there is a market for natural cannabis, pre-legalization, that actually tastes like cannabis and feels like cannabis and excels as a social drug, rather than this medical grade cannabis on the market, which was engineered to replace opiates as a pain reliever, cannot be used socially because it knocks you out and just makes you feel dumb and tired. the manufacturers are not understanding demand, which is not for more and more potent pot.

they're trying to get people addicted. that's the point. it's obvious.

i remember talking to some meth dealers in downtown ottawa years ago. everybody knows they hang out at the rideau centre and that these guys are bad news, and work for gangs, mostly bikers. the cops don't clear them out. i needed some pot. i thought i'd ask. 

i found one that was relatively chill and seemed to have some understanding of the supply chain and he told me point blank: the bikers won't sell marijuana, because it's not addictive. the whole point is that you addict your victim, so they keep coming back. pot is one-off. it's useless to them, and the market is too saturated. you can't get repeat customers selling pot, which is what they seek. you don't get the big buys, in the end. nobody is going to sell their car or mortgage their house to fund a marijuana addiction.

but the marijuana industry wants the repeat customers. they want marijuana addicts to act like tobacco addicts, to get hooked, to use regularly and keep buying regularly. so they are pushing the potent strains. you can't buy normal pot anywhere.

one solution to this would actually be to deregulate it so you can bring back the basement grow-ops by hippies paying off their mortgage. the gangs want the hippie's house. the industry wants the hippie's mind.

legalization was implemented catastrophically and the long term health ramifications will be immense. we're not talking about this and should be.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/psychological-distress-among-ontario-teens-has-nearly-tripled-in-a-decade-study-finds/

my rdsp grants came in today. look at this:

that is $3490 + 3490*3 (grants) + 11,000 (bonds).

if i can get another $5000 in there by the end of the year (roughly), they'll give me another $10500 of grants. i'll get another $1000 of bonds, regardless.

i do not believe i have ever had an asset level close to that in my life. that is more money than i've ever had.

i can't touch it until i'm 59. i need to figure out how to get it to grow a little.

the karen case, which i have been quiet about, should see an order fairly soon. i had to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that the karen called the cops out of spite rather than out of fear, and i think she more or less made my case for me, in her own testimony. i just got out of her way. she seems to have contradicted herself repeatedly in a way that makes it clear she wasn't acting out of fear.

i'm also still trying to reverse costs in the eviction case and trying to grapple with how i can get a broken court system to fix a wrong outcome, when the system was broken with the intent of creating wrong outcomes, and then making it impossible to correct them. i am cognizant that i have to get this to the supreme court to get the correct outcome, and i'm confident that will work, but it's a lot of work, and i'm struggling with justifying that to myself, given that i'm starting over here, and i'm planning on future decisions now with the rdsp cash. i want to move on.

i need to wait for an outcome in the karen case before i can start making decisions about that.

i am not in favour of a large scale attack on iran. i am in favour of limited strikes, in order to help groups on the ground get over critical mass. the purpose of these strikes would be to dismantle the irgc overnight in a single fatal, decisive blow. these time windows are short when they come up and require a quick response. i do not know with clarity if such a thing is in the realm of what america can do or is in truth in my imagination but i strongly suspect that the united states could, in fact, completely wipe out the irgc in about an hour. the americans appear to have missed their current time window.

the americans should avoid drawing too many resources out of ukraine and into a war in iran. 

you'd expect something like this in somalia or afghanistan. mexico can do better than this.

i don't want to get overly weberian on you, but the state needs to be able to stop this. otherwise, there isn't a state. anarchists would deal with this by declaring war against and ostracizing the thugs, but this is the kind of social dynamic where anarchism breaks and the theorists start arguing that the society doesn't meet the preconditions and isn't ready. the basic hobbesian social contract is that the state needs to stop this.

the americans are beginning to signal that, if mexico doesn't want to stop this, they're going to finish the war they started, themselves and, on some level, they will be justified in doing that, if the mexican state refuses to exist.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/kidnapping-mexico-influencer-9.7066638