can the arab world get the idiots to release the fucking hostages, before there's nobody left to kill? or is that what they actually want?
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
i want to deconstruct the logic on this scurvy-generating policy of slapping import taxes on american orange juice (how many indigenous kids are you going to send to the hospital over this?), and then rationalizing it by saying you can buy orange juice from mexico or brazil instead. this naive application of market theory is going to argue that orange juice imported from mexico or brazil will remain lower in cost because it's not being taxed, while orange juice from the united states will price itself out of the market. this will harm american producers, who will no longer be able to compete in the canadian market.
is that what's going to happen?
well, that's not what i learned in school about markets or how markets work.
rather, what i learned about markets in school is that the orange juice industry is an oligopoly (bananas are a monopoly. have you ever seen the price of bananas vary from store to store by more than a cent? the banana industry is so controlled, it's like an organized crime syndicate. the upside is that inflation is low. the only commodity that's experienced less inflation than bananas is marijuana. shrinkflation aside, it's still $10/gram, right?) and that orange juice producers inside the oligopoly will consequently cooperate to set prices in a way that is consistent. what that means is that a modern, evidence-based, non-naive, non-ideological analysis of how the orange juice industry actually works in the real world (really existing market theory) would rather predict that if you put an import tax on american orange juice then manufacturers of orange juice from brazil or mexico would react by cooperating with american producers and increase their prices proportionally to maintain price consistency. mexican orange juice producers would not seek to compete with american orange juice producers, as that would not be in their self-interest, which is to maintain high prices to maximize profits for investors. in an oligopoly, competition is destructive and harmful and to be avoided at all costs, as a primary corporate objective.
oligopolies can be upset by the introduction of new manufacturers seeking to enter the market by undercutting the oligopoly, but it's hard to see where that's going to happen, unless we start growing oranges in greenhouses in southern ontario and the okanagan valley, which is not the worst idea i've ever heard. that may force the oligopoly to compete, until the new manufacturer can enter the oligopoly, or be targeted by it for destruction, dismantling or hostile takeover.
the result is that this attempt to minimize inflation by choosing commodities with replacements is naive and a poor understanding of how markets actually function in the real world. the import taxes, as regressive consumption taxes, will simply be inflationary across the board in the commodities being targeted. they will not harm american producers, they will just lead to inflation in the targeted commodities. further, this deconstruction of the orange juice oligopoly would apply to most other commodities being imported and most other industries, which are oligopolies or cartels in the real world, and which don't want to compete with each other, but want to avoid competing with each other. that's why we have huge government departments trying to force companies to compete with each other to salvage the facade of the make believe ideology of market economics - they don't want to compete, they realize competing is dumb. markets that have competition are called unstable; that's a definition. an unstable market is defined as a market that has competitive firms. all unstable markets tend to oligopolies as stable outcomes, which you can derive using differential equations, by using game theory (the nash equilibrium) or by just taking as an analogy to blackbody radiation or any other steady-state equation. markets tend towards equilibrium between producers and consumers; they don't tend towards competition, but towards the abolition of competition. then, the government has to step in and kick them in the ass and yell at them "start fucking competing.".
if we had real anarchy in the colloquial sense, the real end of government, the first thing that would happen is that this naive government creation we call the market economy would completely evaporate, and be replaced by feudal cartels and landowners colluding with each other to reduce everyone around them to slavery, leaving the workers and slaves and serfs and migrants to organize to try to survive. from that origin point, the workers could start building the kinds of societies that anarchists in the technical sense have long imagined and desired, by starting from the bottom up in collectives and communes, intended to size control from the oligopolies and feudal lords and cartels. markets cannot exist without governments to define, oversee and ultimately regulate them, as nobody would agree to these contrived and often childish rules that are in nobody's self-interest without an organized system of violence and control threatening them to behave via a monopoly on violence. no government means no markets.
that's what i learned in school, anyways.
if what carney ends up doing is reducing or cancelling the relatively progressive (in the sense that the wealthy pay more) consumer carbon tax and replacing it with a regressive consumption tax on imports by wrapping himself in the flag to sell it (and from this point on, i will refrain from using the word "tariff" or the terminology of "retaliatory tariff". i will instead strictly use the terminology of "import tax" or "regressive consumption tax"), that will work out to a massive shift in the tax burden from the wealthy to the poor, which is exactly the kind of policy that bankers love and have been pushing for the last sixty years. since 1970, we've seen an astronomical downloading in the tax burden, and continuing that shift seems to be the entire point of carney's fiscal strategy. he's also calling for a cancelling of the carbon tax rebate and to replace it with income tax cuts on the "middle class", which in liberal party terminology is just code for the rich. it's a massive shift upwards in wealth, consistent with and an extension of everything else that has defined the neo-liberal era, fiscally. i've been nailing trudeau for ten years for being too right-wing on economics, but he seems like a socialist in comparison to carney.
worse, he wants to balance the budget. this is not the time to concern yourself with the irrelevance of balanced budgets. nobody cares about balanced budgets, and to the extent that it concerns your average voter, most people just hear "cuts in services" when politicians talk about balancing budgets. canada is not in the poor fiscal position it was in in the 90s, and we have no motives to incur the kind of difficult cuts in government spending that we had to endure through the 90s to chase off the vampires at the imf, which mark carney is basically one of. the issues we have in front of us are poor healthcare delivery, mass poverty, a housing crisis, drug addiction, environmental degradation, climate change....we should be talking about dramatically increasing government spending as a percentage of gdp to deal with these massive problems we have in front of us that are in a large sense a consequence of previous attempts at budget balancing, not talking about balancing the budget. the imf isn't on our ass right now at all. in that sense, carney is very much the wrong person at the wrong time. shifts in the tax burden from the rich to the poor and cuts in services to balance the budget is not what canada needs at this time, but what canadians should be rallying around each other and strenuously fighting to avoid. that prescription will severely harm us, make us weaker and make us easier to invade.
i'm not going to support these shifts in fiscal and tax policy.
rather, i'm going to aggressively campaign against them and do everything i can to explain them to low income people so that they understand what the proposals are and don't vote against their own interests.
the simple analysis is that mark carney is a banker and his fiscal and tax policies reflect that fact. they're exactly what you'd expect from a banker. do you want to vote for a banker? does that sound like a smart choice to you?
bizarrely, increasing consumption taxes might be popular in canada, right now.
but it's not a good policy and not an effective response, and it will just hurt low income canadians, while inflicting minimal harm on american capital. the real winner is the federal government, which gets a new revenue stream.
if they really wanted to fight back, they'd bring in export taxes, not so-called retaliatory tariffs.
broadly speaking, these retaliatory tariffs will have little effect on purchasing decisions by canadians and therefore have little effect on foreign suppliers. rather, they are just a means for the government to generate revenue, and are in a real sense an undoing of the gst decision in the 80s, which shifted import taxes to sales taxes. we're bringing back the tax importers used to pay before mulroney abolished it and converted it into a sales tax.
if that's what we're doing, can we cut the gst, then, too?
if it's just a revenue generating mechanism, which is what it is, it should be strenuously opposed as a cynical way to introduce a tax increase. why should canadians pay for this? let the americans pay for it. tax them, not us.
i'm not an economist. i have a math degree, some experience solving economics problems in calculus and algebra courses, a few economics themed math courses (third year linear programming was very economics focused, 4th year automata theory is a computer math course with applications in economics and linguistics, 4th year game theory had major applications in economics, i took a number of courses in differential equations from 2nd-5th year which are used in engineering and economics, etc), economics 101/102, a three year sociology of law degree and some experience reading policies, as a 44 year old. the number of math courses i took that were cross-referenced as economics courses, together with economics 101/102, would give me enough credits for a minor in economics, if i applied for it. that's it.
i would also have a minor in physics if i applied for it due to the number of math courses i took that were cross-referenced as physics courses, on top of the degrees in math, computer science and sociology of law. i am a little bit short on minors in music and english lit, but not by much. i have only taken a total of two history courses, both in greek history (classical and byzantine). then, there's a lot of topics where i have a credit or two - biology, chemistry, psychology, philosophy, etc.
so, it doesn't take much education or very deep reasoning to figure out that these supposed "retaliatory tariffs" will have no meaningful effect on american suppliers and are just a regressive tax increase on canadian consumers.
if you paid 30% more for florida sourced tropicana instead of mexican sourced walmart orange juice, you'll pay an extra 25%, too. etc. these aren't major price hikes per unit, it's a dollar per orange juice jug, or a couple of extra bucks for a 40 of whiskey. it's just a regressive, revenue generating consumption tax, and we're being suckered into it by politicians wrapping themselves in the flag to promote it.
see, this is why i didn't want ford talking to trump.
ford thinks that by lifting the export tax he's making progress towards a resolution that can benefit both sides.
in trump's mind, he just tricked the fatass dummy ford into removing the export tax, and then suckered him with a 25% tariff. and, basically, trump is right, that's exactly what he did. trump then defines that as being "smart" and "good negotiating". he "wins". further, he's proven that canada is weak and stupid and easy to take advantage of, so he will therefore continue to take advantage of canada in the future.
that's how america operates and has operated for 250 years.
if trump actually understood tariffs, he'd be dangerous.
but ford is a buffoon and he couldn't negotiate himself out of a parking ticket. he should at least send a trade negotiator. he won't, he'll go himself.
the feds need to lock him in a closet and tell him not to come out until they're done.
trudeau's government seemed to be intentionally exceedingly pro-muslim, and that seems to come from a personal interest in the religion from the man himself, who was famously photographed in blackface as an arab sheikh before he became prime minister and seems to view the aga kahn exceedingly fondly, perhaps as result of his mother having had an affair with him, as one of the dozens of women he was sleeping with as a young british aristocrat.
justin trudeau has a far greater resemblance to the aga kahn than he does to pierre trudeau.
google "young aga kahn".
margaret was in the right place at the right time. the public line is that she was friends with his sister. right.
this is going to have to be addressed and moderated one way or another. it would be helpful if carney can set that in motion, even if he doesn't last very long in office.
well, we have to have a reason to think we're not americans and for a lot of people, the government of the country at most levels as the primary example, that's lacking. if canada wants to have the same culture, follow the same ideology, use the same laws, etc as the americans, then why not just become american? an american citizenship card is a valuable item.
i don't want to support a canadian government if it just wants to be all about free markets. if carney and ford and smith want to work a room by pushing market theory and competition, they may find a muted response. those are american ideas. one of the basic differences between canada and the united states has been that canada is a more socialist country, more willing to use government to solve problems, and less interested in market economies. if you ask a canadian on the street to come up with a reason they don't want to be americans, besides a beer commercial, the first and last thing a lot of us will say is we don't want to lose our healthcare.
there's an opportunity to enforce this, but the governments we've elected recently aren't aligned with historical canadian values. it was nice to hear chretien talk on sunday, as he might have been the last truly canadian prime minister and, at 91, he might represent the end of a culture and be the last of his people, so to say. yoda, indeed. justin trudeau, mark carney, chrystia freeland, michael ignatieff, stephen harper, doug ford, danielle smith, etc have their differences, but they all share the characteristic that they are culturally american and have spent their entire political careers wanting canada to be america lite, either as some kind of california north or as some kind of more enlightened texas. that's not going to work with a lot of people, who are going to wonder what the point is.
if we remember that being canadian means using government, and use it to retreat from the reliance on market-based solutions we've seen dominate politics since the turn of the century, we might find more people want to remain canadian. if we keep copying america, we might find people think there's less purpose to it, and they may start to look at the positives of the alternative.
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
jean chretien called for export taxes in his speech to liberals on sunday night. like i said before,
chretien is this weird yoda character that speaks broken english and is somehow always right about everything, despite coming off as not very bright.
if there's a keeper of the canadian swamp, it remains mr. chretien. none shall pass.
if this is the policy being written up - export taxes on potash, aluminum, oil, electricity - trump had better back off before he gets hurt.
let's understand what trump did.
ontario put a 25% tax on electricity going to the us, in response to the tax that trump placed on his own people to buy canadian goods. trump's taxes are not targeted, and make no sense. he's not trying to protect industries. he's not trying to help businesses. he's just trying to dissuade american consumers from buying canadian products, broadly. it's not intended to help america in a specific way, it's intended to hurt canada in a broad way. it's the economic equivalent of a terrorist randomly shooting rounds into a crowded shopping mall, which is a fitting analogy for an american president.
what canada is saying is "if you want to tax your people to buy our products, we're also going to tax your people to buy our products, but we're going to tax the items that you have to buy from us, because you don't have any choice, and we're going to use it to mitigate the job losses resulting from your attempts to hollow out our industries".
in response, trump increased the taxes on his own people even higher.
well, we should increase our taxes on them even higher, too, then - but ensure those taxes are targeted on goods that they can't find an alternate supplier for.
i want to clarify that canadian governments should mostly choose materials that are purchased by businesses to put export taxes on. the idea is to transfer the costs to american companies, because that is what trump is doing, he's targeting canada's corporate sector for hostile takeover.
some steel workers may benefit from retraining. we have a housing crisis - tell them to become construction workers. i mean, it's the most obvious keynesian make work plan in the world sitting in front of us - take the laid off workers and tell them to build houses. in terms of sterile, by the book economic metrics that nobody actually cares about, boosting housing makes everything look better on paper.
steel is a gross, dirty industry, anyways. i would rather offshore steel production. let the americans ruin their lakes.
if i was a conservative voter, and i was asked to pick between pierre polievre and mark carney, that would be a no brainer; i would pick carney in a second. polievre would be roundly defeated if carney were to primary him in the conservative party.
however, i'm not a conservative, i'm a socialist on the far left of the liberal party, and my ballot choice - which does not consider polievre, but is between carney, singh and may - makes me rather unenthusiastic about voting for the liberals.
i'm going to suggest that you're going to see a lot of volatility in the polls, as the right abandons the goof polievre for the far more acceptable carney and the left finds itself in a crisis point, as it clearly doesn't want to vote for singh, for good reasons. he's a religious nut, and not in line with the left's tendency to embrace secularism, which is a longstanding issue with the ndp, which has always had this very undesirable religious streak that has sent secular leftists to the liberals instead.
a few months ago, this looked like a yawny election where little would change. i know the liberals were polling badly, but i didn't take that seriously. now, it looks like the conservatives might find themselves cockblocked by the liberals, who may just end up teetering to another minority, as they cave to the greens.
i could only vote green or not at all at this point.
the outcome may not look much different in terms of seat counts, but it would be an upending of the political spectrum that is long overdue. the conservatives keep electing goofs and running them for prime minister, and conservative voters have long been looking for some escape mechanism. they don't have another harper to save them from the goofery, apparently. carney is exactly what they want. conversely, left-liberals have become increasingly frustrated and alienated by trudeau and the switch to carney - at 86% of the vote, apparently, according to the liberal politburo - may indicate they've given up and moved on.
Monday, March 10, 2025
Sunday, March 9, 2025
Saturday, March 8, 2025
i'm more concerned about carney's apparent authoritarian streak. he didn't want to be finance minister, he wanted to be prime minister. he has to be the boss, in control, but it seems to be more about his ego.
he's probably better off as a bankbencher economic advisor, but he wouldn't do it, because it's all about him and his legacy.
he can't break things the way biden did, and he does legitimately know what he's doing on monetary policy. yet, when people seek absolute power like carney is, it's almost always a good idea to stop them from getting it.
"handling" trump is not the right approach.
the right approach is adapting to trump.
personally, i would argue that that is the one issue where carney is clearly best qualified, by a large margin. it's everything else that i don't like about carney, and which i'm far more concerned about, given that trump has 2 years max and carney might be in office for a while.
there's some articles up suggesting trump wants to invade canada for the reasons putin invaded ukraine, which would be difficult to defend against a strong analyst. is canada inviting chinese troops into the country?
but, the history is the other way around. canada is not a lost province of the us; the us is a lost province of canada. the united states declared independence from canada in 1776.
maybe, one day, we'll get them back.
Friday, March 7, 2025
if the us picked a fight with some block in europe, would canada come to europe's defence?
no.
in fact, a foundational shift in the trudeau government was to kiss washington's ass. it was decided that pushing back on iraq and cuba wasn't worth it. if trudeau were in office when bush invaded iraq, he would have signed up for it because fighting it in principle wasn't worth it.
we see how foolish that is now, and how right chretien was. chretien is this weird yoda character that speaks broken english and is somehow always right about everything, despite coming off as not very bright. he wrote most of the legislation we give the elder trudeau credit for. it was utterly stupid to intentionally flip the policy and bail on the global south. we may now suffer tremendously for that.
asking europe to pick between america and canada isn't going to help us. that is clear, and they shouldn't be faulted for it.
does donald trump think he's thomas paine all of a sudden, or something? he keeps talking about common sense, as though he even knows what that even means.
i bet that your average trump voter would guess that thomas paine is ringos starr's new wrestling name, tommy pain.
they'd let him use his sticks in the ring, right?
i don't understand what the intent or purpose of "cutting off" things to the united states is. is it supposed to be "punitive"?
they're our only market in many cases. they can buy things elsewhere, and in fact want to; we don't want them to. we want market access and they're trying to take it away. "cutting off" things us what they want.
if i was in a fight with somebody and i was given the choice between denying them access to goods or services at my own cost or increasing the price of goods and services, it is clear that my self interest would be the latter. i would always choose raising prices over denying access, every time, without serious debate.
perhaps the obvious truth should be considered: if the behaviour of canadian politicians aligns more closely with american interests than canadian interests, as has often been the case since mulroney and the fta, maybe that's what the truth actually is. perhaps this is a charade and the truth is that ford, trudeau, the bulk of the old tory media and the rest of the punditry-political-industrial complex are actually working for american lobbyists and that is why they are talking about "cutting off" trade with the americans at our own demise and cost and their actual longterm benefit, rather than maintaining it by aggressively trying to cash in on it by introducing export taxes.
when some deduction doesn't make sense, perhaps the axioms should be questioned and reanalyzed.
Thursday, March 6, 2025
i watched part of the state of the union. it wasn't that different than previous ones.
this is what i want to say: trump is worth opposing, but not on the grounds the democrats want to oppose him on, which are mostly the small number of things he should be supported on. in fact, the democrats are going to largely avoid opposing trump on the things he should be opposed on, because they actually agree with him.
trump comes off as uncouth, granted. people criticize him for not really being rich because of how he acts and talks. further, he has some ideas that we haven't heard in a while, and some of them are bad and some of them are less bad. however, fundamentally, i don't see a break from the status quo neo-liberal washington consensus, where the democrats and republicans agree on everything i'm opposed to, and they argue about things i either don't care much about (gun rights) or actually think the republicans are right about (russia).
do you think that colbert looking guy running the house of representatives sitting behind trump supports tariffs on canada? he doesn't. he hates it. he's waiting trump out. the bankers do this from time to time in history, and it exposes what the truth is, which is that trump is the puppet, and the real oligarchs are using him to sit on power and get what they want done, which appears to be an end to this stupid war with russia first and more tax cuts second.
i will eventually pick a side and align with a party, but it's not going to be in the next four years. what i see is the same thing i've seen since the end of clinton, which is my entire adult life - two parties that i disagree equally with in their core principles, which they largely share, and can equally support 10-20% of the policies of, albeit my support would be for different policies on either side. i would disagree with 90% of what democrats support and 90% of what republicans support, but would agree with random policies pushed by either party.
i'm going to largely agree with what trump does as commander in chief, which is his actual job, amidst howls by the democrats, which i will mostly ignore or flat out criticize. i was vehemently opposed to biden's foreign policy, which i thought was catastrophic and brought us to the brink of nuclear war. i will strongly disagree with trump on his economic and tax policies, which democrats will probably actually vote for. i had minimal support for some of biden's domestic policies, but i largely thought he was too right-wing on economic issues and his legislation had no chance of accomplishing what it purported to accomplish because it relied strictly on voluntarism and the use of market theory, when he should have been passing laws about emissions levels and then sending people to jail for breaking them.
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
i sample a small section of the good neighbour policy speech in my 2004 symphonic work, "interplanetary isomorphism".
this composition is complete, but the recording/ep remains unfinished. i have been intending to complete a remaster of this track for years, which would close the ep, but i've been fighting off all kinds of bullshit and haven't been able to.
it is featured as the centrepiece of my upcoming eighth record, {e}, which will be backdated to 2005 when it can be finalized.
all sound in all trivial group material created by the identity element, the one. that's the point. it's solely me; strictly me. nobody else is ever invited. any attempt to participate would be violently stricken.
the missing link between inri and the trivial group is pythagoras, and i've created an akousmatic project to fill that in, but it's still in sketch stages because i simply can't get any work done. i was reading reconstructions of pythagorean philosophy in 2004. via pythagorean philosophy, which may have had indo-iranian origins via thracian influences, the trivial group is the origin point of the platonic tragic hero, jesus, which inri is named after.
there are three official inri lps and one official deny everything lp, two official jjjjjjjjj lps and one official ftaa lp between the inri project and the trivial group project, which culminates in a 2xlp set. all of these projects in the main sequence (inri, deny everything, jjjjjjjjj, ftaa, trivial group, cycles per second, tetris, pi, proverbs) only include me as a member, but may include guest contributions from others. not the trivial group; if it's filed as trivial group, it is me and only me and strictly me and nobody else ever at all. otherwise, it's not the trivial group, it's some other group that is isomorphic to c2 or c3 or c4 or k4. there are also some side projects (rabit is wolf, cynicide collaboration, throatmotor, etc) with others, but mostly with an old acquaintance named jon that was reliant on me for bass for a few years.
canada will not find friends or solidarity in europe. that's why i've been arguing against supporting them. that's the point.
if what trumps wants is hemispheric dominance, which is the monroe doctrine and not "manifest destiny", and he's looking to make a deal with the russians to get it, then the solution is to look towards other actors in our own hemisphere, not to poke monroe in the eye and pine for a return of colonialism by calling the french back into louisiana. vive la nouvelle-orleans et saint-louis libre? let us instead advance the good neighbour policy of fdr, retooled for canada, and look to make friends in the south.
the reality is that almost everything we buy from the united states could be grown or manufactured in mexico and already is and is already on our shelves. i guess it depends where you shop. i'm poor, so i do almost all of my shopping at walmart, and they don't import anything from the united states, it's entirely from mexico.
there are large countries in south america with advanced economies: peru, argentina, chile. brazil has a lot of the same problems as america, except far worse, but is a very populous nation with tremendous potential. it might be a secret nuclear power.
we are better off waiting this out and expecting it to be short-lived, but if this goes on for a while and the americans really want a new civil war for control of the hemisphere then we'll have to understand that and build alliances in the hemisphere to contain them with. right now, it's a little too early for the canadian government to be talking about an american containment strategy, but it needs to be ready, as a contingency plan.
right now, we should just slap massive export taxes on the giffen goods and perfectly inelastic commodities to try to milk them of their own stupidity and wait it out.
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Monday, March 3, 2025
Ford has previously warned that a 25 per cent tariff on most Canadian goods at the Canada-U.S. border could result in the loss of 500,000 jobs in Ontario.
so, what happens if you shut down nickel and electricity exports? you just make it worse; you just create more job losses. you reduce revenue streams coming from taxes. you create a negative multiplier that is recessionary, especially in northern ontario. this could devastate northern cities; this is retarded.
the americans are shooting themselves in the foot and, in response, we're shooting ourselves in the groin. that'll show 'em, right?
but, if you keep the industries running and hike the price via export taxes, you save those jobs and create a revenue stream to help the workers in the industries that do get shut down by the tariffs.
ugh.
retards. everywhere. you have to be a retard to want to run for office because you have to be a retard to actually want to make decisions for others and control others and implement power over others. what do we do?
the greeks used to pick their leaders in the assembly, and force them to serve against their will, not let them volunteer to run, as they knew that allowing politicians to volunteer self-selects for retards that want power and dominance and control.
no. when i call you retarded, that doesn't mean i think you should be forcibly sterilized. it just means i think you're a fucking moron and should be called out publicly for your worthless, abject fucking stupidity, and i think that calling people out for being complete idiots is necessary and required and positive.
i ultimately don't like people telling me what words i'm allowed to use. i'll decide how i want to speak, not you, and you can go fuck yourself if you don't like it. i have no remote concerns about your feelings; i'm strictly concerned with my rights to free expression, and if you want to restrict my right to expression in any way, you are my enemy and must be smitten and destroyed.
until relatively recently, i would generally avoid calling somebody a retard because it was unnecessarily rude and tended to reduce the quality of the discourse. it was just unnecessary to resort to specious ad hominems; i could insult your position, instead of insulting you directly. it was more effective to merely imply you were a retard, and not helpful to actually point it out. it made me sound brash and uncouth. i have a better vocabulary than that. really. however, when these retards on the fake left (they're actually the far right. the left doesn't restrict speech, only the far right restricts speech) started trying to tell me i couldn't use the word, i felt it necessary to start using it just to assert the fact that i can and i won't be told otherwise.
what this is about is rebelling against an authoritarian culture trying to tell people what they can and can't say and how they can and can't think. people of all ages and all political alignments don't like that and are likely to spit in the faces of people trying to control them through policing their language, and kick them down the stairs and tell them to fuck off.
it is actually one of the basic principles of ideological liberalism to reject authoritarian control structures trying to police language or create categories of thought crimes. i consider my insistence on the right to call you a retard to be a left-wing position and those institutions trying to shut me down to be on the far right.
it does not align me with any of these groups at all, and i'd like to see more socialists be more vocal about this. the politics of restricting free expression is a losing political position, and these guys (they are 95% men) have co-opted a foundational principle of the left that the left needs to aggressively and assertively take back from them. this is our policy and you can't have it; fuck off.
shipping oil to the eastern seaboard is not forward thinking. the carbon era is ending, trump will be gone in a few years, and it's generating a gigantic ecological threat for minimal economic gain over a short time frame. they should just leave the system in place and implement massive export taxes. the governor of michigan is trying to shut down the existing eastward movement of fossil fuels, and i fully support her in doing that.
this idea that transporting oil by pipe is safer than by boat or train (or plane) is missing the point. activists opposing pipelines are trying to stop the movement of oil altogether; we want to keep it in the ground.
canada still has massive undeveloped hydroelectric potential. i understand that some environmentalists oppose developing hydroelectric dams because they're conservationists (right-wing environmentalists, conservatives) that want to keep nature untouched. i support sustainable development that uses the science of ecology to develop a holistic relationship with the environment that allows for the continuation of development and industry in a way that doesn't generate a negative impact. we can reroute rivers in a way that is safe and doesn't harm the species that live in them. we should be focusing less on mining and moving dirty oil for the old economy and more on generating clean electricity for the new economy.
i don't want to own a vehicle, i want access to an efficiently run publicly owned electrified transportation system that connects the entire windsor-quebec corridor as a giant megalopolis.
an export tax on oil is also a carbon tax, remember. it's worth supporting strictly on that ground alone.
industries will also find ways to adjust to the tariffs.
have you noticed that the price of coffee has doubled in the last few years? there are apparently climate issues with the production of coffee, but the increase in cost is due to the tariff taxes on the cost of aluminum. the tariffs increased the cost of producing the tins, and the costs got passed on.
in response, walmart has started selling it's coffee in cardboard containers instead, and they are selling their house brand at 50% the cost of the cheaper coffee (maxwell house) and a third to a quarter the price of the premium brand. they are going to completely undercut and rive maxwell house out of business unless they adjust, and i'd expect they will. these cardboard containers are made from recycled cardboard and are more sustainable as well.
coffee is an essential good for many people, including myself. coffee is food. i'd like to start growing it here indoors in a a circular, sustainable manner. removing the large amount of aluminum in the manufacturing process is actually a good thing, long term.
the right move for canada to make next is to slap large export taxes - 100%-200% - on items that the united states gets from us and can't find another source for, such as oil, uranium, potash, aluminum, nickel, gold, canola and electricity.
it is stupid to threaten to cut off the electricity like ford is doing.
he should jack up the price, instead.
then, you take that money generated by the export taxes and use it to help the workers harmed by the tariffs.
i'm still watching the liberal debate.
now is not the time to balance the budget, but three out of four candidates are insisting on doing it. let's remember back to 2015. the ndp were the opposition, and mulcair was running way ahead of trudeau, but then he promised to balance the budget, and trudeau promised to run deficits. trudeau ending up leapfrogging mulcair and winning a majority.
it's not the 90s anymore, but it's not as though chretien ran on balancing the budget. in fact, he faced major pushback for it. balancing the budget was what a very large number of people voted against in 1993. he ran on cutting the gst.
i'm consequently not entirely sure what these people are thinking.
canada is going to need to run large deficits to mitigate the effects of these tariffs. i don't want to hear about balancing the budget, i want to hear about the government absorbing the costs.
none of the candidates are impressing me but three of them are right of centre, and it leaves the remaining candidate - karina gould - as the only option, by default, although she seems to be rather flawed, as well. i'd rather put carney in a technical or finance role than make him prime minister; he doesn't strike me as a good candidate for that role.
the canadian liberals do this every few years, they swing to the fiscal right and run these technocratic candidates, and they can never generate popular support because it's not what people want. the banker is going to become leader, but he won't last long.
the idea that canada can mitigate it's problem with the americans by retreating back to the british empire is delusional. the british need to maintain lapdog status with the americans and will not stand up for us. further, the americans are militarizing the pacific to try to contain china, and will need to aggressively position forces in australia.
the only way that we're going to escape washington is to conquer it, and if you follow the narrative, that's actually what the americans are worried about. they're afraid of us. that's the point.
we need to find some way to work with the americans, and politicians suggesting otherwise should be seen as insane. it's geography. it's unavoidable.
everybody needs to calm down. trump is a lame duck president, and an anomaly on canada. he's not overseeing a shift in policy, he's a loose cannon. we should avoid reacting rashly, as this won't last, and we don't want to create more damage than is necessary, when we seek to undo this with the next president.
Friday, February 28, 2025
what happened in the white house today with zelensky and trump looks brutal. granted. but, history will demonstrate trump is right.
what i have realized, and what the media won't cover, is that biden was hopefully the last cold warrior. he started from day one in his withdrawal of afghanistan (which, whatever he said, was about redeploying resources to europe) and had an obsession with creating the knockout blow to finally defeat the russians. he never campaigned on this, and few people saw it coming. nobody seemed to want to believe it.
in the end, nato was launching an offensive incursion in russia by sending trillions of dollars into ukraine which is not an ally or a democracy. ukraine is the most corrupt country in the world. it's a kleptocracy that has experienced multiple coups since the collapse of the soviet union, and spent the first 25 years under a literal dictatorship. it's recent history is more similar to a country experiencing oriental despotism, like kazakhstan, than any country in europe. it has generally leaned towards russia, not the west; that was why there needed to be a coup in 2014.
the catastrophic mess that biden created by his aggressive policy to destroy russia (he seems to have thought the russians were so weak they'd be defeated by ukraine, which is absurd) has to be cleaned up using similarly aggressive tactics. zelensky is not a politician; he's a creation of biden, and he says the things he says because it's what biden groomed him as. he's a puppet that's lost his puppeteer. he should resign, and should be replaced.
i am still watching the liberal leadership debate, and they keep arguing with each other over who is going to increase military spending the fastest, under the flawed perception that a "strong military" will "keep us safe".
i would have expected liberal leadership candidates to actually want to talk about diplomacy and what canada is going to do to stop wars from starting.
that said, i would support some kind of missile shield in the arctic, similar to iron dome but on a larger scale. that would be very expensive.
Thursday, February 27, 2025
every response by every candidate is about trump.
trump is a lame duck president in poor health that might die in office and appears to be a puppet of elon musk.
i want to hear about what ideas they have to address the problems canadians face in canada, like too much immigration and not enough housing.
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
what do i think is really going on with this doge thing?
i think it's a cover. smoke and mirrors.
donald trump does not care about fiscal solvency and is not a fiscal conservative. he proved that in his first term. he slashed taxes irresponsibly and generated huge deficits, then shrugged it off, which is the norm for republicans since reagan. republicans always create huge deficits, often largely via war spending, but also via overwhelming corruption. it is true that they cut services for the poor, but this isn't about saving money, it's a type of class warfare. it's also a means of scapegoating that helps them get the working poor and lower middle class to vote for them, against their class interests.
i would expect millions or billions of dollars to disappear in the next four years, or to be spent on weird consultants, and for the money to ultimately be funneled to trump and/or musk. that's the actual point. they're not just making stuff up, they're distracting you from what they're doing by telling it to your face and hoping you can't figure it out.
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
i acknowledge that it's somewhat of a gloss on the facts, but in russia the narrative is that ukraine is preventing the east from succeeding, after it voted to leave, and this is fundamentally actually true, even if it ignores the attacks on kyiv and the rest of the country, who have not vote to secede and probably won't.
it's not dissimilar from the american civil war in a lot of ways, with zelensky playing the role of lincoln and the russians acting like the british empire, except, in this telling of history, the south secedes and rejoins the empire.
when you drop all the bullshit and look at the basic conflict, zelensky is fighting a war to prevent the east from seceding, which is fundamentally an attack on democracy. there's good reason to question his democratic legitimacy, and to question the democratic legitimacy of his position in the war.
does trudeau actually believe the nonsense he's spouting about ukraine or is he just reading something somebody gave him? is he ignorant or stupid?
not only should a condition of ending the war not be ukraine in nato, it should be the withdrawal of nato troops from poland back to germany, and the americans should be realizing right now how important it is that they occupy germany, which is a vanquished enemy, not an ally or friend. the importance of occupying germany has never been more apparent than it is right now.
should the russians give back the territory they've (re)claimed from ukraine since 2014? well, that should be up to the people that live there, who are russian speaking and who voted to join russia. maybe there should be another vote, but if what you're going on about is saving democracy, you have to realize it would be undemocratic to send these people back to ukraine, when they want to be a part of russia.
this war was inevitable, after the coup in moscow 35 years ago. it took too long to happen, really. you should stand with the people - the actual people - and not with either military, one of which is a totalitarian system and the other of which is a protection racket. that means listening to them when they vote and self-organize, even if you don't like the outcome.
Monday, February 24, 2025
this isn't our war, and throwing rocks at the russians - who we share a very large border with - like this is abjectly moronic. trudeau is a complete, utter buffoon.
i would be vociferously, vehemently opposed to this, and i will explicitly vote against the liberals on this policy if they bring it in before the next election.
i would have never expected to see the liberals arguing for the occupation of a foreign country, but here we are.
ruby dhalla may have broken some rules, but they all have. it is more likely that she got disqualified because the party executive doesn't like her politics, and that's fundamentally undemocratic. in a democracy, you don't prevent people from speaking because you don't like their views, you engage with them and try to convince them that they're wrong. it demonstrates a continued weakening of free speech rights in the liberal party that's been ongoing for some time, which everybody should be extremely concerned about.
if the party really doesn't like her views, it should be confident that she'll lose. right? that they can't be confident they can beat her indicates that they don't have confidence in their own grassroots, and perhaps they ought not to, but it would be extremely helpful for everybody to learn just how many votes ruby dhalla can get running on an anti-drug, anti-immigration platform in the liberal party of canada in 2025, and the party might want to learn something from that rather than ban her from speaking. perhaps the truth is that some of their policies on these topics should be modified, because their positions on drug use and immigration are actually borderline insane. members of the grassroots should be given the opportunity to argue that, and the party should listen, if they speak loud enough.
i mean, if even the party grassroots is arguing this point, which is notoriously left wing, the party needs to pull the dildos out of it's ears and start listening.
the liberal party i used to support just wouldn't act like this; it would strenuously argue that when you don't like somebody's views, you engage them in debate and defeat them and aggressively criticize people suggesting otherwise, because you ultimately have to do that in order to change them. banning ruby from running doesn't make her go away, it just means you're ignoring her and choosing not to see her standing in front of you; it's ostrich logic. you have to engage. that's why the liberals opened dialogs with these unliberal groups like muslims in the first place, because they realized you have to engage with them to convince them to change, and that this is necessary moving forward. these unliberal groups in our society like muslims must change.
shutting ruby down on a trivial technicality like this more or less just proves she's right and that, to an extent, we've already lost the fight against the authoritarians, like the fundamentalist muslims that are increasingly taking over the liberal party, because they made the mistake of letting them in.
i wouldn't have voted for ruby, and i haven't identified as a liberal in a very long time, but i'd have ripped up my membership over a party's refusal to uphold basic principles of free speech and free discourse. i wouldn't align with a political movement like that, wouldn't support it, wouldn't donate to it and wouldn't vote for it, and what the liberal party needs to realize and understand is that what's happened is that it's been co-opted by the right-wing foreign religious and immigrant groups that it initially engaged with to try to assimilate. it reached out to these groups to try to change them, and got taken over and overwhelmed by them because it didn't set rules for itself.
i might suggest to more powerful people than i in greater positions of power than i that the liberal party of canada is too important an institution to allow to be overrun by barbarians at the gates, and that they need to take the party back using the methods they have in front of them to do it.
the reality is that the pretty indian woman in makeup got banned from running by the muslim-dominated liberal party executive because she looks like a slut, and this isn't the first time we've seen the liberal party engage in attacks on indians, sikhs or hindus that seem motivated by a fundamentalist muslim perspective. this needs to be understood, exposed, attacked and dismantled.
Thursday, February 20, 2025
these guys are dipshits.
in fact, the german business class will be extremely appreciative of trump for ending this, if he does. this war is not popular in germany at all - not amongst workers and not amongst business. it's just this class of fake left politicians that have egg all over their face, and they're only embarrassed because they look like idiots for having to flip-flop.
a lot of the people that knee jerk are going to be just trying to avoid contradicting themselves in public.
see, this is what i was talking about in suggesting a handful of democrats should try to grab the balance of power.
trump will hold a core of republicans, but a substantive amount of his policy positions are so unconservative that he'd be looking to the far left of the democratic party for support.
people like myself, for example. i absolutely agree that zelensky is a brutal fascist dictator, and that he's a front for the most dangerous right-wing coalition we've seen since the nazis. i think trump is getting the puppet strings reversed, but his analysis is spot on.
so, how does somebody like bernie sanders walk into this and try to take advantage of it? sanders is unfortunately a bad example, because his foreign policy actually sucks across the board. however, there is a clear opportunity for somebody on the real left to step in here and try to influence policy, because the lindsay grahams of the world are gonna hate this, and they can fuck off on the horse they rode in on.
as republicans melt down and revolt, i'm having the opposite reaction. i have spent the last four years railing against biden's foreign policy, and pointedly refused to endorse him in 2024 or 2020 for the specific reason that i thought he would be a foreign policy disaster, and i was clearly right, he was the worst foreign policy disaster in decades. i have repeatedly blamed biden for starting this war in this space (he is not solely to blame, but he set it up, and he let it happen). i think trump is a godsend for showing up and trying to put an end to this mess.
in fact, my position is a bit more meta than this; i realize that it is absolutely imperative that the united states have russian support if it wants to win a war against china, and i realize that the russians want to be on our side, we just have refused to let them be on our side. the chinese have got us fighting each other, when we should be working together. ukraine is irrelevant and fighting the russians is retarded; it is the russians, and only the russians, that will help us beat the chinese, and we have no chance against the chinese without russian help.
when i look at american and british state and corporate media, and i see it take this anti-russian position like this, i realize it's a subtly pro-chinese position, and it makes me wonder.
i'm reminded of the debate between obama and romney, where obama nails romney for thinking russia was america's adversary. clinton first and then biden reversed that and aligned with romney, in calling china a competitor, and russia an adversary. trump's position is closer to obama's again, which is the correct one - china wants to be america's enemy and is america's greatest and probably only serious threat, while russia actually wants to be america's friend, and is constantly being rejected in it's advances. america has for decades very stupidly tried to build alliances with it's enemies and tried to start wars with it's friends.
america doesn't stand a fucking chance unless it figures this out, and future historians could point to this shift in policy as a game-changing decision that saves american hegemony from the brink of collapse.
Sunday, February 16, 2025
it would seem that carney has emerged as the runaway favourite, with chrystia freeland running at a distant second and karina gould as an also-run. there's some business guy running, too, apparently.
there's one more candidate.
is ruby dhalla a dark horse in the liberal leadership, given that they use preferential voting, she's a legitimate outsider, she's the only immigrant on the ballot and she knows how to leverage her appealing appearance?
she might be.
it does look like carney will win the most votes on the first ballot, and the expectation should be that he will win by the third round at the latest, but i wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being dhalla that gives him a run, rather than freeland.
the reality is that appearances are very important in politics. it's better to learn that at the start of your career than at the end of it. that's just real life.
in ontario, the liberals have tended to lean pretty far to the left, as well, and the differences in policy are often difficult to articulate. often times, on issues such as gun control, the ndp actually come out to the right of the liberals. it's counter-intuitive.
i don't support merging the parties.
but they need to stop competing. it's stupid.
it's a classic prisoner's dilemma.
instead, they're going to be stupid and compete and both lose, and ford will win another majority.
if the liberals and ndp want to throw this fatass dumbfuck loser doug ford out of office this cycle, and probably next cycle, they're going to have to strike an accord. it's not that doug ford is particularly popular, although his demographic numbers are admittedly somewhat frightening if you break them down and analyze them. these are numbers that should really throw liberals in this country for a loop. the problem is that the anti-ford vote is almost evenly split almost everywhere, and they don't make any attempt to work together in any way, they just show up to compete against each other, they run directly against each other, they split the vote and they throw the election away. it's utterly foolish, tactically.
there is no possible outcome besides a ford landslide, and a situation where he gets 40% of the vote and has 100% of the legislative power. i don't want doug ford to be premier any more, and his approval rating is worse than joe biden's, but there's no realistic path to get rid of him.
the liberals and ndp need to take a different approach and should perhaps look at the recent elections in france for ideas as to what to do.
i'm going to flip this issue over.
the united states is not good enough to be a part of canada, like turkey or ukraine is not good enough to be a part of europe. there are a few things that the united states needs to change about itself before canada would consider admitting it to be a part of the dominion.
1) it needs to adopt the metric system.
2) it needs universal healthcare. today. this is non-negotiable. this cannot wait any longer.
3) it needs a bill of rights with bodily self-ownership in it, so that abortion is a constitutional right.
4) it must do away with property rights immediately. yuck. gross.
5) it has to accept better protections for trans rights, and allow for state-funded transgender surgery.
6) it needs a multi-party democratic system. the two party system is not democracy.
7) abolish the second amendment, outright. yuck. gross. i don't want that kind of bullshit in my constitution.
8) ban the death penalty.
9) abolish all slavery, including prison labour.
this is not a complete list, it's a set of basic starting points.
once the americans have implemented these policies, they can get back to us about becoming a part of canada.
odsp is currently about 55% of minimum wage (net, not gross, which is more appropriate because we don't pay taxes), which is too low, but i'd settle for a doubling in the housing amount, which is the actual problem and an issue everybody is dealing with.
odsp, however, needs something more than money thrown at it. it is suffering from a design flaw brought in during the harris years to shift to something market-based. this was rooted in the silly conservative idea that people are more free when they have more financial choices (because that's what i want in my life, the freedom to make financial decisions. right. in fact, that's about the last thing i give a fuck about.) and less free when they have less financial choices. ergo, disabled people would be more free if better allowed to participate in the market. essentially zero disabled people agree with that logic; disabled people generally want freedom from markets and look to odsp as an escape mechanism from the tyranny of the market, which they can't compete in.
it's the same issue with religion. conservatives want freedom of religion. secularists want from from religion.
today, they give us 55% of the minimum wage and tell us to compete with minimum wage earners for market housing. a one bedroom apartment in the cheapest city in ontario is roughly the same amount as my entire odsp check, $1300-$1400/month. how can i compete on the market when i'm not given the resources to? but, it's the premise - that disabled people can compete on the market - that is actually the problem, because it's backwards and orwellian and stupid. the definition of being disabled is that you can't compete on the market.
the inevitable outcome of telling disabled people to look for market housing and then giving them 55% of the minimum wage is that disabled people are going to end up homeless. the math is pretty oppressive. it doesn't work out any other way. worse, the disabled are the people in society least able to pull themselves out of poverty, or generate money from nothing. then the conservatives moan and complain and whine that they're throwing away all this money on the disabled, when this is actually not what we want and not what we need.
odsp needs to be redesigned to fix this design flaw brought in during the harris years by stop telling disabled people to pay market rent and then handicapping them by preventing them from being able to compete on the market by giving them too low a fraction of the minimum wage, so that they cannot compete with minimum wage earners for housing. the two ways to do this are to get odsp recipients out of market housing by increasing subsidized housing (which is the better idea) or, if you want to hold to the delusions of market theory, by setting the amount that odsp recipients receive to an amount that allows them to compete on the market. they would need to at least double the shelter amount from $600 to $1200, keeping in mind that, as a disabled person, i actually don't need income for things like gas money, because i can't afford (and in my case don't want) a car.
i'm such a dour realist that when i dreamt of gentle, rolling fields and pastures this evening (as i truly did, i woke up a little after 1:00), it was in an algorithmic pattern, so i could deconstruct it into computer code.
my brain subconsciously deconstructed the landscape into patterns and turned it into a cgi background.
some napkin math for the liberals.
1368x = 2056 <----> x = 2056/1368 = 1.50
a 50% increase, and legislation that it increase at the same rate as the minimum wage so that the distance between the two is maintained (canada is a metric space. i'm sorry.), would be sustainable and fair.
bonnie crombie repeated in the debate that she wants to double odsp, which is something that i've heard politicians say before, and sounds encouraging, but should actually be taken as a red flag - it's not a serious promise, and it will be broken. as an odsp recipient that is having difficulty finding housing, an increase in benefits is exactly what i need right now; it would be a godsend. however, i want to see and hear a serious plan for odsp that is sustainable and realistic, not a crazy promise to win my vote.
what would doubling odsp actually mean?
As of February 2025, Ontario's minimum wage is projected to increase to $17.82 per hour on October 1, 2025. This would result in a gross monthly income of approximately $35,149.92 for a full-time employee working 26 pay periods per year. However, after taxes, the net income would be approximately $29,026.
ok.
how much would my yearly income be if you doubled my odsp check?
it's currently $1368 and set to increase by around 3% on aug 1 due to inflation, as it is pegged to inflation. $1368*12 = 16416. 16416*2 = 32832. they don't tax this.
so, if you doubled odsp, my income would be higher than minimum wage. unless you also boosted minimum wage - and maybe you should, to $20 - that would not be fair. as an odsp recipient, i know that's not fair.
however, we've increased minimum wage faster than odsp and that's created a problem that was foreseeable. that was a bad policy choice.
something fair and sustainable would be to set odsp as a fraction of the minimum wage, say 85%, and ensure they increase together, so increasing one doesn't harm the other. i don't want to play into protestant work ethic narratives about lazy disabled people, but some subset of alcoholics and drug users (particularly) should have that incentive in place. this does not describe most odsp recipients, who have legitimate disabilities, but it is a nontrivial subset and if you tell them they're better off doing drugs on odsp, they will make that choice.
when she tells me she wants to double my income, i'm supposed to run to the voting booth. i'm not that stupid and i don't appreciate having my intelligence insulted.
i'd call on the liberals to release a serious, sustainable plan for odsp. the province needs it. i need it. it's overdue and required.
Saturday, February 15, 2025
it turns out doug ford sent me a check after all. i didn't pay taxes last year, but i did file my taxes because i get tax rebates.
it's not a good public policy, but i need the cash and i'll take it.
the donation button is on the side and i'm on the brink of putting everything in storage and hitting a hotel c. mar 15th, right now. i kind of have to because i can't even go outside. the only way out of here is via an intermediate source.
Friday, February 14, 2025
there are specific goods that the united states used to make - used to dominate the production of - and no longer makes at all any more. the reason is indeed due to free trade, but trump is misunderstanding the problem.
the chinese have more than a comparative advantage, which is fair trade in principle, but an absolute advantage in the cost of labour. it's not just china, it's most of the far east, india, africa and parts of south america, including mexico. the united states cannot produce goods at the same cost because it has to pay up to 10x as much in labour costs. therefore, it cannot compete.
one solution would be to make labour unions illegal, but what is great about that? who wants that? donald, do you want that? really? you don't, you're desperate.
the minimal reshoring that's occurred recently has been about moving production into prison facilities, and that is actually happening, look it up. that is the only type of labour in america that can compete with overseas labour costs.
rather, the solution is to support labour movements in the developing world. if the chinese had some organized labour, their comparative advantage would collapse, and everybody - except the investor class - would be better off.
this is the solution that workers should be supporting, but it's hard to get the uneducated idiots to listen. they should be standing in global solidarity with each other and fighting capitalism. instead, they elect donald trump, who installs tariffs by imperial decree, which just makes everything worse.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
some number of years ago, hillary clinton started comparing putin to hitler and the liberal press has run with it ever since. it's a toxic, stupid, offensive comparison that should be ridiculed and avoided.
i probably won't be happy with the outcome of this, but i'm not happy with the process. it's not exactly joe biden's fault personally, except in the sense that he escalated in a ham-fisted manner that was far too transparent. he made it far too obvious that nato was planning an attack on russia (which has in fact happened, now) and left putin without an option but to strike first. a different president might have been less obvious, less clumsy, and generated a different response. however, the responsibility for this war lies with western military leaders going back to clinton and hw bush, including with trump who ordered a massive troop movement from germany into poland. this is not the fault of any particular person in america, it is the responsibility of the war obsession in american culture and american society, and the obsession of the elderly in defeating the soviets in the cold war. comparisons to yalta (when stalin helped us defeat hitler. a lot.) are so bizarre as to be downright offensive. america has more than a small level of moral responsibility to clean this mess up.
right now - today. this minute. - the focus needs to be on averting further escalation and preventing a nuclear war. we can write and rewrite the history books tomorrow and the day after. trump is correct to identify the imminent danger and threat and seek to swiftly put an end to this, before we all burn.
the important thing right now is not the terms of the peace, it is the return of peace itself.
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
i'm almost done 88 with the genesis plow through, and i'll do 89, but i'm going to flip to "90s" for 90-99, 00s for 00-09, 10s for 10-19 and "20s" for 20-25 and then rewind, but i might be gone by then.
the phil collins hits are instantly recognizable by people of all ages, and most people know the gabriel megahits, and know that gabriel and collins are connected. the bassist also had a couple of big singles, including "all i need is a miracle" and "living years" and that connection is less known. the two guitarists both released widely, but did not make massive singles like that; hackett sold a lot of albums, but not many singles. the keyboard player did not have a successful solo career. the three of them that did focus on single releases (collins, gabriel, rutherford) were ubiquitous in the 80s in a way that only the beatles were previously.
in fact,
According to available information, the only three musicians who have sold over 100 million records both as a solo artist and as part of a band are Paul McCartney (The Beatles), Michael Jackson (Jackson 5), and Phil Collins (Genesis).
i'm trying to get a point across about the cultural importance, here. i will do this for other important 20th century artists like zappa, puppy, crimson, bowie, nirvana and floyd, but none of them will be as impressive as this in terms of breadth, depth, longevity, scope and raw sales. as a music historian, i have to understand that.
i have a music web project that's currently on hold until i can get my exercise space set back up. right now, somebody is drugging me when i'm sleeping and hacking my raspberry pi remotely, so i have the pi off and the exercise cut until i can control my surroundings again. just a few more months, i expect, before i can get back to doing cardio on the bicycle.
cardio on a bicycle is a type of exercise that decreases body mass and leads to weight loss. i bicycle to stay thin and keep my cholesterol down. getting out of this mess is taking longer than i wanted. the last thing in the world that i would want would be to gain muscle mass or gain weight, so i've avoided any exercise at all while i think i'm being drugged with steroids by these disgusting freaks and will continue to until i'm sure i have the testosterone completely flushed out of my system and i'm able to assert control of things as being back to normal.
i am trying to avoid this issue of trans kids playing sports and i can't. i frankly don't care much about competition, and i would not consider this to be a pressing concern to most transgendered women. what percentage of transwomen care about sports? at all? 10%? nor is the issue of much importance to voters, but it's seen saturation level advertising, and the political establishment is reacting by following through so it can say "look, we won".
so, i've been forced to reflect on something i don't care much about and in the process have developed a different perspective.
i think the broader concern should be america's unhealthy obsession with competition and success in children's games, and that this is in truth merely one manifestation of the broader sickness in american culture around competition and sports. this issue with trans kids playing sports is really the same kind of abuse we see young men routinely incur at the hands of their fathers and increasingly see young women incur at the hands of one or both parents. for too many young people in america today, their worth as human beings is tied directly to their ability to excel at some children's game that is a triviality in the larger scope of existence.
the question that keeps jumping out at me is why the political and academic systems aren't encouraging more healthy attitudes about children's competitions, more generally - ideas about sportsmanship, inclusion and the importance of having fun when you play the game. is a factor in america's obesity rate the attitude it instills about exercise as a competitive process in so many young children? does the way that america approaches exercise as a form of competition exclude and alienate so many people, not just trans people, that they become so mentally damaged and experience so much trauma that they end up dangerously overweight?
i want to see the system promote more co-ed exercise activities that are about co-operating in teams and including and accepting people in the team despite their differences, and not about hypercompetition and the exaggeration of difference as factors to analyze in the course of competition.
kids should be having fun when they exercise, not be so obsessed about winning that they attack their colleagues over coveted spaces on the team.
when i was a kid, they told me that it didn't matter who won, what mattered was that you enjoyed the activity. there's lost wisdom in that. i would rather refocus on cooperation and de-emphasize competition than kneejerk with a militant trans rights response.
that's what i have to say after thinking about it a little and needing to adjust to this barrage of media. this isn't my fight on it's face, but perhaps it is in abstraction, and i want to side with co-operation in opposition to competition.
again, i don't like that i have to do this, but some people are incredibly hard-headed, in addition to being ignorant and stupid. in fact, i've posted this before.
this is a picture of my franco-italian father and i at my grade 8 graduation, outside of frank ryan middle school in ottawa, ontario in the late spring of 1995, when i was 14:
my dad had a little scottish, a little mikmaq and apparently quite a bit of russian (from an unclear source) in him, but his father's side was overwhelmingly franco-ontarian (with some wonky indigenous ancestry that i was able to sort of prove with a clovis test) and his mother's side was italian. he was, however, an austrian celt in his y-dna, indicating that before he was french he was celtic, and his dna mutated in the alps, likely within the halstatt or la tene culture:
in fact, his y-dna (and therefore mine) is an old mutation, making him somewhat of an archaic european cave man, genetically. my dad is in truth what central europeans actually looked like thousands of years ago. i actually have NO neanderthal dna, which is very unusual. it's like <0.1%.
i could not trace his russian ancestry, but it is there. i was able to determine that there was likely an illegitimate child in his grandfather's family. in my opinion, he looks more russian than italian.
his mother was north italian, and the dna test pulled up an affinity to the gotti clan, which is both a large crime family and a marker of germanic ancestry. gotti means "goth", which is an italian slur for "dirty, barbaric german". it indicates some distant swedish ancestry, which is what the dna test pulled up: 10% north italian, <1% sicilian. my grandmother did not have gracile features, but she seems to have been very italian in the roman sense of the word.
he did not have middle eastern ancestry of any sort.
my mother's side is overwhelmingly viking, and i really look more like a swedish/finnish kid here, as i generally did. my mother also appears to have some jewish ancestry on her father's side, but it's distant, like the indigenous mikmaq on my father's side. there's also some suggestion of viking/mikmaq marriages on my mother's father's side at the point of very early contact in the 16th century, in the form of mothers in the genealogy that have non-western names and appear out of nowhere. my mother's father's ancestors were scottish shipbuilders that migrated to nova scotia very early in the colonial period, and (before that) appear to have been vikings that settled in the very north of scotland (moray) and became shipbuilders instead of pirates as they settled. so, you can trace them from sweden to scotland to nova scotia as vikings, pirates and shipbuilders. my mother would appear to be directly descended from aristocratic scottish-viking pirates in the very northern tip of scotland. my mother's mother is finnish/irish.
i used a screenshot of my head for my inri youtube site because it's the earliest picture of me available:
i've also used it for my second class citizens site, as the picture was taken in late 1995 and that is the most appropriate project to connect to late 1995:
for some reason, this headshot was misperceived as belonging to an acquaintance of mine from high school named sean, who later sang some demos for me (which i rejected as not what i wanted), by people that apparently knew me from the period and they will not let this go: they are insistent that this is a picture of sean.
this is not a picture of sean, it is a picture of me, as is clearly demonstrated by the above picture. i don't mean to be an ass, but sean did not have a father. it could not have been him, at the least; even if you don't believe it's me, it can't be him. however, it's me, clearly.
all of the pictures on my site are of me, unless noted otherwise, and that is very infrequent. virtually all of the thousands of pictures posted are of me.
i have no motive to post pictures of somebody else. i was in fact a cute kid. i know that.
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