just briefly.

the argument i'm going to advance against religionists that are condemning what china is doing is in the definition of control, and the question as to which means of control is more negative, overall.

see, these people will condemn what china is doing as "brainwashing", and then point to participating in the religion of islam as an act of free expression. this is an utterly ridiculous way to frame the discourse. whatever we think of what is going on, we have to begin with the understanding that islam is, itself, a system of brainwashing and control, and that these people were brainwashed into this system from the time they were born.

so, i don't want to engage in this discourse that is about statist brainwashing v religious freedom, as that is an absurd framing from the start. what we have, here, is rather a question of two different systems of brainwashing and two different systems of control. once these people get through their training with the "communist" party in china (which is anything but...), they will no doubt see islam as what it is, and wonder how they could have ever seen it differently. and, while i have a list of criticisms directed at china, i'm at least more on the side of the chinese on the specific question of religion.

if real, ideologically pure leftists were to take over the universe tomorrow and do this right, it would no doubt look a whole lot like what china is doing, except cleaned up to be a little less vicious. insofar as the focus is on undoing the religious brainwashing, i'm entirely on their side, on this - but i want to replace it with critical thinking, rather than obedience to the chinese state. so, i'm calling for the chinese to be humane.

but, that's the extent of my disagreement with what they're doing - it's a big disagreement, but it's about what to replace islam with, rather than about the process of doing away with it.

and, at the end of the day, i would consider china to be less of a threat to global peace and less of a barrier to progress than islam. so, it's a step in the right direction, however minimal and however flawed.

but, it's a good demonstration of why i'm a leftist and not a liberal, and a good purity test for the left. if you find yourself standing up for "freedom of religion" to "protect islam", you're just missing the basic plot on the left - you're failing to recognize religion as a tool of control that must be eradicated to become civilized and live freely, which is foundational to any coherent concept of leftism, and instead retreating to these liberal/conservative concepts of bourgeois rights, that are just intended to uphold the status quo of capitalist and aristocratic hegemony.

ultimately, i support modernization in western china.

i've already posted an analysis of the uighur thing and this is the conclusion of it: i would call on the chinese government to be as humane as is possible in it's attempts to help the turkic populations in it's western regions leave the past behind and enter the modern world.

this house hereby declares that a genocide is currently underway in the people's republic of china

(pause)

"glad that's over with."

"same"

"so, what's for lunch?"

"i hear there's a nice spot up on sparks."

"chinese?"

i would advise that the broadly ignorant individuals that make up the canadian parliament (there are some exceptions, but these people are, broadly, hardly anything approaching scholars.) avoid making foolish statements about what is or is not a genocide, without the benefit of clear facts on the ground.

the facts of the matter are not clear and anybody suggesting they are is operating on political bias.

so, if it turns out that they're wrong, they look like idiots and tarnish the reputation of the country as a rash, authoritarian state that legislates without properly investigating, largely in the servitude of neo-british imperialism. it would just be an empty attack rooted in politicized rhetoric, and somebody will need to apologize for it, one day, in the end.

if it turns out they're right, they open up legitimate questions as to inaction. and, let's be clear - the parliament is not proposing actually doing anything about this genocide, it just wishes to decide a complex historical question on a party-line snap vote and then use it to whip up identity-driven voters to drive them to the polls in the next election. but, if an actual genocide is occurring, and they have evidence to support it, and they decide as much in the legislative body, do they not have a moral responsibility to act? of course they do. the criticism then rightly falls to the government for inaction.

they should just shut up.

but, this is true about their foreign policy, in general: this government, and this prime minister, should just shut up and leave the room when the topic comes up. it lacks basic experience, basic wisdom and basic knowledge.

canada needs to avoid being the bull in the china shop, here, and just not do this at all.

and, if i was in the house or the senate, i would refrain from voting by citing a lack of evidence required to present an informed analysis.

fell asleep again.

let's try again.

i've said this about hitchens and iraq before: his argument is airtight, but his facts are completely wrong. so, like the worst type of medieval religionists, he's erected a perfectly correct syllogism that is erected on a framework of absolute bullshit; it's a perfect deduction, a flawless exercise in logic, but follows uniquely from a set of facts that simply are not true. and, so one is reminded of the witch drowning scene in monty python's holy grail, as this basic truth must be gotten across to him, and never was: christopher, you cannot build a castle in a swamp!

parenti's response is consequently the appropriate one, in that he mostly focuses on correcting the facts.

see, i don't believe that the rulers believe what they tell us. but, they aren't revolutionary leftists. and, i consequently don't really even care what the elite believe, or even care why they do the things they do - i care what i believe, and base my support on the projected outcome, and whether it aligns with what i believe in and want or does not.

i opposed the invasion of iraq in 2003 and i think that was the right position. there was no opposition on the ground.

but, if the american government were to present to me the same argument about iran, i might go along with it - not because i care about what the elite thinks or why they're doing it, but because i would have solidarity with the secular left on the ground, and would see it as a way to advance their causes.

this goes back to the old debate they had in spain about accepting support from stalin. they knew better, and stalin slaughtered them, in the end. but, it's not that easy.

sometimes, base pragmatism is the right choice. 

while hitchens was wrong about iraq, he might not have been. and, in the long run, he may seem less wrong than he does now - which doesn't and can never excuse the error, but can only mitigate it.

---

and, yes - hitchens ripped him apart in the q & a.

he's christopher hitchens.

he'd do that to anybody.

---

the united states has convened all four.

the only other country i can think of is israel.

...& the saudis.

again: the democrats have the chance to materially improve the lives of their voters by expanding access to education and healthcare, and they are instead choosing to restrict the rights of people to express themselves on the internet.

let nobody be surprised by the inevitable backlash against them.

and, force them to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

another night wasted sleeping.

why bother to exist under such meaningless conditions?

where has my energy gone?

the answer is that i've been drugged with "medicine" that is stealing my life from me.

fuck off. i want this to stop. i want my 72 hour days back, again.

there's some evidence that aspirin might help.

hrmmn.

let me look into this more.

it's the bicycling, and the walking.

the irony, right?

see, the problem with me just taking calcium channel blockers is that they're intended to treat high blood pressure.

i have low blood pressure.

i might even have "athlete's heart".

so, it's potentially dangerous....

i still have that spironolactone, so i found myself wondering if it might act as a calcium blocker, and the answer seems to be "sort of", but nobody is linking it to gingival overgrowth, probably because it also causes dry mouth.

and, the cyproterone causes dry mouth as well.

but, progesterone is a kind of known issue for gum recession, and that might be more at the root of it, in combination with the crooked teeth. hrmmn.

i'll probably never get a clear cause, and i'm more interested in finding some way to graft over it. if i undid everything that might cause it, i'd have to starve to death.

those hydroxyapatite pills come in a gelatin shell that i could potentially recover some collagen from, although i would doubt this is useful as a topical.

i could add a little to the daily fluoride bath....

i need to do some more research before i do anything.

cysteine is, supposedly, a powerful collagenase inhibitor.

so, i think i have my candidates:

- type I collagen + cysteine 

i need to stop for some fruit.

ok, so i'm back to where i was.

- i think the primary problem is that my teeth are crooked.

- i need a topical collagen application of some sort to try to stimulate regrowth. ingested collagen could end up anywhere, including in the ligament space, where it might even do the opposite of what i want. i need to put the collagen where i want it and hope it works. but, how?

- i need some kind of collagenase inhibitor, but should that be topical as well?

and, it could also be caused by crooked teeth, which i have, and which is where the problem is worst..

i'm entirely absolving myself of blame, here, i think.

and, that's important for my self esteem.

but, that means i need to cover up the roots, or it's just going to get worse and worse.

so, i don't know how to figure that out without doing xrays.

but, in a sense it doesn't matter; what i needed to know was how it could be that excess collagen and deficient collagen could lead to the same result. but, i get it now - you can both have actual, literal receding gums (collagen deficiency, or collagenase excess) and emulate the effect of it by having an expanding jaw (excess collagen, manifested in that specific way).

it's ultimately because collagen is a medium rather than a mechanism; it's the thing that other cells grow in, and depending on where it ends up it can have opposite outcomes.

for me, i'm going to need to find a way to emulate a graft, regardless - so it doesn't matter if my bones are overgrowing or my gums are receding. i fix it by doing the same thing.

ok.

next step....

Radiographically, the striking feature of this disease is the widening of the periodontal ligament space. Seifert, White and others have reported that this is an inconsistent finding in all patients with Progressive systemic sclerosis; however, this was contradicted by Marmary and others, who observed widened periodontal ligament space in all 21 patients examined.[5,14,15] In our study, 66% of the patients showed widened periodontal ligament space... 

what is this "periodontal ligament space"?

this helps:

https://www.slideshare.net/malvika014/periodontal-ligament-64860505

so, if i understand correctly, what's happening here is not that the gum is actually receding, but that the jaw is actually increasing. as your body doesn't grow new gum tissue, the increased amount of bone and tooth ends up pulling the gum back, creating the impression of gum recession - and ultimately exposing the tooth. and, this is a consequence of excess collagen in the "periodontal ligament space".

ok.

so, even if i don't have sclerosis, can i figure out if i actually have gum recession or am actually producing excess bone?

this doesn't sound much like what i'm experiencing, though, even if the pictures look similar:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232232188_Oral_and_periodontal_manifestations_associated_with_systemic_sclerosis_A_case_series_and_review

the thing about those pictures is that the recession and staining is not due to poor hygiene, and, further, you don't see the bone loss you typically see with periodontitis. so, your typical picture has these receding gums and these little teeth with these gaps between them; where these pictures are more similar is that they have receding gums, but full, healthy teeth - which is more like what i'm experiencing.

but, i mean, i can open my mouth. my fingers aren't falling off...

i still want to understand the mechanism before i move on.

yeah, i'm looking at pictures of people experiencing dental concerns due to scleroderma and it definitely looks more like my mouth than the pictures of gingivitis.

let's see if i can understand the mechanism.

i've been concerned about the onset of an autoimmune disorder - like ms - for years.

i've had migraines, seizures - weird attacks.

and, gum recession is a symptom of ms, as well.

i don't expect to be able to cure this. i just want to figure out how to treat it.

the volume's back to working again, which just demonstrates how weird the situation really was.

so, we are indeed starting to see the start of an anti-mask backlash in ontario, and it seems to be targeted at doug ford, rather than justin trudeau. 

the ndp are even worse than the liberals.

so, what happens if a serious anti-mask backlash kicks in?

the answer is that this is one of those classic scenarios where a far right party has a space to walk in, as it can latch on to a populist position that is rejected by the entire mainstream spectrum.

for that reason, i am calling on the liberal party of ontario to be fucking liberals and push the idea of individual choice when it comes to mask use. you don't have to be anti-mask, exactly - i wouldn't categorize myself that way, either. i'm pro-choice on masks, and would label people pushing mask mandates as anti-choice. my body, my choice.

if the liberals take this position - and it is the right position for them to take, as a liberal party - this will give the upswell of frustration a way out of voting for a far right party.

otherwise, this election might get messy, as people find themselves with nowhere to turn.

i think i'd have to assume that any scleroderma i may be suffering from is mild, and not likely to be the major factor in the substantive gum recession i'm dealing with.

so, is it possible that i might have scleroderma and i should be reducing collagen levels rather than increasing them?

i don't have any of the more dramatic symptoms of it, but i do have a few areas of my body where there's noticeable scaliness, including my hands and what i've been thinking of as a regular build up of dry skin on my cheeks. i've been blaming it on pollution and dry air, and...i think that's correct. but, i can't rule it out completely. there's some consistency with the idea.

it would appear to be unlikely that it would be caused by too much vitamin c or something else in my diet. rather, if that's the case, and the cause of the gum recession, i'd have to file it under "genetic". and, then what? there's no cure, and no convincing diagnosis.

so, no - i don't appear to be able to test for collagen levels and base my reaction on that. unfortunately.

i'm consequently going to kind of put this aside as an exotic idea, but i have an appointment coming up and i'll run it by him. he once suggested to me that i may have raynaud's disease...

somebody seems to have gone through this page and replaced a large number of words with their homophones - things like they're/there.

i'm going to fix it.

but, this is something i do not do wrong, and if you see a large amount of it in my writing in the near future, it should come off as a red flag that somebody is altering the content.

actually, i'm going to unplug the modem and take a shower.

no. i still can't hear it...

oddly, music is continuing to stream. am i supposed to get a hint or something?

that's not happening - i refuse to listen to music until the lectures work again. i'll try again when i make breakfast.

what if i embed it?

that didn't work, and the issue appears to be site-wide so i suppose there's two possibilities:

a) youtube has made some internal change to reduce the volume.

b) i'm being targeted.

i guess we'll have to see if other people have the same problem or not.

i could plug this chromebook into the amplifier in the other room, but that would be annoying. so, i'm going to wait a few days and see if i can get a headphone amp, instead, if i have to.

if you've also noticed that the volume on youtube has decreased substantively site-wide, please post somewhere so i can see it.

this is quite strange - the volume on youtube just decreased to the point that i can no longer hear it.

i'm actually going to powerwash the machine and see what happens.

so, when you say things like "there's no evidence that canaanites existed", please realize what you're actually saying.

these people were erased.

the romans famously wiped carthage out of history, and i strongly suspect that the reason we have no history of phoenicia - the culture that invented the fucking alphabet - is that the romans wiped them out, as well, as the ancestral culture of the hated carthaginians.

and, i strongly suspect that anti-semitism, as we understand it, is in truth the legacy of the roman genocide of carthage and phoenicia.

but, phoenicia is what the greeks called them, after a purple dye that was exported from the region. that purple dye became the imperial colour, years later. even in their destruction and hate and contempt, the romans elevated the legacy of these people to the highest symbol of status that they had.

all evidence suggests that the carthaginians and phoenicians alike called themselves "canaanites", as far into history as they existed for.

but, we don't really know.

carthago delenda est.

so, cyrus - an important historical figure outside of the biblical narrative that definitely existed and created the first major empire in the middle east, by uniting the egyptian, hittite and mesopotamian regions under iranian hegemony - is presented in the biblical narrative as this protector of the jews, that allowed for some return of jewish sovereignty.

but, if you look at real history, what you see is that the persians were broadly supportive of phoenician civilization, in general, because they recognized it as the most advanced in the region. it was the phoenicians that built the persian navy that later harassed the greek colonies. but, they were more than military planners - they were the protectors of the knowledge in the region.

so, while the biblical narrative is of course very silly and cannot be taken at face value, the reality is that the persians did give the phoencian city-states privileged status in the empire due to their role as purveyor of scientific and engineering knowledge, things that the persians, as a barbarian people, lacked. that presentation of cyrus is consequently somewhat grounded.

and, you can't understand what judaism is without understanding that synthesis between phoenician and persian culture, which later became a synthesis between phoenician and greek culture, when the greeks replaced the iranians as the hegemonic power.

that is what you learn by studying levantine archaeology - that the region has shifted dramatically under the influence of various hegemonic powers, from egypt to assyria to iran to greece to rome to the arabs to the turks and now to ukrainian migrants - and this idea of a pure judaism outside of the forces of history simply does not exist.

judaism could neither exist without iran, nor without greece.

they'd still be worshipping tanit.

no, i'm going to repeat the point about jewish migration before the destruction of the temple.

this is a passage from a roman writer named juvenal who lived roughly at the same time as the destruction of the second temple, which we can at least be sure actually happened

For the Syrian Orontes has long since polluted the Tiber,

Bringing its language and customs, pipes and harp-strings,

And even their native timbrels are dragged along too,

And the girls forced to offer themselves in the Circus.

the reality is that the romans took huge numbers of slaves from the region, and that roman slavery was both brutal and sort of liberal, in the sense that slaves were routinely emancipated. so, the end result is that the romans settled huge numbers of people from the middle east on the italian peninsula. and, i mean, just look at a picture of your classical, arian roman with his northern, alpine features and a picture of your modern day arab-looking italian and tell me that isn't fucking obvious.

that is what happened: the romans inherited a middle eastern cultural hegemony and eventually become subsumed by it, through both voluntary and involuntary migration from the middle east to western europe.

so, attaching jewish migration to the destruction of the temple is no doubt a glossing over of history. the event happened, and some migration was no doubt a direct consequence of it. but, migration in and out of the region - to spain and northern africa, especially - had been occurring for centuries previous to it. i mean, the carthaginian state in modern day tunisia was the force that truly built and urbanized spain (which was initially inhabited by indigenous basques and warlike tribal celtic groups) before it was romanized, and they were the sibling culture to the ancient jews; what the archaeology actually says is that the "jews" of the period before the captivity were essentially a forgotten backwater of phoenecian civilization and essentially worshipped phoenician gods and carried out phoenician cultural practices, and that judaism is an essentially iranian religion that entered the region after cyrus, wiping out what was left of ancestral phoenecian culture - which completely disappeared altogether, under first the persians and then the greeks, until the day that carthage was, indeed, destroyed.

so, it's a kind of oversimplification of history to assign all of this migration to this scattering event - the migration took place for centuries before 70 ce, and for centuries after it, as well. and, you can look this up yourself and find out that, yes, i'm summarizing experts, even if i'm too lazy to look it up right now.

so, i'm going to make some eggs, take a shower and get back to this.

can i test my collagen levels?

people waste a third of their fucking lives sleeping and the doctors tell you that's "healthy".

?

i don't want to sleep for eight hours every fucking day. ugh.

what a fucking wasted night.

give me awakeness, alertness and sobriety.

or give me fucking death.

the life of a zombie isn't worth living.

:(.

i am exhausted when i want to be alert.

that is all.

i fucking hate being tired like this.

there is no purpose or value to sleep. it is literally the absence of existence, the absolute destruction of life.

give me a pill that ends sleep, and gives me my short, finite, meaningless life back.

i'm again convinced i've been drugged with some kind of "medication", and all i can do is say "fuck off, i don't want your filth.". but i'm back up and all i can do is try to stay awake.

so, the disease that they attach to excess collagen production is called scelroderma  and one of the symptoms is gum recession.

i'm a logician.

i don't like contradictions.

alas.

let's take a step back, here.

so, if i don't get enough collagen, my gums might recede. and, if i get too much collagen my gums might recede. where's goldilocks when you need her, right? but, how do i figure that out?

and am i barking up the wrong tree?

i don't want to shut off that specific growth factor, tgf-β, as it kills cancer cells.

hrmmn.

so, collagen excess may not be a serious concern, but shutting down the underlying mechanism might have unintended consequences in letting other things run out of control. and being specific about it isn't likely to work.

i'm probably better off with collagen bombardment, then.

oh no.

so, estrogen both creates and destroys collagen?

ack.

how do i get it to do one and not the other?

to be clear: i'm taking roughly the amount of vitamin c that a person my size can absorb.

if i wanted more vitamin c, i'd have to inject it.

i don't want to talk about dr. pauling spinning anywhere. he disproved that.

but, maybe his activation energy just fluctuated.

what about collagen supplements?

you'd expect me to tell you that's bullshit. but, it might not be, it depends on your diet.

collagen is a protein, so it's composed of amino acids, and your body will break it down into amino acids and reuse it. so, you won't necessarily get increased collagen production from eating collagen, but you're at least giving your body the building blocks to do it with.

if you really need more collagen production, i'd advise trying something other than eating it directly.

i'm wondering if a collagen injection in my gums might be worth it....in conjunction with a collagenase inhibition strategy. it seems to be the latter that's more important.

i'm mildly concerned that if i just take a general collagenase inhibitor it might lead to excess collagen somewhere else, but what does that mean? i mean, restricting collagenase could actually help with my hair, my skin...even my eyesight....it's not clear to me why i'd be concerned about shutting that off.

let's be sure, though. is collagen excess ever a problem?

so, if i want to hack myself to regrow gum tissue, i think i need to do the following:

- some kind of topical to act as a medium is likely useful. the collagen is used to help the body regrow the tissue, rather than to regrow the tissue directly.

- i need to inhibit collagenase production.

The Colored Alliance occasionally cooperated with the Southern Alliance. Both advocated the abolition of the Louisiana lottery, fearing it would lead farmers further into debt. To keep vegetable-oil prices low in comparison to the prices of animal fats, they opposed the Conger lard bill, a measure that attempted to impose taxes upon the production of vegetable oil. The two alliances sometimes joined forces in attempting to improve their business ventures. Despite their mutual support for some goals, however, the two organizations had sharp differences, as they revealed in a clash over the Lodge election bill, which promised federal protection to safeguard voting rights in the South. The Southern Alliance condemned that measure, while the Colored Alliance supported it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodge_Bill

so, this is pretty much exactly what i needed.

it's type 1 collagen.

i'm not going to graft myself, but i should be able to buy this fairly readily, i think. 

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bpb/28/10/28_10_1817/_pdf

fuck.

if it's this easy...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120305081419.htm

so, apparently, what's happening with the overgrowth is that the collagen/collagenase balance undoes itself, and the overabundance of collagen leads to gum overgrowth.

i get tons of vitamin c, but is this a reason to cut down my folic acid intake?

or should i find ways to get more collagen in my mouth? and, what will my body do with it if i do? is it even topical?

actually, before i do that, let me look into this induced hyperplasia.

supposedly, the class of drugs that does this is "calcium channel blockers". these are rx drugs and i probably don't want to put the stress on my organs. but, can i isolate the mechanism?

maybe there's a sneaky way, after all.

ok, so i'm getting started on this and i'm going to rewind to the start because it's been a little while.

so, here i go.

let's hope i can get something new up before i crash.

the anti-semitism was embedded in the christianity, a point that scholars constantly forget - nazism was christian to it's bones.

this is the thing that bugs me about nietzsche, this idea that the death of god will lead to all kinds of depravity, and his supposed prophesy of nazism. the exact opposite is true. he lived through the high period of western civilization, and longed for a period of backwardsness - which returned with nazism, via bismarck perhaps, but nonetheless.

and, so, it's true that you see a kind of interregnum of barbarity in the 19th century, but it's precisely because the civilization had done away with christianity. then you see a return to barbarity with the return of christianity, in the form of nazism. and, now, post-1945, you see the death of anti-semitism in germany - because christianity was once again put aside. except that it is still there, and still threatens to return...

the problem is that history is written by christians, so they consistently misunderstand this accidentally on purpose.

this is better, but he's still purposefully forgetting to mention that jim crow was a consequence of the populist movement, and not something that happened in opposition to it. the major opposition on the ground to voting rights for blacks in the 1870s was in fact the southern farmers alliance, which is the major precursor party of the populists.

now, we can be sneaky about this - what was really going on, here? were these farmers being divided and conquered, as is the central thesis in much of zinn's work? maybe.

but, my singular point was that the contrast being presented between the populism of the 1800s as this egalitarian force and the populism of today as these racist inbreds is total revision - on the issue of race, there's broad continuity, not difference.

also, "history is written by the winners" is an ancient quote that i've seen attributed to everyone from orwell to caesar.

i might believe it was napoleon, but who knows.

Christlich

The incredibly rude way they treat the actual survivor, shows what they really want to achieve. It‘s not really about the victims.

deathtokoalas

yeah, i found the body language here disturbing, as well. it's easy to understand why people connected to the event would show an interest in the history, but it's interesting to ask the following question: what kind of (relatively) young white person enjoys researching and writing a book about the holocaust? what draws people to spending their time doing that? and the body language in this presentation answers a lot of questions.

debbie

God makes all kinds of interesting people. I

deathtokoalas

well, i might suggest instead that the stochastics in chaos theory provide for infinite variation in the face of natural selection. but, i take your point.

so, i tried to make some calls today and all the offices are closed early on fridays. ugh.

i only have a handful of choices, unless i want to take a bike ride out of town.

but, i've got a start on it and i'll need to follow up on monday.

i didn't get a chance to do the reading last night because i fell asleep, again. i've been sleeping far too much, recently, and i get depressed when i sleep too much. sleeping is such a fucking waste of time.

but, i've got the laundry done in here, so i'm going to make some pasta and get back to what i was doing.

honestly?

you should really shut the fuck up and listen to me.

i have an academic background that helps me devise tactics. that's my skillset, that's what i can do.

so, i contribute primarily by advising on tactics - because that's what i'm able to contribute.

you can listen to me or ignore me.

but, don't give me shit when you fail because you didn't listen to me, or tell me to contribute in a way i don't have the skillset to contribute with.

from each according to their ability...

and, i simply have no social skills. at all.

i'm just not good at that.

this is what i'm good at...

listen - it's very easy to criticize me for not organizing in real life, but you're ignoring the fact that i live on disability for an anxiety disorder.

i'm not a philosopher that sits inside and works out empty nonsense because i'm too lazy to do anything; i'm an activist that contributes in the only way i actually can, which is to ask people to think before they act - a request that is sorely lacking in the activist community. and, i get pushback from people that really, really don't want to think before they act!

the fact is that i'm not capable of organizing people.

this is what i can actually do. and, if you claim it's invaluable, i deny that - tactics are important. 

your disinterest in tactics is why you fail.

i would actually be more likely to use facebook more frequently if it removed news content, as one of the reasons i got off of it was that i got fed up with the amount of garbage being shared on it. a depoliticized facebook that is focused on art and lifestyle would actually be more attractive to me - it would be a more appropriate use of the platform.

so, i'm with facebook on this issue; they own the servers, they have the right to regulate them. i'd rather see these servers nationalized, granted. but, to have an authoritarian state dictate terms like this is the worst possible outcome.

and, what kind of legislation are they bringing in? like, are they going to tell me to pay to post this link? because i'll tell you what that will do - it will prevent me from posting links to "official sources". i'll link to blogs, instead. or, i'll just talk around them.

i'm actually in favour of letting the newspaper industry die, and good riddance to it. so, they may want to be careful. is what they're doing going to hinder or help?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-condemns-facebooks-highly-irresponsible-australian-news-ban/

in the american discourse, i'm actually a "big government liberal". but, i won't use that language, because i reject the discourse.

just so you're not confused...

i frequently rail against "the state", but i don't mean "the government" when i do that. this is kind of a basic point that you deal with in anarchism 101 and that i sometimes forget that most americans are oblivious to.

but, like, fucking learn it.

so, what is the state, if it's not the government? and, what is the government if it's not the state?

the state refers to what donald trump might call the swamp, or what the populists of days past might have called the "elite". the state is always there - it is beyond the reach of electoral politics, and not removed or altered by the popular will. it inhabits the public and private institutions, it permeates the police and it governs without direction by popular will. the french called it the aristocracy; marx called it the bourgeoisie. but, it's there, behind the working of things, at all times. when leftists (and here, i mean not just anarchists and marxists but "real liberals" as well) talk about "abolishing the state", this is what they mean - abolishing the nexus of power that exists between banks, politicians, corporations and the upper class that runs the world.

and what do leftists want to replace the state with?

the answer is government.

government refers to the democratization of institutions, and not just traditional political institutions but also the democratization of work and the democratization of services, such as health care. you can talk about proudhonian mutualism, the kind of co-operatives pushed by kropotkin & bakunin, the syndicalism in spain or boring old marxist labour unions, but the basic point here is the democratization of every facet of existence - and that is government, in opposition to the tyranny and authority of the state.

the discourse in america is, as usual, deeply confused.

but, just remember this - you are not the state, unless you are at the very top of the elite. but, you are the government.

i'm going to send my doctor a fax.

so, there are drugs that result in hyperplasia in 70% of patients.

that's what i want, right?

nobody seems to have decided to try using something like cylosporin on people with gum recession...

you don't need to be on it forever, right? just until it grows back.

like i say, i need to call somebody. but, if i were to take cyclosporin for three months or something in the hopes that it creates hyperplasia, is that that dangerous?

like i say: i intended this.

i knew it.

let's hope i'm right.

bacteria are made of cells.

gums are made of cells.

there's not really a good way to kill one without killing the other.

it's kind of like how cancer is made of cells, and killing cancer means killing other cells, too.

if i'm approaching fixing my teeth like chemotherapy, the idea is you eradicate the bacteria and lose a little gum, then pull back and hope you've wiped out the bacteria and can still regrow the gum.

if i'm pretty sure i've wiped out the bacteria, it's time to switch directions and focus on healing...

i knew when i started doing this that i'd be dealing with tradeoffs - that there wasn't any really good option, and that anything that is going to work really well at one task is going to have a downside. so, if you're trying to kill bacteria in your mouth, you're going to run up against the consequences of that, and it might mean killing other cells, as well.

i knew that.

and, i told myself from the start that i'd pull back on the dish soap at the first sign of overuse.

i think i'm there. but, i don't want to cease it, i just want to tone it down.

i'm not joking or exaggerating it when i say it - my teeth feel and look ridiculously clean. like, it's working. really well.

a little too well -  i'm worried that it might be hurting my gumline, as it's effectively eradicating bacteria. because that's what oral health is - it's all tradeoffs.

so, let's tone it down.

and, let's call the fancy dentist.

but, let's spend some time tonight figuring out if there's anything that can be done to regenerate gingival tissue, too.

actually, because it's working so well in cleaning my mouth, why don't i just tone it down to the start of the cycle only?

i've been using dish soap every 12 hours, before every meal.

let's take it down to every 36 - before the fruit bowl, only - to start.

to be clear: i may go back to the dish soap at a later time but, for now, my teeth are entirely free of any sort of plaque at all, and i consequently want to lay off and see if it helps with gum regrowth a bit.

anyways, there may be some ways to deal with this.

gingival cells are not isolated from your blood stream like enamel cells are. surely, there's a way to stimulate growth besides using stem cells.

i need to look it up.

the rest of the world is laughing at us - our entrance requirements are a joke.

so, then i show up at a doctor's office and can't understand the ignorance i'm seeing in front of me.

but, it's less baffling than i let on. we do this to ourselves...we take in the world's worst students, and then get confused at the results.

we take in thousands of indian students a year that can't get in to schools in india.

that's why they're here.

i'm not being an ass.

the university of windsor is a major centre for international students of the lowest quality. this is where people come when they can't get in anywhere else.

as in, can't get in anywhere else in the world.

what a bunch of idiots...

no wonder they ended up here - they probably couldn't find a job in the countries they came from.

i want to save my teeth, but not at the expense of forcing myself to endure the effects of testosterone.

as much as i want to save my teeth, tooth loss is an acceptable side effect.

but, again - this is stupid. what kind of retarded doctor is going to look me in the eye and tell me to lose my teeth rather than perform basic surgery on me, because their imaginary friend condemns it in their two thousand year old, obsolete system of morals?

what kind of moronic discourse is this?

another thing to point out is that cyproterone may be a factor, so if i can hurry up and get my orchidectomy, and get off the cyproterone, it might help.

would i go off the testosterone blockers to save my teeth?

no.

i'd rather be a woman with dentures than a man with teeth.

there are ways to generate "gingival overgrowth" using medication.

my doctor thinks i'm insane as it is. and maybe he's right.

if i can figure out something without an rx....

i don't have any of the signs of gum disease - there's no bleeding, no redness, no swelling.

they're just receding.

and, whether it's due to genetics or brushing or something else (i quit smoking in 2016 and, when i did, i had no gum recession. so, this has developed entirely post-smoking. it's an easy answer to blame it on smoking, but it's wrong.), i don't know....

but, i need an expert to look at it and tell me what can be done about it.

i'm done with the court stuff now, hopefully until monday, at least.

i need to call the periodontist tomorrow...

i keep saying my teeth are in good shape right now and my gums aren't, so i'm going to put the dish soap away for a bit. i feel it's done it's job for now, and i want to ensure i'm giving my gums every chance they have to heal on their own.

can gums grow back? i'm told they can't. i haven't found a trick, and this seems far more complicated, and perhaps without a good answer. can i get a graft? i may need one. it might come down to what kind of dentist i can find. but, i think i want to shift focus on this, now - i need to worry about gums at this point and not teeth.

so, if i can stay awake long enough to get through it, i'm closing down for the week, finally:

- the karen case has two components:

a) the divisional court case, where i'm trying to get the cop charged with harassment and/or fired, is on indefinite hold until the end of the pandemic. i sent them an email asking if it was appropriate to resume the filing process at this time, and they told me to apply for a virtual hearing - which i can't actually do, because i don't have access to the technology. i simply don't have a computer that is fast enough to run zoom, and i simply can't get to toronto until the greyhound resumes. it's legitimately stuck. but, the process is at least put in motion; if i can get a judge to at least provide some direction regarding future direction, that would be helpful. the court staff didn't get it, but i've had that problem with them before. the filing process in place also seems to be explicitly for virtual hearings, so it's probably not useful to try to file there, but i'll wait for a response. they've brought in a new case management system, and even if the hearing is indefinitely postponed, it may be helpful to get the filing process in motion. i'm waiting for some reaction from the justice... 

b) the human rights case, where i'm trying to get a pay out from the karen directly, is awaiting an imminent response through a backlog of requests that continues to pile up, and that i'll continue to add to until i get a response. as of today, there is a second form 10 request to the police regarding the conflict of interest in (d). so, there's about 20 requests to sort through. if i have to ask the divisional court for certiorari in the end, i'm going to make it ridiculous on the way - i'm going to make sure there's a hundred unresponded to requests, first.

c) i need to file with the privacy commissioner regarding the omitted statement, but i want to wait for a reaction from the cops, first.

d) i have contacted the crown's office regarding the conflict of interest, and they've told me to file a foia with the cops. so, i'm producing another form 10 request for information regarding the conflict of interest. if i don't get a response by the end of the month, i'll need to file with the privacy commissioner regarding this, as well.

e) i will eventually be filing a constitutional challenge in this case.

f) i am still looking at filing criminal charges against the karen, and the results of the fippa were helpful, but i want to wait for a few things to play out, first. locating ryan myon as a real person would be helpful. what was the conflict of interest? that would be useful if i want to file charges.

- the discrimination case against the hospital has two components:

a) the additional form 10 regarding the guard's report has now been filed. i am awaiting the tribunal's response to set a hearing date.

b) i will file with the oiprd this evening, after i take a shower and eat lunch.

c) i have everything from the hospital, now.

d) a foia is filed with the cops and will arrive mid-month.

e) i have filed with the privacy commissioner.

- i still haven't received the foia regarding the grocery store case.

so, this week i am

- if i can file a foia with the crown about the conflict of interest, i'll do that. the karen won't respond, so this doesn't appear headed for a hearing, either way - i'm either going to get a ruling in my favour or a dismissal.

- wait for the criminal charges against the karen & the request to the privacy commissioner about the omitted statement, but both are coming up.

- file something with the privacy commissioner about the video.

- file a new form 10 when the security report appears

- file a first response with the oiprd

- file against the grocery store 

what's coming up then?

- i may start refiling documents with the divisional court case digitally. i can't schedule a hearing, but i can get the files online, at least. if that's allowed. the answers i got from court staff were not well-informed, and what i'm asking for seems to be outside the existing direction. so, i may have to just wait.

- i see no imminent filing decisions in the hrto case against the karen. rather, i'm just waiting and will need to file weekly requests to rule immediately. i'm expecting to need to file a certiorari at this point.

- i will need to contact the privacy commissioner by the end of the month if i don't get a response.

- the hospital case has no imminent filing, and i am awaiting responses.

- the grocery store case should be filed soon.

and, as soon as i post that, the idiot lights a cigarette.

it's crystal clear what is going on - there is an abusive, harassing person sitting upstairs reading this blog and intentionally pissing me off.

that's fine, the window can stay open all day, then.

idiots.

i at least got the human rights case update in to the hospital before i had to pass out.

i said that it doesn't add much, but he admits to removing me for non-medical reasons. i presented it as an admission of guilt, and i think it truly is.

it's much better this afternoon. i can only hope it stays that way. 

so, let me work through this point by point...

there is no ambiguity as to the source, either. i had the door open for a bit to clear it out, and it's crystal clear that the smoke is coming from upstairs and not outside.

i thought i was awake, but i'm not. i need to fall back asleep.

a $100/night habit that makes you feel like shit.

i don't want anything to do with that...

and, they just don't stop. they must have smoked through $100 of the stuff tonight, because they were still at it when i woke up.

and, i do not want this.

i want to be healthy - to eat well, to exercise. to experience sobriety as a normal state, and to only ingest psychotropic drugs as intoxicants in moderate, infrequent dosages.

i like smoking a joint once in a while.

but, i'd rather be dead than be a stoner.

being a marijuana addict is just like being a drunk, except you remove the drunkeness from the process - instead of being drunk 50% of the time and hungover 50% of the time, you're just hungover 100% of the time.

this is a worthless way to exist.

the smoke is making me sick.

and, the drugs are making me feel like shit.

it's fundamentally a quality of life issue.

i don't want to live my life like a zombie in a perpetual hangover, like i am right now. i want a clean, healthy living space free of drugs and smoke and pollution. i want sobriety.

and, i'm feeling suicidal. 

the life of a drug addict isn't worth living. and, a life breathing in second-hand marijuana smoke isn't of any greater worth than a life breathing in first-hand marijuana smoke.

if this is the new normal, i don't want to live in it at all.

somebody has been chain smoking drugs up there tonight, and it actually knocked me out around 21:00. i wanted to get some work done last night, but i've been stuck sleeping, instead :(.

i have the window open in -10 weather, and i'm going to need to rewash everything in here. it's depressing. and it's disgusting.

the security guard's report doesn't really add anything to the argument, and my response is going to be very short. but, this is very frustrating - i need to write a two page report and can't even sit down for an hour to do it without falling asleep due to a contact high.

legalization of drugs is not a straight forward concern, for this reason: drug addicts are inherently anti-social people that care little about the externalities of their actions. the criminality of drug addiction may not be the right approach, but the behaviour is hardly benign; for everyone that claims this is a victimless crime, i must object - i am being victimized by a drug addict landlord as we speak, with no legal recourse as he won't admit to it. and, there are now no longer any laws on the books to protect my health. i am forced to endure the suffering of living in a polluted environment, with no legal remedies available to me besides the assertion of market logic - "if you don't like it, move.".

move where?

with what wealth?

i have no way out. i must sit here and die, stoned, in a deprecated mental state. i have no choice, and there is no solution.

yes, i am desperately poor.

when my parents met, my mother was a waitress of some sort and my father was a tax collector at a private collections firm that no longer exists. he took a detour into tech support, but he died doing collections for the government. he spent something like 30 years in the collections industry. it became more lucrative as time went on, but when i was born he was making something close to minimum wage.

my parents split up when i was four, and my mother has been on welfare ever since. so, i spent the next ten years of my life in subsidized housing; i was my mother's cash cow, the thing she needed to get paid. i was never homeless - i was not poor by global standards - but i was about as poor as a kid in canada got in the 80s. and, the other kids knew it, too.

my memory is a little blurry around 5 or 6, but, iirc, my dad ended up quickly remarrying - and he married a step up. he may have spent some time on friends' couches; what i actually remember, in the period right after the breakup, was that he just disappeared for months - until he started coming over, and we'd hang out in the basement. and, then he had a new house in britannia bay....

i grew up in trapper's park, and i talk about it being rough; my dad grew up on ritchie street, and that was even worse. 

i know that talking about the ghetttos of ottawa is going to produce eyerolls, but this is what happens when you google ritchie street in 2021:

i'm going to guess it's probably full of syrians nowadays. when i was a kid, it was full of somalis. when he was a kid, growing up there, it was full of italians, native americans & jews - which he was all of, in varying amounts.

so, he was dirt fucking poor. no intergenerational wealth. at all.

wife #2 seems to have been better off, but it was short-lived and my memory is pretty sketchy. his father - a literal mason, a brick-layer - died in that period. but, she seems to have owned the house because he ended up with a roomate in a condo in kanata...

wife #3 lasted the longest, by far - i guess it was around 25 years, give or take. she was wealthy. she had intergenerational wealth. he snagged her on the rebound, from what i hear (the guy that dumped her ended up being my grade 10 math teacher). and, she was strictly white, of apparent irish-french extraction. her surname started with "de", indicating actual noble background - and deep wealth, going very far back, back to feudal or potentially roman timeframes...

when i knew her, she was a lab tech and then a middle manager at the red cross.

so, i got to experience an upper middle class existence, for a few years of my life - about the ages of 15-22, give or take. but, that wealth was hers, and strictly hers; there was a pre-nup, and he died young. the will left it all to her - and there wasn't anything that was his, besides debt, regardless. 

the last traces of wife #3 on the internet dry up in 2018. i wonder if she's dead. i don't know. i've heard nothing, and don't expect anything.

what about my mom?

well, i don't know, actually. i've barely spoken to her since i was 13. i know her "father" worked in the rcmp and pretty high up; if he's not dead, he's in florida. i haven't seen him in 25 years. the thing is that everybody knows he's not her actual, biological father. my grandmother won't answer questions, but my mother (who was born in saskatchewan) is quite visibly of plains indian extraction - a bizarre truth given that her mother is irish-norse and her supposed father is scots-welsh. the guy knew she wasn't his daughter, and he did horrible, vicious things to her as a child; i talk of my mother being a drug addict, and the truth is her life was damaged from the start. so, there's wealth there, but my mother has never had access to it and there's no reason to think i ever will, either. my aunts both inherited quite a lot... 

my grandmother worked as an investment banker and ended up as a sort of mistress for an extremely wealthy italian property magnate in ottawa, and had access to quite incredible wealth as a result of it - something i again had a glimpse of, growing up. but, that wealth stayed in his family. i presume he died of prostate cancer a few years ago. she's in a retirement home in bc nowadays, suffering rather badly from alzheimer's. i keep meaning to call her, but it's clear enough that this wealth, whatever exists of it, is going directly to her youngest daughter - who is going to hand it off to her own son.

and, i had as much opportunity as a person with my background could ever hope for, but i threw it away to live a life of freedom; the irony is that i could exist so close to such wealth, and be told i had to work for a living, and then throw it away. i used to tell this to my father, to his bafflement, all of the time: i'd rather be free than rich. that made no sense to him, growing up the way he did - all he ever wanted was a way into the middle class. but, growing up the way i did, a stable middle class job was just giving up...i wanted meaning and purpose and the freedom to seek it.

and, so i am desperately poor, because i threw it all away to chase art and experience.

i don't regret it, in the bottom of the pandemic.

i just want my freedom back - because that trade-off has lost it's meaning, right now, as i sit at home in a pollution filled basement.

there's other ways around this, as well, and i think the concept of due diligence is probably being underutilized.

that working class dipshit that got a divinities degree at harvard and works at starbucks probably has an excellent argument that the banks should have known better than to given him that loan. and, it should fall to the courts to work these things out on a case-by-case basis, not the legislature to write laws about them.

now, if you're really insistent on eliminating private debt (and, i realize i'm using words in a confusing way. so, in this specific context, private debt means debt between individuals and privately owned institutions; public debt means debt between individuals and publicly owned institutions. so, government-financed student loans. which, is actually public debt, as well. but, yes - i'm abusing the language.), the government could make a decision to buy it out (rather than cancel it) and i'd have to take a look at the proposal before i could decide if i were to support it or not. 

i would not support a general amnesty on student loans that are privately held, for the reasons i've stated - it's just a bank bailout on bad debt. but, maybe this is where you can bring in ideas about means testing. some small percentage of working class dipshits no doubt went to harvard on private debt, got a divinities degree and ended up working at starbucks - it helps nobody at all to perpetuate this kind of debt. but, if it's a private institution, you have to pay them for it, so this should be done carefully and with a lot of thought put into it.

i hate sleeping, but i was absolutely exhausted last night. so, let's hope that's the end of it for a while and i can get myself back into the schedule i created for myself.

the brand new fan is working better than it has for a while, so it's actually more breathable in here now than it has been in quite a while. 

that's not a license to smoke, you disgusting worthless pigs. but it's better, at least.

i need to do court stuff this morning and should hopefully be back to what i was doing tonight.

so, should abolishing student loan payments be mean-tested?

no - that's not an argument i've ever made, i don't think. but, i have argued that it should be institution-specific, and i'm going to repeat as to why.

what are you doing when you talk about relieving student loan debt? are you talking about a one time wiping of the debt? or are you hoping for systemic, structural change?

i posted this in june of 2019:

jun 24, 2019

if you're going to wipe out student debt in the united states, it should be limited to people that attended public institutions.

income is perhaps not the most relevant factor, but i would oppose a bill that wipes out student debt for private institutions.

15:49  

there are only around 20 private universities in canada, and almost all of them are religious in focus. 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/education/canadian-university-report/article-why-there-are-only-a-few-private-universities-in-canada/

 15:58  

again: i'm not a muslim. i don't have a moral problem with usury. i'm not going to support an anti-debt bill for the sake of it. if consenting adults want to sign an agreement, it's up to the courts to regulate it, and that goes equally well for everything else that muslims don't like: divorce, child support, mortgages, pay day loans and student loan debt, too.

so, if the government wants to step in and cancel a debt that was taken out by citizens to attend an institution that is public in scope, that is a question of democratic oversight. if there is support for this, it is up to the people to enact it.

but, for a government to cancel a debt held between a private citizen and a private institution, even if it is acting as an intermediary in the loan, would be overstepping it's bounds and interfering in a process that should be determined via the rules of contract law and regulated by the courts - an area of law that is far more flexible than classical liberals would have you believe.

my position is actually that the government didn't do it's due diligence in researching my background before it gave me the money, and the loan should be declared a gift for that reason. if a banking institution doesn't do it's due diligence, it has no right to expectation; that is, the courts have determined long ago that if the bankers give money to people they had no reasonable expectation would be able to repay the loan, then the debt can be declared null and void. consent requires competency. i could very well argue this in court, one day. for now, i just ignore the loan collectors.

but, the point is that the issue of private debt is not up for the government to regulate, but up to the courts to deal with. public debt is a different issue - that is a question of the public will.

16:16  

another way to articulate what i'm saying is this: i would be opposed to bailing out the banks on private student loan debt.

and, let's be clear what a student loan forgiveness really is: it's a (ed: bank) bailout.

16:39 

jun 26, 2019

so, with the debt thing, to clarify.

the goal should be as follows:

1) public universities should be subsidized entirely by taxpayers.

2) it should be hard to get into these schools, and they should regulate their supply of professionals based on what statistics regarding market demand exists for them that government can conjure up. so, free university shouldn't mean an influx of fine arts grads, but should also mean a more centralized production of professional workers.

3) private universities should eventually be phased out.

so, the reason you leave the private school debt in place is because you're ultimately trying to nationalize these schools. universal debt relief doesn't make sense in the broader context of this, unless it comes with a total socialization of education, which nobody is currently talking about. but, in the end, it's that socialization that you really want, and what the policy ought to be angling for.

if you set up a system where one type of schooling is "free" and the other one isn't, the expectation should be that the best students will gravitate to the least expensive option, so long as it is just as good, leaving for profit schools for legacy students of the rich and stupid. that is, you set up the public schools to push the private schools out of the market, over time.

so, i'm not concerned about income as a dividing line, here. i'm not complaining about giving hand-outs to rich kids, or pushing for a "progressive" approach over a socialist one. what i'm doing is pointing out that the universality doesn't make sense so long as the market continues to function, and that if you're going to leave the market in place you should be starving it rather than funding it.

so, go ahead and bail out the public school students, but make it clear to everybody that private school students will receive no such treatment, not now and not ever in the future, either.

21:31 

so, i got my fan and i'm setting it up within minutes. i also got some actual calcium carbonate, which i'm going to use to replace the baking soda i picked up a few weeks ago.

i'll repeat the logic with this: calcium carbonate is basic in solution, so if you're concerned about acid wear on your teeth, it makes sense to swish with it after you eat - not really because of the calcium, but because of the carbonate. it's the same logic as with baking soda, but it's a little less abrasive, meaning you need to give it more time to work.

what about the calcium, though? well, it can't hurt, but calcium carbonate is apparently very insoluble, and when i went through this previously i came to the conclusion that rebuilding hydroxyapatite from calcium & phosphate doesn't seem to really actually be possible - you need to remineralize with the molecule in tact, or it's gone. so, that's probably not going to help much. but, i think it's a better idea than baking soda as an after meal rinse, even if i stick with the baking soda for after coffee rinses. we'll see how it works out...

i got the security guard's report & a response on the request about the conflict, so i have some writing to do tonight...

but, windsor got a lot of snow last night, and this was a vicious, three hour trudge through cold weather and heavy snow banks, the kind i really haven't interacted with since i lived in ottawa. i prepared though. we're talking about:

- two sweaters + heavy grey jacket (+ undershirt)

- two pairs of socks

- two pairs of jeans

- boots

- ski mask

- toque

- hoodie on second sweater

- kombi gloves

people seeing me might imagine i'm wearing a surgical mask under the ski mask; i am not. i just live in canada, and happen to have almost no tolerance to the cold. so, i dress like i'm going skiing when i go to the grocery store this time of year, and that's a constant going back quite a few years.

so, no - i haven't converted to islam (lol.) and i'm not wearing a mask for the virus. i'm just bundled up for the cold weather.

this is what i'm wearing, precisely:

it's sold as a "snowmobile mask", which is pretty canadian, but i bought it explicitly for bicycling in cold weather. hey, try biking anywhere in canada even in november or april. it's cold here, and for much of the year. it's really needed to avoid serious frostbite.

so, no - i'm not happy about the mask laws, and i wouldn't wear a mask if it was warmer out. but, this is how i dress in the winter anyways, so i happen to be kind of floating through...

i'm hoping that the mask laws are gone by mid-march; if not, i'm hoping there's enough of a backlash against mandated mask wearing that i'm not forced to create a conflict when i walk around without one.

for now, it's fucking cold out and i'm dressing for it, full stop.

here's what it was like in windsor, today:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/windsor-essex-school-buses-1.5915123

the sidewalks were partly plowed by local citizens only, meaning it was hard to get through long stretches of city property (like going under the freeway). if this was ottawa, it'd have been cleared by 10:00 am - it's nothing, really. but, windsor doesn't have the capacity, and i've noticed this before. it's almost like a yankee city, in that respect.

so, i had to dodge traffic both ways, with a 16" fan in my hands on the way back, while walking around six foot high snowbanks created by incomplete plowing. i thought i'd never have to do that again. hopefully, that was the last time - ever.

i need to clean in here, shower and probably nap - and i have a lot of things to do tomorrow, now that the files are here.

these vector bars are actually unusually good:

- vitamin a, 25%

- b1, 46%

- b2, 25%

- b3, 26%

- b5, 25%

- b6, 25%

- b7, 80%

- b9, 30%

- b12, 25%

- vitamin c, 32%

- vitamin d, 26%

- vitamin e, 21%

- ca, 32%

- p, 26%

- mg, 19%

- fe, 28%

- zn, 33%

- i, 20%

- cl, 3%

- cu, 20%

- mn, 50%

- se, 13%

- mo, 40%\

- na, 5.5%

- k, 6.5%

- k: na - 3.6

it seems to be discontinued.

obviously.

it's actually sort of wrong to call this capitalism, and i don't mean in the real vs really existing sense that you used to hear however many years ago. this system is the exact system that the initial capitalists were trying to overturn! and, what they called it was feudalism. i used to have these debates with these hayekian right-libertarians ten years ago, about what policies would really bring us back to serfdom. but, we're almost there...

for that reason, i acknowledge what hannah appel is saying, and would extrapolate that something like paine or locke might be more useful in the next few decades than something like marx. marx was attempting to reapply liberalism to an economy designed around socialized production, as the basic assumptions underlying liberalism collapsed with the advent of factory work. but, to an extent, the factory is just a different kind of plantation. i've been asking "what's the way to maximize freedom in a post-industrial economy?", and deduced some kind of superproduction, but this isn't the first time somebody has told me we're on a direct course back to feudalism, and then the theory flips over - the left needs to re-embrace liberalism. i'm not so sure...

and, this is what i'm left with regarding debtors' unions - they're no doubt going to be useful to help alleviate suffering, if you hold to the premises underlying the system. should debtors get a new deal? no doubt.

but, what you really want if you're a revolutionary is to abolish the debt, and i'm not sure i see the utility of this type of union for that purpose. rather, i want to suggest pointing to the production of parallel systems. and, in the end, the only solution is ever through democratization of the institutions, and public ownership of the services they offer.

the end result is that you have to support these unions, but you shouldn't be naive about them - they're not a revolutionary tactic, but a stop-gap reformist measure to make things a little bit better. and, they will tend towards conservative tendencies in the end, like unions always do...

in the end, the best thing that can come out of these kinds of things is the seeds for a more revolutionary movement.

but, you have the bombs. so, why not use them to build schools? what else are they good for?

yes - mmt is a pragmatic way to get some actual, concrete, meaningful change on the ground, it's not a revolutionary theory. but, you are the fucking empire. why not be a little pragmatic about it to get your living standards up to the rest of the world?

the talking point from bernie was that every other country in the world has universal health care, and there's just a bit of a reality check here as to why. you might imagine that these concessions were won through broad working class movements, but they actually had more to do with the realities underlying the corporate welfare that is inherently attached to state funded insurance monopolies - and there's actually an argument that the reason that never happened in the united states was because it didn't have to, because the amount of wealth in the period was so immense anyways...

in canada, what is being cynically written off as impossible actually did happen - the conservatives, ndp & liberals all got together and decided to build a system modeled on the british nhs. how did we get the conservatives to vote for universal health care? the reason is that the insurance lobby supported it. for the liberals, it had a lot to do with the auto pact - a 1965 agreement between the united states and canada to consolidate tariffs through the automobile sector. do you know the actual, technical reason that the liberals in canada supported universal health care? it was to support the automotive sector, by downloading health care costs to the state. so, if ford set up a factory in detroit, it would have to pay it's employees health care (ironically because the unions won it), whereas if they set up here in canada, the government would pay for it.

i'm as cynical a person as you'll meet, but the whole fucking world has this stuff; it is only the empire that doesn't. it's bizarre. and, you really shouldn't be cynical about basic rights that the rest of the world has had for decades. if we can figure it out, so can you.

that's not to discount the value of struggle but every other legislature in the world has given it's people access to these services, and you're selling yourself short by discarding it as impossible. that's too much cynicism.

and just to clarify a point - what modern monetary theory is is an argument that the theory that exists today is not reflective of how money is created in real life. so, it's correct that it doesn't change anything - the point is that it doesn't change anything. it just helps us better understand what already is, and how to best utilize it to our advantage.

i run the risk of them breaking something else when i'm out, but it's not habitable down here without air flow.

i opened it up to clean it, hoping it was just jammed, and when i did i realized the screws were loose - somebody had recently taken the device apart. 

there is a black chip attached to the motor, but i can't say for sure why it's there or what it does. it doesn't look like a part of the device, but i don't know for sure.

what i know is that the fan had clearly been dismantled recently and now no longer works.

i had to walk around with a puffer when i was a kid because my mom smoked in the house. the effects of this were permanent - they've never fully resolved, and never will.

it's 2021 and the cops in this city don't believe that second-hand smoke causes asthma.

how did i end up in this fucking hole in the earth?

it seems like the cops put some kind of surveillance chip in my floor fan, and what i'm thinking is that it broke because they're too incompetent to do anything. i've had this pile of broken hardware over the last few years, and it legitimately seems like they keep breaking it accidentally. but, i can't function without it. it's bad enough as it is, but it's just too dry and smoky and disgusting in here to do anything at all without it. i'm just going to cough and hack and wheeze until it's fixed.

they have something at canadian tire, but i have to order it on the internet and wait until tomorrow to pick it up, and i want it now.

so, i was hoping to be in for the rest of the month, but i need to walk across town to the walmart to pick up a fan, instead

ugh.

i haven't had time to eat a real meal in something like 36 hours, but i bought these meal replacement things and they're quick fixes at least. but i'm going to make some fruit before i go...

i'm angry and frustrated and can't even fucking breathe in here at all right now. and, the fucking idiot cops seem to think i'm making a bronchitis diagnosis up - because they are a bunch of loser nicotine addicts, themselves. i hope they all die young....

i'm essentially being targeted by a nazi, and the system is designed to protect the nazi, not me.

this process needs serious reform.

this person should not be allowed to do this, and is only able to do this because the system is so poorly designed.

any prejudiced idiot can show up anywhere online and flag whatever they want, and the burden to appeal it shifts to the accused, rather than the accuser. this is, legally, completely backwards.

if somebody is to make accusations like this, they should be:

1) forced to identify themselves to the people they're accusing. this is a fundamental right, the right to know your accuser.

2) actually provide an argument, before any action is taken.

as it is, the system allows for somebody like me to get targeted, and have no idea who is targeting them or why - although i can figure it out. 

i actually think the person is anti-jewish first and anti-queer second.

this anonymous anti-queer, anti-jewish bigot hides behind their computer and anonymously flags my posts as offensive - and always gets overturned, in the end.

who are you?

show your face!

because i want a restraining order put on you.

there's been about 20 things flagged at this point, and every single flag has been undone upon review.

it's frivolous, and wrong - and it needs to cease.

identify yourself, you coward.

i don't know who is doing this, but i want it stop.

it seems like i'm being filtered, but they've relented. i'm going to flip this around: i've been targeted by some anti-queer and anti-jewish voices on the internet for quite a long while, and this is just the latest example of it. i'm the one being harassed, here - there is somebody that keeps sorting through my content and reporting harmless posts to the authorities, in an attempt to shut me down. it seems to increase when i criticize certain voices on what i call the "fake left". if whomever is now filtering this could identify who these actors are and prevent them from bothering me any more, that would be greatly appreciated.

i will, unfortunately, need to go to toronto to have this surgery done, despite repeated pleas by surgeons in toronto for local doctors to do it - which have fallen on deaf ears. and, if the pandemic doesn't end soon, i may actually run out of time to do it.

i have asked the tribunal to order the local hospital to perform the surgery as a result of the discrimination i recently experienced at the hands of a psychiatrist in the er room.

it's a huge problem in this country and, if anything, it seems to be getting worse - trans people technically have access to care, but it's very, very hard for us to actually find it.

so, i got my first taste of censorship here, and i'm not interested in it.

the following post is posted to this blog and the travel blog at 15:03 on mar 15, 2020:

this is simply a true statement. i have contacted every urologist in windsor and they have all refused the voluntary orchidectomy for religious reasons.

i'm not somebody that gives a fuck about political correctness, but that's not even the issue at hand - somebody has decided that a true statement is offensive to them, and all i have to tell them is to go and fuck off.

i have reposted the post to where it was and i will continue to do so until the issue resolves itself.

actually, no - if you do it right, there's an obscure spot where it cancels. it's not obvious - at all. - but it's there. so, i gotta redo it...

the federal government has just dramatically increased taxes for poor people.

i'm disabled - literally.

and, i had to use my education credits to avoid paying taxes...

otherwise, they would have charged me $120 worth of taxes on an income that is entirely derived from disability payments. i repeat: they're forcing disabled people to pay taxes.

and, i'm going to once again lose my climate refund to my student loan; last year, they applied $28.01 to my $50,000 in defaulted provincial loans, which they won't cancel because i'm not disabled enough.

the liberals are slowly taking away all of the reasons that leftists might have considered them a lesser evil. this is the worst type of stupid fiscal conservatism and malicious, punitive attacks on the poor.....

ok, so i can file with the privacy commissioner online, so i still have until the end of the week.

as a result, i'm going to wait for the security guard's report. it's key to the argument.

i think the crown's office is closed today because it's "family day" in ontario, which is a bullshit, but stat, holiday that i always forget about.

so, i'm done for the day...

i have to file taxes.

nice to see stuff like this...

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/ecuador-pro-mining-politics-indigenous-green-movement-victory/