it's cold out in canada, right now.

i need to be careful in how i articulate this, because there's a lot of scientifically illiterate people on the soft left that want to understand science as an article of faith, and react to anybody challenging what they've been taught as heretics. so, if i point out that there isn't actually any evidence that a specific trait is heritable, and there is rather quite a bit of evidence that it mostly isn't, i get this uproar around contradicting vague statements like "scientists think that...". at least i haven't been called a lamarckian, yet (and that would be a misunderstanding of my claim, to be clear, although it would at least be a refreshingly literate smear). and, if i point out that the climate system is a complicated and chaotic thing with multiple causes, these people want to nail me to a cross.

when it's cold, it's climate change. when it's warm, it's climate change. and, when it's exactly seasonal, it's climate change, too.

right.

one of the stories i've been following on this page is the idea that there is actually a force operating in the northern hemisphere right now to locally counteract the effects of climate change, namely a solar minimum. now, this isn't some crazy theory, although the way it's often presented in the soft-left media would make it seem as though it is. the sun fluctuates in strength, and this has had a measurable impact on our climate, going back many centuries. this is well studied. it's mainstream science.

and, it is well understood that we're currently in a period of very weak solar output. i'm not going to jump on any bandwagons - we don't know what's going to happen next. but, if the sun stays weak like this, the white people of the northern latitudes are in for yet another beneficial fluke of geography, as we end up shielded from the worst effects of this, while the rest of the planet burns.

now, it's also well understood that this won't reverse climate change, in the sense of climate change being a long term increase in the mean temperature of the earth (which, itself, is not being measured geometrically, and probably should be to be really meaningful). the sun would have to turn into a black hole for that. we are still venus bound, as we choke ourselves to death in the sauna. but, so long as the earth remains on a tilt, if we remain exposed to decreasing solar energy in the north then we are going to suffer the consequences of the expanding north winds. i keep pointing this out, and you have to remember it: we cheat an ice age every 12 months on this planet, as we wobble dangerously far from the sun on our busted-up axis.

there is some evidence that the sun may be waking back up again, and we could see an early spring because of it.

but, if that doesn't happen, and the cold reality is that most solar scientists think it won't, then we could be in for a very nasty season, here.

but, do not lull yourself into a false sense of security: it will probably be very hot in india. and, should the sun wake back up, we could be looking at a very fast and very permanent reversal.

i've often wondered, though. we don't know what controls the sun, and the idea that it operates in some kind of entanglement is not particularly exotic, anymore. we seem to be increasing the heat on our little planet, in our little system, in our distant galaxy. what if we're a part of a living system, and that system has other ideas?

don't pretend you can debunk that. you can't.

iirc, i corrupted the 32-bit version by converting it to 64-bit, and then couldn't re-open it in the 32-bit browser - and that was fine, at the time. but, it doesn't help me reconstruct data since mid-2017, which was a long while ago, now.

as mentioned, it was mostly research done in the browser. legal stuff. still. it'd be nice to rebuild it.

i'm trying a plugin.

i can't get the history for my 32-bit browser, but i remember transferring it into the 64-bit browser, so that's actually not that big a deal - it wouldn't have any meaningful comments to retrieve, i don't think. i do remember having to log into the cbc site using the 32-bit browser, but that data should be retrievable from the profile.

and frankly, i should be able to get any meaningful information by cross-referencing with the google search history - but i don't think there is any.

there's a 20 mb file there that i don't know how to open, though. i should figure that out and then delete it to start fresh.

the only reason i keep the 32-bit browser installed at this point is to use google voice, as it doesn't work right with the 64-bit browser.

this is such an information overload over and over and i'm absolutely running in place, but i think i've got an efficient algorithm in place now, if i can just catch up.

there's stuff posted as far back as 2009.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbDgSDTJv38&lc=UgzDwtA9pql797vNlkt4AaABAg

they were asking him the wrong question, as they have been conditioned to by NWO-stooges like alex jones. the question to ask paul martin is:

"sir, do you think that you are more qualified to determine the cause of the collapse than a council of engineers and architects?"

once he said "no" and it was agreed that the experts have concluded that there were explosives, the questioner should have drawn on his background as a lawyer to help him construct the obvious chain of logic.

i didn't find what i was looking for, but i did learn that this exists:

https://www.youtube.com/feed/history/comment_history

i missed some things, and i'm going to have to cycle back around.

that being said, it should allow me to be more complete as i move forwards. i was previously trying to operate out of my firefox history, which was imprecise. this will get every single one of them.

so, i'm actually going to have to spend the next few days consolidating local files and clearing the comments out. once i get caught up, stating that i'm done a specific month will mean i've also cleared out the firefox history and both of the youtube profiles.

so, the same thing happened again last night, and i slept again all day today.

let's try this again and hope i can stay up....

apparently, my transcript is mostly done and will be e-mailed in the morning, allowing me to kickstart a few things for friday. it's going to be too cold to leave the house tomorrow or thursday. we'll see.

for right now, i'm just getting back to trying to find that review. i left off last night unable to find it, and unwilling to move on. there's a few more spots to look...

the stock market is not in any meaningful way a measure of the strength of the economy, and only vaguely represents the value of any specific company.

however, it is an excellent measure of the amount of money in the economy.

it follows that removing money from the economy will eventually result in declining stock values, and that the more money you remove, the steeper the decline. likewise, a decision to create more money will always lead to increasing stock values.

while the situation is always reversible, the decision to create or destroy money has a time lag in terms of how it affects the markets. right now, it would seem as though the dow will likely see 20,000 again before it sees 30,000 the first time.

yeah, it's gone.

and, i don't think i can remember the night well enough to rewrite it.

but, let's see if i can find a reference to it in the vlogs.

i think what i did was write a reflection of the night itself, then not do an actual show review. so, there's a narrative of the adventure, but no actual analysis. then, i accidentally deleted it...

i think i posted it to google+.

i'm going to try one of those download-all-the-data things and see what comes up.

i've been having some difficulty getting used to an overnight shift, but i've at least made some progress on the electrical.

no transcript yet, so i guess i'm not going anywhere tomorrow.

i got my other pair of airwalks in and they're actually new shoes, so i'm going to have to call sport check in the morning to return the first pair as damaged.

my led lights should come in this week.

i'll need to make a number of calls tomorrow, but everything else is pretty much on hold until the transcript comes in. so, hopefully i can get some work done overnight, without falling asleep.

what it smells like is pepper.

i've never been pepper-sprayed, but it's kind of what i imagine pepper spray would be like.

and, i guess it's having the kind of reaction that pepper spray would have, too, isn't it?

it should be absolutely obvious that this is not my site, as the interest list is not remotely similar to anything i would demonstrate an interest in. stated bluntly, i absolutely despise everything about hip-hop. i think it's the personification of the decline of western society, and i'm never going to change my mind about it.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChFC3O4nKgg5zGbqoqkmBSA

insofar as youtube is concerned, deathtokoalas is a dead handle. i will not be resurrecting it. if you see it jump up elsewhere, be confident in realizing that there is almost no chance it is actually me. and, if it is me, you should be able to link to it from this page, somehow.

surely, i must be typing on youtube somewhere, secretly? i'm not. and, the reason i haven't been utilizing youtube as a platform recently is because i don't like the interface anymore - something i was upfront about when they separated the interfaces. when youtube cross-linked to google+, it made sense to use it as a social networking platform, because comments by heavy users like myself would crosslink back to a profile that could likewise link out to a store (in my case, bandcamp). now that the platforms are no longer integrated, commenting on youtube is like typing into a black hole - it's just another anonymous comment, buried in the thousands of others. it's a waste of time.

nor am i easter-egging - i'm centralizing this because i want to make it easier to find my writing. i want everything accessible from one place so that nobody has to wonder whether it's me or not; i don't want this ambiguity, or these question marks.

but, i had somebody steal my handle on twitter, too, and i really don't get it. why do people feel the need to steal handles or set up fake profiles? get your own fucking handle.

so, i'd like to make a public request that whomever set this profile up either delete it or change the name on it, please.

i'm going to have to write something or other, but i'm going to put it aside for a little bit.

see....if i write the review, it's going to be dated to right now. today. and, i am going to be writing old reviews of shows, starting around mid-2017. but, i want to be sure i haven't lost it before i start writing it.

so, it will be at the top of the list of unwritten reviews - unless i find it, or otherwise get a better understanding of why it doesn't exist.

i noticed this afternoon that running the hot water in the kitchen really improved the air quality. so, i've put a pot of hot water out in the bedroom, and it seems to be making a difference. this is indicating to me that the primary reason my throat is sore is due to a lack of humidity. i'll have to keep experimenting with that, and keep trying to separate the aridity in the space from any second-hand smoke from upstairs or outside.

i think that admitting to hearing voices from god is a pretty strong disqualifier for running for dog catcher, let alone president of the united states.

listen.

i actually don't think it's implausible at all to suggest that somebody like rachel maddow is just literally a paid propagandist, on the payroll, an actual literal cia employee.

i have no evidence.

but it wouldn't remotely surprise me to find out that somebody else does, or that this kind of relationship with the intelligence establishment is actually normal amongst major news broadcasters.

i don't talk about russia. i've explained this.

my hypothesis - and it is only data driven in the sense of pointing out that the data doesn't support the official outcomes - is that the cia rigged the 2016 election, and blamed it on the russians. i will retreat to "voter suppression" if challenged, but i think the fraud was deeper than that. the russians are just being used as a decoy. the real motive was to keep hillary out of power, as she is seen by the security state as a serious threat to national sovereignty. but, the russian narrative has the added utility that it can also be used to take down trump, once hilllary is disposed of.

basically, the idea is that hillary is so off-the-wall corrupt that even the cia was afraid she was too much, and blocked her from winning. the fear was that she would just act in the interests of the highest bidders, which may be incompatible with the country's longterm strategic interests. her completely extralegal destruction of libya at the bidding of the saudi theocracy, and the outsized focus that the shadow government placed on it as a kind of terrible sin, suggests that the influence of oil money may have been a particular fear. my evidence is circumstantial, and largely inferential, and i fully accept that i wouldn't be able to defend it in court, or to get a diploma - but the premise that a smart, independent researcher could gather enough evidence working in their basement to indict the cia is fantastical thinking, on it's face. you couldn't possibly expect something better from me, or anybody like me. but, the idea is that this is the shadow government at work.

so, my hypothesis is that, contrary to the media narrative, it was trump that was the elite's actual preferred candidate, and he was put in power by the american security establishment to block clinton from winning. they then tried to cover it up by blaming it on the russians. so, why waste time getting lost in an obviously manufactured narrative?

but, this same russian narrative then has the added benefit of being useful in taking trump down from the inside, as he was hardly an ideal candidate, himself. what they really wanted was pence, and getting him installed is the end game in this take down of clinton from the inside.

it seems like pence started to be more aggressive in his disagreements with trump, especially around china, on the day after the midterms. while i don't think that trump has the faintest idea of what's happening, it would not surprise me at all if pence were aware of it.

so, it seems like the next phase of this is about to kick in - and i would expect that pence will be sworn in by the time the 2020 election happens.

i don't think i did an actual show review, but i'm pretty certain that i wrote a review about my experiences during the day - but i also vaguely recall accidentally deleting it. hrmmn.

i'm going to watch the vlog and decide whether i should write something up, now.

during this period, i would have normally written the review in the space where i uploaded footage, rather than in the vlog itself. but, i didn't upload any footage. so, i might have posted it to google+, instead - but it's gone, if i did.

i just remember taking about the rain, and the price of beer, and the kids that didn't know how to roll a joint, and then the strange experience of a seated disco concert in a bourgeois venue. the chickens. i wrote this up. but, that was over two years ago, now, and i'm not sure i'm going to recollect it so well.

i slept, so this is a new day. and i'm going to eat, first.

the weird thing about the smoke from upstairs is that he only seems to smoke when the kids are there. so, am i mistaking something else for the smoke? is it a food by product? are the kids tracking in smoke from somewhere else, and am i that sensitive? is he just letting his daughter smoke in the house? or does he find the kids that stressful, or what?

i have nothing to go on, right now, besides my sore throat and persistent cough in reaction to the stimulus of polluted air.

did i delete my review of the steve reich show in 09/2016 or just not write one?

i dunno.

i think i need a nap, and i'll work it out from there.

i've been coughing all night and i don't know what to do. i'm clearly dealing with bad air quality, but i can't pinpoint a source. so, i may have to order an air quality test to determine what it is and how to react.

he may be running a dehumidifier upstairs; i'd like to run a humidifier, or at least leave large bowls of water around the apartment. but, he's coughing, too. so, i'm left to wonder if he might think he wants dry air, but really doesn't.

or he might be smoking. or we might both be reacting to the neighbours. but, it still seems to be coming from the walls.

i have enough fights on the go right now and can't deal with another one. but i'm not sure i can deal with this, either.

ugh.

i think i need to win one of the big lawsuits and buy a condo - that's the only way i'm going to be able to get some fresh air in this society. you'd think it's the most basic human right there is, but it seems like it's a privilege for the upper class.

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-everybody-moving-to-likely.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-idea-of-canada-on-united.html

i want to clarify a point.

these comments i'm posting to 2016 were not "deleted", or at least not in the sense of being removed with the intention of destroying them. in fact, most of them have been sitting on youtube the whole time.

what happened, rather, is that i began to notice that posts to google+ were disappearing, so i archived the page to prevent it from being deleted. i don't know who or what was deleting posts at google+.

and, yes, i know that blogspot is run by google...

this is taking a long time due to external factors, but i actually intended to have this reconstructed months ago. and, i never intended to hide anything, i intended to save it!

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-deplorables-comment.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-healthcare-spending-as.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-apparent-non-existence-of.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-unusual-emerson-polling.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-polling-fallout-from.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-idea-of-politicians-taking.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-irrelevance-and-actual.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-benefits-of-electing.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-ideological-equivalence.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-astrology-and-amazing.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-clintons-seizurecollapse.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-google-winning-long-game.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-friendship.html

it's over two years later, and i'm reliving this while rebuilding my blog. i appear to undergo a second batch of aphasia around 52:00, which has me wondering what i consumed on this evening.

i'm not the type to black out; i don't have a history of it. i have a few stories with vodka as a teenager, but these occurrences have been very rare, since. i nonetheless initially assumed that i merely drank too much, in the absence of any evidence otherwise. while i still cannot prove it, in hindsight i do believe i was drugged on this night, and that this moment of aphasia is suggestive of it, as aphasia is a known side effect of date rape drugs. and, frankly, i was clearly too sober upon coming-to at 6:00 to have drank myself under.

in the long run, i had a series of negative encounters with security at this bar, who accused me of drinking too much on repeated occasions. i do concede that i was incapacitated on this evening, but i am skeptical that the cause was alcohol consumption.

there were strong signs of a sexual encounter, but i have no memory of it. at the time, i was more concerned about blood tests (i came back clean) than retribution. nonetheless, if anybody has information about the evening to help me reconstruct it, i would appreciate it.

i mean, what is the guy thinking?

did he think it would be funny?

what a fucking idiot.

fwiw, i am also now pretty sure that it is the guy upstairs that is smoking, and i'm just appalled by that, and don't know how to react. i can hear him hacking and coughing, as he's smoking.

so, it seems like the fucking low life really did coerce a non-smoker into his basement with a non-smoking lease, with the full intent of smoking in the building, himself.

and, i'm just astounded by it. i'm disgusted by it.

i'm going to focus more on the stuff with the cops for now, and deal with him afterwards.

yeah....i'm not sure it would help now...

if i were a more wealthy person, and i had a lawyer, and it came to me or my lawyer's attention that officers were being sent to my home to arrest me without a warrant, i could have run away and sent that lawyer to the justice to argue that the officer is statutorily bound to seek a warrant. but, what good does that do me, now? these are the same arguments i would make in a civil case.

i've mentioned before that my primary concern at the time was avoiding any perception that i was resisting arrest. i didn't ask anybody if they had a warrant, and don't think it would have modified anybody's behaviour, if i did. however, i yelled and screamed to see a judge for most of the time i was in custody, unsure if i had access to one overnight (and i don't think i did, in hindsight.).

i'm going to keep thinking about this, but, for right now, i should get back to what i was doing.

i've already missed the deadlines, and this is very blurry.

i think what i'll have to do is wait for the opird response, as the opird is a more traditional administrative body. but, it's not going to let me frame the issue the way i want to.

hrmmn.

what i'm looking for isn't habeas corpus, though.

habeas corpus is a review over the grounds for detention, and that happened, and it was ruled there weren't any. but, it wasn't a review over the grounds for the charges - which should have been dealt with in a warrant request. so, the bail hearing transcript is helpful, but not sufficient in reconstructing the missing component.

and, regarding the cheese wrappers...

i'm thinking i should wait it out. it seems like the technology is currently in development.

an apparent problem is that the fda won't allow for the recycling of food packaging into more food packaging for contamination reasons, which is perhaps overly cautious - they are melting the stuff down. nonetheless, it means that you can't recycle cheese wrappers back into cheese wrappers. as a lot of this packaging is actually engineered for specific purposes, that makes finding something to do with it somewhat challenging. some cursory research suggests that you could convert this particular blend primarily into plastic bags, at this timer.

it would be nice if somebody would just warehouse it, then. well, the idea is to keep it out of the fucking landfill as much as it is to actually reuse it. i'd be just as happy to send it to an empty warehouse in detroit until somebody figures it out. you know?

so if anybody wants a pile of pet/evoh black diamond parmalat cheese wrappers...

ok.

so, if i were to try this, the question i'd have to put to judicial review is not whether the officer should have made the arrest, but whether the officer should have sought a warrant. and, i'd be looking at a correctness standard primarily, and a reasonableness standard, second.

the thing is that you can't determine what a judge would have ruled, right. there's a spectrum. and, judges - unlike cops - have independence.

so, the intent would be to get a ruling that states that the officer acted outside of his authority in making the arrest - and i think this is actually blatantly obvious, in canadian law. i was not caught in the act. and, there was no evidence that i posed anybody any harm. i was at home. so, he's supposed to get a warrant. clearly.

then, what? do we send it to a justice for a ruling? do we use the justice's statements at the bail hearing? do the reviewing judges make the decision?

i think this is novel, granted. but, i think it's a good, idea, too - and that this kind of enforced oversight is something worth fighting for.

what would happen if i made a request for judicial review to determine whether the officer had a right to make an arrest?

i feel like this is the fundamental question at hand.

it would perhaps be unusual, but would it be wrong?

i guess i need to see the bail hearing transcript, first. and, i need to get a response from the opird, too.

so, to recap, we're looking at a civil case over:

- s. 7 & 9 & 10a & 12, arbitrary detainment. warrantless arrest on a hybrid charge, and no cause presented for detainment. the arrest shouldn't have happened at all, as no evidence could be produced to prosecute with.

- s. 8, illegal search/seizure. if it is true that i was illegally detained, and that the arrest was unjustified, i was illegally printed while illegally detained.

- s. 6, mobility rights. the illegally obtained prints are preventing me from travelling abroad.

- s. 2b), freedom of speech/expression. i am not looking for a law to be changed, as there is no law to change.

again, i'm left to wonder if my situation is so egregious as to be unique, because i'm not immediately finding information on s. 6 related to the question of fingerprinting on withdrawn charges.

the charter was written in 1982, so the americans have two hundreds of precedent on us, here. but, what i'm looking for is an argument around the idea of due process, which seems to be more developed in the american jurisprudence.

i was arrested without a warrant, and charged while in custody without a judge ever even looking at the evidence. when the justice looked at it, i was released with no meaningful conditions. so, there's no due process, there, and i am, in fact, currently being denied mobility rights in the absence of it.

it's as strong an argument as the rest of it.

and, it goes back to the question of a lack of judicial oversight in the arrest process.

the answer is that you shouldn't print somebody until or unless a judge or justice orders it.

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

but, if i haven't been clear, the place where the system failed here was that the cop arrested me without seeking a warrant, or even obtaining the evidence - it was purely on hearsay.

i was arrested and fingerprinted on hearsay, and no judge would have allowed that to happen.

we need to reassert the necessity of judicial oversight in the arrest process.

ok.

there's a process, and i'll be pushing it forward as far as i can take it. let's hope they just delete them quickly.

but, i'm going to include mobility rights in the charter challenge, anyways, as a mitigating factor - because i have already had them impacted by the frivolous charges. i mean, this isn't a hypothetical that kicks in if the application is denied - this has already happened.

in the worst case scenario, am i willing to appeal a judicial review to a real court in order to challenge the law that says you can't destroy prints on a secondary offence? well, i think i'm evidence that the law is overly broad - this is essentially a rule that says that any accusation of this sort, however frivolous, must be maintained, forever. and, if i find myself in that situation, it would necessitate that i would have to do it, and demonstrate that the law needs to be changed, as evidenced by the fact that i can't get my prints destroyed. i guess it's sort of circular logic if you're coming at it from a certain perspective, but i can't let the system get away with this.

there should obviously be a discretionary process. even if the nature of the accusations are very serious, that doesn't mean a false accusation should have lifelong consequences.

i mean, this is a serious problem.

the system needs to enforce the warrant requirements far more strenuously. i am now a victim of the officer's behaviour.

and i may have to sue the officer, personally, for damages.

criminal harassment is listed as a secondary offence, which means i may get my print destruction request denied.

yet, the charges should not have been filed. there was no warrant. they were dropped due to a lack of evidence.

if they deny the request, i'll have to include it in the constitutional challenge, as a denial of mobility rights.

so, i finished with my calls yesterday and decided to take a nap from 15:00 until 19:00 to try and cycle myself back around to an overnight schedule, so i'm taking advantage of lower time-of-use rates. there's no longer any reason that i have to be awake during any specific part of the day, so why not just stay up all night?

unfortunately, i crashed until around 23:00, woke up to get a smoothie and then crashed again until 5:00 - partly because i was cold. shit.

i was at the point where i was so hungry i was going blind, and possibly undergoing ketosis. i had two of those kid's meal burgers on monday night and snacked on those raisins all day tuesday, but i hadn't had an actual meal since early on monday morning. i mentioned that my schedule dropped a week, which will be good for my budget in the long run, but i was at the point where i just didn't have the choice. so, i got up to eat, and then crashed again until around 15:00.

i need to have longer than 12 hour days, certainly. but, i need to be eating in off peaks, and i need to not be sleeping during down peaks, if i'm getting my point across. i can't and don't want to sleep from 7:00 to 19:00 every day, but i want to make sure that the period that i do sleep is always in that space.

at this point, i'm no longer interested in taking a shower or putting those clothes away until i get back from my errands on monday. i'm just waiting for the bail hearing transcript before i put in the file destruction request, file the discrimination suit & do the foia requests for the civil suit. right now, i want to get back to the rebuild, and try to get close to the hook-up by monday.

i still can't get through to the health unit to get the file destroyed. i'm getting the idea that this may take a while, and that i may have to find a way to get a judge to order them to do it. ugh.

i got some information back on those cheese wrappers, though - they are pet (#1), but with an evoh coating. i'm now trying to figure out what i can do with them.

but, if things go according to plan, i should be awake and focused on the rebuild for most of the weekend - and should get a lot done.

so, it seems like the most recent chinese containment plan is to arm extremists in central asia to push back against communist expansionism into the region.

that kind of sounds vaguely familiar.

but, it seems reasonable, so i'm not worried. what could possibly go wrong?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/world/asia/congress-uighurs-china-detention.html

it's easy to trot out that old definition of insanity, again - except that one questions whether a different outcome is desirable.

but, this isn't isolated. it's part of a centuries long struggle. and the only real intent is to produce instability.

conservatives just aren't very good at budgeting, huh?

i think the issue here is the time requirement. he appears to be arguing that he shouldn't go to jail over unpaid fines - which is what is about to happen - rather than that he should be allowed to pay the fines down personally. the payment option being presented is just a scheme to avoid jail time.

and, debtors' prisons would be a pretty unconstitutional - and pretty uncanadian - concept, for sure.

it follows that the judge can skip the issue discussed in the article by striking down the criminality around indebtedness, which is the more direct question. but, i might suggest that it is overstepping it's bounds by striking down the law, in the absence of a clearer breach - merely stating "but, i'm in debt and i can't pay it off" isn't a demonstration of a rights restriction so much as it is a demonstration of mr. leary's fiscal incompetence, and perhaps why it is that he was unsuccessful as a candidate. mr. o'leary made those choices.

there is a valid point, here - he shouldn't go to jail over this. that's too much. he should just be forced to raise the money, until he succeeds in paying it off - or until the parliament decides to change the law.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/powerandpolitics/pnp-tasker-oleary-suing-elections-canada-1.4905684

what?

it's a classical position on the anarchist left to suggest that stamping religion out by force is a nice idea, but it doesn't work, and that anarchists need to be very careful not to alienate themselves from a backlash by appearing to be too harsh on religion, even as they understand that they must be. this is a discussion that goes all the way back to bakunin.

the short answer is that you have to get the people to do it themselves, somehow - and not due to some moral opposition to the destruction of faith, but as a pragmatic reality. if you want a backlash, you use force; if you want to actually do away with faith once and for all, you have to use ideas.

hey, i didn't say i had a good solution, i'm just towing the party line, here.

obviously, when you're talking about xinjiang or tibet, there's a deeper geopolitical context at play.

but, most people don't know that.

it's no surprise - any halfways intelligent person could have predicted that a ford government would run an absurd deficit, as it hands out goodies to it's cronies.

try to get somebody to walk you through the argument that removing rent control will incentivize building low income units. i'm not sure i could even deconstruct that, because i'm not sure i could understand the logical errors built into coming to such a ridiculous conclusion in the first place. obviously, the exact opposite is true, and it's just a policy that awards developers for their generous campaign donations.

now, that said, i actually think that $30,000 is too low of a cut-off for taxation - that number should be something closer to $50,000. but, it should be offset by steep tax increases on the higher income levels. and, they're actually cutting taxes for high income earners...

is this a disaster? sure. but, you could only be surprised if you haven't seen this film before, and i've seen it more than once, already.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-pc-fall-economic-outlook-cuts-tax-lcbo-1.4906718

my only suggestion to the chinese government is that they learn from the mistakes of the past and ensure that their policies to root out religion are not counter-productive. they have made some good progress in rooting out the superstitious beliefs in the tibetan plateau, and should use their successes there as a model.

i've been repeatedly clear about this in the past - i see "religious freedom" as a contradiction in terms, and am in favour of destroying religion using any and all means possible. but, these kinds of tactics have historically not just been unsuccessful but have been counterproductive. today, religion is as powerful in russia as it has ever been. it is important that they don't overextend their hand and in the process produce a backlash against secularism.

and, it is disturbing to me that our prime minister is so intent on aligning himself with the religious right, and the forces of religious backwardsness, in stoking a reactionary push against secularist policies.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-canada-uighurs-letter-1.4906522

so, i sat down yesterday to take a nap and i ended up passed out instead. i've spent the morning tying together loose ends on some things, a lot of it focused on the question of recycling excess plastic.

back in july of 2017, i took a recycling run into detroit to try and get rid of a few things. the recycling complex on holden (near the marble bar) took a number of items, but i couldn't get the whole foods to take anything. i was on my way to a dj set by jello biafra, and didn't want to try and get into the bar with a bag full of used razors, so i gave up and tossed them out. i told myself i'd call ahead next time...

i still haven't called the whole foods, but i understand the situation better, now. what they have is a #5 plastic recycling program drop-off through their house brand, preserve. they should take razors, brita filters and toothbrushes - so long as they're #5. if the store in downtown detroit doesn't take it - and i'll call before i go again - i can try one of the other stores, or even mail it to new york. i didn't really know what i was looking for, i just asked around, and nobody knew what i was talking about. but, they should also take the plastic bottle caps, which is a problem i didn't have an answer to.

i knew they don't take them in the blue boxes, but i've been leaving them in there, anyways, as a kind of act of protest - because they are recyclable, and they should take them. there wasn't a better answer. this might be the answer i wanted.

so, i'll put aside a little box for #5 plastics and plan to take it to detroit, when i can.

i still don't know what to do with the cheese or plastic wrappers, but they may take it on holden if i can get a # for it. and, i have at least found a few places in windsor that will take soft plastic bags, so that i don't have to take them to detroit.

i'm going to put off constructing the other room until the 1st, and do it as a part of the end of the month cleaning.

and, i was going to do groceries today, but i'm going to put it off until monday, because i've cycled around on the meals - i have officially skipped a week of meals. *shrug*. i can wait until monday. so, i'll just wait until after 19:00 before i get everything in motion.

i'm going to try to get through september on the rebuild for monday.

i can't get through to that mental health unit to get a file destruction. but, besides that, the last thing to do is call my grandmother.

i have to point something out about my brief, and hopefully final, experience in the criminal justice system.

i was arrested by male officers. but, the officers i dealt with in the cell were all female - perhaps by intent. i mean, i would have expected to go to a female prison, and they seemed to realize how i ought to be identifying, as well. so, female cops with female-identifying inmates is probably not an accident. after i left the cell, though, these reasons are less compelling.

i dealt with three duty counsels, and they were all female. i dealt with three justices of the peace, and they were all female, too. all of the court staff were female. the staff in the attorney general's office were female. the crown prosecutors were primarily female. and, even most of the lawyers were female, as well. it was frequently the case that the only men in the court room were accused people.

now, i don't know why that is, exactly - and i'm not pointing this out to present an argument against it. my individual experiences do not a systematic analysis make; it could have been a huge coincidence. i'm just pointing out my observations of the situation.

i'll budget it as costs, for now. i should get it recouped one way or another. i'll just have to wait a month to buy the shelves, which is fine - i'd rather be rebuilding right now, anyways.

and, when i sit down to do that in the next few days, i won't have an artificial boundary i have to work around any more, either. i can sleep during the day, again - and stay up over night when the rates are cheaper.

speaking of which, there's a weird spike last night around 11:00 that i can't make sense of. i was asleep. the only possibility is that the freezer flung open, and it was in fact loose when i woke up :\. it's not a lot, it's just inexplicable.

i should hopefully get the electronic document first, and print off parts for the fingerprint destruction request. what's a few days, right? everything - in theory. but, i think it's worth waiting it out to make the point.

so, it turns out that my bail hearing is roughly 35 pages. that's expensive.

but, it's what? 2-3 minutes per page? that's at least an hour.

i was only there for around 10 minutes - indicating that a very lengthy process took place without me.

i didn't want to pay $150 for this. really. but, now i feel like i kind of need to know.

hrmmn.

yeah.

*sigh*.

it's funny, though.

that's what they told me, when i came in, and requested an immediate file destruction.

you should obtain counsel.

right.

i think i did pretty well, thanks.

but, should i wait for the bail hearing transcript?

that's the closest thing i have to a judge ripping this down. & it's coming, anyways. hrmmmn.

if i mail it today, it won't go out until tomorrow, now, anyways.

yeah.

let's see if i can get an answer, at least.

so, i have to send a letter to the windsor police.

ok.

====

Fee Waiver and Expedition Request

I am requesting a file destruction on prints that should not have happened, and I’m going to explain why. While I’m not a member of the bar, I do have a legal background, and this should be interpreted as a letter from a lawyer. If the officer had listened to me in the first place, none of this would have happened.

A part of me wishes that I would have gone to trial so that I could attach a scathing denouncement of the situation by a judge. As it is, I have to point this out - the evidence in the case was never presented to a judge for analysis. How can I be in a situation where I have prints on file that are going to affect my border travel, when the issue was never put before a judge? That is preposterous. & yet, this is the reality I am faced with, due to the actions of a rogue officer.

On Sept 12th, 2018, an officer that I had had previous negative encounters with appeared at my door and asked me to stop applying to an advertisement for an apartment, under threat of being charged with harassment. Now, harassment in canada is very explicit - it specifically refers to threatening behaviour that causes a victim to fear for their safety, and does not apply to behaviour that is merely annoying. Fully aware that my behaviour would simply not qualify as harassment in a canadian legal context (and that attempts to define behaviour that is similar to mine as harassment have been declared unconstitutional by the united states supreme court), I asked the officer to define the term ‘harassment’ under the law. He told me that harassment was behaviour that is repeatedly annoying - and that is wrong. I told him that was incorrect, and invited him to write a report, fully aware that, under canadian law, an officer is required to obtain a warrant to make a charge on a hybrid offence, and that an arrest should not happen, even if charges are filed. I expected that the officer would fail to obtain a warrant, because a judge would understand what harassment is.

Unfortunately, the officer came back ten days later and arrested me without a warrant. I was then held without cause and fingerprinted while in custody, aware that struggling or refusing would be futile, and perhaps harmful. I think the most cursory observation of the evidence suggests that I was illegally detained, and because I was illegally detained I was also illegally printed. I will be dealing with this in the upcoming months.

After seven weeks of obfuscation by the crown, the charges were eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence - no reasonable chance of conviction. Great. Yet, I could have told you that in the first place - and a judge would have certainly stated as much, had the officer sought a warrant, as he is required to under the law.

It is one thing to have the officer(s) make an honest mistake and for an acquitted person to request a destruction after vindication through trial. It is another thing altogether for a person’s constitutional rights to be completely trampled over, and end up printed in a case that no judge would have ever issued a warrant for, and that ends up withdrawn over a lack of evidence. Had the officer sought a warrant, as he was required to, it would have been denied and the prints would have never been taken.

As mentioned, I will be pursuing this assault on my constitutional rights to various ends.

In the mean time, I have had my access to detroit severely restricted by these prints, which should have clearly never been taken. I am a disabled person on a fixed income. Why should I pay for the officer’s error? And why should I be subject to any waiting period at all? Have I not already (unjustly) suffered enough due to the officer’s incompetence, or malice?

Please note that I will also be applying to renew my nexus card in the new year - that I have expedited border clearance as a consequence of my flawless record. Why should I lose that over withdrawn charges that should have never been filed?

I am consequently requesting an immediate destruction, as well as a fee waiver on it.

While I am willing to accept an apology, what I want is immediate action; I would like to be able to get to detroit for new year’s eve at the latest, please. My life has already been disrupted enough, as it is.

the chatham office sent an email to the windsor office last night indicating that they acknowledge that they can't proceed without the "emails". they couldn't get this from the complainant. so the charges are now dropped.

it's a mixed outcome, as i have none of the disclosure i wanted and will need to file a series of foias to get it. and, trust me - i'm just getting started with this.

my immediate concern is in getting the prints destroyed. there is an ongoing investigation related to the officer. i have a bail hearing transcript coming for the discrimination suit. and, i'll need to evaluate the kind of evidence i need for the civil suit.

do i want to do this one thing at a time? well, the outcome of all of these things leads to the civil case, which might be better left put off for a bit.

and i need to call my grandmother tonight, too.

to be clear, this is the order of precedence in reliability of information:

1) grandmother - not a stranger.
2) step-mother - not a stranger, but do not get along.
3) mother - stranger.
4) sister - stranger.

for the record.

i have not had more than a handful of conversations with my mother about anything at all in roughly 15 years, and if you take out a brief period of six months when i did stay with her, i hadn't spoken to her for the ten years previously, either. i'm nearly 38 years old, and i haven't had a meaningful conversation with my mother since i was about 12 or 13.

while i was close to my father until his death in 2013, and actually have a better relationship with my maternal grandmother than i do with my mother, i haven't had a meaningful conversation with my younger sister in that time frame, either - and have really not spoken to her at all since my father's death.

what i'm trying to get across is that, while these people are technically my family, they are in every meaningful sense actually factually strangers. they don't know anything about me at all, and cannot be relied upon to provide the slightest bit of insight about me.

in the absence of any evidence, my mother no doubt interprets me through the filter of my father, which she interpreted through the filter of her own father. it is not possible for this process to lead to anything besides a fantastical projection, which, in the presence of her myriad mental health problems, can only produce a schizophrenic fantasy. the fact is that she would be unable to identify my thoughts or viewpoints from that of a complete stranger - because i am, in truth, a complete stranger, to her. she is not a reliable source of information.

my step-mother and i did not get along well, but at least she is not a stranger. yet, i would not present her as a reliable source of information, either.

if you must, please ignore my mother and especially ignore my sister and consult my grandmother or even my step-mother, instead.

but, listen - i don't want to come down too hard around the question of potential prostitution. remember: i'm on the left. and, it's a classical marxist argument that all sexual relations in a capitalist society are necessarily prostitution. i've been over this before: once you reduce the actual issue to the question of prostitution, the next question to ask is whether or not that's worth prosecuting anybody over, and i'm not likely to agree that it is so long as consent is easily established, which it usually is.

the court isn't likely to accept the argument, granted. but, this classical marxist perspective actually pushes the idea rather forcefully that consent is incompatible with capitalism. but, then, what you need to do is look beyond the person soliciting; taking this perspective doesn't indict all men on solicitation charges, or all women on prostitution charges, so much as it indicts the system for making any relationship between the sexes (and much intrasex relations, as well) reducible to a financial transaction. it follows that if you want to establish ideas like love and consent - real consent - then you need to do away with capitalism altogether. for all the pablum that hallmark wants to push, the marxist view is that love and capitalism are in contradiction with each other.

so, the cynic on the left is actually likely to shrug it off - well, you wanted capitalism, didn't you? then, this is what you'll have. no policing can change the capitalist relation, power must be redistributed. and, if you flip the gender, you just change who is holding the whip - preferable to the capitalist female perhaps, but not a real answer, on the left.

the ck example at least could have been workplace harassment, but let's look at what would have been harassment, and what actually happened (as far as i've read).

suppose your boss calls you up and asks if he can jerk off when you're on the phone. you say no. then, you get fired or demoted the next day. ok - this is a scenario that would have been wrong, and the correct thing to do is sue.

and, suppose your boss calls you over and over again and asks to jerk off when you're on the phone, even though you've said no. well, that's certainly harassment, even if you get promoted the next day.

but, if you say no and nothing happens - or you maybe even get promoted - then i don't think there's anything wrong with that. that would neither be morally wrong, nor would it be against the law, in my estimation. a very strict workplace may interpret it as a problem, but it would probably be the boss that gets to sue for wrongful termination, in such a scenario. if i were the judge, i would consider that wrongful dismissal.

further, if the boss asks and you say yes then that's not anything more or less than a consensual encounter. so, this idea that you were forced into it by some kind of imagined system of hierarchy or something is not an argument for anything except schizophrenia. the hierarchy is an abstraction, useful for certain arguments on the left, but it is not a concrete thing that actually exists, and it cannot be referenced as an actual entity in a legal context. that is an argument from conspiracy; it's like blaming aliens, or the illuminati. perhaps the consent was attached to an assumption of favouritism, but insofar as that is true, it's a type of prostitution, and the wrongdoing would fall upon the person consenting under questionable premises. and, in situations where people are promoted in exchange for sexual favours - which i believe was the case in the weinstein fiasco - the correct charges are related to solicitation, because that's what is actually happening.

but, to have a consensual encounter and then decide afterwards that it didn't have the intended outcome is not a coherent accusation of harassment under any existing concept of the law. and, it follows that i don't actually think that louis ck is guilty of anything at all - except, perhaps, behaving in poor taste.

so, why are all of these men just stepping aside and letting themselves by destroyed by ridiculous charges? franken is the worst example - he didn't do anything wrong. so, he should have pushed back. hard. and, you'll notice that the media narrative around the ck issue (and, i don't know anything about louis ck, nor do i think i'd find him very funny, based on what little i know about him) has shifted from "consensual" to "non-consensual" masturbation, due to some kind of neo-hobbesian, post-modernist claptrap about being unable to consent in the existence of a hierarchy, which is essentially an argument for slavery.

"i was just following orders, sir.".

the reason they're just rolling over is that they're sexists. they may not have done anything wrong, but they don't want to fight against the girls - because they're men, and men don't do that.

i'm neither a man nor a sexist, so i don't have any problems hitting back at a girl, when attacked - although that has nothing to do with my situation. i'm being charged by a faceless corporation, which i communicated with solely through an employee named "ryan". and, i'm being accused of repeated communication for the purposes of filling out a rental application. nonetheless, understand this - gender equality means that a man has the obligation to retaliate when attacked by a female. if you're just going to rollover and take it, you're just a stupid sexist idiot and you deserve what you get.

but, that is the change that needs to be asserted - men need to get used to the fact that women are going to fight them now, and they're going to have to defend themselves, when they do. that's equality.

i am leading by example, here.

when you get bullshit charges filed against you, you should counter-attack with abandon, and tell the peanut gallery to fuck off.

what's the update on disclosure?

the crown is delaying. i gave them a request for further disclosure on the 24th of october, and requested i come back for a follow-up on the 31st. they were insistent that they needed until the 14th, and the justice agreed.

the request never made it to chatham - meaning we just wasted the last the three weeks. and, they're going to get shit for it tomorrow.

so, what is going to happen tomorrow? well, i was supposed to schedule a resolution meeting, once the crown had analyzed the request. but, the crown never received the request. so, i'm going to have to go in tomorrow and complain about an unreasonable delay, then basically state the same thing i stated previously. the crown may claim there is no further disclosure, but how can the crown respond when it didn't receive the request? and, this opens up a more complex set of circumstances, as there is a conflict on the file. did the crown withhold the request on purpose?

so, i'm going to make my first formal request for a dismissal; the crown isn't taking this seriously.

i've also made a request for a transcript of the bail hearing, and plan to file discrimination charges within days of it getting here. i was waiting for documents, but they're clearly dragging their feet for a reason.

i haven't heard back from the office investigating the officer.

this is annoyingly stupid. and it's just going escalate from here.

so, i got the oesp to confirm that the credit is gone.

i called the hydro office to explain the plan of letting the oesp cut down the bill month over month and ask what they'd do if i followed through with it, and they had no meaningful response. "just check your bill". ok. i guess that's what i'm going to do.

the process is apparently rather mechanized, so i don't have a lot of space to talk to a person, or get a human response, and that's sort of what i was concerned about. if they mail a disconnection in february, can i talk to a human being to get a straight answer? i think that i should be able to get the point across well enough. i mean, they can see my usage, they can see the oesp, etc - it's a convincing argument. but, you can't argue with an algorithm.

i tried to insult an algorithm once, and i was impressed with myself, but i don't think it had much of an impact.

i did learn something, though - i learned that they can't disconnect in the winter. so, i'm kind of safe until probably march. and, the argument should just get stronger as it goes, and the balance comes down.

i just need to be conscious about usage for the next few months - the less i use, the faster it flips, despite very diminished returns over the $27 service fee.

so, that's the first thing for the day.

i have meet queer arabs and queer turks, but they didn't identify as muslims. and, no, you can't be a gay muslim - or at least not genuinely. you're just a living a lie, and if your family still talks to you, they're waiting it out.

but, i need to be clear on the point, if i haven't been (and i have been): i'm not arguing for racial intolerance or racial inequality. what i'm arguing for is a greater level of social coercion towards open apostasy.

i want the women to burn their hijabs in giant festivals denouncing patriarchal oppression, and i want the men to feel comfortable embracing each other.

....because it is these right-wing social values that threaten me, not their fashion decisions or their skin colour.

it's a waste of time for everybody, as there's only two possible outcomes. the first is a secularization process, which leads to an end point where we're not talking about muslims anymore but arabs or pakistanis or somalis or whatever that have apostatized and denounced the faith, and then it's no longer a discussion - they're just some liberals with some brown skin, and nobody on the left is going to care about that. the other is that they hold hard to their religion, in which case that wall needs to come up, and it just needs to be explained to them that their views are not consistent with a secular, liberal or, dare i shudder to say, "progressive" view of western democracy - that they're going to find their values better reflected in the republican party.

see, and then the solidarity lies on a racial level and it starts to get weird, because the left should support the rights of muslims to be republicans and be accepted by conservative institutions. and, then what? do democrats write laws that force the republican institutions to accept muslims as equals? in a functional sense, this is what democrats and leftists are actually arguing for - the right to register these people as republican voters.

...because there has to be a breaking point, eventually. the left can only stand up for people they are fundamentally in opposition to for so long, and if there is ever any level of actual success, the muslims themselves are not shy in admitting that they will instantly bolt to the right.

so, what's the point?

the left needs to give the muslims a choice - convert or get lost.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/opinion/sunday/do-muslims-have-to-be-democrats-now.html

or, you could show up with a swat team and yell at everybody to be civil, right?

*shoots gun in the air*

you're going to stop being uncivil right this moment. or else.

or else what?

the importance of speech rights is in direct proportion to the level of offence taken at them.

that is, the more offended you are by what i say, the more important it is that i'm able to say it.

when somebody says to me that "i'm offended", i imagine they must be a 90 year-old woman that hasn't missed a day of church since she had her last child.

and, i frankly don't fucking care - except in the sense that it's comical.

if you won't fight for your rights, don't be surprised when you lose them.

expressions of moral outrage are comical - it's the comedy jackpot, the higher plane, the whole point of telling a joke.

and, i mean - do you not realize that i'm trying to offend you?

do you think it's some kind of accident that you're upset? because the joke is less in the offence, and more in the reaction of being offended - that's the part that's really funny, the puritanical reactions against moral turpitude and statements of self-righteous superiority. that's where the laugh is. that's what i want to hear.

a few decades ago, i would have jokingly asked a sarcastic question, "what are you going to do? put me in jail?". nowadays, that's becoming increasingly less farfetched. so, these arguments need to be had in the legal arena, and these attacks need to be beaten back.

people need to STOP APOLOGIZING and start FIGHTING BACK. you take these freedoms for granted. but, freedom is not something to put on a shelf and forget about, it is something that must be constantly exercised. and, when people challenge your rights, you need to assert them, not apologize for having them.

it's not a triviality.

it's the basis of a free society.

so, a muslim and a republican walk into a restaurant during pride and sit down and order a glass of water.

the waiter comes by and asks "are you guys together?".

and, i just don't understand how we got to this point where the left is complaining about being offended. that's supposed to be a right-wing thing.

nobody imagines the young liberal activist as clutching her pearls - that's what the old conservative woman is supposed to do. and, the young liberal activist is supposed to enjoy watching her squirm, and laugh at her for being uptight.

i really think the (real) left needs to stop giving a fuck, and start poking people in the eyes. when somebody says "don't say that, it's offensive", the proper response should be to yell it into that person's face 40 times, and laugh at them when they start crying.

and, i intend to lead the way.

so, go ahead and tell me you're offended - that's just an affirmation that i'm doing something right.

but, what if i told you that i actually enjoy offending people?

"j, did you actually make the football team?"

yeah.

"matt didn't make it though."

matt needs to either lose some weight or gain some weight if he wants to play football.

"i see. and, dave didn't make it?"

dave was apparently lacking in skills. i dunno. i didn't talk to him about it.

"but, you made it? really. i'm just surprised. you don't come across as somebody that would be interested in football."

well, i'm not, really. it's more a dad thing.

"right. but i still can't believe you made the team."

well, i'm a fast runner, and i can actually catch. i'm very healthy; i'm in very good shape. i know football is thought of as this violent sport, but the fact is that there's always going to be a place on a football team for people that can outrun the field.

"right. i guess that not everybody on the field has to be physical and confrontational. so, what position do you play, again?"

left bench. they tried to move me to the right side a few times, but it didn't really fit. i'm a natural on the left bench, though.

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

i actually quit the team midway through the year because i didn't want to skip out on math class. that was the excuse i needed.

oh, and by the way...

i ain't afraid of no ghost.

i never did the knopfler thing myself, but my blues guitar teacher considered him a dominant influence, and it is nice to hear him get going once in a while.

nearly let my cherry ice cream melt in the bulk barn, while looking for yogurt covered raisins.

"you weren't supposed to use less than average. nobody uses less than average.".

somebody doesn't know what an average is, clearly.

but, how much did it cost to have those absurd light bulbs running in the bathroom like that?

about $40.

it's actually going to be closer to $30 in service charges.

there's a fixed rate of $26.94. so, even if i don't use any electricity at all, i still have to pay $27. then, they charge $0.0174/kwh - which is no doubt the actual cost. that $27 is just theft.

but, on 75 kwh, i'd be paying 26.94 + 0.0174*75 = $28.25 on service fees, on what is a $5-6 dollar electrical bill. so, it's going to come to around $35, after the taxes cancel out.

that means i'm looking at saving something more like $10-15 a month, rather than $25 a month, and it might take all year to balance it out.

but, it still doesn't make sense to pay the bill. if anything, it makes less sense to pay the bill, because i'm just paying exorbitant service fees.

presuming that $270 credit is truly lost, i just want to work out the logic in not paying the bill - or why paying the bill doesn't make any sense.

suppose i pay the bill in full, tomorrow, and that i'm able to cut my usage down to around 2-3 kwh for the next few months by just closing the lid on the laptop when i'm not using it. 2.5*30 = 75 kwh, which is going to be some like $5.00 in actual electricity. but, then they're going to charge me $15 in service charges, so the bill will be around $20. the credit is $45, so i'd be building up $25/month.

if that works itself out, i'll have a credit of $25 for november, $50 for december, $75 for january, $100 for february, etc. but, what i've learned is that i can't access this money, so it will just continue to build. i made $270 in credits over ten months in the last apartment - after paying down the first bill.

if i don't pay the bill, i'm going to be down $47 for september ($30 setup...) and i'm going to be looking at around a $60 bill for october, minus the $20. let's say it's $100, even, together. but, that will $75 when the  bill gets calculated for november, $50 for december, $25 for january and then breaks even when the bill gets calculated for february, some time in mid march.

you could say "that's a long wait. just pay the $100.", but you're missing the point - i can't do anything with that money, otherwise.

now, if i have access to the other credit, then that's different. i can take the $270 and use it to pay the difference off right away. but, if i don't, i'm just throwing away $100 for no discernible reason.

it's not clear why the province designed the system they way it did, other than hoping that most people wouldn't know about it and wouldn't apply. but, i think you need to blame them, and not me, as they designed the system in such a way that incentivizes me to miss payments.

i'll call them tomorrow to get a straight answer.

yeah.

so, all the government offices are closed today, and i'm going to have to put everything off until tomorrow.

*shrug*.

ok.

this is what i'm going to do.

i'm going to call the oesp tomorrow and get a straight answer on what should have happened to my $270 credit. i'll then decide whether i want to pay the setup fee or not.

i kind of don't think i should have a balance here, at all. let's get an official answer...

checking the electricity usage from last week, i've figured out the following:

both halogen type j bathroom lights - 0.24
just 100 W - .11
just 150 W - 0.13-0.15

*just fan - 0.1
fan + grow lamp - 0.24
fan + led - .06

both kitchen spotlights  - 0.04
just halogen kitchen spotlight. - 0.04
led kitchen spotlight < 0.01
two kitchen leds - .02

inside hallway (two halogens, 1 led) - .10

*given that the led is negligible, i must have had something else interfering with the fan,initially. later testing seems to uphold the second reading, indicating the fan alone was probably half the initial reading.

since fixing the lights in the bathroom, my usage has fallen back to more normal levels, which is around 3.5-4.0 kwh. that should give me a monthly bill around $30.

so, what am i going to do? am i going to pay this thing?

well, i'm guessing the bill is going to be around $60 in total, and that i should get about $20 on the rebate, indicating it should be around $40. but, that amount is entirely in fees.

likewise, the first bill only used about $7 in electricity, and the rebate would have covered it, but it's $47 due to service fees.

i've done this analysis before. the problem is not that the cost of electricity is high, it's that the utility company is adding on service fees and gauging customers for no apparent reason.

if i don't pay the bill before wednesday, i'm going to have something like $100 owing, and it's all going to be in service fees. i'll have paid the cost of the actual electricity. this is really ridiculous.

i'm considering paying for the setup fee and letting the oesp catch up ojn the rest, which i'll be able todo by being extra careful with the laptop. even if the laptop is only running around .07, which is probably a little low, that's still 1.68 a day, which is about 45-50% of the daily total. if i can cut that by a third for the first couple of months, it should help me catch up.

i just don't want to reward then for the service charges. rather, i want to cut usage to compensate for them.

what the democrats should do is pay off some staffer to take hillary clinton down on sexual harassment charges.

i'm not joking.

they need to treat her as an existential threat that must be immediately annihilated. scorched earth. blitzkrieg. total destruction.

the democratic party should be distancing itself from hillary clinton, right now. they should just throw her under the bus. flat out. no compassion.

she's a loser.

deal with it.

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-iphone-7.html

i've always been straight edge in spirit, if not in fact - and i've gone through years of abstention several times.

and, i've identified as a punk since i was a kid.

it's not such a crazy idea. who knows.

i will say this, though - given that marijuana is now legal in both michigan and ontario, it is plausible that i may have smoked my last cigarette, ever.

i'm sure i'll probably smoke a joint again at some time in the future, and i'm sure i'll probably have a beer again, some day. but, i'm not sure i'll ever smoke another cigarette, and would be just as happy if i never do.

is living on top of a marijuana addict for ten months going to have the long term effect of turning me straight edge?

i doubt it.

but, it could be a while before i have any interest in inebriation, again. a long while...

also, i'm coming up on six months straight edge, and have little interest in going out anywhere any time soon.

i may even skip christmas this year.

i'm just not into it.

i was hoping to get through september by the end of the weekend, but i lost most of saturday to a systematic link update over the review site and i've spent most of the last 12 hours sleeping. i hadn't really slept since thursday afternoon, so i guess i was catching up.

i'm beginning to conclude that the remaining smoky smell in here is a combination of dry air and dust. i might change my mind, still. i mean, it's certainly making me cough and irritating my throat and nose, but, since i finished the laundry last week, the only thing i've been able to really tie it to is the heaters. the heat gradient (it's below freezing.) right now should be defining negative pressure, so i shouldn't really be getting pollution from outside, although it does seem to be a continuing annoyance.

i'm going to hope that the dust comes down as the place is put in order. it will probably never go away entirely, but hopefully it gets a lot better. and, i'm just going to have to get used to drinking a lot of water to offset the extreme aridity.

is there still some chance that somebody is smoking upstairs? i can't rule it out. but, if that's a part of the problem, it doesn't seem to be the totality of it. i'm more concerned about the pollution in the neighbourhood, right now, even if somebody is up there smoking. i'm going to have to find a way to seal the windows up.

the immediate solution is to drink more water - a lot more water.

i'm going to get through a bit more this morning, stopping before i get to the major vlog from the night that i may have been roofied, and woke up in some stranger's car. but, i need to put it aside for the day, at least - and i might not get back to it until thursday.

another thing that people don't realize (and i had no idea, either, until i looked into it) is that the leading cause of homelessness amongst youth is not addiction or mental illness but....

homosexuality.

that's the sad truth: a very strong plurality of the kids you see on the street were kicked out of their homes for the crime of being queer. it follows that addressing attitudes around this very specific issue should cut homelessness rates by nearly 50%, and also that the shelters should be organizing themselves around the very specific issue of dealing with queer youths.

but, you have to take the time to figure that out before you realize it.

the comment about staying in school was unfortunately ignorant, enough that this idiot should probably get fired, as the people getting hit by this are mostly dealing with mental or physical disabilities.

but, it's encouraging to see the right narrative being presented.

https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/lack-of-affordable-housing-blamed-for-windsor-s-homelessness-1.4082229

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-two-specific-polls-about.html

i don't want to be underweight, and it's not just about my health, it's unattractive.

sorry.

it's easy to look at the vlogs and claim i had a perfect living arrangement and was stupid to screw it up, but that is wrong.

1) the unit was infested with bugs.
2) the building was full of second-hand smoke.
3) there was some kind of chemical leak - probably a natural gas leak - that was giving me migraines. i haven't had a migraine since i moved out of there.
4) the neighbourhood was infested with stray cats, who left piles of feces in the backyard.
5) the neighbours were continually chain smoking in the backyard, making it hard to keep the window open, to fight the a/c.
6) the building owners were constantly harassing me.
7) the neighbourhood was becoming increasingly dangerous, and at this point is flat out unsafe.
8) there was some kind of magnetic field in the neighbourhood that was disrupting my equipment.

the harassment was not minor; it ranged from leaving feces on my window sill (which i have video evidence of) to leaving cigarette butts at my front door to entering my unit when i was gone. the intent was clearly to try to get me to move out. i had no choice but to try and push back, but i could not have kept any money awarded to me as compensation (unless in the form of  rent reduction), so the attempt from the start was to try and change behaviour.

what do you do when the building you live in gets bought out by a pathological liar that is harassing you on a daily basis and wants you to move out? there's no good answer, it's just a terrible turn of events. your only real options are to either try and force the owners to sell by bankrupting them and/or sending them to jail, or to relent and move out. i initially picked the first option, then stepped back when they made what seemed like a legitimate step to change their behaviour - only to realize within days that it was simply another example of pathological dishonesty, and antisocial behaviour, indicating that there wasn't a solution besides bleeding them dry, and staying there would be a long slog of constant court battles - i was going to have to sue them over and over again until they had to sell.

i have argued in this space that the ruling against me (eviction for personal use) was incorrect, and i do believe that i would have won an appeal. i even suspect some corruption on the court, unfortunately. but, i was living in a roach-infested ashtray that was giving me headaches and had bad wiring that was interfering with my ability to record. i had a moment of clarity: staying there no longer felt worth fighting for.

i did not lose money on the move, in fact i gained last month's rent from the city, so i did not have any damages to recoup, but came out ahead by $700. they also covered moving costs. on the other hand, the process must have cost them between $5,000-$10,000.

so, i could have re-opened the harassment case after i moved, but i wouldn't have been able to benefit from it. on winning the case, i would have had to declare the money as income, and handed it back to the odsp office. so, why bother? i wanted to look forwards. the purpose of the case was to try and get them to stop the constant harassment intending to get me to move, or to bankrupt them if they wouldn't. once i had moved, the purpose became purely punitive, and it seemed like they had already been punished via the costs of hiring representation and appealing to the board. things were looking up; i had better things to do.

i did keep an eye on the unit to see if they were renting it, as that would give me a path to damages i could claim via rent reduction. it doesn't look like they did. i suspect they realized that the unit was not half as valuable as they thought, after all. who knows how much money they've sunk into it, trying to renovate it...

as we know, the living situation in the apartment was not good for me. but, the difficulties i had in the apartment do not negate the problems i had in the previous basement, which were a consequence of a number of changes: installing the gas furnace seems to have created leaks that gave me headaches and broke the electrical wiring, my decision to quit smoking made the unit difficult to live in, gross neighbours moved in and the building changed ownership, with a new owner that was a dishonest, capitalistic nihilist. it would have been better if i would have gotten it right the first time, but i had to move out of there, and would have even if i hadn't quit smoking.

hopefully, it works out better, here, once i do the things i need to do to get the unit in proper order.

but, i don't look back at that as something lost - i'm better off being out of there.

the guy that i signed the lease with was honest, if not very smart.

the woman that took over was neither intelligent nor honest, but a pathological liar that would repeatedly balls out lie to me to my face in ways that were not difficult to detect. she seemed to think she was smart, and that her intelligence level was correlated with her ability to trick people into thinking things that were not true. but, she wasn't fooling anybody, she was just an obvious liar.

i've been over this point in this space repeatedly and don't see the use in continuing on with it. i guess the truth will come out when i finally get to publishing the vlogs from that space.

i just need to state it again: this woman is not merely a little bit dishonest, she is constantly lying, and cannot be trusted to state the most basic truths.

and, listen - there is no ambiguity on the point. the bugs in the previous basement were oriental roaches and looked like this:

oriental roaches live in drains and sewage systems, cannot climb walls, and move very slowly because they eat a low nutrition diet of sewage. so, they are both the grossest type of roach and the easiest to deal with.

as i am not an etymologist., and bugs can be difficult to id, there was an initial point of less than certainty. but, it was a short amount of time before i was certain about it. and, looking back, there is really no ambiguity.

further, it's not like the property owners denied it - they were forthright about it, and willing to work with me to help me contain it. they claimed they were 'american roaches', and i did see a couple of roaches that i think were german, but i was able to deal with them by blocking holes in the electrical heating. these ones were faster and more reactive to stimuli; they would jump into holes in the wall before you could get them. i was there from mid-2013 to late 2017, and i don't remember seeing these roaches - at all - after the first few months of living there. the steel wool worked like a charm.

the ones that kept coming back were the orientals. what the property owner told me was that they came in through the sewer lines, which were open in the back room. i was able to get a look at it at one point, when i finally forced them to get an eel in to clear the drain, and it's some kind of ancient system that is really an open sewer. i agreed with the analysis, but i was convinced they were coming in around the back of the unit, rather than under the front door.

we decided that it would be best if they let me deal with it, i just requested that they buy me the pesticides. so, i'd ask for some more spray every once in a while and liberally go over the back spaces with it.

there's quite a bit of documented evidence over the course of the vlog - i kill roaches, take pictures of their dead bodies, etc. i'd invite some analysis. but, it's not an open question, and not a debate i had when i lived there - they readily conceded the point.

so, i do, in fact, appear to be in the northern range of the boxelder bug, as i'm in that little bit of canadian range around detroit.

i'm not an etymologist, and identifying bugs can be tricky, so i might be wrong, but i'm pretty sure it's not a roach - i spent quite a while studying roaches in the last basement, and this doesn't fit the description of any i've seen. to begin with, it's very small compared to most species of roaches. but, this picture is pretty close to spot on:

i just caught it stumbling around in my blanket when i was napping; woke up to it, initially thought it was a phantom. i'd never seen one before....

and, it is in fact the first bug i've seen in here - excluding a couple of small centipedes.

apparently, they live on trees and winter inside and it's not something to be concerned about until i start seeing a few more of them. but, i'm wondering if this was the smell i was noticing.

i can chase some bugs out if i have to; if this is the worst of it, it seems like a minor annoyance.

she got a friend to do it, in the hallway. i think it was before algebra class, because i remember it was in the c building, the old building at pius, which was still haunted by the ghost of dan akroyd (and who you gonna call when it's the ghost of dan akroyd?) from the days when it was a real catholic school, with nuns and priests, and i don't remember taking any other classes in the c building that year.

hopefully, the remaining aura of dan akroyd's sense of humour is helping the dead souls of the people that were killed there, years ago, by an angry child. this was all years before my time.

finite math was in the portable. calculus was in the new building, which was what? a? b? i don't remember. so was english, physics, bio & chem - although i think i took bio & chem the year before. computer science was downstairs. and that's the eight i took.

most people took 6 pre-university courses; i took 8 because i didn't know what i wanted to study, and i wanted my options open. clearly, i was leaning towards a science-based education. that said, i would have liked to have taken a music course as well, but there wasn't really an option. a lot of people took geography, but i felt this was pointless. i somewhat regret not taking history. were there other options? i think economics was an option. the only mandatory course to graduate was english.

so, it was definitely algebra class.

i remember coming in after i told her friend 'no', and she was shaking and distraught and embarrassed and...not exactly crying, but clearly on the brink of it. again: still a teenage girl, and on some level the smart ones are the manic ones, right? she was visibly very upset.

so, i tried to be rational, and i think it worked.

"listen, i don't want to go to prom. i have my own reasons. that doesn't mean i hate you. i'm a little surprised by the request, but i'm not going to get weird about this. and, we can keep it between the three of us. so, let's just be rational about it and move forwards. i'm sure you'll find somebody else."

she was a smart kid, and she instantly perked up and went back to her normal self - stoic, distant, introverted and kind of barely there.

but, i don't remember actually speaking to her again after that.

fwiw, the 'ol brookings institute ought to be on guard - trump is due to break in and steal some documents, any day now.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/11/08/2018-exit-polls-show-greater-white-support-for-democrats/

so, a muslim, a republican and a liberal walk into a film festival. the popcorn-tender asks them - who is your favourite director, oliver stone or david lynch?

the muslim immediately responds "oliver stone".

the republican says "david lynch".

the liberal says "neither. i don't believe in capital punishment.".

so, what's the difference between a muslim and a republican?

muslims prefer to stone you before lynching you.

it really doesn't help your argument to point out that the kkk were historically attached to the democrats.

so, what's the difference between a muslim and a republican?

the colour of their hoods.

no, listen.

this is what i need you to do.

if you go through my blog and replace the term "muslim" with the term "republican", you need to ask yourself if you're still upset or not - because my criticism of muslims is exactly the same as my criticism of republicans, or of christians in general, and if you react differently then you need to explain why. so, if it upsets you when i say it about muslims, but it doesn't upset you when i say it about christians, or republicans, then you need to ask yourself why that is.

& to be as clear as i can be, if i haven't already been, my opposition is to any kind of organized religion, or, more broadly, any kind of conservative institution - including the democratic party, itself. that is, i'm not making the argument you hear on the right that criticism of christianity should be held to the same standards as criticism of islam, but am rather introducing an argument from the left that criticism of islam should be as deep and as frivolous and normal and routine as the widespread criticism of christianity is. and, yes that is the correct argument from the left. if you want to argue that islam should not be criticized because it might offend some muslims, that is an exceedingly right-wing position.

i have pointed out before that there are two reasons that you might react differently to a criticism of islam than you would to a criticism of the republican party (and, again, i criticize both in this space). the first is that you don't actually realize that republicans and muslims are essentially the same thing, with the caveat that muslims are far more extreme than republicans, in general. there are neither moderate republicans nor are there moderate muslims. so, the first explanation is ignorance, and i suspect that this is the proper explanation when dealing with most activists on the ground - whether they've been taught to see the issue as racial rather than ideological, or they're just mindlessly following a trend, the basic point is that they actually don't have the slightest idea what they're talking about, they just think they're doing something good. this is a broader cultural problem that needs to be addressed at the organizing level - the debate that needs to be had here is about the longterm consequences of renormalizing these value systems. and, this is where the second explanation asserts itself - there may actually be some people organizing on the left that actually uphold these values, and see islam as a way to reverse a moral decline in society. it is these people that are most dangerous to the left-wing project, and that need to be defeated in open debate, not the mindless foot soldiers on the ground, who will shift allegiances with the wind.

i've spent my whole life fighting against religious value systems, and i'm not going to stop or tone it down or dial it back just because it is unpopular this month. rather, i intend to win the debate, over time, and put the left back on a proper footing towards increasing secularism.

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-usual-calvinist-criticism.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-implied-racism-in-focusing.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-idea-of-2000-being.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-idea-that-markets-will.html