i have set up passwords that take months to hack on fast computers.
so, they spend months hacking them and come back when it's done.
and i don't know what they want.
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
these losers are hacking my router again.
i don't want to waste my time competing with people. go away.
i'm frustrated and depressed that they won't leave me alone. i don't want to compete. i don't care. i want to finish setting up my apartment and i want to focus on creating art.
competitive behaviour is boring.
what have i been doing?
my last updated plan was aug 20th:
that (the b complex) should be here in late august. i have enough fortified nooch to last until then.
the upside of this is that it's also cheap - $75/year, or under $10/month.
i don't currently plan to take choline pills. but i also purchased a 100 count bottle of 100 iu of vitamin e for $10, which is about a year's supply, at every third day. that should be here tomorrow.
the shop vac should be here today and the new dustbuster should be here tomorrow.
i also bought a pile of hemp seeds, which was the last pantry item, and some more juice, which i've been drinking through fast because i'm sick, which came in this morning with another bag of concrete, which should let me finally finish setting up the garage.
my book shelf in the end couldn't stand the weight of the math textbooks. so, i'm going to move them in here until i finish cataloging them. i have two further shelves like this and will both set up a new one and try to strengthen this one. the metal poles are caving in. it's just more weight than it can stand. there are engineering solutions.
but i have to file some documents tonight as well.
so my plan now is to:
1) finish those documents
2) finish patching the holes in the garage, vacuum, get the carpet down, set the tables up, get the couch out, set the bike rack up, move the bikes in
3) set the furniture up in the library/charging area and around the studio (without installing any instruments or computers yet), set the furniture up in the rest of the kitchen, set the furniture up in the side entrance
4) finish sealing up the laundry. it's been sitting a while and i'll understand better what the remaining challenges are. and there's a new vac coming in.
5) clean the floors in the bathroom and kitchen with the new steam mop. summer should be milder from now until november.
6) clean the bedroom, including laundry
7) clean myself
8) get back to the cataloging of books and cds, including rebuilding the coffee table book
9) then work through the coffee table book sequentially to make sure all purchases are installed, and then finish in the kitchen. the last thing i set up was the first of three metal and vinyl bookcases. i will try to build the next two a little stronger, so they don't fall apart or cave in. it's a steel structure, but the connections are weak and liable to fall open. the connections need to be stronger. i think the next thing might be finally using the tablesaw i bought to cut through some wood and install some shelving. i am still looking at installing a dishwasher, a pop maker and a hot/ice cappuccino maker, amongst other smaller updates. the console table i bought for the last apartment is likely going to have appliances on it and the zoom area will be moved to the carpeted area in the front instead.
so, i was:
- waiting to get a vacuum i could use in the garage before i finished up in there, including working through a last bag of concrete
- waiting to get a shop vac i could use in the laundry before i finished up in there, too
- noting my bookshelf was broken and needed to be rebuilt
- planning on sequentially (1) finishing in the garage, (2) finishing in the library, (3) getting the shape of the studio in place, (4) finishing in the side entrance, (5) organizing the kitchen, (6) finishing in the laundry and then cleaning in the laundry and in the bathroom, (7) showering, (8) cleaning the bedroom, (9) shifting to the typing and cataloging.
that's not quite what's happened, or not yet.
i finished the documents on aug 21st and then spent the weekend and start of the week in the garage patching up remaining holes and installing some insulation. i made a substantive amount of progress, but stopped near the end of the week (around the 27th) to let the concrete dry a little. i realized i was going to need to get some better tape before i could get the cardboard up on the joists because the wood was so old and the packing tape wasn't sticking to it. unfortunately, my chromebook completely crashed on the 27th, and i lost several months worth of tabs in the process. shortly afterwards, the usb key i use to transfer documents around imploded. it looks like a cia firmware virus and is likely connected to these stalkers that are drugging me. i don't want to pretend i understand what is going on, but i've been convinced for a while that this is an international incident and that these people think i'm something i'm not.
odsp and cohb money for september came in on the 28th and the 29th of august so i spent these days buying food, vitamins and materials, like more tape. i intended to then get back to finishing up on the garage.
however, i noticed on the afternoon of the 30th that the deadbolt to the front of the house was intentionally damaged so that it doesn't turn, in an apparent attempt to break into the house. i consequently made a video to send to my landlord on sunday evening and had to sit inside to wait for the upload to finish. when it was done, it was too late to keep working on the garage, so i got something to eat instead, and completely shifted the way i was eating, temporarily, for the next week or so. my diet is shifting to mostly fruit for the next couple of months to catch up until it balances back out to normal. i may have ended up sleeping most of the day on the 31st.
i believe it was later in the day on the 31st, after 19:00, that i decided to rebuild the bookshelf first. i realized the shelf was failing because the metal poles were connected with cheap plastic connectors but i had to take a better look at it to understand the problem. there are these plastic pieces with round holes/sockets that you push the metal poles into and which connect the metal poles to each other; some of these connections are snug and fit tightly, but the plastic pieces in the middle of the shelf are too loose, and come apart very easily. it's consistent; it's a design fail. it might be why it was cheap. as the connection was not snug, when i put heavy textbooks on the metal shelving, the gravitational force created by the weight of the books was pushing the poles out of the socket and disconnecting the unit. to rebuild the shelving unit, i needed to tighten that connection, so it couldn't come loose as a result of weight pushing down on it.
i initially tried to squeeze it together with a pair of wire cutters, but that didn't work well. so, i ended up using most of a bottle of airplane glue to paste every single one of the metal poles into both sides of a plastic socket, like i was building a model plane, and then strengthened it all over with duct tape.
it seems to have held.
i then spent the next several days cataloging these textbooks at librarything, and putting them back up on the shelf. i was largely done cataloging on the morning of the third when i stopped to sleep in the morning. i will need a second one of these shelves immediately as the first is now completely full, and it's going to require some extra costs for crazy glue and duct tape, but i want to finish in the garage first and then clear the items out of the hall by moving them into the garage in order to make more space for it.
i fixed the lock myself on the 2nd.
however, a major rain storm came in on the afternoon of the third and dumped a huge amount of rain on the front porch, exposing some leaks from around the door into the garage. it is not the first time i've noticed this, but it only pours like that very occasionally here. i'm actually glad i caught it while i was in the middle of doing it. i kept most of the water out of most of the space, but there was a small area i hadn't finished yet and also a region i had overlooked. further, it exposed the need to address rainproofing the door itself. then, when the rain stopped, somebody broke the deadbolt again and i actually filed a police report about it early on the 5th. so, i needed to place a pause on working in there for a few days, which was fine, as i wasn't done cataloguing the books. as of early on sept 7th, i had a list of over 500 texts in four major overlapping categories
- reference library (the shelf i just fixed)
- fiction shelf (the shelf i'm building in my bedroom for novels)
- read but unowned (these are books i took out of the library for academic reasons, or downloaded pdfs of)
- books that disappeared (books that were stolen, lent out, sold or damaged in storage (and disappeared) at my parents from 2011-2013)
i still need to catalog the manuals for my devices and i can also use librarything for cds and will do that in parallel to discogs. it is a cleaner system than discogs, although discogs has some unique features, too. i would like to use both systems, not to choose.
i also have not added the pile of fiction texts i compiled for grades 3-13 or gone over course notes for the 13 years of university courses that i took. i'm also continuing to try to find lists dated to 2011 and to 2002. that 500 book list is still quite minimal, overall. i actually have quite a lot to add to it, still, but i am done cataloging the books i currently physically have in my actual possession at this time.
there is a link to the librarything pdf here:
my chromebook unfortunately crashed a second time on sept 7. i spent the rest of the day on the 7th and 8th rebuilding, sleeping and eating and, as of sept 9th, i've been able to rebuild only mildly, while i reconstruct a new workflow.
my updated work flow is as follows:
1) rebuild tabs on the chromebook i lost on monday morning.
2) call the landlord in the morning and get an update on the front door. wait until it's clear what they're doing.
3) continue searching external media, etc for old book lists and then go through school files backwards to update the list as much as possible, for now. this list will, by its nature, always be incomplete.
4) as i can't finish in the garage until i get a clearer understanding about the door, i can't clear out the hall, and can't replace the items in the hall with the things that will go there.
5) i can build the shape of the studio up.
6) i can't clear out the front entrance or organize the kitchen well, yet.
7) however, i can finish in the laundry and should shift to that next.
8) i still have work to do in the garage and can't shift into working on the computer in the bedroom until it's done, but i can stop to shower nonetheless if it's going to be a few days.
i also need to note that the summer is almost over and disappeared fast than i'd like. i did absolutely nothing all summer, unfortunately. these disgusting retards continue to sit upstairs and jerk off and there's no sign that they're going to go away. in fact, there's increasing indication that a violent confrontation will be required to defend myself.
but what that means is that i need to focus on getting money into the rdsp for the rest of the year. i need to get $4000 in by the end of the year. that means i won't be spending money on buying things, but will rather be focused on ensuring that everything i've purchased already is properly installed.
that means that once i get the things described done - finish the laundry, finish the garage, rearrange the space, clean everything - done, i'm going to be sitting down to type for quite a while, and not doing much else.
i made a choice to do the bookshelf first. it's put together now. i should get the tabs rebuilt in the next few hours, and then should be able to finish up in the laundry by the end of the morning. how much more i can get done and how quickly depends on what i can learn about the situation when i call the landlord.
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
if i were the eu, i would tell canada upfront that it's proposals are driven by eurocentric identity politics, are economically irrational and that there's no benefit to either party in signing a free trade agreement.
canada may benefit by greater integration into a kind of nordic union that includes russia, the us and the uk, excludes southern europe and is focused on arctic cooperation but that will have to wait until the stupid war is over.
the historical luddites, like the historical populists, were really not precursors to marx or bakunin (the populists were chronologically later, but you get the point). they don't even fit under the definition of "utopian socialism" that engels contrasted against the "scientific socialism" of marx, which has been a misnomer to this point but is still the direction that proper socialists and anarchists need to take to be proper. it's a little bit hard to get it right, but if your socialism isn't scientific, it's not proper socialism.
the luddites were brownshirts. they were nazis. they were fascists. like the historical populists, they were very religious. they were a late medieval, pre-modern (if just barely) development of historical barbarism and one of the earliest demonstrations of what we refer to today as the extreme fascist right.
luddite ideas showing up in fake leftist circles should be raising alarm flags. when this shit gurgles up, it's not a left, it's an extreme right. worse, it's consistent with other extreme right ideas infecting and co-opting the fake left, to produce what has become an increasingly ideologically coherent extreme right.
chomsky saw this coming a little but he avoided taking it on. chomsky was pretty hard-headed and not afraid to get into a debate, but he didn't want this fight. the person that really took this issue on, and whose writings on the topic are invaluable at this point, was hitchens, who was almost prophetic at points, despite getting the basic point wrong in iraq. dawkins has been wrong about hormone science and women's rights, but he identified a lot of the fake left issues before they were serious concerns.
the broader society should see these fascist attacks on the use of technology as dangerous and as an extreme warning signal that we're on a path towards collapse and self-harm.
socialists and communists and anarchists would not have any opposition to the increased use of technology in society at all. that is not a left-wing position.
the left would support socializing the production of technology, increasing automation and the eventual jump to the superproduction of consumer goods for the benefit of the working class. the basic idea on the left is that increases in technology will lead to decreases in costs (including via economies of scale) and that this, combined with the elimination of profit and the abolition of private property, will ensure that the consumer goods made in the factory are accessible to the proletariat operating the machines, so that we don't have this depressing reality where we enslave a dominant portion of the population to make goods for the elite, which they can never afford. the auto workers should be able to afford to buy the cars they make.
luddite nonsense expressing a fear of change about the "dangers of technology" is as right-wing, as backwards and as conservative as you can get. it is in direct opposition to any sort of leftist theory and has no remote resemblance to it.
i mean, carney claims he wants to replace the united states with other countries through expanded trade deals.
but then he attacks the domestic industry with these outrageous tax hikes and sells it by wrapping himself in the flag, and pushing this chauvinistic nonsense about competing. how does he expect them to compete in foreign markets? they won't be able to, because of the local tax policies.
but he's then opening up our markets to goods from horrible places like indonesia and the uae, that literally have actual slaves in their production process and put actual poison in their food. those are going to flood the market at rates similar or lower to chinese goods, and they're going to displace the canadian goods that can't compete because of the tax rates.
these trade deals he's signing, in conjunction with the counter-tariffs, are just going to contribute to the effects of the trade war, not mitigate it. then he clarifies by pointing out that what he actually wants is "foreign investment", which is newspeak for selling canadian assets to foreign investors. it's apparently intentional. the policy is apparently designed to make canada for sale.
i couldn't create a worse policy for canadian businesses and canadian workers if i tried.
but if you're invested in some indonesian palm oil exporting agrifood company, you just got a foot into the canadian market, and preferential conditions that could even start to harm the canola industry.
we're under serious attack by our own government in ways that trump could never do by himself. all trump can do is tax his own people, which would have a minimal effect on us. but the policy path canada is choosing is going to severely damage profitable, successful canadian economic sectors with the apparent intent of opening them for sale to foreign investors, at minimal harm to the american exporters.
in the canexit analogy, alberta and saksatchewan are actually emerging as a kind of scotland, that is resisting the exit and wants to stay in the cusma. and, in the process, they are implementing more academic and less populist policies, that will lead to less self-harm, although they are bound by the foolishness of the federal government's new hidden consumption tax policy on capital inputs and capital investment.
if we're going to do this with seriousness, we should also abolish the gst.
...because the gst was created to replace a similar historical tax that existed before the fta, and was taken out as a part of the trade negotiations.
as it is, the net sum is that we've doubled consumption taxes, because we have both the gst and the thing the gst replaced in place, simultaneously. that's like a 70% consumption tax on some items. nothing could be more regressive than that. that's going to make us far less competitive, globally.
i would consequently support a policy shift by the opposition parties to completely get rid of the gst, so long as these tariffs look like they're long term. it's not a good policy, but it's a lesser evil.
these kids are going to grow up into useless, anti-technology pothead hippie idiot retard adults that are incapable of doing anything useful in the actual economy and then complain that they can't get ahead no matter how hard they work at it because their idiot parents wouldn't let them use computers when they were kids.
i will take the opposite position: restricting kids' access to technology should be seen as a form of child abuse and kids should be removed from those environments and placed in foster care instead.
this is the most anti-intellectual form of luddism that i've ever seen.
if you don't want your kids using computers at school, go fuck yourselves, first, and then get the fuck out of canadian society, and go live with the amish. i have no respect for your opinion at all and i don't want you living in my society. i don't want to hear from you at all. just shut up and go away.
if you don't want to exist in modernity, kindly remove yourself from it and leave everybody else alone to live in peace.
studies are clear that the use of technology increases educational results. it's not ambiguous. i don't want to live in the dark ages and i will very aggressively resist any groups trying to drag me back into them.
canada doesn't gain anything from a strengthened economic relationship with the european union. it is neither a likely market for canadian goods, nor a likely supplier of goods to canada. canada is further from europe than africa or russia and has higher labour standards than both. canadian goods exported from canada to the eu will be prohibitively expensive and unable to compete with russian or african goods, and european goods imported to canada from the eu will likewise never be competitive with american goods, even with high tariffs.
a basic application of ricardan theory would suggest almost no level of trade between canada and the eu makes economic sense, which is why almost none exists.
rather, it would appear to speak more to the cultural affinity of mark carney and his family, including his wife, than to the legitimate economic needs of canada as a country.
canada would be better off seeking a stronger trade relationship with mercosur and building stronger relationships with other south and central american countries. ricardan theory would suggest a stronger trading relationship with these countries would be mutually beneficial to both of us, as we can each specialize in the production of goods that the others cannot.
again, the point of putting carney in power was that he was supposed to be an economic egghead, but he's turned out to be a kind of populist dumbard, instead - a centrist version of nigel farage that puts his personal cultural preferences ahead of the country's economic well-being, and is repeatedly making mistakes that you'd expect a prime minister educated in economics would not make. he is essentially adopting the theory promoted by the don coyote school of economics, that tariffs make us rich and create jobs, which has been repeatedly rejected by repeated failed application. the point of getting an education is to learn from the mistakes of the past. carney seems to have learned nothing from the past.
what's going on in canada right now is not some brave show of independence. that is nonsense. canada is in actuality undergoing a kind of canexit for purely cultural and populist reasons out of an emotional kneejerk reaction that is going to severely harm it for years to come.
Monday, September 7, 2026
for many decades in canada, the liberals have credibly run elections on their superior economic management, and attacked the opposition as economically incompetent, largely by criticizing them for being too pro-market.
the liberals have been repeatedly elected to fix or save the economy, while "tory times are tough times". it's been a consistent vote driver for decades.
by embracing neo-liberal ideology at a level that the liberals never have previously, and by holding to these foolish counter-tariffs, carney is severely damaging the economic credibility of the liberal party by aligning himself and the party with free market tory economic policy, which has historically had terrible outcomes.
carney times are tough times, indeed. and we're shooting ourselves in the hip. much of this harm that's coming will be self-inflicted. we will have nobody to blame but ourselves.
this is the kind of dipshit that this law was intended to not prosecute. explicitly. exactly.
people all over the spectrum don't seem to understand this well, and the reason is that english culture is dying a slow death on this continent and few people read classic speech rights texts or understand much about it nowadays, but the law is not intended to punish "immorality" or censor "offensive conduct". those are ideas that have no valid place in canadian law at all, and to the extent that they are creeping in through badly written legal codes providing backdoors for unwanted civil law concepts, they are mistakes waiting to be corrected.
the law is intended to protect identifiable minority groups from imminent, foreseeable harm.
this guy wants clicks on his website. he's drawing attention to himself for personal gain, and the post is walking into it. he's an idiot, clearly. but he poses no legitimate threat to anybody or anything except his own credibility, and perhaps the credibility of any educational institution he might have attended.
he deserves a fine for property damage and a reminder that free speech isn't an excuse for property damage. i would also sentence him to community service mowing the lawn of the local synagogue every week for the next 80 weeks.
i would like to see the canadian dollar get closer to parity. i don't benefit from a lower cdn dollar; i have increased purchasing power in the united states when the dollar is more valuable, and lower purchasing value when it's higher. that means that x dollars buys less beer and less concert tickets when the dollar is lower and more beer and more tickets when the dollar is higher.
it's actually american capital that is the primary beneficiary of a lower dollar because they can hire workers in canada at lower costs. that creates jobs here, but it might displace others and the overall benefit to individual canadian citizens is less obvious.
individual canadians do not benefit from a low dollar at all. they would be better off with higher purchasing power in the united states, not with more american employers in canada.
that said, the canadian dollar is largely tied to oil. so, the dollar goes up when oil goes up and falls when oil comes down. the lower canadian dollar is mostly a result of lower oil prices. if trump wants the canadian dollar to go up, the way to do it is to create substantive longterm pressure on oil prices.
but trump doesn't want that, clearly. i actually would also like to see higher oil prices because it should reduce consumption (and increase revenue in canada) and would support policies that both hike the cost of oil and increase the value of the cdn dollar. that sounds good to me.
if trump wants to separate the price of oil from the value of the cdn dollar, so that the cdn dollar goes up without increasing the cost of oil, the way to do it is to increase other canadian exports, perhaps by buying more canadian goods. he's not doing that, either. he's trying to stop that. that will drive the dollar down further.
what we're hearing from trump is consequently something along the lines of that he wants a llama for christmas, and he wants a pony, and he wants an elephant, too - delusional expressions of desire from a spoiled brat loser that expose a level of economic ignorance that demonstrate him as his unfit for the office he occupies.
mr trump can talk out of both sides of his ass, but he can't create opposite outputs of the same function, or live on both sides of the curve. the doublethink has physical limits in objective reality.
Saturday, September 5, 2026
i get the feeling that this will go over like a lead balloon.
hi,
i'm inri.
you might remember me from such online discussion fora as,
epilogue: the mailing list for skinny puppy fans that thought the band was dead in the late 90s and wished it was dead by the late 00s.
w.a.s.t.e: the mailing list for radiohead fans, when radiohead was good, before they sucked.
alt.music.nin: where you have to read the fucking faq to know what it's about.
eh?
the muslim world - north africa, the middle east, turkey, iran - made up a substantive theatre in the second world war, with italian and german troops seeking to liberate arabs from british and french colonialism, after the collapse of the ottoman empire (which was aligned with germany in world war one). the german/nazi propaganda reflected that.
the reality is that the people around today that sound like the nazis did in 1942 are not the euroskeptics, arguing for reduced immigration. the nazis never said that.
no, the people alive today that sound like the nazis did in 1942 are the phony leftists standing with hamas, arguing for the liberation of arabs from "western colonialism", whatever that even is. that is what the nazis actually said, and what they actually did, too. the soviets picked up something like that later on, but it was a different argument. the argument you hear from phony leftist hamas and hezbollah sympathizers about saving arabs from colonialism is taken verbatim from nazi propaganda.
this was a massive part of the war, and it was a german campaign against british colonialism, with arab revolutionaries on the ground as major allies - not dissimilar to the taliban fighting against nato, or isis trying to set up a caliphate.
i'm not exactly making an argument about islam in germany here. i'm pretty distant. i think it's obvious there's a problem that needs to be addressed. i wouldn't vote for the afd for other reasons.
i'm just looking for accuracy and clarity.
the narrative is ass backwards. the "far right" sounds like winston churchill. the "progressive left" sounds like adolf hitler.
the german far-right has historically been overwhelmingly pro-muslim, stemming from arguments in a book by edward gibbon called the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire, which argued that the first reich (the roman empire) failed because christian society did not militarize to meet the challenge of militant islam (relative to medieval period definitions).
the second reich was the holy roman empire, that is the empire of charlemagne, which became the hapsburg empire until it was dissolved by napoleon in 1806.
the third reich was the comparatively short lived nazi empire, which was in fact actually geo-politically aligned with major muslim regions like iran and saudi arabia. north africa was a somewhat forgotten but major theatre of operations in world war two. iran was invaded by a joint british-soviet force in world war two to stop the nazis from being invited in (and causing problems in india or the caucasus). the saudis, palestinians and other groups were aligned with germany as a counter to what they saw as british colonialism, and out of a shared opposition to zionism. the fact that the arabs lost world war two, as explicit german allies, is of some importance in the development of events that led to the re-establishment of a jewish state in historical israel.
there was absolutely no persecution of muslim or arabs by nazis in nazi controlled areas from 1933-1945 and turks were seen as german allies, rather than foreigners. the groups targeted by nazis actually included many of the groups that were persecuted by the ottomans, including ethnic greeks, ethnic croatians, hungarians, poles and slavic-speaking groups in general. the jewish holocaust was modeled after the continuing armenian genocide. the actual thing that the nazis were actually doing as step one in the goal to take over the world was trying to wipe out the slavs, to enslave the jews and to abolish communism. muslims and arabs were variably seen as irrelevant or as allies in this task, and large amounts of nazi policy was emulating recent events in the country of turkey and the previous ottomon empire.
it's up to the german people to decide whether they're in favour of more or less muslim immigration, but the historical nazi party and the historical german far right would not have supported or aligned with the afd on this issue. on the issue of islam and the political persecution of muslims, the historical nazi party and it's officials like hitler and goebbels would have sounded more like modern "liberals", and been in favour of tolerance and integration.
one of the explicit arguments made by the nazis was that they should replace the british as the occupying power in the middle east because nazism was more similar to islamic law than british parliamentary democracy, and the arabs would not react as negatively to authoritarian nazism as they reacted to representative democracy. and they had a coherent point to make, on that concern.
the afd - like the french national rally - seems to be more akin to the historical left than the historical right and that is probably the actual reason it's being attacked by the european mainstream. it's probably not a coincidence that this district is east german, and previously communist. and what voters are probably looking for is a social democratic party that hasn't been corrupted by neo-liberalism. the technocrats in the eu consider that to be public enemy #1, so they're attacked as nazis, despite being almost diametrically the opposite thing, politically.
that doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons to oppose the afd. but this conflation of being critical of islam or seeking less migration from muslim societies with the historical german right is exceedingly counter-factual. it's dead wrong, it's actually backwards (those are positions that were held by the historical left, due to slavic nationalism often defining itself in opposition to turkish colonialism), and it should stop.
i apologize for the orthogenetic proposal. my aristotlianism is clearly sardonic. i actually believe that evolution is mostly driven by chaos and chance, and natural selection is real but not common. genetic drift is a more frequent cause of evolutionary change than natural selection, which should be assumed to not exist, a priori, and only be derived via hypothesis testing. genetic drift must be rejected to conclude natural selection. that is, if you want this to be science.
the general consensus at this point is that intergalactic travel is probably impossible due to the amount of time required. we'd die before we arrived anywhere. so we should give up on the idea of galaxy hopping aliens.
but what if an extra-terrestrial species has evolved in specific high stress conditions to live for hundreds or thousands of years?
a 200 year journey would not be so steep if you could live for five thousand years.
it should put down an expectation for us - if we find extra-terrestrial life, it will essentially necessarily have to have extremely long lifespans. we should expect that.
it may consequently be the case that a theoretical alien race has observed hundreds or thousands of years of human progress. that would be a potentially invaluable source to draw on about our own history and evolution.
and what it further implies is that what we've learned about the physics of space travel makes it more likely, in my opinion, that at least some of the historical descriptions of human interaction with god or gods are confused interactions with alien species. they would necessarily be god-like to us, in order to exist at all.
a naturalistic explanation of god as a concept may involve the biologification of the deity. and it's a reason to return to polytheism as more reasonable than monotheism.
this does continue to strike me as far-fetched, but i must also argue that it's the most likely of a collection of crazy propositions. there must be some empirical basis for so much nonsense. it can't have come from thin air. if i had to pick one proposal out of the pile, the idea that our concept of god comes from interaction with ten thousand year old aliens strikes me as the best of the bunch. it's at least falsifiable, right?
nobody else collapsed and suffered brain damage. so, the workout wasn't so grueling for the other players, and perhaps he wasn't such an elite athlete.
i would consider 31 degrees celsius to be comfortable, not scorching hot. i enjoy aerobics workouts in hot weather.
i hope they did thc tests. i suspect that's the actual cause of the aneurysm or whatever happened.
despite what i said about insanity or not criminally responsible defences, and how a science-based system of law would enforce greater sentences and not lesser sentences on people found to be not criminally responsible (it shouldn't be a defence to a charge, it should be a sentencing criteria that increases the severity of sentences), i actually would reject the argument if i was the judge.
the kids were aged 3, 5 and 8 months.
that's not post-partum anything. those are toddlers. it's a lot of bullshit.
i would flat out find her guilty of three counts of first degree murder and sentence her to three consecutive life sentences, with no chance of parole.
Friday, September 4, 2026
fuck alberta.
there's some refineries in new brunswick and there's oil in newfoundland. that's a better source for eastern canada.
we need refinery capacity for national security and we should have built it eons ago. but canadians should be trying to shift off oil. the better idea is building more hydro plants.
in the long run, newfoundland is a more practical, economical and environmental source for the minimal oil canada will continue to require, post-transition, than alberta. let the western shitheads starve in their debt.
this is similar to the argument i was making.
does carney really have much decision making influence or authority in the pmo, or is the civil service really directing policy, and doing so foolishly?
this recent current case is a good demonstration of why it is that the way the courts approach intent is currently backwards. we have an ancient system of law that is fundamentally about obeying the king's orders interacting with modern science, and the system is sputtering, and then trying to assert it's authority to prevent itself from changing rather than adjusting to what the science says.
currently, the way this works is that the woman will be declared not guilty - or not criminally responsible - if the defense can demonstrate that she wasn't capable of forming intent. but who cares? how does that have any relevance in determining how dangerous this woman clearly is to the people around her?
a modern system of science-based law would flip the logic over and instead order her to be permanently incarcerated with no chance of parole if it can be demonstrated that she lacks the capacity to form intent, because there would be no way to mitigate the threat she poses to the community around her.
it's not that the question of intent isn't of continuing value in law. it is. but this ancient medieval system of dominance and submission, that is difficult for modern people to even understand at all, doesn't interact well with what the science says. the science is relatively clear that this woman is very likely to repeat offend and that she's never going to be fully capable of rehabilitating. the system of law was devised in an era where these analyses and determinations were not of any consideration and the only real issue before the judge was whether you obeyed the king's orders.
the system is reformable. it doesn't need to be redesigned from scratch, and it has good foundations. however, cases like this demonstrate the need for the system to update itself to make the law more reactive to the science and less reactive to medieval concepts of social control through implied violence and the assertion of physical dominance.
submission to the king is not a real-world concern here, but it's still what the law is in truth actually about.
i finally bought some 28 ounce glass bowls last week, and they came in yesterday. these should be good for cereal, minimum meals and other smaller applications, but i'm about to give up on finding large glass bowls at an affordable price and use stainless steel for the salads that make up a big part of my diet, instead. they may leech nickel and chromium, but those are actually both micronutrients required for human health in unknown quantities. that's not a bad thing.
i'm consequently largely finished swapping out the ceramic and plastic for glass, steel, iron and silicon.
- i have three 750 ml glass cups that were manufactured as vases that i use for juice
- i have six 550 ml glass cups in use for water and soy milk
- i have two very large glass beer mugs in use for coffee
- there are four additional stemless wine glasses for a total of 15 glass cups
- i have swapped my plastic brita jug out for a glass water jug
- i have three small glass containers for sauces. i need some more for fruit. i don't mind storing some fruits and vegetables in old margarine containers, mostly because i don't save most, i eat the whole thing all at once. exceptions are tomatoes and red peppers for the half pasta plates (and for nachos and salsa with eggs) and pineapple for pasta. i would especially want the pineapple and tomato not in plastic nowadays.
- i have bought some canola/olive oil to replace the margarine, and some canola humus with olive chunks
- i have four 12" glass plates in use that replace the ceramic ones
- i have replaced six smaller ceramic bowl with six 28 ounce glass bowls
- i need to buy a couple more 3 quart or 4.5 quart stainless steel bowls for salads. i have one of each, and an 8 inch bowl, that i bought for utility, but it's looking like they're going to replace the 70 oz ceramic bowls i've been using for the last few years to make large salads in. i am not sure if 3 quarts or 4.5 quarts is better.
- i swapped all the plastic spatulas out with silicon and steel.
- i swapped the plastic cutting board out with a titanium one
- i have swapped my pans for eggs and bacon out with cast iron skillets
i am keeping the small ceramic plates for cutting, i still have plastic measuring cups, i have a lot of plastic tupperware that i'm reexamining and the onion soup bowls are ceramic and will stay that way.
otherwise, that's it. the ceramic and plastic is out. it's all glass and iron and silicon and steel.
i will keep the ceramic plates for holding glass or metal bowls (like a bowl of soup or salad, on the ceramic plate) to prevent spilling or control temperature and the ceramic bowls for things like chips and candy. i don't buy candy; i occasionally buy potato chips.
Thursday, September 3, 2026
i shouldn't jump to the conclusion that i had a vitamin e deficiency, at least not relative to current clinical standards. i haven't been tested. i understand that it isn't very likely, at least relative to current clinical standards.
but the e has made a positive difference in a number of ways. i won't list them, but i'm noticing big differences after only a few pills. frustrating blemishes on my face that i was starting to worry were skin cancer are peeling off. i thought the glow was from estrogen, but i'm starting to think it's from vitamin e. that persistent annoying diarrhea, which i was tying to the stalkers drugging me, has cleared up.
the a came in the other day. i've taken 1.5 and am not noticing it yet. i would expect less obvious changes. the b is replacing the yeast, remember, and not a hike in much except b5 and b7, which weren't in the yeast. and i didn't take the yeast that frequently. i am feeling a little more awake, but i'm not sure yet.
i think a better analysis is that the rdi for vitamin e is currently too low.
i really actually don't think this needs to be nearly as big a deal for canada as some would imagine
there's no doubt that we buy things from the americans, but we could replace them almost entirely with a combination of brazil and mexico, who together have roughly the same population. neither are substantively further away. the things we can't get from latin america, we could get from japan or europe, and both have substantive populations to sell into.
there's likewise no ambiguity that we need a market to sell things to, but the fear that the americans are going to stop buying is overblown. the selling point about the us is gdp, but it's gdp per capita in a grossly unequal society, and if canada stops buying us goods, the us gdp will actually cave in because they rely on us for their own sales. if we start buying our fruit from brazil and mexico instead - and pay attention at the store. we already have started. - the subsequent decrease in american gdp will undo their own propaganda as the us being this giant market. it's really not. it's 4% and it's overridden with extreme poverty.
i'm not convinced that brazil is a worse market than the us. as the us is also attacking them, we have a unique opportunity with the brazilians, as they can replace the us for us as a supplier of food (mostly), and we can replace the us for them as a supplier of finished goods. it's a great way to apply the theory of comparative advantage. we should be all over each other.
but i know that the budget juice i buy is sourcing from brazil nowadays. the mangos and grapefruits are from brazil. almost nothing is actually coming in from the us. this is happening because the transnational capital of walmart and loblaws opens up those supply chains. and the truth is the us is actually getting cut out.
we should be putting a specific focus on latin america.
these are the koppen climate zones here:
the snot green is humid subtropical, while the two shades of blue above it (detroit-windsor sits between the two shades of blue) are humid continental. the lower shade of blue is defined by hotter summers.
the snot green is humid subtropical, while the two shades of blue above it (detroit-windsor sits between the two shades of blue) are humid continental. the lower shade of blue is defined by hotter summers.
but as the subtropical zone moves north it swallows up st louis, detroit and chicago. it's only the smallest, most southernmost part of canada, but it's a place to enjoy the warmth.
i will reiterate my call to windsorites that don't like the weather: get lost. go to winnipeg, go to toronto, go to ottawa. leave this city for those that like the climate.
In recent history, Windsor has had about 22 days each year when the temperature gets up to at least 30 C.
But if climate change continues unchecked, these very hot days will be more frequent, according to projections in a new report from the University of Waterloo's Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation. Windsor could see 30 C days 79 times a year by the 2050s.
by my count, we've had 36 such days above 30 C so far in 2026. and we had a slow start to summer.
as mentioned, it rarely gets below 27 degrees from mid may to mid oct. that's no longer a barren frozen north. that's not even temperate anymore, that's subtropical. we're increasingly seeing hot days linger into november or december and starting as early as late february. the winters here now run cold but short from c. dec 20th to feb 20th and we get long bouts of spring in january and february. the cold comes in short, intense bursts.
a city where the temperature is above 20 degrees consistently from mar 1 to dec 1st, which is where we're going, is no longer one that people seek to escape due to the cold, but one that people seek to travel to to enjoy the warmth. windsor and the region should see that future and prepare for it.
the idea of windsor-leamington as a tourist destination makes some sense. we're surrounded by water. the weather here s beautiful for 6 months of the year, and growing. if that gets to 8 months, 10 months, it might be a high yield investment projection.
come to windsor to enjoy the humidity and play in the lakes. we've got trails for bicycling, fresh fruit off the trees and plenty of places to grab a beer.
note, however, that a ten degree boost in hudson's bay means -15 instead of -25. it doesn't make the land more useful. it doesn't open the northwest passage. it may make driving in the winter more annoying.
southwest ontario is becoming a rainforest and may end up as a subtropical tourist destination. but the bulk of southern canada, including the prairies, is going to get hit by this, while the north will see little benefit. optimistic predictions are not well-informed.
the areas we grow in today in canada are going to turn into the badlands of montana and wyoming and we can't just move north because we ruined the land with tar sand development.
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
there's two parts of canada that really aren't much like being in canada, in terms of climate.
- the very southern part of ontario, not including toronto but including windsor, london, kitchener, hamilton, niagara.
- the okanagan valley
these two very small regions do not have weather that is very canadian at all. windsor is further south than minnesota, wisconsin, iowa, most of michigan, a bunch of states moving west to washington and oregon and and the entire northeastern us, including almost all of new york. even toronto is a tad further north of boston.
this doesn't seem weird anymore. rather, i'd be surprised, today, if the opposite happened - if i needed a jacket in september.
but this would be considered baffling a few decades ago.
in windsor, in 2026, sept 1 is not the end of summer, it's mid-summer. sept 21st is not the end of summer.
oct 15th is the end of summer, here, nowadays, and you would expect high humidity and heat here and to be out in shorts and tank tops until mid october at the earliest. we've had summer linger into november here recently on several occasions - meaning consistent 20+ highs.
for the americans, 35 C is 95 F. 45 C is 113 F.
this is a canadian suburb of detroit.
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
the reality is that the jails in the united states, a country that has long enforced these kinds of draconian rules that conservatives like ford want to enforce here, are full of retards that never get properly diagnosed or tested and will never rehabilitate because they can't. we do the opposite and call it humane and hopeful, but it isn't humane and hopeful, and the outcome is not much better. the last thing canada should want is to get in the habit of throwing retards in jail, like the americans do. but the evidence is also clear that not giving them the support they need frequently leads to terrible outcomes. the middle point is returning to the institutionalization model that was abandoned due to neo-liberalism.
there is little question that this crazy law will be struck down. this is not consistent with canadian law.
the courts have repeatedly blocked things like mandatory minimums and cash bail and it is clearly frustrating conservatives, who are no doubt asking "what can we do to keep people in jail?", and what they aren't learning is that the science is clear: jail doesn't work.
there is a subset of criminals that legitimately don't understand what they're doing due to fas, complications of shs exposure, drug abuse as adults or other causes of mental retardation. the system has not dealt with this well; it's dealt with it backwards. it argues that an inability to form mens rea makes guilt impossible. but nobody is of greater threat to the community than a severely mentally damaged person with a history of lashing out. there needs to be a way to get the mentally damaged into hospitals, rather than jails, and keep them there, against their will. these people will never be rehabilitated and that's not the point of incarcerating them. they need to be humanely warehoused out of the general public.
if this was done effectively, it would lock up most repeat offenders. but this is a hole in the criminal law that isn't going to be patched with draconian laws that order people to behave and beat them with dominance if they refuse. they're retarded. they don't understand. it needs to be addressed with science.
what's left is mostly "crime of passion" where intent can be established and the courts mostly already refuse bail for this and property crimes which are mostly the result of poverty and need to be addressed with greater social spending.
the courts won't let the government break the system like this, at least for now.
the other option, of course, is to stack the benches with ignorant judges, and the harper, ford and trudeau governments certainly tried, but perhaps ran out of time. we're going to need to get the conservatives out of ontario very seen if we don't want to threaten long term damage to the tribunal system, but that's separate from this.
this is a shitty way to bring up a valid criticism about the direction of canada's military, which i've brought up myself.
there was a big attempt to eliminate sexual abuse in the army under the trudeau pmo. this was driven by the pmo's backwards ideology, and not by the direction of the military. in fact, there was a major purge of army people for resisting it.
conservative feminist ideology argues for the state to act as a leviathan so that women can walk around naked downtown at 4:00 am without fear of being assaulted. i exaggerate only slightly. it's less that i disagree in principle and more that i'm concerned about the unintended consequences of getting to that end point. but the military is an exception.
a state that acts as a leviathan to protect soldiers from sexual assault will be useless on the battlefield. soldiers that cannot defend themselves are useless to that state and should not be soldiers. yes, enemy forces will use rape as a tactic, and it's required to understand and react to that expectation.
canada needs to put less of an emphasis on protecting vunerable soldiers from harm and more of an emphasis on developing soldiers that can protect themselves when required. that is not necessarily gender-based, but it will require telling some women that they don't make the team and will have to accept it. that's the point of an army.
the military is not a social assistance program, but canada has treated it like one for too long, and the last pmo took disturbing steps into parody in the way it expanded that that should be reevaluated and reversed.
Sunday, August 30, 2026
i spent $450 on groceries, $220 on cleaning and bathroom supplies and $150 on supplements, and i'm now entirely stocked up on everything imaginable until the spring, when i'll need to do that again. grocery bills will be for perishables - fruits and vegetables, breads and eggs and cheese. that's how i keep my monthly bills down - i buy pantry items in bulk ahead of time. it requires a little bit of expenditure up front to appreciate the savings in the long run.
let me do this again.
- the b and c are being cut in 4 and taken every six hours instead of all at once. they are here and i've been doing this for a few days, now.
- 100 iu of e at 0:00 on mondays, wednesdays and fridays, with sunday left optional.
- i am going to buy a kelp tablet i can cut in 4 and take 1/4 of the tablet every day at 6:00. this will give me a little more than 150 mcg of iodine/day, which is the rdi. i have sent an email to jamieson to ask if these kelp tablets contain epa/dha as well. they are marketed as "kelp, which contains iodine" and not as iodine.
- 1000 iu of d at 12:00
- the a is being cut in 1/2 and 1/2 is being taken at 18:00 daily. this is 2500 iu daily. this is between the rdis for women and men, and probably right for me. i ordered this yesterday and it should be here this week.
- i am going to take 2 tums after each full meal as a calcium supplement for now on (800 mg elemental calcium)
- i'm deciding not to take pills for vitamin k. i eat a salad-based diet and i take a lot of estrogen. so, i want my blood a little thin and might be concerned about overdoing it on vitamin k creating clotting risks. this is the one vitamin i want to keep a little low. i have seen no symptoms of a difficulty coagulating.
- i'm going to take a tbsp of flax dissolved in a glass of water daily at 15:00 for omega-3s. i should meet the rdi of them, at 1.7 g of ala, if i do that.
- i'm going to note that i drink at least 250 ml of soy and 4 mini cups of coffee a day and usually closer to twice that
- i have devised a daily minimum meal made up of:
a bowl with:
- 3 tbsp of raw, unroasted, unsalted, hulled sunflower seeds (longstanding)
- 3 tbsp of hulled hemp seeds (longstanding)
- 3 tbsp of hulled chia seeds (bought, added)
- 3 tbsp of wheat bran (longstanding)
- 3 tbsp of soy lecithin <------not yet
- 30 g of all bran (longstanding)
- 1 tbsp of paprika (longstanding)
- 1 tbsp of ground cumin (longstanding)
- 1 tbsp of dried oregano (longstanding)
- 2 cloves of garlic (longstanding)
- 1 beet (longstanding)
- 1 avocado (longstanding)
- 50 g broccoli (longstanding)
- dried dill, caesar, hot sauce, nutritional yeast for flavour (yeast does have some b vitamins still) (longstanding)
with
- one banana (longstanding, bought)
- one orange (longstanding, bought)
- two pieces of untoasted quinoa-flax bread with unclear spread (longstanding)
- one tum (longstanding)
that has
- in total, 12+ g of omega-3s
- 23+ g of omega-6s
- 55+ g of mostly complete protein, which is about right on the rdi for my weight, maybe a little more. i would prefer to barely meet the rdi or just miss it for protein. excess protein is hard on your body and stored inefficiently as fat. high protein diets are stupid.
- minimal saturated fat for absorption (some in the dressing, avocado, soy lecithin)
- some carbs. whatever. carbs aren't worth measuring.
- it's all stored the same way. your body uses less energy to process carbs and more energy to process protein but it does the same thing with excess amounts of them, which is store it as fat. what i'm more interested in is the fact that flax, hemp, chia, soy, quinoa and in fact also sunflower are all complete proteins and have all 9 essential amino acids, although the sunflower seeds are low in lysine (and high in vitamin e, selenium, omega-6s). i'm not aiming for a protein salad, but this would be pretty effective if i was.
- 180%+ rdi for magnesium
- 160%+ rdi for phosphorus
- 110%+ of the rdi for potassium
- 120%+ rdi for calcium
- 210%+ of rdi for manganese
- 30+ mg of iron (elemental) (300% of a 10 mg amount but i have absorption issues and need it)
- 195%+ of rdi for copper
- 125%+ of rdi for zinc
- 125%+ rdi for selenium
- 110%+ rdi for molybdenum (not including the high amount in soy milk that isn't bioavailable)
- 175%+ of the rdi for choline (960 mg) & an additional 100% in the form of betaine (550 mg).
- some sulfur in the garlic
- some inositol and salicylic acid in the orange
- extra food-based vitamins (carotenoids, b vitamins, a little c, some d, a fair amount of e and some k)
- around 950-1000 mg of sodium. ish. which is a decent minimum meal amount.
this will be taken at 3:00 am or 9:00 am on days where i didn't eat a full meal the previous day and will be intended to ensure i'm meeting daily rdis while i continue to lose weight. this may mean i go longer between meals. but this isn't a meal, and is not intended as one. it is not high in calories but is very high in nutrients.
the bread is still pretty fortified and the flax-quinoa bread has a fair amount of ala. the soy has lost a lot of vitamins but is still worthwhile. the all bran in canada has been stripped to almost nothing, like the yeast, but it's still a good source of betaine. i'd like to get some better caesar dressing as i eat a lot of it.
i did not initially measure iodine because i assumed the salt in the bread, caesar and hot sauce was iodized. in fact, the salt in the bread and the soy or not iodized and i have not yet heard from frank's, or contacted great value or all bran. i feel this is a failure by health canada, which should be mandating iodine in soy milk, bread, cereal and sauces like frank's and casear. what is a good source of daily iodine, then?
don't tell me to just eat salt. health canada stupidly tells you to eat a teaspoon of table salt a day. that's 6 g of salt. the mayo institute says to keep it under 1.5g. you'd need to eat around 4g of table salt a day to meet the iodine rdi. that's a disgusting amount of salt that is going to make you fat and give you heart problems. in fact, in 2026, table salt is not a feasible source of iodine for healthy people to use because the fortification level is way too low. it should by increased by roughly 5x so that you only need less than 1g of table salt, which is still more than you should eat, to meet the rdi. further, there should be a recognition by health canada that fewer canadians consume table salt today than in the past. i do not use table salt for any purpose at all (i don't even buy it) and i am no longer an obscure minority. there should consequently be further iodine fortification mandated in soy milk, bread, pasta and other processed foods, under the realization that iodine is scarce in the diets of healthy people, today.
when i was doing my initial diet design, i wanted to include seaweed, but it never happened and it still looks to be infeasible.
i don't drink cow's milk because it's utterly disgusting and i don't eat seafood because it's not worth the risk for mercury and other contaminants.
that leaves eggs and cheese as the only substantive sources and i'd have to eat an unrealistic amount of cheese, daily, to meet the rdi.
i'm left with the reality that i am going to have to take an iodine pill due to insufficiently mandated iodine fortifications in the utterly backwards failed state we call canada. this should be included in bread and soy and i shouldn't need to worry about it. i'm consequently not including iodine levels in the minimum meal because it's in the supplements list.
not measured:
- chloride (i should get enough in the city water in windsor)
- chromium
- boron
- fluoride (windsor's water is back to being fluoridated, that should be fine)
- nickel
- carbs (who cares?)
- glucose (this should be low)
- calories (calories are irrelevant to human health)
the rhetoric from the united states president is idiotic. he is placing the office of the presidency in disrepute. he should show far more respect for the office than he does.
the united states may have the ability to react to steep export taxes, but that shouldn't be a reason to avod enacting them. high export taxes is a less aggressive response than cutting exports. historians will tell you that denying empires from accessing resources has resulted in invasions and conquests. empires will fight wars to secure access to resources. but, i know of no example of an empire launching a war to cut taxes or reduce the price of imports. the americans should be reminded of that when they complain.
there is a good argument to make that the united states owes canada quite a lot of money in backpayments due to the discount on oil we've been giving it for the last 40 years.
nonetheless, i can acknowledge that there's reason to be incremental about this. i'm not an incrementalist, i'm a radical revolutionary leftist. i don't want to see small changes, i want to burn the system down. i do not naturally lean towards incrementalist policies. so, i wouldn't think in that kind of conservative way. i can make a moderate exception here, with caveats.
step one should be to ensure the americans are paying market prices for oil, aluminum, potash, uranium, electricity and other items crossing the border. let the export taxes be the next round. let this round be the imposition of market rates, as a consequence of abandoning the trade deal.
alberta is likely to complain, and the argument they use is atrocious. they will claim they don't have control over "their own" resources. what does that mean?
when alberta entered confederation in 1905, it did so under different conditions than the eastern provinces, in 1867. there is a section of the 1867 constitution act that determines jurisdiction over resources in the maritimes, ontario and quebec. but, control over resources in the prairies actually belonged to the indigenous groups, under the numbered treaties that were signed between 1871-1899. when alberta joined confederation in 1905, it had no control over resources at all, and the 1867 constitution was not applicable to them. rather, the numbered treaties were the legal documents that determined who had control over what, and most of the control fell to the indigenous populations, not to the colonial power. at the time, the indigenous population was drastically larger than the colonial population, which was mostly actually american settlers moving north back to the british empire. by the turn of the century (1900), the colonial government had largely given up on trying to convert the indigenous groups into farmers (which they fiercely resisted) and the canadian government subsequently put a lot of effort into getting people from northern europe - scandinavians, finns, scots, poles, balts, ukrainians, russians - to settle in the prairies and develop the land.
the situation from 1905-1930 was that the federal government took control of the resources, but only in it's position as the steward of the indigenous groups. that is, ottawa adopted a kind of fiduciary responsibility to oversee development on behalf of the indigenous groups. but these treaties rarely transferred outright ownership, and control was still legally in the hands of the indigenous groups.
this was altered by a manouvre undertaken by the british crown in 1930 to "extinguish" the treaties and place alberta under the 1867 constitution act. a subsequent large amendment to the constitution took place in 1930, which resulted in control of the resources being transferred from the indigenous groups to the prairie provinces and the federal government taking a step back. indigenous groups were not consulted and were ignored when they protested.
so, what does it mean for alberta to bitch and complain about not controlling it's resources? it illegally stole that control from the indigenous groups, when the federal government failed in it's fiduciary responsibility to administer them on their behalf. in fact, this historical wrong should be corrected and control of these natural resources should be transferred back to the crown. the 1930 transfer acts should be repealed.
the elder trudeau, to his credit, tried to correct this historical wrong, but alberta had a hissy fit and told the "eastern bastards" to "freeze in the dark". alberta, still populated mostly by americans at the time, decided it would rather sell to the us than to ontario and tried to block pipelines moving east to eliminate reliance on imported oil. the end result is that they gave the americans a whopping discount when they could have sold it at a higher price to ontario, out of spite and due to hatred for the rest of canada. the idiot mulroney included that discount in the fta, and it's still there in the reworked nafta.
so, complaints from alberta about losing control over their resources should fall on deaf ears as they were illegitimately granted control of them in the first place. ottawa should make decisions about the resources that are in the national interest, and uphold it's fiduciary responsibility to the indigenous peoples by consulting them in good faith.
canada should also ensure it is doing things like building refineries, so that it is less vulnerable to american retaliation. this was an important part of the nep that should have been followed through on but was foolishly cancelled by the foolish people that led us down this path and got us into this mess.
public funding for "quantum computers" in the midst of a climate crisis is not an intelligent way to utilize public resources.
capitalism is built on the fallacy of infinite growth and a corollary of that fallacy, embraced by the liberal capitalists, is infinite progress, or infinite increases in technological efficiency to be more precise. the processor industry presents this as moore's law. but our understanding of modern physics is that our universe has very hard limits and boundaries that prevent infinite increases in technological efficiency and that moore's law will reach a hard stopping point. all theoretical and experimental evidence suggests that qubit error-correction in an economically and environmentally feasible way is completely physically infeasible and outside of actually real boundaries set by actual science.
quantum computers are not science, they're science fiction.
research into the real energy intensive stuff done at university labs has a legit purpose. this technology might emerge as a new kind of mainframe for governments and large corporate enterprises, with minimal to no applications for the general public.
but what xanadu is doing is blatant nonsense. this is not cutting edge research, it's a scam to make money on the stock market, and canada should be embarrassed that it's government fell for it and bought into it.
but if you're paying close attention, that is the answer to the apparent contradictions presented by mark carney as an actual human being. much of what we're hearing from mark carney cannot be coherently deconstructed because it is little more than disingenuous bullshit, and the only constituency he really represents is investors looking to capitalize on short term stock options.
xanadu will make some scummy people a lot of money from inflated trading and then it will collapse without bringing anything to the market. but that's not an error that needs to be corrected, that's the plan.
when i was a kid, my sister became friends with a girl that lived down the street, and my father got to know her father fairly well, through going to pta meetings around the fisher park area, in central ottawa. the school was st pius X. we lived just south of fisher and baseline.
this guy had a phd in chemistry, but he was an unemployed drunk because he made millions on the bre-x scam. he should have been working on fusion, but he gave up on it. he thought it was impossible. it's more feasible than quantum error correction at scale.
he used to get shit faced in my basement fairly regularly and i learned a fair amount from him about what the kind of person i didn't want to become was like. to quote jello biafra when i should be quoting greg graffin, it was a lesson in what not to become.
but that's what xanadu is and how xanadu will end and is what carney actually is. so, cash in and out while you can. whatever.
but don't expect this to go anywhere.
the state of error correction in quantum computing in 2026 is that they are making progress because they've yet to hit that physical limit. hey, you should do the experiment. but at the end of the day we're just stupid monkeys that basically can't learn and continue to repeat the same mistakes.
that $200 million dollars would be better spent on climate resilience policies at the current point in time.
Saturday, August 29, 2026
i just want to remind mr carney that, while capitalist analyses of venezuela as being wealthy and safe in the 80s are outside of the realm of facts (venezuela was one of the most dangerous and corrupt places in the world in the bad old days of unrestrained capitalism, with a murder rate that makes dc look like ottawa), it took a turn near the end of chavez towards a very bad economic policy that included pricing itself out of the market to sell oil to the united states, destroying it's substantive agriculture sector and embracing the disastrous policy of "socialism in one country", which you'd probably rather refer to via it's nazi name of autarky. this trio of bad decisions worked to undo the positive components of bolivarianism, including it's focus on grassroots democracy and it's legitimate progress in redistributing wealth from the country's obscenely rich to it's desperately poor. the middle class might have tolerated the wealth redistribution, otherwise, but it couldn't deal with the social changes. chavez' successor could not break the impasse and probably didn't legitimately want to. and he sleeps in a cell in new york, now, as outrageously illegal as that is.
canada might want to make an effort not to repeat those mistakes.
it's going to cost a lot to redevelop the oil industry in venezuela and it's not going to pose a threat to canada for a while still. but trump got what he wanted, which was a massive pile of oil. and we may even find he leaves us alone for a bit.
it's not clear why he thinks stealing something is better than buying it. i don't imagine he intends to sell it. i don't expect his successor will have the same views.
in terms of quebec politics, i would prefer the pq to the caq and not support the quebec liberals.
the liberals need to do something about that upstart conservative party if they want to get back into power. but the caq is also eating into the pq vote. the return of spectrum politics to quebec and the breaking of the nationalist-federalist spectrum is healthy for quebec society, but it hasn't resulted in a traditional spectrum. the quebec liberals are still very right-wing, and i'd rather vote for the pq.
i have carefully sorted through everything and the margarine appears to be the only food item that's been infected with the palm oil virus to this point.
i'm blaming arabs and i'm not wrong but i should extrapolate. this garbage is mostly grown in the east indies, but is native to africa. the movement of the palm genome is one of the agricultural effects of arabic colonialism, and the item is a staple in arabic diets, but it's not from arabia, it's from africa. you'll note that the east indies is a muslim region, today, although it was historically hindu, buddhist and animist (like essentially all of africa). so, the historic market for palm oil is arabs and people consuming arabic culture diets. palm and coconut oil are hugely responsible for the high obesity levels in arabic societies, which are the only societies in the world with higher obesity rates than the united states.
however, palm fat has in recent years also become popular as a replacement for trans fat, which is rightfully banned almost everywhere today, and in the process has become very cheap as a result of the economies of scale in fast food. the result is that it's finding it's way into other supply chains as a replacement for other products.
in the case of margarine, palm oil has almost completely replaced sunflower oil industry-wide and this has had a negative effect on taste and texture. there are other changes in the product and i will admit that i may be over-attributing the shift to the palm oil, but the increases in saturated fat, decreases in vitamin e and more butter-like taste and appearance in the walmart margarine, and similar changes industry wide (including in the irresistible food basic house brand and the lactantia/olivina brand i use to buy before i noticed the decrease in vitamin e on the label in one and then the other, and just said "fuck it" and started buying the cheaper walmart brand) have made margarine a food product that i no longer feel is acceptable as a standard part of my diet. it's the change in taste and texture to a more buttery taste and less olive-y taste that's the last straw for me.
as stated, i'll be moving to a 100% canola-olive oil mix for cooking and to flavour pastas and salads, which is a return to the excellent mix of polyunsaturated fats and the lower amounts of saturated fats that were once standard industry wide in margarine in canada, and to pre-made palm-free and additive-free hummus as a replacement for margarine in sandwiches, toast and other applications where i would have previously spread margarine on bread or toast.
i would encourage health canada to take steps to slow or eliminate the use of palm oil in food before it results in increased obesity rates.
i was able to find a palm-free canola-based hummus with chunks of olives in it, which i'm going to give a try. i also have some palm-free canola-olive cooking oil on order. i'll use the rest of this gross walmart olive oil margarine, which is no longer what it used to be and should change it's description from olive oil margarine to something like "canola-based artificial butter", up on sandwiches and substitute the humus in for the minimal meal for now, and eventually swap the margarine out and the hummus in for anything to do with bread and leave the oil for anything to do with cooking, including cooking bacon and eggs, as well as for flavouring in salads and pastas.
i have everything on order for the minimum meal except the soy lecithin. most of the items are shelf stable and can be purchased in bulk infrequently.
i can't find any margarine without palm oil anywhere and i think i'm consequently going to have to completely remove it altogether. i use it primarily as a cooking oil and have been buying olive oil margarine very intentionally for that reason, and i can easily replace it in that aspect with a palm-free canola/olive mix with or without sunflower, but i also use it on bread for tomato sandwiches, eggs benedict and just for toast and that might be harder to replace.
ironically, one of the few things i can find that's made without palm oil and seems to be healthy overall is hummus and it's starting to look like i'm going to be using humus instead of margarine on toasts and sandwiches. i'd like to find something higher in omega-3s though.
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