chapter 3 - kitchen

oct 27, 2025

step one in setting this place up was cleaning and redesigning the kitchen because eating is one of two or three things that i have to do almost every single day, whether i like it or not, on threat of starving, which means dying. no thanks.

this is not a chef's kitchen, and it's not designed to feed a family, although i could feed a party in here rather than a family. i'm not much into family, but i don't tend to have parties, either. this is a one person kitchen in every way, but i'd challenge you to find me a better one, anywhere.

my new kitchen has three entry/exit points, so i'm going to start by posting pictures from each one. 

i need to acknowledge that my new vlog camera, which was cheap, is somewhat lacking in terms of picture quality, and that i need to address that. i've been considering buying a second polaroid, which was my old vlog camera. however, it gets the point across for now.

this is a shot walking in from the side entrance, looking towards the bathroom. the closed door is for the hot water heater for the whole house.

this is a shot walking in from the living room:

and this is a shot looking back from the bathroom, to the side entrance, with the to-be-installed walk-in laundry closet behind me:

that looks pretty good, right?

so, how did i get here?

first, let me say that i think i've got everything i need. am i missing something? send me an email; it's on the side. i might argue with you, but i'd like to hear as many ideas as you have.

walking in from the side, the first item is this three-tier console table, which is a hallway and not a kitchen item, and which i don't currently have a clear use for, but will probably remain where it is:

this is currently storing cleaning supplies, but i will move them to under the counter when i get a wood plank for it, soon. when i remove them, it will only have that coffee maker. i currently have three extra coffee makers, an extra toaster and a few extra scales, and they'll probably stay on this table. it's otherwise a big random shit table, which i definitely have and will retain a use for, as i always have a pile of things i can't organize or store in a clear way, yet.

i initially bought this on kijiji in june for $20 + $10 delivery to fit into a small area in the kitchen i just moved out of. it was supposed to have a voip phone and a media laptop for zoom on the top, and a stereo system and a chromebook in the middle, with whatever on the bottom. those items would feed out to the kvm peripherals on a small kitchen table. i was going to get some kitchen stools and roll back and forth. 

that place didn't work out, and this table doesn't work in that context in this apartment, but will be a great second entry table to throw shit on when you come in, and a kitchen overflow table if necessary. i will probably leave the voip phone in the bedroom and get a zoom videophone for the couch. i'm almost there with the latter but want to do some further research to be sure, as i was a little turned off by the small video in the model i was looking at. i might want to run the videophone to an external monitor.

beside the console table is what i'm calling my ghetto hutch, which is two stacked cabinets i found on the curb, one of which has become a spice cabinet since i took the doors off and the other of which is a general use cabinet, with pasta and quinoa in tupperware.

this cost a total of $0 for me to recover and reclaim, and it is highly likely that i will continue to use the top cabinet as a spice rack indefinitely. i had previously placed it directly on the stove in order to replace the stovetop cabinets in my last basement, but i cannot do that here. the bottom cabinet, which retains it's doors, could be used for anything, but i like this particular use of pasta on the top shelf and quinoa on the bottom. the real function of the bottom shelf, however, is to keep the spice rack off the floor, which is why it's now a ghetto hutch.

the spices from the top shelf down, left to right, are:

bob's nutritional yeast / frank's hot sauce / garlic or onion salt

paprika / dried dill (empty space) / open baking soda for odours / black pepper

dried thyme / dried basil / dried oregano

cayenne pepper / ground cumin / raw, plain sunflower seeds

i keep my hemp seeds in the fridge nowadays.

next to the ghetto hutch is the start of the counter, and there is a cut out area under the counter that likely once had a garbage can but that i filled in with a plastic drawer system, instead:

i bought four of these modular, stackable drawers for $30 after moving in. i wanted to buy a $40 unit with five drawers, but it wouldn't let me, so i instead bought a four unit version and took a large drawer out of a similar broken drawer system that had been left here by the previous tenant. as can be seen, this unit fits perfectly into the space, which was carefully measured for that outcome, and the reason i purchased this unit, specifically. the tongs and juice maker were both left here; the cheese grater was purchased in roughly 2013. drawers are something you can always use more of, and can always be repurposed for some different purpose.

next, this is a picture of the entirety of the counter:

there are items here that are old, that are new and that were found, but i want to point out that i drink a lot of coffee and that's what you're seeing here - two floating shelves i connected to the walls and the cabinet with oversized pegs and packing tape (it's sturdy, but don't push on it) that have coffee cups and various types of coffee and tea respectively,  a single serve coffee maker i use with cappuccino grounds, a 12 cup or big pot coffee maker and an oversized kettle, along with a knife holder, a new toaster, a new scale and an old blender, the latter three on a microwave.

i discarded a gross old toaster oven when i moved in here, partly because it hadn't been cleaned in eons. i have a toaster and i have a microwave and i have an actual oven, too. i don't quite get the point of the toaster oven; my mom liked them for making sandwiches, but i actually tend to avoid toasting sandwich bread because it decreases the nutrients in the bread. i'll toast white bread, and i like to toast bagels, hence the new bagel toaster.

my counter items are all inexpensive small appliances.

i've had this microwave for over 20 years. it followed me from my parents' basement to my first apartment, and i've had it ever since, with no reason to upgrade it. i guess my parents ultimately bought it. microwaves used to be a lot more expensive in the 90s than they are now. this is pretty big, compared to most microwaves nowadays. i really only use the microwave for one thing, which is to melt cheese.

this new scale came in recently in the mail for about $1.

i bought this single person small blender on sale in 2013 at best buy, for around $20.

the bagel toaster came in this month, for around $15. it replaces a toaster in bought in 2014 for around $10 that was no longer working correctly.

this very large kettle has a heating component under it and is plugged into the power bar behind it. this was abandoned in the unit, and something i was looking to pick up, although i planned to get a $5 stove kettle.

this $10 knife holder came in this month. the pink betty crocker samurai fish knife and the scissors were left here, while i've had the black butcher and bread knives forever.  

this $20 full coffee maker was purchase in june, and is the first full coffee maker i've had since i dropped a carafe in 2020 and had to bike down to walmart to get a single serve.

i also bought this $20 single serve maker in june, and it replaces a single serve of the same model because the long shaky electrical finally shorted. i can't get the proprietary screw out of the back to resolder it, yet. i bought some italian cappucino a few weeks ago when imported coffee was $30/tin, and i realized it works better with those types of grounds. that's how i'll be making coffee with this device from now on.

i know i've had this cutting board since 2006. i don't remember how i acquired it. i probably bought it in ottawa.

you can see the pegs and the tape i used to keep the shelf in place. the pegs are enough support for the shelf; the tape is to stop the shelf from moving around and keep it flush against the wall.

this lower shelf has coffee grounds, coffee filters and tea. it will also have espresso grounds, and more coffee ground and more tea.

 i found these shelves on the curb with some bookshelves they didn't fit into around 2021.

the higher shelf has mugs and other coffee (and tea) cups. i use the beer mugs for big cups of coffee.

so, that together, then, is my coffee station, which takes up a lot of my time in the kitchen.

i don't currently grind my own beans. i might one day soon if it's cost effective. i could add that.

under the counter are two drawers:

i have had too much cutlery for a while now, and the fact that i found a pile of it when i moved in here exacerbated the preexisting issue. i need two cutlery drawers, at this point.

under the drawers is a pretty big cabinet, currently full of cereal and canned food from the food bank. i wouldn't normally have a pile of cans like that.

when i get a plank of wood for in there. i'll put the cans on top and the cereal under it, along with cleaning supplies. normally, this would be for cleaning supplies, mostly.

next to the counter is a pretty standard sink and cabinet, with an old dish drainer.

the single cabinet is big enough for all of my actual dishes, i just have a lot of tupperware, and i use it all because i eat a lot of vegetables. there's more in the cabinet than usual right now.

this is under the sink, which has been cleaned. the mountain dews are kept for water and for other items, during concert trips. the coffee containers are kept for storage.

this drain was leaking, but i tightened it, and now it's fine.

i also dumped a bottle of bleach down the drain here:

the last thing i did was scrub the floor, although it had been washed in bursts as i was doing other things (like cleaning the stove). i had also already scrubbed under and behind the fridge and stove, and under the kitchen table.

that, then, is the north side of the kitchen, itself:

next is a short hallway leading from the kitchen into the bathroom that i first wanted to extend the counter into but realized was really the best place to build a one person eat in space. if you removed the second plastic drawer system, which contains an assortment of tools and plastic bags, and then took the side table out from under the main table as well, you could maybe seat two or even three people at this table, but i don't need or want that. i want somewhere where i can sit down with a big salad or plate of pasta and watch a lengthy documentary, or participate in a lecture series. this does that extremely well.

i might have bought an actual computer desk for twice the price of the table, but i instead spent the extra money on building the table into a custom desk, using an industrial side table and a cheap monitor stand.

the table itself was $60 and purchased this month.

this is a different angle on the three component composite computer table, including the side table.

i purchased the chair in june on kijiji for $5. it's also made of metal, with leather cushions.

this is a shot of the industrial strength metal side table ($40) and the stereo system on it:

this is just the moniter stand, which was $20:

in total, it was $120 + hst, which is about the price of a computer desk, but it would not have been as customized for this space.

here is the stereo:

the receiver is a vintage nad 3020e that my dad found for me when i was looking to pa my pod:

the cd player is a sony that also plays mp3 discs and my dad also gave me at some point, although it's less clear when; i think it was about 2009. i could potentially use this for dvd video, but it's currently not connected, and there's almost no possibility that i'm ever going to watch a dvd.

the video source is a falling apart mini lenovo thinkpad chromebook i bought brand new in 2018 for $100 from factory direct because it was end of life, then. it needs a mouse and keyboard to be plugged in. this model could be converted into a laptop and, because the chrome os is end of life, i might do that. for now, it just streams youtube, and it does it fine. i may need to replace this soon, probably with the busted dell chromebook i'm typing on.

and, there's an ethernet switch on the bottom that i bought for $10 about 2022ish:

this is the mini keyboard i just got for $15:

the monitor is a philips. it does not have high end specs, and takes a vga in, but these fall of civilizations videos are vibrant, if you ask me. if i'm watching a lecture, it doesn't matter, and this is a good size without getting too big, which is the actual concern. but if i'm watching some vivid film with vibrant production, the goal is reproduction, and this monitor will do fine. what this monitor won't do is make dull source material glow, via over saturation.

these are 6 ohm yamaha ns-e55s that are rated at 50 watts. they pair well with the low powered nad, which can do about 35-40ish at 6 ohms (much lower at 8 ohms). there's also a button to cut your input volume from cd or digital media, which is helpful for cds mixed during the loudness era or youtube videos mixed into the red, with people yelling at you in them.

these speakers were sold with subwoofers, which i don't have.

this the the $5 chair i bought in june. it's a nice chair, but it was dirty when i bought it, and i take it nobody wanted to clean it, so they just sold it.

in the far corner next to the computer table/desk, is my first plastic organizer, which i bought in 2018 because the previous basement had no drawer of any sort at all. i have taken the cutlery, pills and other kitchen things out of it and distributed it more loosely, so that at this point it's largely a tool box, but with a lot of plastic bags in the bottom shelf.

above the toolbox is a small floating shelf with a bottle of vodka and a little tin container with rolling material in it, along with an assortment of lighters. the pill bottle is a shot glass, but i haven't touched that bottle of vodka since the start of 2020.

this is a combo shot of the northwest wall of the kitchen/hall/dining room.

this is the south wall of the kitchen, facing towards the living room. it's much shorter, and contains only the two fridges and the one stove.

this is the new mini fridge i bought for $100, to store produce in, mostly:

this is the fourth floating shelf, right above the mini fridge, connected to the two walls, and with an old scale as a weight to keep it put. it will just hold light plastic containers. i keep margarine containers for storage, specifically. this wood was purchased in 2013 and cut for a corner shelf.

this is the big fridge that came with the apartment:

the fridge was dirty and required a lot of effort to clean it, but it's otherwise fine, besides the missing piece of plastic. i added a piece of wood and really just taped it to the side. the bottom drawer was from a different fridge or not from a fridge at all and i just took it out as i don't need it.

the stove was far worse than the fridge, but look at it now. i scrubbed it inside and out. i added a shelving unit to the side of the stove to hold two items i want to plug into the stove, namely a coffee warmer and an indoor grill / panini maker. the idea is you move the grill to the stove top when using it. 

not all of the elements worked, but i cleaned them and that fixed it.

the stove was particularly gross, but i got most of the grease out.

the pan compartment was one of the grossest things i've ever seen, but i cleaned it up:

here is a picture of the shelving unit from the side. this is another $0 curb pickup. it's mostly full of food bank food now, but it should eventually be full of items like doritos, when i get back to my normal diet.

this is the coffee warmer, with a coffee on it. this was left by the previous tenant.

this is a picture of the grill, open. it was $30.

and that's it.

what's left is (1) that wood plank for under the cabinet and (2) if i can find a very tall, skinny bookshelf, i will park it in here for bathroom stuff, but i might leave it in the bathroom, instead.

total cost for kitchen, including items previously purchased for last apartment, but not including food or cleaning supplies, including hst or shipping per itrem:

console table: $30

plastic drawers: $34

knife holder: $10

wall pegs for shelves: $10

computer desk (main table + side table + monitor stand): ($60 + $40 +$20) + hst = $136

chair: $5

mini fridge: $115

indoor grill: $35

wood shelf: unclear

--

kitchen scale: $14   <----replacement item

bagel toaster: $17 <-----replacement item

single serve coffee maker for cappuccino grounds:  $23<-----replacement item

12 cup coffee maker for regular grounds:  $23<----replacement item

mini keyboard: $17 <-----replacement item

--

ghetto hutch: $0 (curb find)

stove side cabinet: $0 (curb find)

extra utensil holder: $0 (curb find)

--

kettle: $0 (left here by previous tenant)

coffee warmer: $0 (left here by previous tenant)

extra cutlery, dishes, mugs, pans, tongs, juice maker: $0 (left here by previous tenant)

============================

$375 new items + $94 replacement items = $469 + wood shelf, probably $20-25

that's not bad, i don't think. 

here's a vantage shot of the new eating spot that i'll be sitting in to eat at.

nov 11th update

i have some of those wall pegs left over and also bought a few more. i have enough to finish the kitchen, but then i'm going to need to buy even more. i also bought a lot more food and cleaning items. as of this morning, i put two further shelves up on the other side of the above the sink shelf on the computer/tv/stereo system side and there's going to be two additional shelves under the counter, not one. i've decided to buy a circular saw and get the wood delivered from home hardware because i'm also going to be putting similar shelves in the bedroom and maybe elsewhere for books and maybe cds. for that reason, i should have leftover wood for the under the sink shelf, so i'll do that, after all. i will maximize storage in the kitchen, even if i don't always use it. unfortunately, i don't think they'll drive the wood down the street, but i should be able to use a cart. that's the best choice. it's going to warm up on the weekend, so i want to plan around that. in total, there are now two further shelves coming and then the kitchen is probably completely redesigned, to the extent that i'm going to redesign it.

i was going to leave everything unorganized until the shelves came in, but then i took a better look at it and realized i didn't really need to wait, so i've moved everything in here around and the items are now more or less in their permanent places..

here is a picture of the side shelf full of the food items in my normal diet. i moved the food bank stuff off and put it on the console table, for now. these are items the food bank gave me and that will not be replaced in time, so the console table is doing what it should, which is holding random shit.

here is a picture of the shelves i put up this morning with cereal on them, which will be their purpose.

here is a picture of the coffee shelf full of items, including tea, cappuccino and ground coffee:

that means i now have a coffee shelf and a cereal shelf. breakfast is important.

here is a picture of the ghetto hutch full of spices:

everything in the ghetto hutch is full except the dill.

here is a picture of the walk-in table full of random shit (food bank food, storage containers and some spices in packaging) like it should be. i took the cleaning supplies off and put them under the sink.

here is a picture of the under cabinet storage, more or less as it will be, minus the shelf in the back, and the things on the shelf (tupperware containers and the drainers). i will normally have a lot of caesar stored in here, but it's currently in the fridge and i don't want to take it out; instead, i'll buy more, so i have double for now. i won't have to buy any for a while, but i go through 5-6 of these a week, sometimes. i took what was in here out and either put it on the console table (if it was food bank food) or on the cereal shelf (if it was cereal).

could i survive on franks, soy milk, caesar, cereal, coffee, doritos, mt dew, spices, pasta, quinoa and nutritional yeast? don't answer that.

here is a picture of the under sink cabinet, which is full of cleaning supplies. the shelf in the back will have some smaller cleaning supplies like jclothes, comet, gloves, etc and anything else that should go back there and fits.

i will add pictures of the under cabinet shelves when they get here and are cut to the right size, but i need the wood and the saw first.

that means everything is off the counters and cabinets and where it ought to be and the kitchen is now normalish.

i bought two extra large wood tables yesterday on kijiji for $50 so i should have the work area needed for the saw to cut the wood, even if i have to do it in the laundry area or even just in the kitchen for now.

here is a picture of the back wall of the whole kitchen, zoomed out. you should see the cereal shelf near the computer, the coffee shelf on the other side, the cleaning cabinet under the sink, the bulk food storage cabinet under the counter, the full ghetto hutch on the right side and bits of the console table with food bank stuff and the side table beside the stove.

as everything is now put away and in it's right place, and without the need to wake up sucking on any lemons, this is really down to (1) getting those extra shelves from home hardware and (2) filling in the missing food supplies.

i will need:

- two pieces of wood, cut from one 36"x24" piece

- the circular saw

- 8 pegs (i have exactly that many)

- kleenex x 4, caesar x 15, soy x 3, ice cream x 4

- hemp seeds (with one new container) x 2, wheat bran x 2, flax x 2, dill x 2 (with two new containers), 

i am appealing an order that, at it's core decision, affirms the consequent.

the horrors.

this is the judiciary chosen by justin trudeau, folks.

i just called the sheriff.

there's no enforcement scheduled for today at this address. i was told there would be. it could be that the property manager doesn't understand how this works and doesn't realize that enforcement doesn't happen on the day of, but that you need to call, send a notice, etc. i guess i'll find out by the end of the day if an eviction notice comes up on the door.

i don't know the technical cause of eviction.

the heat was shut off last night, which is a characteristic of the stalkers being present. the stalkers like it to be very cold. there are some muslim migrants on the main floor, who are potentially easily manipulated, but who i am gathering have little understanding of what is going on around them, and they turned it up to 30 when they woke up. i had to teach them how to use a thermostat, as nobody else was going to, but they don't understand temperature. they understand hot, cold and on and off but they don't understand 30 or 15 or 27 or 0 degrees. i don't know if the representation of numbers is confusing to them (i thought otherwise because they're hindu-arabic numerals, right?) or if they don't know how to count. it's become extremely easy to emigrate to canada recently, and it's not outside the realm of possibility that they can't count. the kids don't go to school and nobody is working. i hope they realize that the subsidy they are getting is temporary, but there's little indication they do. it'll probably run all day. i don't blame them - it's below zero outside.

i guess i'm planning to lock myself in here, unfortunately, but i'll check the situation when i go up. 

new york city, new jersey state and virginia state are races that the democrats should take for granted and, in new york city, both of the candidates were democrats. i understand that democrats want a reason to get drunk, but this is about as flimsy a reason to start chugging as i could imagine.

democrats also won in detroit, which was a shift from an independent, who had been mayor for ten years and is running for governor. they also held mayors in seattle, pittsburgh, buffalo, minneapolis, new orleans, boston and elsewhere.

the most notable actual win for the democrats on the 4th was the city of omaha, nebraska. does that suggest farmers and the region are pissed off by the tariffs? it might. i'd keep an eye on that.

functionally, the elections provide no information about demographics in upstate new york, in the rust belt or in the great lakes areas, outside the urban centres. they consequently provide no information about upcoming elections in existing swing districts or potential swing districts.

democrats should enjoy their beer and take whatever justification they need to get drunk, but not get too giddy, as there is no good news in the data. if anything, the fact that electing mamdani is clearly a swing to the right in new york city should be a little bit alarming. cuomo was certainly the more left-wing candidate of the two. but, then again, new york city democrats have always been upper class "liberal republicans" and not really representative of democrats in the rest of the country.

keep an eye on nebraska. there's maybe a story there.

there's no story in the bos-wash except the long evasive excuse for democrats to get drunk.

i think what i'm looking for is porteus with chrome (or firefox) running.

that should let me launch the browser as an os, and then design separate images for each of the three chromebooks - one for a bedside news reader, one for uploading data to sites like bandcamp from in-studio and one for streaming video from youtube. i would potentially want to purchase a fourth device and use it strictly for online purchases and a fifth to use as a zoom device, if i can't find an acceptable videophone.

i wanted to get the court stuff done over the weekend, but i couldn't do it until i fixed the computer. i need to do that this morning, hopefully by noon, and then get back to redesigning the space.

(edit: actually, no. porteus is now requiring a paid subscription. but this is out there, i just need to find it.)

the chromebook is usable for now, after logging in with a stub account. i'll keep looking for a user agent spoofer, which is why i logged in, but i can log in to the device with multiple accounts for services for now, and just use the stub device for search, until that either breaks or google reallows older chrome browsers access to javascript in search....or until i got blocked by blogger, gmail, youtube, etc and have to figure something else out entirely.

this is no longer a mobile device like i planned it to be. i am using the mp4 player for that purpose and that is ok.

i want to continue using one of these expired chromebooks to stream youtube, one of them as a studio terminal (to connect to bandcamp, etc) and of them as an email/news reader. the major design flaw with the entire concept of a chromebook is that they force you to make your email password short enough to be able to type in with your fingers and to remember, which is unacceptable. you want your passwords to be 100 characters, or longer if they let you, and to store them on thumb keys or external drives. the chromebook won't let you do that - it forces you to type it in, and that's just not workable. then, you need to do something like what i'm doing, which is log in with a stub account with a short password (like you would use on your windows account) and then login into google to use it with a separate account. but, then, what's the point?

for that reason, it is going to make more sense to turn all of these chromebooks into non-chromebooks, which is frustrating, 

the best way to use these devices is as terminals, which means to log in as a guest and then log into the google accounts from the guest mode. you don't need local storage on a streaming device, or a device used to buy or upload things, or even on a news and email and facebook reader. you should keep your local storage in air gapped windows or linux pcs, and just use an assortment of cheap streaming devices for online interactions, each with unique online accounts that don't speak to each other. due to the fact that they're cheap, you might have to replace these devices every ten years instead of every twenty or thirty years like you do with pcs, but you really shouldn't, they should last longer than pcs.

i bought cheap/expired chromebooks because i realized that buying expensive laptops was stupid, after watching a few overheat and explode. there is no way to engineer a device to run hot in plastic and expect it not to break; laptops are what the masses wanted, but they are a stupid concept, thermodynamically. you can't make these things last. they're going to break. it's hopeless. i don't have the money to spend $2000 on a laptop every five years, so i bought a brand new expired $99 laptop expecting it to break. if i have to replace it every 3-5 years anyways, i'd rather spend $99 dollars than $999 dollars; the thermodynamic reality of laptops is that your $999 laptop has no greater a shelf-life than the $99 expired chromebook.

but then i realized that these ssd chromebooks with cheap processors actually solved the thermodynamic problems with windows (or apple) laptops. these are cheap to buy because they are cheap to make; they're cheap terminal devices that came out of the "one laptop one child" initiative intended to get silicon into the hands of starving africans, who would probably prefer a sandwich, but whatever. they don't have hard drives. there's nothing spinning. the chips don't run hot. the monitors are led screens. and the chrome os does nothing in the background. this dell 3120 i'm typing on needs a few new keys, granted, but the device itself should last forever. there's nothing in it to break and there's nothing driving it to overheat. a slightly more sturdy build construction, and a chromebook should last 300 years, not 3 years. 

oops.

so i bought some more of these and wanted to buy even more. this was the solution, not the problem. i wanted to put linux on them but i didn't have to so i didn't.

google won't let you do that anymore. google is trying to force you to buy more hardware.  you shouldn't have to replace these slave terminal devices that let google servers do all the work every five or three or two years. these are increasingly devices with little to no moving parts that should actually work for decades, but google increasingly won't let that happen.

there's two answers to this.

the first is to acknowledge that google is increasingly becoming the monopoly that the united states successfully prevented microsoft from becoming, partly by funding google as a competitor to microsoft. google was able to succeed largely due to the antitrust suits against microsoft. i think people don't understand that. those antitrust suits also stopped apple from dying. apple was dead in the 90s. who saved apple? you want to think it was steve jobs, but it was bill gates. gates brought apple back from the dead with cash injections, partly on the condition they bring jobs back, in order for gates to have his old competitor back, and that worked for microsoft. apple is not a monopoly and is really largely a joke; the ability of apple to corner the naive rich person market just brought the price of pcs down, when helped sell more copies of windows to consumers and businesses. however, google is now becoming what the ftc aggressively prevented windows from becoming, by stopping microsoft from monopolizing explorer and search.

the ftc should let google keep search and let google keep chrome, but force it to sell it's hardware and operating system businesses. the problem is not that they have all of these server apps, that's good; the problem is that they're making laptops and phones to access the servers, too. tell google to just be google and focus on server-side applications. force somebody else to build the terminals. it can be hp or compaq or dell or ibm (it won't be ibm), that's fine. it could be a different company altogether.

don't separate the browser from the search; that won't help, that will hinder. what will help is to separate the terminal/slave device from the server/mainframe device. this is a very old way to look at very new technology, but it is the truth of what google, nvidia and others are doing right now, they're bringing back the 60s and 70s model of dumb terminal machines connecting to smart super computers, and the truth is that that makes sense for the internet, while not making sense for home pcs, which you really don't and never did want on the internet.

i want to buy a terminal that connects to multiple mainframes - google, microsoft, nvidia, apple, etc. the terminals should be cheap because they have minimal functionality, and almost never need to be replaced because they do almost nothing and require almost no parts. anti-trust function should focus on that endpoint.

i knew what i was getting when i bought expired chromebooks, but google shouldn't be able to tell me i can't upgrade the firmware on the terminal, or turn off javascript from the server. the ftc should step in and break that.

for now, it works, that's fine, but i'm going to need to convert all three of these devices, and i want to convert them into devices that run in guest mode. that's the next issue. are there linux distros that have guest modes like chromebooks, and run in guest mode like a chromebook? if there's not, there should be. go build me that, and make it for free. that's what i want to flash these devices with.

as it is, i'm going to have to barricade myself inside again until i'm sure he's gone, one way or another.

if i can generate any kind of proof he's here, the next step is to try to get a peace bond to force him to stay away from me.

islam is a brutal cult of brainwashing, and it's insular and exclusivist. it isolates and separates it's victims from the outside world in order to take advantage of them. i saw this coming but the space was what i want. there is no future in hiding from religionism. i'm not looking for conflict, i'm looking for escape, but i need to hold my ground.

if i have to move again, i've got some new furniture in here i can take with me.

i hope that the addicts are removed tomorrow. i'll have to react to that as it occurs.

it also seems as though the phony loser piece of garbage sean hansel has found his way back upstairs. he's apparently continuing to pretend he had some artistic contribution to and take credit for my art projects, despite having been eliminated from the 4 songs i let him sing on as a guest vocalist because his lyrics are juvenile and stupid. as before, the people that let him in are junkies, addicts and other types of useless eaters.

i've been told they're getting evicted tomorrow. i haven't seen any notices from the sheriff on the door. i'm actually going to call the sheriff in the morning to get a better idea of what's going on. if the sheriff doesn't confirm an eviction is happening, the next call i'm going to have to make is to police. i'm extremely agitated by the fact that this moron keeps following me around, and i'd frankly like to put a hole in his skull. or a couple. i wouldn't be too careful about it.

if anybody tries to force their way in here, they're not going to like how i react.

i hate apps.

apps are stupid. the concept is stupid.

i just want to login via the browser.

all of my passwords are 100 digits and intended to copy and paste. it tooks some time before i could log into one, and:

(1) the first account actually loads javscript

(2) subsequent accounts do not

(3) all of the user agent switchers for subsequent accounts need newer versions of chrome

this is extremely depressing. 

i have no intention of purchasing another chromebook. if they're going to block search functionality, i'll have to turn it into a linux device.

it's very frustrating. at least i have a better understanding of what's been happening, but i'm upset about this.

for now, i see no other option besides running two chromebooks sat the same time - one logged in for services and the other logged out for search. but i can do that right now on this device, logged into the stub account, and i'll have to stick with that for now.

yeah. it's the browser version.

if i open the chrome developer tools and spoof it, it runs normally.

it follows that google is now actively trying to force you to by a new chromebook by blocking access to google search for browsers of a certain age, and they can go fuck themselves.

ok. i was a little freaked out. i get it now. i can run searches in a developer window if i need to. that's fine.

i've been having some laptop problems. 

if i don't sign into google on my chromebook, google operates like it normally should. however, as soon as i sign into the chromebook, the google ui completely breaks. at first, i thought it was somebody hacking my router again, but it wasn't acting that way more broadly. after a fair amount of testing, i'm concluding that the problem is not on my end, but rather that it is google that is doing this intentionally, apparently by blocking javascript from working. specifically, google is blocking java from working on search only; everything else works fine. the cookies from the google server are set to no javascript.

i've sent google some complaints. they're going to need to figure out what's going on and fix it. unfortunately, it might be because the chromebook is expired, and that might be how this works nowadays on expired chromebooks.

i think i'm going to be more likely to switch these devices to linux than buy a new chromebook, as that is why i bought them in the first place. in the mean time, i need quick access to gmail, particularly.

i'm going to try a few things. can i spoof from guest mode? what if i actually log into the device?

in the mean time, i basically can't search anything without logging off. so i'm going to need to log in on this chromebook and set up a second chromebook that is not logged in so i can search on it.

it's clear that an election right now would be pretty drastic. we already had an election this year.

but this is not what canadians voted for, and this budget is so frighteningly terrible, so corrupt, so dangerous, that the damage caused by anther election is justified in order to block it.

i would support a 30% tax on sports players salaries, but the tax for yachts was probably largely performative, as there aren't that many of them in canada. canada is not a prime destination for yachts.

the tax on capital gains is something i strongly supported, and it is difficult to understand the logic in removing the tax on unused property, other than that the government is (somewhat predictably) aligning with property owners that want to leave property empty to reduce availability and raise rents. if the tax on vacant property was not funding enforcement mechanisms, which i doubt, it should have been increased so it does. the tax on carbon emissions isn't working anyways, and should be replaced with a general and broad hike on corporate taxes, but i am concerned that carney is bringing back nonsense about carbon capture and storage, and planning to waste taxpayer funds on a technology that doesn't work, rather than passing a law telling industry to do it to the extent that they can, or go to jail if they can't.

i don't really support carbon taxes. what i actually support is laws throwing fossil fuel executives in jail for polluting. industrial pollution shouldn't be punishable by a fine, it should be a crime punishable by jail time.

investment in r & d and in infrastructure (including housing) are things i support, and i'd be happy to support a 100 billion dollar deficit that is intending to overhaul truly public infrastructure to reduce emissions and modernize more generally. that is overdue. however, a quick perusal of the proposals (i haven't looked at it in depth) suggest that the funding priorities are rather in the form of corporate subsidies and handouts of taxpayer dollars to massive conglomerates. while the claim may be to influence company direction on it's face, the truth appears to be that the purpose is to increase their company's stock prices. if the canadian government wants to control the direction of these industries, it should nationalize them so that it captures their revenue stream, but it doesn't intend to do that, and we will probably hear little to nothing about much of any of this in the next five years, as the money disappears into ceo bank accounts, flees the country and/or ends up in trust funds for their kids. it's just a giant kick-back scheme to defraud the country and plunge it further into debt.

this consequently looks less to me like it's an infrastructure budget and more to me like it's the worst corruption we've seen in canada in decades, and if the imf has to step in, the unfortunate truth is that, perhaps, it should. the canadian state has wanted to change it's demographic structure to be a third world country for decades. well, welcome to africa, canada.

whatever you think of mark carney broadly, it is not ambiguous that his class solidarity lies with the bourgeoisie and the funding decisions you're seeing in the budget reflect that.

this "liberal" budget is going to destroy the country's credit rating by bringing back structural deficits, slashing the tax base of the federal work force (and it's subsequent multipliers, in carney's own riding) and irresponsibly spending billions on silly fantasies instead of investing intelligently in things we need and in economies with futures that work.

this should be called the "imf restructuring" budget, because that's what canada is going to get in five years if this passes.

the ndp should force an election. the conservatives will be bad, but they won't be this stupid.

apparently, the media, desperate for a win, is deciding that andrew cuomo is now a republican and new york is a swing state.

you should see how excited they get when democrats win in dc. or detroit. or seattle.

my video intercom came in in the mail today, so the only thing i'm waiting on is a package of nitrile gloves. unfortunately, as expected, the cable is only about 3 m long. i am going to need to run the cable through the garage and through two doors, which should be 5 m max. i'll have to see, but i think i'll need to buy another cable. that's ok. i can use this one to test it.

i'm also deciding that because i'm going to be putting a lot of wall shelving in here (the bedroom is a little small, too small for bookshelves, but it has that big closet/laundry area off the bathroom, which i consider preferable in concept; it means that multiple shelves on the walls are a better idea) and because i have a garage area that i intend to use to work in, it makes more sense to just order the wood i need and order a cheap circular saw to cut it with. i'm going to buy the same amount of wood, whether i cut it here or at the store. i can't bicycle with these wood planks, so i'm going to need to either walk it or cart it but some of the wood is going to be upwards of ten feet, so that even carting it from the closest store (a home hardware) becomes awkward. home hardware is also known for being overpriced. so i'm probably better off getting it cheaper online and mailed to me, and paying the $60 difference on a new saw. when i was a kid, i had a basement bedroom that had a kind of built in shelf (it was actually that the wall was about a foot from the brick, and the space lower to the ground was filled with insulation covered over by drywall, while the space higher up was not, it was just drywall over the outer layer) that i used to store paperbacks on. i'm going to build something similar to that in here, but it will be with three ten foot shelves held on to the wall with those adhesive pegs. that should be helpful to me as i work through the j's journal section of the multimedia presentation, which is the first thing to do when i get things set up properly.

it would be a shame to leave this space. it's huge. and it's cheap. i'm trying to get the furnace to work correctly and get a fan installed and get a new door on the side and i think i should be good to go after that. the landlord is absent-minded and distant but seems to be better than the last few, it's just that you have to bug him to do stuff. that's fine.

so, there's going to be another bunch of purchases when i next sit down to do it and it could actually be quite a bit, but everything else is in now except the gloves. today, i have the follow-up hearing for my harassment suit against the landlords in the last basement i was in and i will be filing something in the court of appeal tomorrow, regardless of how that goes, although i need to know what happens before i finalize what i'm filing.

nobody give a fuck about the size of the deficit. that doesn't matter.

what matters is that there aren't cuts to essential services, and what is concerning is that there will be. there's also rumours that the budget might have tax cuts, in the face of an increasingly structural deficit, created by subsequent governments cutting taxes to bribe voters. we need a tax hike right now, not tax cuts.

i've been holding out for years that somebody would get the chance to shoot him in the face. alas.

this man should have been arrested and convicted of war crimes, but the world is a fucked place.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/dick-cheney-obituary-9.6965786

the nigerian government is not hamas and should not be treated like hamas. that would be an affront to decency. they need support, not condemnation.

boko haram is worse than hamas by a good margin. they should be treated worse than hamas.

these ultimatums should go directly to the terrorists. the nigerian government should not be bullied or pushed around, but boko haram should be bombed into a crater.

mark carney is marketing his budget as a big, beautiful bold bill. in fact, there's a pattern of him mimicking republican slogans and talking points, including "drill, baby, drill". there's no ambiguity about the hard right nature of the swing he's trying to engineer in the liberal party.

he's actually trying to remarket the liberals as the canadian version of the republicans. there's some historical logic to this, more broadly, but this is the worst possible time to do that.

this is not what canada voted for, and we have grounds to call for an immediate election. i didn't vote in the last election, because i saw this coming. he did not fool me. he did fool millions of canadians, who deserve a sober second opportunity.

the problem is that the ndp, canada's perpetually useless sanctioned opposition, decided to intentionally take two years to pick a leader. they won't be ready any time soon.

the greens are actually a better choice, and a more appropriate choice, right now. that party had better be ready to go.

the democrats lost control of congress. that means they don't get to pass their legislation; that is democracy. throwing a hissy fit and shutting down government because they lost the election is undemocratic and unsupportable on it's face. it doesn't matter why, and they shouldn't be given an opportunity to explain themselves; attacks on the democratic functioning of the legislative branch can never be justified and are never supportable.

rather than reach out to low income voters, which have historically formed the base of the party, and where my own class solidarity exists with, the democrats are pretending that they aren't responsible for the consequences of their juvenile behaviour, by blaming it on the ruling party. the media is following behind them in lockstep.

this won't work. rather, it's giving the republicans an opportunity to step in and fund the program, and continue to swing low income voters away from the democratic party, making it less and less likely that democrats are going to win elections in the near future. these low income voters may be criticized for voting against their own interests, but that criticism rings hollow when it's the democrats that are cutting funding and the republicans that are stepping in to save the programs.

if the democrats want to pass laws in congress, they have to win an election first. it doesn't matter if they disagree very strongly, or if they have religious opinions, or if they think the laws are "immoral". democracy is paramount, not morality. they lost, and they'll have to eat it.

but losers tend to act like losers and it just makes them bigger losers in the end when they do.

i agree with the court's decision. mandatory minimums are always unconstitutional and should never be allowed to exist in law because they're always overly broad.

the pictures themselves are harmless; they're just pictures. the law also attempts to eliminate exemptions for artistic expression, rather than allow for them. simple possession of pictures or art, even if some people consider those pictures "pornographic" or "obscene", should not be criminalized in a free society. the conservative party is expressing and reflecting an irrational moral panic that the court correctly put an end to.

the crime is in trafficking and exploiting of children, not in possession. courts need to be able to correctly ascertain the difference between these behaviours, and not be restricted by moralistic sentencing laws.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/wab-kinew-court-child-pornography-9.6965133

trump is apparently concerned that snap isn't eligible for emergency funding. this follows trump's use of emergency powers to enforce tariffs on everybody.

if trump actually gets those benefits out, the democrats are going to be fucked for the next 20 years.

well, if you want rare earth metals, control of nigeria is a good start.

i'm not clear where trump is going with this. the nigerian security forces could use some us help, but they have also have a history of doing america's dirty work. the chinese have their own interests here, but they don't walk in with soldiers. i guess this is the reality in today's world - the chinese want to buy things, and the americans want to steal them. it's two different phases of capitalist development, with america increasingly collapsing back into mercantilism.

there are bad actors in nigeria, certainly. the government itself is relatively docile. they're not going to react like saddam hussein. they probably won't even fight at all.

but, given that truth, why not just take it? it's free.

the next step is a proxy war, but i guess that's inevitable, isn't it?

i wouldn't concern yourself with nonsense about protecting christians, although there are certainly bad guys there to kill, and i wouldn't shed a tear over it. but, i'd like to hear more about it before i make a decision about it. on it's face, the nigerian government does not seem as though it should be dismantled, but, rather, the docile nature of the government might make the resources too easy to avoid stealing, and then you need to ask if it's better them than us, if it's going to get stolen, anyways.

there's a lot of wars in africa all of the time and it's been that way for decades. there's a reason for it. it's not likely to change.

you know what chuck schumer is for halloween, right?

chuckie.

he doesn't even have to dress up, or do an impression or anything, he just has to read his own speeches ironically.

chuck and his grandkids are doing fine during the shutdown:

after all, unlike food stamp recipients, chuckie still gets paid when he's off work, hanging out with his grandkids.

so, your grandkids should starve because your son married a shit for brains?

that's amerikkka.

but, i mean, it was the democrats that shut down congress anyways, not trump. and she doesn't sound like she found for chuck e. cheesemer. these are the kinds of voters democrats need to be reaching out to if they want to win seats. it doesn't seem like they're reaching out to this one.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/maga-mom-snap-going-viral-155120624.html

as it is, if mr. carney wants a sacrifice, he should climb up on his self-erected cross and sacrifice himself.

his budget full of sacrifice, sacrifices he makes on behalf of others, is going to fail, it is going to trigger an election, and he will be forced to resign.

good riddance.

we do not need submarines. we do not need fighter jets. we need healthcare, we need education and we need freedom of speech.

if we must have subs, despite not needing them, we should build them ourselves, at whatever time and cost is necessary. those funds could be used in our economy to create jobs here, rather than exported from it to create jobs elsewhere. if it will take a while, that's fine. it is always better to do things yourself than pay others to do them for you.

in the second world war, which, unlike this war, was a war with no exit strategy, that we had to fight, the british leveraged canada as a builder. in fact, britain has often leveraged canada as a builder, going as far back as the napoleonic wars. canada's access to raw resources and relative isolation make it an ideal place to build. it would be a shame if that korean sub was sunk on it's way out of port.

canadians would agree to build before they agreed to be conscripted. i would fight in solidarity with a new conscription crisis, before i saw the value in fighting the most pointless war europe has seen since 1918.

"strong" leadership would be focusing on generating taxes via the multiplier effect and funding local industries with government subsidies in order to do it, not on pushing down austerity to buy expensive offensive weaponry we don't need to fulfill the demands of foreign dictators, and then telling us that we have make sacrifices to do it. nothing could be weaker than that.

no.

i am not going to sacrifice a fucking thing for this asshole's vision of a competitive society based on violence and hierarchy. i'm going to fight to throw the piece of shit out of office, and i'm going to do what i fucking want, when i fucking want. he can shove his sacrifices up his conservative ass.

go fuck yourself, mark carney.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-polievre-budget-sacrifice-analysis-9.6962155

canada really ought to be building more ships, more broadly.

it's somewhat absurd that we aren't. we have the longest coastline in the world and are major producers of wood, steel and aluminum.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/navy-commander-says-hes-not-looking-to-have-new-sub-fleet-built-in-canada/

so, in detroit's mayoral election, you can vote for the minister, or the minister's daughter.

and, from what i can see, you're either going to get a minister, or a minister's daughter.

the minister's daughter (she is running on this, this is her language) is a dangerous trope in american culture, and is often not quite what they seem. i fear detroit might be walking into somewhat of a trap.

but, the other option is the minister, and nobody wants to vote for a minister, for good reason. i certainly wouldn't vote for a minister.

detroit has experienced several years of gentrification. there have certainly been winners, and, as a canadian regularly transiting through detroit to concerts or other events, i'll admit i appreciated the increased lighting and infrastructure. however, i also frequently ran into the homeless population of detroit, who expected things of me that i couldn't give them, as a tourist. it's clear that the gentrification has left a lot of people behind and that is probably a factor in why detroit is now choosing between a minister and a minister's daughter.

it doesn't appear to be a close race.

if detroit is voting for wealth redistribution, i'd suggest it's required, and i hope they get some, although i might expect otherwise.

what a stupid waste of money.

not one person in canada should be forced into unemployment to purchase some stupid boats to fight wars of aggression with.

submarines have absolutely no defensive capacity whatsoever. they are strictly tools of aggression.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-submarines-carney-south-korea-9.6959659

municipalities will need to return to their previous approach, which was hiring police to stand on the side of the road with speed guns, and then pull people over to ticket them.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/speed-cameras-removed-in-two-weeks-9.6960359

the ndp should vote "present" on the budget and let the election happen.

it's hard to see how polievre could be any worse than carney, given carney mimics polievre at every opportunity. they should run ads calling him a copycat.

a conservative minority could force the liberals to change course away from austerity and war.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-ndp-budget-election-vote-9.6960615

one of the items left here by the previous tenant was a three stage activated carbon hepa filter, which she seemed to use for her cat. the air quality has not been too bad, actually, but an overwhelming stench of pot or gasoline (it wasn't clear) took over about 6:00 am in the morning and was still going by 9:00 am. the heroin addicts upstairs are getting evicted this week, so i'm going to be patient about second hand smoke until they're gone.

this plug-in device, which pulls air from the room, filters it, and puts it back, has been running for about 7 hours, and the air is noticeably cleaner to breathe, even if the smell is actually still lingering. it's hard to get rid of the stench of mariijuana when gross people smoke inside for long periods.

it needs a new filter, but i'll hang on to this.