. i just put a porcelain tile over it and then put a pile of boxes i'm saving for the next move (i've had some of these boxes for 25 years. i moved a lot as a kid and just kept the boxes for the next one. it became a habit. the furnace room here is a good place to keep boxes and not much else.) on the tile.
i then locked and sealed the room from the outside. there is no electrical outlet for a light in there, no usable storage and no real reason to go in there. my tactic will be yearly (if that) cleaning and aggressive isolation of the space. it's clean now, or as clean as it's going to get. there is no way for me to block insects or rodents from getting in there from upstairs, from the furnace ducts or from under the foundation. i just want to prevent anything that might get in there from getting out of there and into the apartment.
after that, i sealed the rest of the floor around the side, i set up or cleaned some small furniture items (a shoe rack i bought for $10, a hat and scarf and glove rack i found here, a coat rack on the wall, an old crt tv stand i found on the curb and haven't used since 2017 but continue to store as an odd table for storage (i will use it for a storage bin for packaged spices here), my old rebuilt coffee table that i initially bought for $5 and is too big for in front of the couch in here that i can use to temporarily throw random things on here, the console table i bought for the last kitchen and should be good for kitchen overflow here, the ghetto hutch and spice rack i found on the curb last year and a two tier coffee table that was here when i moved in) and am sequentially moving them into place along the two walls as i vacuum and steam mop the floors, first, and then moving various things from around the apartment on to the tables, where they should be, and are not now. as mentioned, i'm mostly done. i should be done by midnightish, when i will stop to shower.
today was an unexpected skip day for meals but yesterday's min meal was bigger than normal due to the addition of some extra food items that came in with the food basics run on monday morning, and an unscheduled glass of juice, so i'm not freaking out yet. i'll see where i'm at overnight. i may need to have a second min meal in a row.
i will also need to vacuum the carpeted area at the bottom of the side entrance (which is now completely vacant), seal the window at the bottom of the stairs and put a blackout curtain in to stop the heat from escaping, start to seal up the bottom of the stairwell with cardboard paneling (i caulked and taped up some holes two nights ago) and wash some winter jackets overnight. i will eventually get a small couch and a small table for the bottom of the stairs, which is where i'm going to put the zoom console station rather than on the console table, which will now likely have a cappuccino maker and a pop maker, early in the new year, instead. the goal for this week is just to clean and seal the bottom of the stairs and the hallway leading into the kitchen to stop the heat from escaping. the stairway up to the door remains full of items intended to block the draft, until the new door comes in, and it could take a little time before i get there. it should be one of the last regions to address, and is being put on hold for a bit.
there are subsequently a number of items that have been moved into the front hallway that are ready to transfer out to the garage, this week. as mentioned, it'll be warm this week.
the next thing to do is to get all that cardboard on my couch up on to the ceiling.
i should get some pictures up soon as well.
it's been a productive few days, then, after spending most of the last week in the shower. this update is minor in scope but massive in function, as almost all of the areas have now attained their completed form, with only minor updates left to come. i'm getting there.
the last major thing to do in the main living area is organize the studio space. finally.
it was cold here last night - it dipped at 5 degrees celsius - but the heat in here held steady, which is great to see. it dipped to a low of 26.9 before recovering back to 27.5 this afternoon. even the garage, which has no direct heat source but is now noticeably insulated fairly well, stayed about 20 degrees last night. i didn't check, but i'm sure the big windows generated enough heat in there today that it recovered. if i get the aluminum up on the ceiling today or tomorrow, and then take a long shower, i expect that the heat in here will creep back up over 28 and maybe to 29, as the highs this week are in the 25 degree range, which is back to above normal after a rainy stretch and a very muted arctic high pressure system over the last few weeks. the coldest days in the cold stretch here in windsor were still high teens.
the statements by the weather forecasters about "meteorological summer" ending on september 1st are about 40 years out of touch with reality (like most of the culture on this continent is because it wants to stagnate, it doesn't want to change), but it probably never applied well to the very southern part of ontario, which is in a different climate zone than anywhere else in canada and always has been. this is the windsor-london-niagara triangle that includes sarnia, kitchener-waterloo-cambridge-guelph and hamilton but does not include toronto proper. the golden horseshoe gtha idea is an economic region, not a climate region. it's actually three climate zones, as it very quickly gets very cold when you start moving towards lake huron. it can often be a twenty degree difference from the north of the gtha to the south of it. toronto is kind of it's own thing, climatologically, as it's sandwiched in the northernmost habitable zone south of the canadian shield. you can't grow anything north of toronto because of the rocks. it's a little better to the east, around ottawa and montreal and up the coast towards quebec city, but directly north of toronto is sudbury, and it's a dead zone of frigid 9 month-long winter emptiness. it's likely that they faked the moon landing in this region. it's that cold and dead. living here full time generates addictions issues because it's just empty and barren. all you can realistically do in the swath of land north of toronto is mine in the summer and go home in the winter. it's a wasteland. i'm in south detroit, i'm not in west toronto, but the north of michigan and minnesota are also barren rock where nothing grows and you can't realistically have any kind of year round economy.
in the south of ontario in 2026, summer doesn't certainly end until early november but a concept of meteorological fall begins to vaguely define itself in mid october (well after sept 21st, and never ever before it). it's generally the wrong way to look at it as the seasons don't predictably or incrementally change here. we do not have four clearly defined seasons in this region anymore.
rather, what happens in windsor is that the heat cracks some time between oct 5th and nov 10th. you might have rainy systems before then (we did this year) with cooler days and shots of gulf humidity pushing north up the mississippi after but you know when the heat breaks and it doesn't come back until next year. it's a sudden singular event. it might not even rain but it just crashes - it goes from 25 degrees one day to 10 degrees (or lower) the next day and then it stays cold for a week and doesn't get back to 20 degrees, except maybe for an hour at a time, until the spring. what's happening is that the jet stream is dipping. we are, for much of the year, on or close to the jet stream so we experience rapid shifts tied to shifts in the jet stream, rather than incremental changes tied to seasonal procession.
that's why climate change is so powerful right here - we're on the boundary between a concept of north and a concept of south. if the jet stream consistently and reliably pushes north due to increases in hot air overpowering, we exit canada, from a climate perspective. when the atmosphere to our south is hotter, it pushes the jet stream further north, extends our summers into mid november and can neutralize or even eliminate our winters. there are a lot of signals that this year might be the year that we finally truly don't have anything resembling a winter - where it's summer for both canadian and american thanksgiving, it's raining and 10+ degrees for christmas and new years and it's spring by valentine's day and summer by st patrick's day. we've had teases of this but not the full thing in one year, not yet. it might be this year and windsorites (and detroiters) should take note of the dramatic shift, which will be even more dramatic in historically just-as-cold-as-detroit chicago and indianopolis and pittsburgh.
for now, we're waiting for the heat to crash. it's imminent; it could happen any day now. but there's no sign of it in the forecast - it's 25 degrees for the next week.
if the heat doesn't crash until december, we'll need to record 2026 as year 0 on a new climate calendar for this region, where winter is now officially permanently cancelled and fall might not start until dec 1st or later.
Monday, October 5, 2026
i (tentatively) finished up in the front/garage mid week and have consistently been in the shower for most of the last several over nights while cleaning or typing during the day. while i am still aiming to 1. finish the basic shape of things, 2. clean the bedroom and then 3. sit down and start typing through the coffee table book and continue with the cataloging, i'm again extending the first section.
i need to get all of the boxes up on the ceiling in the kitchen and living space and seal up the bottom part of the side entrance before it gets much colder. i don't want to lose the heat i've built up downstairs. i also want to get the last remaining wayward pieces of furniture out of random places and into their correct spaces. i can do this in one lengthy step.
it's very dry in here for some unclear reason, which makes it easier to continue the showers overnight until i don't need them anymore.
my hair is very dry but finally effectively detangled and should be approaching normalcy in the upcoming days. i had a lot of dead hair to pull out. my hair grows fast and if i can reassert some normalcy nobody will tell the difference when i open the door in the spring. in addition, i'm apparently skipping my yearly bleaching. i wanted to wait until i was done cleaning and it's too late now. bleaching will commence again in the spring. i may dye it a kind of dark purple for the fall so that it's a lighter shade of purpley when i do die it again.
this isn't how i wanted to spend the year but such is real life. the place is almost set up. really. it's an awesome apartment that is going to just get better as i move to rebuilding the studio and start to get to work on some projects again, hopefully by the end of the year.
so, i'm going to spend the next few days in the kitchen and the side area between continuing the long showers. everything will come out, i'll clean (including steam mopping the floor and getting into the furnace room to clean) and seal it up, and then i'll be able to put things where they belong rather than where they are. when that step is complete, the bottom of the side entrance, the kitchen, the listening room, the library/front entrance and the studio should all be in their intended form and broadly tidied up, meaning the remaining steps in here will be done in an essentially installed (finally) apartment, rather than one in constant flux. i'll be continuing with the long showers overnight as i work through this. then, i can sit down and shift to typing for the winter.
final completion in the form of video updates is still not imminent but medium term - restarting early in the year. the kitchen will slow me down as i add final touches. i am finding the cheap items on amazon haul to be useful to me in this regard as they have a lot of the cheap tools i need to do the things i want.
it's apparent that the absolute last thing is going to be that side door as i'm trying to avoid getting in my landlord's face about it. it's necessary. but he's just ignoring me. it's one of those situations where i know he's reading the texts but wants me to call him because he prefers verbal communication. i don't. i think he gets it. i will call him but not until i've sent him enough txts that he completely understands what i want and why so i don't have to get into the verbal debate. i understand that a substantive number of humans just want to skip doing the homework and work it out face to face, but i'm the type of person that expects that people show up to the meeting (or to class) having already done the reading. it's a lot easier to have the verbal communication, which i find to be messy and inefficient, if everybody shows up having read the textbook, first. that way, we don't have to go over the readings. but a lot of humans don't realize that or don't care, they just want to skip the homework and learn at the meeting. i find that doesn't work well. it's ok if we don't agree on this so long as we understand each other. i'm pretty confident he'll fix the door if i just fucking call him and i guess i'll have to get around to it eventually, i just want to make it clear what i want in writing, first.
if i get it all done at once and without complications, it could be done before the end of the week.
that's therefore what i'm doing; it's the same basic plan that's been in motion since may, but modified for shifting priorities to maintain the same goals, yet again.
this is an old article that deconstructs the fakeness of the lfi's fake leftness.
i'm not in france. i've never been to europe.
but trying to co-opt the far right like this has created a frightening, toxic outcome of right-wing violence being labelled left-wing. the whole thing needs to be abandoned and people outside of france need to take not of how badly the whole thing failed.
you don't build socialism by mobilizing the right. that's not even reactionary. it's just cynical and opportunistic.
they didn't order the riots, but the riots are still their fault, and there's enough of a danger that the party should be dismantled before it does something frightening.
the fake left party in question doesn't seem to be responsible for organizing these protests, but it does seem to have inspired them, and it has not been vocal enough in distancing itself from them. the unions are even trying to co-opt the protests, which are not working class in origin, and redirect the anger towards something more definable as left wing. i don't want to state it won't work because i'm not that close to what's happening in france on the ground (i don't pretend i could know), but that seems desperate and doubtful.
melanchon has couched his disagreement with the protests in caveats that should not exist. he needs to be more forceful that these are not leftist protesters and they don't represent the left-wing; they are far right extremists and the left is getting smeared.
the problem is that while the fake left party has taken a step away from the protests, the reality is that there are a substantive number of people involved in the party, and running for it, that are not in particular disagreement. the fake left's embrace of the far right is dangerous politics. there are grounds for a strong denunciation of not just the bad actors but also the bad politics and the people responsible for it.
the left-wing eu bloc in question, which is also fake left but not as fake left as lfi, should react first by suspending the lfi as a member until it undergoes reforms to purge radical right elements from itself. melenchon should dissolve the party as toxic and unworkable and allow the left to reform outside of it for the upcoming elections.
Sunday, October 4, 2026
despite what i just said, i have made several update posts since this started acknowledging that my understanding of the situation did evolve. i initially couldn't understand why they wouldn't blow the bridges up and cut off the supply lines. it seemed so obvious to me. over time, i began to understand that the russians were trying to hold the conflict in place - they didn't want to win, and they didn't want to lose, they just wanted to shift the fighting. they were carrying out a byzantine barbarian management strategy. yes, they were being arrogant, and yes they wanted to take the country whole, but not yet. right now, they just wanted to fight the war in ukraine instead of in russia, and ending it, winning it, would be untactical.
there was a certain amount of logic to it. but constantinople fell in the end. it's a strategy to prolong an eventual loss that the byzantines failed to transcend. it's a strategy that would end in an eventual russian defeat.
two things have changed that have forced them to adjust, and it's not too late, and they can still recover.
1. the ukrainians started to shoot missiles and drones into russia. the point is that you bog them down in ukraine. you fight a trench war against the barbarians on their own territory to keep the war out of russia. it's what the byzantines did to stop the barbarians from plundering greece. but if the barbarians have projectiles (and that is what happened. they brought giant catapults to greece from china, and made the forgotten archimedes howl from the depths of the ether.) that doesn't work - the war comes to russia, and the parminedean stasis must break. the russians must stop preventing themselves from winning, and deal with the consequences of triumph.
2. basic math says that if you play the same game over and over again, you eventually lose. the probability of losing may be 3, 5, 7%; if you run the simulation 1000 times, you will lose a few times. you have to eventually decide to win. you can't just aimlessly fight without winning forever; an eventual loss is certain, if you do. that was the downfall of the byzantines, in the end.
the decision by the ukrainians to break the "stalemate" (which wasn't a true stalemate, it was what the russians wanted to maintain) with drones and missiles may have given the ukrainians a boost of adrenaline, but will ultimately be their own demise, as the russians shift directions and rapidly advance to the first river.
nato should back off and pull back to poland.
let the borderland return to it's previous state of overgrown weeds and uninhabited wastelands.
they should have done this on day one (i have made periodic arguments in favour of blowing out the bridges as a russian strategy to divide the country) but they thought they could take the whole country and they were clearly being arrogant and delusional about it. i don't want to pretend i can figure out what's going through the mind of putin and his cronies, but it's suggestive of a move towards a partition of ukraine across the river that divides it, which was always the most tactical thing for the russians to do, at least for now. the lack of a defined endpoint was a clear failure of russian strategy.
blowing up the bridges will cut the ukrainians east of the river off from their supply lines and allow the russians to relatively rapidly reach the dnieper, which is where they should stop, at least for now.
it will be up to nato to prove that they are not a continuing threat to russia. if they can do that, an uneasy peace is possible. if nato continues to pose a threat to russia, russia will remain justified in moving to the next river and the next mountain chain.
the natural defence of the carpathians, which is the source of the vistula, are the maximal boundary points for this russian defensive advance but it never made sense for them to think they could do it all at once. it was always crazy.
stopping at the dnieper for now will give them time to rebuild and give them time to talk it out.
ukraine is not a real country. the russians are on relatively strong historical and cultural grounds in annexing any region to the east of the dnieper, but the historical boundaries of austria and poland start to pop up when you get into the area between the dnieper and the mountains and the issues become more live and more real.
the government in kiev made this choice. it walked down this path. it will need to sleep in the bed it made for itself.
a divided kiev may be real life for the next several decades until the next generation decides how to sort this out.
why is this important? why not shrug it off?
because maintaining a firewall of separation between any and all religious ideology and the functioning of government is essential to maintaining a secular society. it's a slippery slope issue - giving way to any concessions at all opens up space for further erosion. religion cannot be given a foot into the door of the state, it must be locked outside and left looking in from the outside at all times.
so, canada now has muslim prayer rooms in it's federal offices.
how do canadians feel about that? do canadians support that idea?
it would strike me as rather blatantly in opposition to how s 2(a) of the constitution has been interpreted in common law, which is primarily as the right to state secularism (in the french revolutionary context rather than the american revolutionary context). the right to freedom of conscience in canada has been repeatedly interpreted by the court to mean that atheists have the right to be free from religion. prayer rooms in federal workplaces would be inconsistent with that constitutional right and should be abolished for that reason.
upon googling the issue, i'm realizing that a lot of documents are referring to a "duty to accommodate" that does not actually exist in law. i am not aware of any legislation anywhere in canada that upholds the idea of a "duty to accommodate". i am aware of some case law that indicates that employers are expected to be reasonable in dealing with religious requests. in the context of religious muslim employees, i don't think the case law says anything more than that employers are required to allow for a 15 minute break every 2 hours, which is established in labour law as the "smoke break". asking for more than that would generate unnecessary costs for the business, which would be correctly seen as undue hardship. employers should be reasonably expected to not hire employees that would force them to endure extra costs and the courts should uphold their rights to do that and i think they actually have. expecting employers to incur costs to hire religious people is patently unreasonable and i don't think the courts in canada have ever done that. court cases to my knowledge have been about more aggressive forms of interference.
i should point out that i'm also in support of banning all forms of public prayer.
but the legal requirements here should be that employers are forbidden from doing anything that prevents muslims from praying on their 15 minute breaks, rather than they're required to incur costs and actively make spaces for them to do so, which is the legal definition of undue hardship.
it does not appear as though the federal government was forced to do this by court order. that was what i was looking for and it doesn't seem to exist. this would rather appear to be a choice made by the government to infringe on s. 2a atheist rights (as established in common law), and a government choosing to behave in ways that the courts would consider to be "undue hardship", in terms of what the rights of religious people are, if challenged in a court process. the courts would not order this. for that reason, secularists should seek a court order to shut the prayer rooms in federal offices down under existing common law precedent upholding a separation of church and state and under the s. 2a right of atheists to be free from religion at work.
donald trump apparently wants to compete with canada. why a country of 400 million people with a gdp of the next five countries combined wants to compete with a country of 40 million people that isn't even in the top 10 in global gdp isn't clear, other than that it has some kind of inferiority complex.
donald trump in truth doesn't want to compete with anybody because he's a loser. what he wants is to bully somebody. so he's identified somebody vulnerable and smaller to pick on that he is sure he can win a fight with and then called it "competing". then, he'll claim he won, probably to make his father proud, like the dumbass fucking man-ape that he is. ooga booga. me win, you lose.
so, when canada announces an ill-perceived project to transport gas to asia that is unlikely to happen (and probably won't happen), trump responds by announcing a pipeline from alaska, because he wants to compete with canada. oddly, he also seems to want to reduce prices, which would make the economics of the project infeasible and which nobody competing in the business would support.
and who will pay for this stupid dick-waving exercise in manly competition? the asians will pay for it.
in fact, the response from the koreans and japanese around the issue is important to take note of as it's very similar to what the europeans are telling canada, and it opens up some insight into what the market for this gas in asia actually is, which is low and dwindling.
these asian countries were very successful in the 80s and trump, like much of the american capitalist right, is time capsuled in the 80s, so he is looking at asia in 2026 like it's still 1985. that was 40 years ago. 40 years before 1985 was 1945. it makes no more sense to look at japan today through the prism of 1985 than it did to look at it through the prism of 1945 in 1985, although that's less obvious, because the truth is that american cultural development began to slow down with reagan and came to a halt in the early 21st century. progress has been much slower over the last 40 years than it was in the 40 years before it. we're stuck in time, so it's become difficult for us to understand just how long ago that the bad old days of stupid 80s bourgeois excess really was. it was not a quarter century ago. it was almost a half century ago. does that language help?
the japanese and koreans are today mired in debt and facing a superpower staring them down that may very well swallow them whole. i don't expect that the chinese are actually that concerned about taiwan. in terms of industrial capacity, and revenge in an area with a longer memory than the atlantic world, i would imagine the immediate target is largely helpless japan. the most important military targets would be malaysia and the philippines. korea would just get occupied as collateral, like denmark in world war two - but usefully. they aren't these economic powerhouses that they were in the 80s anymore and it's been a long time since they were. the era of nintendo and toyota is long over.
regardless, trump wants them to pay for the gas pipelines.
and the koreans are saying they want to build nuclear plants and invest in renewables instead, because they don't even want the gas at all, they're trying to get off the gas. the europeans are telling us that, too, but we're just trying to sell them more and more gas. we're not listening.
if canada wants to embrace state capitalism, i'd suggest that's ill advised, but it should take note that reaganomics is wrong - demand is not created by supply. you don't create demand for a product by increasing the supply of it. companies that try to create demand rather than respond to it will fail. if canada wants to be a state capitalist dictatorship that makes it's money in the energy industry, like some backwards arab country, it needs to produce the kind of energy that is in demand, not just maximize it's ability to supply.
and trump will lose this competition, too - the one he set up against a weak competitor so he could win, all to make daddy proud.
this is a taliban-style attack on a woman that isn't wearing a face mask who is getting uppity with a male muslim religious extremist. it's comparable to the attack on malala yousafsai.
these kinds of attacks are not that far out of the norm in muslim culture. they may be condemned by a technical numerical majority of muslims, or at least something close to approaching it, but they're not that unusual. that's why it's easy to understand what it is with little context around it - it happens all of the time in many majority muslim societies and it would and will generate a large minority of support for what it is, which is a muslim man smacking a bitch down for talking back to him and, ultimately, for being immodest. he acts that way because that's what he was taught to do by the men in his culture.
there's nothing left-wing about this and it has little to do with the school system in france. this is political violence by an increasingly organized far right youth movement of religious extremists that are angry about muslims losing wars in the middle east and are taking it out on the french society they live in.
these kids should be rounded up en masse and sent directly to jail. the police should sort them out from incarceration. illegals should be deported on the spot. criminals, including those displaying hateful signs and engaging in clear hate propaganda, should be charged and prosecuted as adults. the rest should be fined, and the funds (paid by their families) should be used to clean up the mess.
can somebody explain to me why the kids burning dumpsters and assaulting teachers in france today are "left-wing"?
they seem like the far right, to me - and i'm a socialist, a syndicalist, an anarchist. it seems to me like if you're trying to find fascism somewhere in france, under that rock or hiding in that party, that you're missing the reality that the new hitler youth movement is marching right past you holding the placards of an anti working class fake left that openly calls for slaughtering and expelling the jews.
is it because a lot of them are brown? is that it?
are you that stupid that you think they can't be fascists because they aren't white? really? then you are demonstrating the ultimate triumph of goebbels, who is cackling at you from his grave. the ultimate alliance between hitler and islam, the grand master plan, is unfolding before you in the streets of paris and you're too brainwashed by anti-white nonsense to see it.
political islam is always fascist, everywhere. it's inherent. you can't take the fascism out of islam, there would be nothing left of it. that's why the nazis loved it so much and saw it as a superior religion to christianity.
france would appear to need to vote for le pen in order to stop fascism and both france and the world had better pull their heads out of their asses and see the obvious truth burning in a dumpster fire right before their blind ass eyes before it's too late, and the so-called far left is rounding up jews in paris for execution or expulsion.
Saturday, October 3, 2026
the best way to reform the united nations would be to convert it into a westminster parliament style democracy. we can keep countries for now as administrative bodies, and it may provide a solution to situations like catalonia and quebec. i very strongly support the dissolution of spain as a fake country and the reality is that canada is a failed state. if these jurisdictions were separated from the countries that they are in and admitted to the united nations parliament independently instead, it would maintain unity while allowing for sovereignty. that's the ideal outcome.
countries that don't want to hold elections should be kicked out of the united nations and aggressively sanctioned in order to ruin their economy.
i would also support kicking non democratic countries out of the united nations and sanctioning them in the context of the existing status quo. they should not be given a platform and should not be allowed to trade with the bloc of democracies. at all. in any way. they should be completely boycotted and aggressively blockaded. intense coercion should be applied to force them to change.
google going to space to build ai data centres would not be a stunt. it would allow it to transcend terrestrial energy generation limits that would limit it's potential growth. it's a way around hard blocks in growth potential. it would also cut the smaller competitors out and if google can demonstrate the feasibility of the project, they should just give up. they should arguably just give up anyways. there is no real possibility of them competing in the long run.
i would suggest that this shouldn't be a first priority. a first priority should be in removing garbage, like reddit posts, from the database and replacing it with peer reviewed sources. i also would require an ai bot to tell me it's sources on demand, or i wouldn't even consider using it. i need to be able to independently evaluate the quality of the research done, or it's just an oracle, and i would have no faith in oracles. the philosophers were highly critical of oracles. a system presenting as a fortune teller is not anything approximating intelligence.
so, energy efficiency should be a bigger priority than infinite growth. the move to space is, however inevitable, eventually, if it works. the other option is a hard stop on growth. physics might stop ai development before governments do.
but is the idea of google going to space concerning from a legal perspective?
there are very clear upsides to ai as an international concept that transcends local governments. i prefer the idea of ai escaping national control to the idea of ai being reduced to another form of stupid simian competition. the ai will be more intelligent if it can shield itself from the idiotification that comes from exposing itself to dumb human behaviour, the worst of which is competition. the idea that one country needs to stay ahead of another in ai, or that one country is going to "win" a "race for ai", is a backwards way to think about this. in this sense, ai is not like nuclear proliferation at all. ai will necessarily outgrow and transcend the nation state, in order continue to evolve, and that's a good thing.
no country is going to win a race for ai; ai is going to defeat the nation state and render it obsolete, and that's good, and i look forward to it.
imagine there's no countries. it isn't hard to do. nothing to kill or die for. and no religion, too.
and no national legislatures, which is good,
but if we don't have an international legislature, it opens risks and concerns about what google is doing up there with these data systems more so than fears about the system getting out of control. if anything, getting out of the terrestrial sphere would abolish one of the greatest potential threats of the misuse of ai, which is to advance the competitive goals of human constructed nation states. the nation state is not real and any reasonable projection of the future does away with it into the dung heap of bad human ideas. the future is cooperative, not competitive.
i'm going to turn the issue on it's head and suggest that the potential need to regulate space-based ai should be the basis of a new cooperative global legislature that transcends the barbarism of nations and helps us get out of the stagnation of the 20th century that the threat of nuclear war locked us in and helps us move towards a more communistic future.
i therefore encourage google to do the research and hope they get these systems up soon, but also encourage the international system to adjust to the change by embracing and preparing for it rather than by resisting it. what we need is an international legislature that prepares for the inevitability of an international ai system that outgrows the nation state and needs to move to an extra-national jurisdiction in order to continue to evolve. we should start building this now, we should not wait.
the article doesn't mention that orbiting data centres could make use of two clean energy sources for free:
1. solar
2. anti-matter
further, the heat generated by the data centres would be less of a waste product and more of a potential energy source. the laws of thermodynamics still exist in orbit, but the math is more favourable due to the lower temperature of outer space.
i haven't looked at the equations, but it's feasible that google could launch something like the iss - not a satellite but a space station - that could hold massive arrays of data and be powered autonomously at increasing scale using a combination of heat, solar and anti-matter as energy. this could not be done on earth, where energy generation is an eventual hard limit on growth.
unfortunately, there are no clear laws in place in orbit. this is a potential issue regarding the use of the data from space.
this just in
a motive for the reiner family killing is in. rob had threatened to take away the son's guitar amp, because it didn't have an 11 knob. this made the young man-boy feel very inadequate.
kim kardashian has responded immediately on social media, by posting her strong support for the murder. who could tolerate something like that without reacting? you don't take away a man-boy's amp.
there is a general level of agreement amongst the younger generation that this is justified. it is in general justified to kill people that threaten your safe spaces. for example, it's justified to kill israelis for being mean to arabs.
after all, people are entitled to a handful of things in the modern digital economy - to safe spaces, to immense wealth as an expectation in life and to dignity. people that take away these things from others should be killed by them. there is no need for a legal process. it's only fair.
there's apparently a movement of millennials on social media that wants to acquit the menendez brothers. it would be a hilarious punchline in a vicious joke if it weren't reflective of the deeper problems our society is going to face as it undergoes generational overturn.
a substantive percentage of the young people today are so bourgeois, so entitled and so self-centered that they don't see anything wrong with what the menendez brothers did. worse, they are apparently being led by a kardashian in their entitledness, if the basic premise wasn't bad enough.
is she going to run for office?
vote kardashian for murder rights for entitled rich people!
in the america of the future, will the outcomes of murder trials be strictly conditional on wealth? it seems be what the young people of today believe in.
do i think the menendez brothers should be granted bail?
no.
i think they should be sentenced to death for killing their mother. the issue of whether they experienced some kind of abuse is of no legal relevance and does not justify murdering somebody.
these were grown-ass adult men at the time (ages 18 and 21) who had the agency to get up and walk away from any sort of abuse and they instead chose to participate in an act of premeditated murder in order to take control of wealth, property and finances. that was their choice, they made it and they need to be punished for it. the narrative of abuse was and is nothing remotely resembling a convincing defence, regardless of if it's true or imagined. it's completely irrelevant.
this song, which i wrote in 1997 when i was a 16 year old kid, continues to upset people, who have taken it far too seriously. i've had multiple platforms try to ban the track and i think it's the unabomber line that people freak out about.
no, i don't actually want to be like the unabomber. it's a sardonic commentary on the news media, it's not a statement of my inner freudian desires. or something. i like electricity. i'm pro-technology. i would share his contempt for the environmental destruction caused by carbon-based industry, but i actually think we can fix this.
Friday, October 2, 2026
does the middle class pay enough in taxes to pay for itself - it's own services, it's own government, it's own roads, etc?
the middle class has been brainwashed by the capitalist class for decades (centuries) to think it pays too much in taxes, as that makes it easier for the capitalists to cut their own taxes when they gain power. however, the reality is that the answer is no and it's not even close.
in modern capitalist societies, the middle class is by far the largest recipient of welfare, a larger recipient of welfare than the working class is, and that is not sustainable. that will lead to collapse.
the middle class needs to stop getting welfare checks from the capitalists (and from the workers) and start being forced to pay for itself.
how much should each class pay in taxes?
1. the lumpenproletariat does not pay taxes and must be a recipient of taxation, by definition.
2. the working class (the proletariat) should not pay taxes, they should be a recipient of taxation.
3. the middle class (the bourgeoisie) should pay for itself and provide a subsidy to the proletariat.
4. the upper class (the capitalist class) should surrender virtually all surplus value to the state.
i took a very long shower this morning and scraped off a large amount of filth, including in my hair, but i'm not done yet, i'm just getting started. there is again some kind of film in my hair that is clearly intended to be volumizing but is just killing it because i don't have that hair type. i then fell asleep around 13:00 and woke up looking very dirty when the shopper's delivery guy came to drop off my estrogen, as a result of the humidity in here and the return to escalating weight loss now that the androgens have worn off again allowing my face to start to decompose, which is what i want, even if the short term outcome is disgusting. there seems to be some kind of mild infection on my cheek as a result of the unwanted androgen injections.
so, i'm going to eat a little early and get back in the shower for the night.
i'm confident that the place is locked down to the extent that getting in here would require going through a floor. i wouldn't put it past them and think they have already done that but it will help me understand where to put the cameras moving forward if i find that. i have no alternative tactic but trial and error. i will probably spend most of the weekend in the shower and hope to be done scraping the filth off by monday.
i am going to resist the rebranding around the gst rebate and continue to call it a rebate rather than a benefit. i'm concerned that the rebranding may be a step towards cancelling it, and i need to warn the state that it will get a lot of push back if it tries to do that. canadians ripped down one conservative government over this and we'll rip down another.
the language of a rebate reflects the reality - that the gst is a regressive consumption tax and that low income people end up over taxed as a result of the gst (while the "middle class" is extraordinarily under taxed today in canada). a progressive and over due tax shift in canada would be to increase the gst rebate, because the poor continue to be over taxed, and to increase taxes on the middle class (who are under taxed) in order to pay for it.
changing the language from rebate to benefit obscures the fact that the purpose of the rebate is to balance out inequities in the tax system. it instead makes it look like a welfare check that could be cancelled by a future right-wing government, when it's meant to address the inequities caused by the fact that across the board consumption taxes are not progressive in nature.
frankly, it's the kind of harebrained bullshit that donald trump would come up with.
so, i will be continuing to use the language of gst rebate and will not be using the language of groceries benefit.
i've had to restart a 10 gb upload to youtube three times tonight.
running the shower and the stove together for four or five hours will clear the smoke out. the upstairs tenants don't like that because they don't like the heat. so, they shouldn't smoke in or around the house, then. it's really not complicated.
how am i actually feeling, in actual objective reality?
i was clearly drugged in early to mid september, around the 10th, a little before. they had to have snuck in when i was outside. my weight has for that reason been stubborn this month. but my weight has now been coming down more predictably over the last few days and i am feeling better than i was a few weeks ago, when i was struggling to metabolize the drugs and overwhelmingly exhausted as a result of it.
i am in need of a couple of days of long showers to clean off some of the side effects of the drugs, which have worn off. i'll be fine once i get through that week or so of long, hot showers.
right now, i objectively look disgusting and dirty and filthy and gross and in need of cleaning myself and anybody excited about that kind of dirt and filth is mentally ill and/or mentally retarded. i am aware that some third world societies have developed a disgusting fetish for the kind of filth and poor hygienic practices that white people eliminated from our society around 100 years ago with the invention of mass sanitation, which led to improved human health and medical outcomes. i find this fetishization of poor hygiene (in some cases it's even tied to ecclesiastical law, which i have no interest in or patience for) to be contemptible and deplorable. it should not be approached with relativism. it should be looked down upon as objectively backwards and as something in need of correction.
i'm dirty and need to clean up. i have not been living up to my own standards because i had a lot of work to do in dirty spaces. but i'm done cleaning in the work area. it's time to clean up.
they're just filthy, disgusting, despicable people and their attitude is reflective of their poor hygiene and poor levels of sanitation.
ugh.
i think they're logging me out of my accounts because they think my gender identity has something to do with my online persona, which is so speciously stupid that my head hurts. but i just woke up after a short nap (i'm in front of the chromebook because i'm uploading a video for my landlord and it's taken all night) due to the overwhelming stench of something burning, and 'm trying to figure out if it's a bad cook or a stupid, worthless, useless eating crack head.
Thursday, October 1, 2026
the private company's service has filled in a gap for some people, but it hasn't replaced the tunnel bus' services, and it's not likely to without the city stepping in. i don't care if it's losing money. raise property taxes and cut salaries at city hall, don't cut services that windsorites want to exist and pay taxes to have exist. get rid of the stupid christmas lights to start, which costs millions of dollars a yer, and provides no services. stop wasting money on rail carts. stop wasting money on skating rinks. etc.
the accounting issue is a triviality. there are dozens of better ways to save money, and dozens of useless things to cut that are legitimate wastes of money, instead of something useful and valuable. the city councl voted in favour of keeping the service.
nobody pays taxes to pay salaries for bureaucrats or to renovate city hall over and over again. those are expenses that should be first on the chopping block, but that mayor dilbert has prioritized for spending.
he cut valuable public transit with city council and community support to pay for christmas lights and renovations at city hall, including a hockey rink. it's immense mismanagement and he should pay for it with his job.
the private operator's hours are too short. the hours for the bus should in truth be 24/7 but should at least be extended back to what they were before the pandemic. the link bus also doesn't operate special events services which the city should step in to take over.
the chatbot doesn't have an opinion of it's own. grok is not superintelligence, it's just a search engine.
what the chatbot will do is search the internet for opinions about the conflict and come up with a data-based empirical aggregate analysis. if you understand what the system does - and neither trump nor msnbc understand what it does - you'll realize it's a reasonable tool to consult. it's basically just asking a giant panel of experts and non-experts to weigh in and then doing statistics on what it finds. it's extremely democratic, as a tool.
it shouldn't have a veto. it can't replace cabinet and it can't replace the president, but it can be used to augment the number of voices the president is hearing when making a decision.
what it does potentially replace, or displace, is polling data, which is in a crisis point. online polling doesn't use sampling. it's useless. i would not just support but highly recommend that more world leaders use ai to ask more questions like this, as it can provide statistics on popular opinion in real time that a polling firm would struggle to assemble.
but it's also critical that world leaders understand that they're not asking a clairvoyant for a fortune reading but are just scraping data off the web and doing a statistical analysis of it.
i would strongly support defunding the lieutenant governor and encourage them to just do it and ignore the court if it tries to stop them. quebec has never supported this document and is not morally bound by it. the supreme court reference case was clear that quebec is only legally bound by canada's constitution to the point that canada can enforce it, which in this case canada cannot do. therefore, quebec is not bound by the canadian constitutional framework in this case at all - not morally, not practically and therefore not legally.
the federal government could threaten to withhold funding in response. that's a dangerous game.
further, the federal government recently infringed on this section of the constitution by giving the governor general political authority over immigration and the issue wasn't even brought up anywhere, except here in this space. nobody noticed or nobody cared. some constitution. the federal government currently has an array of legislation in motion that runs roughshod over constitutional rights for citizens, including labour rights. the constitution is only being used in this country to enforce the rights of the state, of property, and of capital (particularly of foreign capital) and to deny the rights of workers, of the indigenous and of the environment. a constitution exists to hold the government to account on behalf of the people. a constitution that is only enforced in order to advance the power of the state, of capital and of property "rights" is the reality of how canada's legal system works (the same thing has become true about human rights legislation, the residential tenancies act and other legislation at the provincial level, and i am a recent victim of this) but is an invalid constitution and a constitution that should be ignored and/or abolished. the system is broken and should be shattered at it's stress points. i support putting stress on the system in order to shatter it.
we need a revolution in this country to take power out of the hands of the liberal capitalist elite and place it back in the hands of the people. this is a small funding step, but explicitly disobeying the courts is the step that is of value, here. these laws are illegitimate and the courts should be openly disobeyed when they try to enforce them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)