trump is probably angling to swing votes in california, and it might work, but probably not enough. we've seen this a few times now in the united states and the result is that voters choose order over chaos.
Monday, June 9, 2025
given that canada is going into recession, 2% of gdp on defence might not be much of an increase.
i oppose the idea in principle. we're not going to win a conventional war against the united states, we'll have to resort to guerrilla warfare. i'd rather see the money spent on housing.
but, we don't really need to choose, and i'll wait for the details before i comment further.
i did my research and the simple reality is that it's cheaper at walmart, as always.
if i can fix the single serve black and decker (which operates like a normal coffee machine but dumps into a 20 ounce thermos. it's not one of those wasteful keurig catastrophes.), i'll just get a 12 cup machine for $20.
if i can't, i'm going to have to get both, and add on the single serve for an extra $20.
it's not that bad, it's just frustrating; the pot should cost $5. i really don't need a new machine.
as for the 10 cup pot, such a machine seem to be available anywhere anymore. i wonder if the machine was originally imported. that was also a dollar store purchase, in 2013ish. there are some higher end models that still use 10 cups, apparently, but nothing in the $15-30 price range. it's a slightly smaller pot and doesn't fit in the 12 cup machine.
i mentioned i got a lot of stuff done on saturday. i spent most of sunday, and have spent most of monday, sleeping. i've been hauling boxes for kms for weeks and need to catch up on the sleep and then i need to wake up and move on. getting a functional coffee machine going will help.
i didn't eat on saturday morning but, before i left, i made myself some peanut butter and jam slices on white bread (with apple slices on top). peanut butter has some health benefits, but is borderline junk food and not a part of my regular diet. i was concerned it would sit in the fridge and go rotten, so i just ate it quickly to ensure it got eaten. the worst thing i could do is throw out free food given to me by helpful people. i don't want to do that. it was not a sandwich, but three slices of white bread with pb, jam and slices of apple. this was enough for the day.
the first trip on saturday was to the old dollar store on wyandotte that i used to go to all of the time, as that's where i bought the coffee machine about 10 years ago. did they have the same model? they had no coffee machine at all, apparently.
i then walked through walkerville and down to the bike store in what used to be ford city. this bike store used to be on wyandotte, and is where i got my now demoed bike setup years ago, but moved several years ago. my old gt palomar had some adjustments done and a new seat put on it. it's a smooth ride, but it's twice as heavy as what i'm used to riding, so it needs a little care on the turns. this heavier bike also needs to build some momentum up before it can build any speed and can be slow trudging at times, but that's the point - it's a clunker with a sturdy frame and big wheels that is intended for pummeling over the harsh roads in detroit. my detroit bike has now been adjusted for safety and is ready to go, when i am.
i then took this bike out grocery shopping because it was ready to ride and my go to bike right now - the mongoose switchback - is behind a pile of stuff i need to move out of the way. i should get the walmart bike on tuesday, and i'm curious as to how it rides. i've never ridden this bike outside.
my first stop was the wholesale club on dougall, where i picked up some specific items. these items were in bulk, so they required some money down to get, but it will save me over the next few months an that's important because i'm dealing with a stark decrease in disposable income after the move (this was optionless. rent inflation happened.). i got those items home and then headed out to the mall at huron church and tecumseh, where i got some items at the bulk barn, got the mugs at the canadian tire, picked up a prescription at the shoppers and then did some grocery shopping at the food basics and the freshco. i got that home and picked up some remaining items at the closer food basics, then went back out to the walmart and the real superstore to get the lingering items. by then it was close to 11:00, so i got everything put away and made my adjusted ceasar salad. i didn't finish it before i passed out; i finished it when i woke up.
this is my normal ceasar salad recipe:
- 110 g of kale
- 2 big cloves of garlic (or 4 normal sized)
- one avocado
- one lime, segmented and cut in half
- one smallish orange, segmented and cut in half
- two slices of bacon, fried and crumbled
- 50 g of broccoli
- one tbsp of cumin powder
- one tbsp of paprika
- one tbsp of nutritional yeast
- one tbsp of raw, hulled sunflower seeds (on the side. i usually chomp it while preparing.)
- one tbsp of hulled hemp seeds
- one tbsp of dried oregano
- one tbsp of dried basil
- one tbsp of dried thyme
- one tbsp of cayenne pepper
- some black pepper
- roughly 150 ml of no name caesar dressing (or more). i am picky about it being no name, as it's a zestier caesar with less salt. most store bought caesar is too salty.
- two pieces of brown bread (100% whole wheat flour including the germ)
- one cup of fortified, sugar-free soy milk. i use natura nowadays.
- 10 chopped slices of medium cheddar cheese (that's how i do it, i don't measure it, and i prefer the black diamond brand, which is expensive but often on sale)
- one tbsp of olive oil margarine (i prefer the olivina)
- lots of frank's hot sauce
i put that down in front of me with a tall cup of 25% grapefruit and 75% orange juice (no added sugar, not from concentrate).
i made some substitutions to use the food bank items and make use of what i had:
- 110 g of kale -----> 250 g of romaine, as i got a big head of romaine. i generally very intentionally pick kale instead of romaine, but i will eat the romaine and say thank you.
- a handful of chopped fresh dill (i may keep this)
- 2 big cloves of garlic (or 4 normal sized)
- one avocado
- one lime, segmented and cut in half
- one smallish orange, segmented and cut in half
- two slices of bacon, fried and crumbled ------> two chopped slim jims, fried in olive oil margarine to be a little crispy. it was actually a pretty good sub.
- 50 g of broccoli
- one tbsp of cumin powder
- one tbsp of paprika
- one tbsp of nutritional yeast
- one tbsp of raw, hulled sunflower seeds (on the side. i usually chomp it while preparing.)
- one tbsp of hulled hemp seeds
- one tbsp of dried oregano
- one tbsp of dried basil
- one tbsp of dried thyme
- one tbsp of cayenne pepper
- some black pepper
- roughly 150 ml of no name caesar dressing (or more). i am picky about it being no name, as it's a zestier caesar with less salt. most store bought caesar is too salty.
- two pieces of brown bread (100% whole wheat flour including the germ) ----> one piece of chopped up onion rye, and the ends of two other pieces (which were toasted for onion bread)
- one cup of fortified, sugar-free soy milk. i use natura nowadays.
- 10 chopped slices of medium cheddar cheese (that's how i do it, i don't measure it, and i prefer the black diamond brand, which is expensive but often on sale)
- one tbsp of olive oil margarine (i prefer the olivina)
- lots of frank's hot sauce
i served this to myself with my glass of grapefruit-orange juice, and two pieces of onion bread, which were the onion rye toasted, with melted olive oil margarine, and melted monterrey jack (in the microwave) and then doused with onion salt and frank's.
the romaine is crunchier (and far less nutritious) than the kale, but it also tasted more "normal" in terms of traditional casear. the onion rye is closer to a crouton than crumbled brown bread, and is actually even a little bit stale. croutons have become their own thing, but it's supposed to be stale bread. the slim jims, when fried in olive oil until they were crispy, really didn't taste much different than bacon. the dill was a good addition. i don't plan an adjusting my caesar salad permanently, but i am going to make the same thing again today, as i didn't get a chance to eat this morning.
i did, however, finish up my peanut butter yesterday afternoon (after sleeping all morning) by having three more open slices of white bread with peanut butter and jam. i skipped the apple; i should have it now. i then slept all afternoon.
i meant to spend yesterday night cleaning my bedroom up and moving items into it, but instead spent all night cleaning myself up by repeatedly washing my face. i had no choice but to deal with a build up of caked on filth as i was moving, and didn't have time to wash. i'm feeling and looking better, but i'm still in need of a long shower.
i bought some compostable bags when i was out, which will help me in cleaning up my fridge and making it normal.
i'll need to take another trip out on tuesday, but the main focus now for the next few weeks is going to be on cleaning the apartment and on sorting through email and catching up on things i put aside until i was done moving.
right now, let me see if i can get that coffee maker open.
Sunday, June 8, 2025
i'm in a frustrating scenario with my coffee situation. i drink a lot of coffee.
i have a 12 cup coffee maker with a broken pot. i have a 10 cup coffee pot without a machine. i have a 20 ounce single serve coffee maker, which is what i've been using for the last several years, that seems to have a short in it, but which i can't get the back off of due to a proprietary screw. i can't even figure out what it is. i'm going to try to jimmy it with a flathead and i'll make sure to replace it with a normal screw.
i have more counter space here and would like to have a single serve and a pot-brewing option, so i can decide if i want a pot or a cup. if i can fix the single serve and get a coffee pot for $5, it should be a simple fix, but a replacement 12 cup pot is going to cost me more than a new coffee machine, which i don't want to pay for. i have a coffee machine that works!
the basement apartment i recently moved out of had extremely hard ceramic tiled floors that would break anything that fell on them and got freezing cold in the winter. i had something like ten mugs when i moved in there; i had two when i moved out, and they're both small. i broke the last one about a year ago and i've been using soup bowls for coffee cups for the last year as a result, as i couldn't find big enough coffee cups online for a reasonable price that were made out of materials that i could be confident didn't have lead (and could take hot coffee without killing me or making me retarded). it's also the reason the pot is broken. the floors here should be more forgiving.
i bought two 21 ounce (621 ml) cups yesterday, which cost me about $13. these are stoneware ceramic made out of black clay, without any sort of paint or inlays and with visible air holes from the baking process. those vintage dishes your grandmother loves are deadly and should be smashed up and sent to the hazardous materials part of the landfill. 21 ounces is as big as you'll find for a reasonable price that is made out of a safe material that hasn't been glazed. it's sort of baffling that you'll find coffee mugs made out of items you can't even microwave. that said, i'm also going to get some 26 ounce glass beer mugs at the dollar store in the next few days with the intent of using them for coffee. the four mugs should be enough and will give me the option of more or less soy in the coffee.
if i have to buy a new machine, the cheapest option is a 12 cup from walmart, rather than another single serve. so i hope i can fix the one i have, too. that would cut it down to one rather than two machines.
what's my take on the hockey player trial in london?
the issue at trial is really not what a lot of people want to frame it as, it's strictly to determine whether she was or was not too drunk to consent. if she was sober enough to consent, there's no crime; if she was too drunk to consent, it's gang rape. you have to be very careful when having sex with drunk people.
as it is, there's apparently a video where she consents, which i find to be very strange. it indicates that there's no mens rea on behalf of the players, as they asked the woman to film herself consenting. however, it also forms the key and really only relevant piece of evidence. i have not seen this video, but it should be relatively obvious to determine if she was able to consent by analyzing how drunk she is in it. if there's any slurred speech or lack of coordination at all, i would find them guilty, but if she consents by film and appears to a reasonable person to be sober enough to do so, then there's no crime to analyze, there's just somebody that made a decision they regret and are embarrassed about making and are looking to evade responsibility for.
the tommy douglas plan, which many canadians erroneously believe was the forerunner to our single payer system, was a way for farmers in saskatchewan to lower insurance premiums by buying insurance together in bulk. the premier wrote the law to allow for farmers to buy the bulk insurance, collectively. they still had to pay insurance packages and still paid premiums, but those premiums were lowered by the collectivized insurance, which allowed them to socialize risk. this was modeled on the canadian wheat board.
this is also how obamacare works.
it's not single payer at all.
single payer was brought in by the liberals, and modeled after the nhs in britain. it was supported by all three of the major parties in a minority government. most of the legislation was written by paul martin, sr.
many years later, pierre trudeau packaged a series of scattered laws together into the canada health act and gave it quasi-constitutional status, introducing a series of barriers that would make it extremely difficult to dismantle.
we need to work together if we want to build a new society, and that's not something to give up on. we have to keep trying.
but, if we were naive then - if we didn't realize that cell phones and social media were state surveillance tools - we cannot still be now. we have to learn from that mistake and put our phones down.
occupy seemed like something different than your average protest. it's not that i ever thought that going out and marching and screaming would really change anything directly, and more that i was looking for a group of like-minded people to build parallel institutions with. you will get nothing done working in the system of government, because it's designed to prevent things from getting done. it would be great if it was that easy, but the reality is that it's impossible to implement change from the bottom up in a representative, parliamentary democracy; once in a while, we get lucky and have enlightened members of the upper class implement good ideas from the top down (which, contrary to the popular myth, is how the liberals wrote the health care system in canada, which is based on the nhs, not on the system advanced by tommy douglas in saskatchewan, which was not single payer but actually virtually identical to the affordable care act in the united states). it's just not a true form of democracy. you pick which oligarch you'd prefer, and they make decisions from the top down.
if you want to build parallel structures and try to exist outside of the status quo, you can't do it yourself. you need solidarity. that's what i was excited about with occupy.
but it was a setup run by the cops. i was in rooms at points with 20-25 people, and i was the only person in it that wasn't a cop. there wasn't one or two informants. the whole thing was orchestrated by squads of officers trying to get people to break laws.
i didn't do anything stupid, because i'm not a stupid person, but i was asked to on multiple occasions. for example, i have a pretty clear memory of a night where i was coerced into keying up a guy's car because he was accused of sexually harassing an employee, without any due process, which would have been an overwhelmingly retarded thing to do. it was a cop directing this, trying to get activists arrested.
i did end up on some kind of list and have been under overwhelming surveillance ever since.
if you're in california, you should stay away from these immigration protests. they're being designed by the police to act as a mechanism to implement facial recognition software, and once you get on one of these lists you will never get off of it. trust me.
we live in the era of orwell, and the technology has just gotten more advanced in the 15 years since occupy, which was a giant entrapment operation conducted by the police.
i noticed something interesting today: not one but several large apartment buildings up for sale in the downtown core. it would seem to suggest an expectation that the property won't be able to attract desirable tenants in the near future, which is an expectation of an extreme downturn. it's essentially capital flight.
this is actually what i want, as an artist. windsor/detroit should have some level of manufacturing, but it should also be cheap. our artist haven was being taken away from us by capital via inflation. we want it back.
if these units have recently been renovated, that's a net positive for any artistic community that sets up in them at affordable rents.
Saturday, June 7, 2025
i also switched from teksavvy to oxio yesterday. it seems to be fine.
i don't play video games or stream large videos to big tv sets. my bandwidth and speed requirements are pretty minimal by today's standards; i was paying over $40/month for a grandfathered 6/2 mbps package that belonged in the 00s. it was already slow when i bought it in 2013 (i believe it was $20/month when i signed up) and i've actually been trying to downgrade ever since as i don't even need that, and they keep jacking up the price and offering me nothing in return. instead of offering lighter packages at lower costs, teksavvy has been trying to coerce me into upgrading by hiking the cost, to make the other packages look more attractive. it's been pissing me off for a while, but there just hasn't been a better choice. any switch would have just cost me more. however, it was also clear that some of the other services in the area were coming down in price, including the fiber optic, which was falling into the $50-60 range. i knew it wouldn't be long before falling prices on much faster services converged into this grandfathered teksavvy package that was increasing in price.
i paid my internet bill on april 1st because i hoped to get into a new apartment asap and then didn't use the internet package at all from april 9th-may 9th, which is a full month on the calendar. i contacted teksavvy to ask for a refund and was baffled by their response, which is that it's not in the contract. did teksavvy get bought by rogers? what the fuck was this? i asked for some basic customer service in not being billed for a service i didn't use, and the response was some contract law bullshit, like i was talking to bell, or woke up in the united states. a reasonable person would not charge somebody for a service they didn't use. so, i decided that was it, i was moving out of the grandfathered package.
the cheapest oxio package is 15/2 mbps, with no bandwidth limits, for $25, which is faster and has more bandwidth and costs less. i'll use something like 5 gb in an average month, and maybe 50 gb on the heaviest months. i had no use for the 400 gb cap teksavvy was selling, but no cap at all just means i don't have to worry about it.
i have tested it at speedtest and i am getting the 15, although my network is currently throttling that on my end. my router is set to 10 mbps mode and i'm using a switched usb 2.0 hub to accept an rj-45 to usb input and that maxes out under 9 mbps. i can set the router to 100 mbps mode and i have a usb 3.0 hub for this chromebook, but it's not installed because i was worried (and am still worried) about stalkers trying to break into my network and the older technology made it harder to access my terminals at a reasonable speed. i don't know if the new modem will make any difference or not.
i'm going to need to spend a fair amount of time fixing hardware, as the idiots broke a lot of my gear in an attempt to hack or overclock legacy hardware that they expected to be faster and more modern and just isn't. a basic disconnect is that these retards seem to think i'm some kind of upper class rich kid with brand new fancy shiny toys to steal, when the reality is that i'm a disabled person that grew up in a ghetto and has very carefully assembled a collection of inexpensive but broadly functional gear through budget purchases over a long time frame, mostly second hand or discounted. and, if the retards would have just gotten a job at walmart some time in 2023, they'd have saved up enough money to get a much nicer studio than i have by now. but that's not as much fun as harassing a disabled trans person, and pretending they're rich, because you're fucking stupid.
i've spent the last few days catching up on sleep and cleaning myself up, as i got pretty gross from weeks worth of walking through downtown in dirty clothes and engaging in minimal showering, as what's the point? i haven't been able to get out to get the extra ingredients for my salads, yet. i should be able to get out tomorrow, after i pick up my detroit bike, which is in for a tune up. i will be having salads every day for the next week or so.
i've decided to clean up the miele and try to reassemble it myself before i take it in. the 90s palomar will be ready tomorrow. the walmart bike (which is a very light (the lightest of the four) 700c hybrid) will be sometime next week. i'm going to wait until august before i bring the vintage mongoose switchback, which is a very light mountain bike or slightly thick hybrid, in. the miele is a more normal sized hybrid and the palomar is a low riding, heavy set mountain bike for cruising at moderate to low speeds through the rough backstreets of detroit.
all of the actual moving is done now, so i should get a good grocery run in tomorrow that will assemble a pantry of basic items, including things like spices and condiments, and also builds up cleaning and hygiene products. that is the basket of items that requires a bit of money upfront to build; the actual food is $5-10/day on top of that, and i can mostly get it at one of the stores in walking distance as i need it. the run tomorrow is going to take me out to get stuff at the wholesale store in bulk (it's cheaper in the long run), at the walmart, at the bulk barn, etc. once that is done, it's done, and it won't need to be done again until next month. it will slowly build on a monthly schedule, on a needs basis, as it comes up. as it is, i've had to improvise a little outside of my schedule. thursday was the cucumber soup and i stopped with that. friday morning, i had my chicken meal, which was the following, and was actually also quite filling:
these items were served together:
- one of those sidekick instant meal packages. it's labelled as a side dish and said to be chicken flavoured, and it had a chicken soup with bigger noodles feel, but was otherwise not particularly chickeny. i would never normally buy or eat something like this at all. i do appreciate the free food. i ate it plain because i was hungry, but if i made it again i would put some cheese and nutritional yeast on it, to give it some value as food.
- i made chicken salad melts with a can of flaked chicken (like a can of tuna) and the last two pieces of brown bread from last month. again, i'd never buy this. i made the chicken salad with caesar dressing instead of mayo, nutritional yeast, paprika, frank's, fresh dill and pepper. the brown bread had some olive oil margarine spread on it, then the chicken salad, and then some monterrey jack. that went in the microwave for 44 seconds.
i had a bowl of chicken soup, separate, with frank's, yeast and old cheddar, melted. they didn't have any medium and the old was on sale, so i got the old thinking it would be fine for this cycle. it was ok melted in the soup like this, but it just reminded me why i buy the medium. the old is way too powerful for me, personally; i much prefer the medium. i can't use this old cheese in salads. i'll have to put it aside for soups and other cooking. that's ok. there's some broccoli soup coming, and it should use most of it.
i also had a margarined dinner roll with the chicken soup, so this was actually a pretty big meal, and i more or less passed out for the night when it was done. all of these items - the sidekick pasta, the canned chicken, the brown bread, the chicken soup, the dinner roll and even the canola margarine were food bank items, and the only thing in that list that i'd ever buy in a store is the brown bread. the other items - the caesar, the yeast, the paprika, the frank's, the dill, the pepper, the cheese, the olive oil margarine - were items i bought myself in the store to supplement, and they added the nutrition and the flavour to the basic food items provided. so you see how i'm doing this. as mentioned, i'm hoping that my adventures in food bank food preparation isn't too prolonged, but i'll make that choice on a month to month basis.
i am actually a fan of dinner rolls, even if i never buy them, but they don't last long and i realized that these ones were already starting to crust up, so i ate the rest of them up quickly this afternoon. four of them were peanut butter and jam dinner rolls (i also don't expect the pb to last too long) and the fifth was another monterrey jack melt in the microwave, the pb, jam and rolls were all donated, whereas i bought the cheese on sale the other day. the monterrey jack was a good idea, jessica, with all this extra donated bread. i've got two more loafs in there - the onion rye and a loaf of white bread. i actually would buy rye from time to time (i tend to get pumpernickel when i get it), but i never buy white bread. i appreciate the free food and will happily consume it. really. i just need to make sense of how. the onion rye will be good for sides of garlic bread with the salads this week, and i'll figure out where to go with the white after that. there's still pb & jam left. and apples. that's probably the answer.
i'm currently not very hungry so that might do me until i get the salads tonight, but if i do get something later then it will be round one of the mashed red potato poutine.
what i'm doing tonight is getting a basic grocery list done and starting to clean a little. once i get the basic pile of pantry item groceries in tomorrow, i will need to shift to a day/night split schedule that requires tending to my email, finishing updating my address everywhere and then getting to work on getting some legal stuff done during the day, and then working on cleaning in here and setting the apartment up. it's currently a giant pile of stuff scattered everywhere. first, i have to thoroughly clean all of the floors, then i can start putting item in place.
i think that public prayer can and should be banned in public spaces that are intended to be inclusive, as it's a breach of secularism. this wouldn't be a total ban. they would be allowed to pray in their church parking lot, for example, but not in public parks or other publicly owned areas, as the expression of religion in these publicly owned spaces excludes those that don't share those beliefs, and prevents them from using those spaces.
this is a good idea.
we've had similar rulings in canada, and our parliament has also ignored them. canada's legal concept of secularism draws more from the french revolution than the american revolution (which we were literally on the opposite side of) and developed a lot later, mostly since the 1950s, and is consequently actually a lot more aggressive in it's separation wall, but our parliaments and city halls have tried to resist it.
there should not be any prayer being done in the house at all, as it's a clear breach of the separation of church and state.
all prayer in any legislative assembly should be banned outright, and anybody seeking to pray in a public assembly in any way at all should be immediately expelled and permanently banned.
activist?
he was a wanted terrorist and a convicted murderer. he deserved to die.
the idea that canadian intelligence tied india to the killing is a lie that trudeau told the world, because he was butthurt about being snubbed about a trade deal. carney should actually come out and clarify that canadian intelligence did not tie india to the assassination, and the previous prime minister concocted a horrendous lie for political purposes, to appease a political constituency.
however, given that the canadian government has refused to cooperate in arresting these people, the indian government would be justified in acting within our borders, if it did, which it probably didn't. when a state refuses to abide by it's international obligations, it opens itself up to reprisals.
i would hope that canada is taking steps to correct and undo the damage that trudeau created with his dishonest politicized foreign policy decisions and his naive perception of sikh terrorism.
Friday, June 6, 2025
it is extremely important that canada maintain good relations with india. trudeau's butthurt response to not getting a trade deal with india was childish, immature and stupid. carney is right on this.
i also support the parliament sitting through the summer. these kids blew the semester; they should go to summer school to catch up.
almost all trade in and out of china goes through the malacca strait in indonesia. if india and the us could together blockade that narrow strait, the chinese would be fucked.
for that reason - and this isn't the only issue but it's currently the most important one - the chinese are trying to smash their way through myanmar to the indian ocean to build a port, much as the russians were trying to do in afghanistan during the great game. they face overt and covert opposition to this by british, american and indian forces operating in myanmar. british infiltration of myanmar is particularly profound and particularly deep; this is the most recent iteration of a conflict between the british and chinese that goes back to the 1700s, and predates the revolutionary war in the united states.
it's not well known that there were indian regiments in the british garrison during the american revolutionary war - that indian troops fought on the side of the british. this is in addition to the native american forces.
however, that isn't what the order is about. the order is about overstays. it is reasonable for the americans to send a strong message to countries that don't respect their international agreements. canada also has a serious overstay problem that needs to be addressed, but i wouldn't propose a total ban, as that is neither fair to those that do follow the rules, nor is it really in our self-interest.
it's not a policy i would support, advance or implement if i were running the world (i would rather focus on foreign aid work and nation-building, which was working in afghanistan before dhimmi joe pulled out), but i can understand why some of the countries are on the recently published travel ban list. i couldn't understand why some of the others were. i understand that burma is undergoing some political instability, and that this is tied into a geopolitical struggle between the us-uk and the chinese (people forget that burma (myanmar) was the easternmost section of the british india, and split off because it was buddhist (while pakistan and bangladesh were split off due to being muslim)), but i have never heard of any kind of burmese instability exported to the west in any way.
so i looked up the order.
(i) According to the Overstay Report, Burma had a B‑1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 27.07 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 42.17 percent. Additionally, Burma has historically not cooperated with the United States to accept back their removable nationals.
(ii) The entry into the United States of nationals of Burma as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
well, presuming that is actually true, it's a reasonable justification.
Thursday, June 5, 2025
i actually think that the term "artificial intelligence" should be disassociated from the technology being marketed by it, as it is not intelligence in any way, it's rote memorization. it's not ai in any way, it's a database query.
i took courses on this at university. the term is entrenched, but it's a misnomer, and there should be an aggressive attempt to correct it. call it what it is - a database search. it's all it is. you're just querying a database for a search term, with a more user friendly interface than an oracle query. at it's backend, it's just oracle. it's just access.
if people were describing this correctly, it would eliminate a lot of the ignorance around it. no, chatgpt is not going to conquer the universe, unless somebody asks it to, and then it's a tool being used by an insane human, and you blame the human not the tool. we could get better legislation and have a better discourse if we better understood what it actually is.
it's just a search engine. it's not some sentient computer program that acts independently or makes it's own decisions.
how's my soup?
as expected, the yeast and frank's and dill really balance out the bitterness of the first bowl. further, i added the beet because i realized that my gazpacho was really more of a borscht.
this is consequently a spicy borscht gazpacho.
and i have to say it's pretty good - if you like bitter and sour and spicy together. a lot of people wouldn't like this.
it's been several years since i've been able to open the window when it's raining. the previous apartment had heavy smokers at both side windows and a functional litter box outside the bathroom window. here, i'm on the third floor, but it's a high third floor, so it seems more like a 5th floor.
the bedroom is facing southeast; tonight the rain is blowing in from the northwest, so there's no threat of splash, it's just fresh air.
it's quite nice.
round two of my hacked cucumber soup recipe, which is still evolving:
=====
- melt three tsps of olive oil margarine in a large sauce pan
- dump a bulb (yes a bulb) of garlic and a handful of diced dill in and cook for 3 minutes, until a little brown
- add a lime that's been segmented and with each segment cut in half and a dash of vinegar. cook for one minute.
- add 450 ml of vegetable broth (a half carton), diced cucumbers (oops. forget to mention this.), one diced beet, one tbsp of cayenne and some pepper. i avoided salt. let it come to a simmer and simmer for five minutes
- dump about 375 g of yogurt into a large soup bowl. i used biobest probiotic because it has fortified vitamins and that's no longer mandatory in canada.
- dump the saucepan of simmering soup on the yogurt, which will cool it down
- add an avocado (diced)
- add a tbsp of hemp seeds
- add a handful of fresh dill, cut and sprinkled
- add about 100 g of grated cheddar cheese, or more. tonight, i used a bit of medium cheddar i had left, and about 100 g of monterey jack that i bought on sale
- add a tbsp of nutritional yeast
- add some frank's hot sauce
i am serving with two slices of buttered (olive oil margarine) toast (they gave me onion rye at the food bank, so i toasted it with olive oil, monterey jack and garlic salt), a second avocado and an apple.
how is it?
the movers finally came today to finish the move. there's one thing left in storage: my old demoed bike, the miele. i need to get that out tomorrow. the 90s palomar and the walmart bike are both in the bike shop. my couch is stuck in the hall and i'll need to get the guy across the hall to open the door so i can tilt it into the apartment.
monday morning, i had the can of soup variation again, but it was chicken soup this time. chicken soup is excellent with melted cheese and hot sauce. tuesday morning, it was more vegetable soup. in both cases, they were served with toast with margarine, and an avocado, but i only had one orange left, so i had two avocadoes with the last one. i approach the soup via the least-expired-first algorithm, although i actually now have too much canned soup, none of which is expired, and which is now strictly backup, in case i need it - it's security. thank you to the food bank downtown, and also to the goodfellows of windsor, who have a highly efficient process in motoon. the goodfellows seem to actually buy items, and present a static basket, while the food bank redistributes whatever it gets, which means the basket is entirely random. i will be developing further recipes over june, as i once again have an assortment of items i would not normally buy, as i try to ease back into my normal eating cycle for july. i'm in a hope-that-happens mindset right now.
i then had the food bank lunch on tuesday afternoon, because i had to eat the pizza immediately, and donuts don't last long in the fridge before they get goopy, and because why did i get an energy drink? i spent the rest of the night snacking on some of the less nutritious items they gave me, including a kit kat bar (no nutritional value, but yummy) and another box of goldchip crackers (high in iron and fortified b vitamins). that gets all of the junk food eaten right away, and i've done a lot of exercise recently, so i was in fact in need of just raw energy like pizza, donuts, energy drinks, chocolate bars and goldchip crackers.
i had two apples this morning before i went out, and bought some mountain dew mid-walk, because it was beautifully hot and humid and you gotta stay hydrated. the travel blog will resume soon, and i should make some attempt to narrate this horrendous move, which required about 400 km of walking with a shopping cart back and forth from storage to my new apartment. let me remind myself about that, in case it takes a while to get the writing done.
i made a flowchart of meals last night for the next week that prioritize eating old items first, and try to ease myself back into my meal schedule by mid month. i have eaten double modified day ones (cereal/fruit/guac), day twos (quinoa/ice cream) and day sevens (eggs). there will be a catchup day this week where i eat the items i passed over from those three days. i will also need to finish round two for the cucumber soup, make two batches of broccoli soup, have two modified ceasar salads (day six pt 2), two modified garden salads (day three), two modified nacho plates (day six pt 1), two modified pasta plates (day five) and eventually two tomato sandwiches (day four), before starting the next cycle at two more ceasar salads and two more eggs days, as that will be the items remaining.
i also got a big bag of apples that i will eat casually and a big bag of red potatoes that i've decided to make a lot of gravy and/or sour cream/bacon/chives mixes with. smashed red potato poutine is a little unconventional but is going to end up being the basic idea. i did some research into how to eat this type of potatoes, and they are generally baked with added spices, which....i would eat such a thing and say thank you if you put such a thing in front of me, but i would not make it myself. i would argue this meal is a little too dry. i would probably douse them in ketchup or vinegar (not salt. i have grown somewhat averse to salt.), which would ruin them. it's just not my kind of meal. you have to boil these potatoes before you bake them, and i'm highly unlikely to bother baking them at all - i'll just boil them and smash them and make some kind of gravy/cheese/sour cream/bacon/chives side out of them. i'll be creative in how i make these sides as it comes up.
tonight, i made a quick run to the store before it closed to get the missing cucumber soup ingredients, but forgot to get beets and found out that they didn't have any nutritional yeast. i was able to order beets & yeast over uber, which was somewhat of a challenge for the driver, but he got it done. so, let me get to work on a redesigned cucumber soup recipe for the night, before i get to the caesar salad tomorrow.
i'm actually kind of hungry tonight, and that makes perfect sense, so i may eat a little more than the cucumber soup. as mentioned, i have a surplus of canned and other pantry items, some of which is a part of my normal diet (if slightly modified, like a variety of different types of pasta i would not normally buy) and some of which is not. i will be prioritizing eating some of the items i wouldn't normally eat as ways to supplement my regular diet plan but drag it out a little. days with two or three meals will be split into two or three days to drag it out a little by making use of the items i wouldn't normally purchase as a part of my diet. that will ensure i'm getting all of the vitamins i normally get, but over a longer period than normal, by subbing in a lot of the raw carbs and sugar in the food bank items.
night one, then, is the redesgined cucumber soup; i may also make a second chicken themed dish that combines a few of the gifts that are unusual in my diet. i like chicken, but i don't eat it regularly.
Tuesday, June 3, 2025
can we stop pretending that the white house is in any way serious in it's demands now?
the tariffs are a way for the treasury to raise money, and trump is dumb enough that he thinks it will get america out of debt and let him cut taxes for the ultra rich even further. trump doesn't think rich individuals should pay taxes at all, he thinks that government revenue should be generated by taxing imports.
there is consequently nothing we can do to change the policy except wait for americans to understand it and react to it.
i want you to make this youtube video for me.
- find a high class asian chef. not specifically chinese - maybe thai or vietnamese.
- find a bourgeois french chef.
- get them together, and ask them to make soup together
- but tell the asian guy he's making hot and sour soup and the french guy he's make french onion soup
- have them fight over the ingredients, and how to make the soup
for my amusement solely, the asian guy should be dressed like commander kor from the original star trek series and the french guy should be dressed like the swedish chef from the muppet show. make no attempt to explain why if they ask, and immediately replace them if they resist.
food bank lunch:
- stale little ceasars (in case you needed proof that they don't make their pizza on demand. there was a stack of them that came in around noon. must have been a slow day yesterday.)
- peanut butter for dipping sauce (i never eat peanut butter)
- two tim horton's donuts (because it's still canada)
- with an energy drink
i used to volunteer at food not bombs and while they would not have take this stuff because it's not vegan they would have been happy that it got donated rather than thrown out. let's have a round of applause for little ceasars (for once. this is south detroit.) and for tim horton's for getting their stale products eaten rather than destroyed.
no onions today, but some more cucumbers, so i need to eat up that yogurt in round two.
i don't normally eat this time of day, but the pizza couldn't sit, so i might not eat again until tomorrow night.
the narrative on the qatar plane is really not correct.
there's really nothing wrong with the president taking gifts, but he's obligated to take those gifts on behalf of the office. it would be unheard of and incorrect and a breakdown in the rule of law if trump is allowed to take this plane with him. the plane has to become property of the white house, for use by the next president.
that's not negotiable.
i expect that will be actually happens.
it's not surprising that the liberals are using the fentanyl nonsense as an excuse to clamp down on civil liberties, as though trump gives a fuck. where did that come from?
the answer is the rcmp, and the military, and the courts. you have to understand that these kinds of things work backwards, in real life - the enforcement agencies change the laws first, often via legal precedent, and then the parliament legislates existing precedent.
the reality is that our courts our exceedingly powerful in canada, and that was fine when the judges were picked properly, but judicial nominations since about 2006 in this country have been broken and in recent years it's really made a difference, in the form of terrible precedent leading to horrible law.
this will generate a backlash, but most of the backlash doesn't get it. it already happened, and nobody told us. now, they're updating the law, formally, as an afterthought.
canadian border guards need to more aggressively enforce stricter penalties on people bringing guns into canada, and i don't see that in the bill.
obviously, the truth is that trump is a robot clone. that's why you can shoot at him without killing him, and why his wife is mia.
mia? no, i never slept with mia. promise.
i mean, like there's some mystery about why melania's pissed off. he was convicted of soliciting (does the case use a different word?) a porn star when she was fucking pregnant. the only mystery is why she's still around at all.
Saturday, May 31, 2025
i had some vegetable alphabet soup this morning, with some toast, an avocado and an orange. i put the cucumber off until i could get some dill and yeast but didn't get a chance to get out today. so i made the cucumber soup without the dill.
i am not very nice to cucumbers. they gave me red peppers, which are good, and cherry tomatoes, which are ok, but the onions and cucumbers are (with lettuce) the triad of useless vegetables. you'd might as well just drink a glass of water. that's why i'm making soup out of it.
i enjoy pickles, but they're not really food.
here's my hacked recipe
=====
- melt three tsps of olive oil margarine in a large sauce pan
- dump a bulb (yes a bulb) of garlic in and cook for 3 minutes, until a little brown
- add a lime that's been segmented and with each segment cut in half and a dash of vinegar. cook for one minute/
- add 450 ml of vegetable broth (a half carton), one tbsp of cayenne and some pepper. i avoided salt. let it come to a simmer and simmer for five minutes
- dump about 375 g of yogurt into a large soup bowl. i used biobest probiotic because it has fortified vitamins and that's no longer mandatory in canada.
- the recipes call for a blending step. i would avoid this. i tried it and it wasn't pleasant.
- i would just dump the saucepan of simmerimg soup on the yogurt, which will cool it down
- add an avocado (diced)
- add hemp seeds
- add dill, if you have some
- add about 100 g of grated cheddar cheese, or more
- i would suggest adding a tbsp of nutritional yeast and some frank's, as well
i am serving with two slices of buttered (olive oil margarine) toast, a second avocado and an orange.
if i do this again, i'll avoid the blender and add the extra ingredients. adding the ingredients converts these useless cucumbers into something worth eating.
how is it?
it's bitter, but it's supposed to be. the missed ingredients could tone it down a little.
yes, this awful weather in eastern north america is climate change.
meteorologists are confused by what they're seeing - the weather is moving the wrong way. the blocking pattern isn't so weird, but the idea of the atlantic dominating weather in the midwest is unheard of.
...except that it isn't. this has been increasing for years. i posted quite a bit about this a few years ago, when it was the hot atlantic sea surface temperatures that were extending the summer here. well, it works both ways, is what we're learning.
if i were in boston or new york, or the swamps of the potomac, i'd be very worried, as it signals you're about to fall into the sea. detroit is becoming a maritime climate, and the boswas seaboard is tipping into domed status.
but what is even more concerning is that we're watching the gulf stream collapse. this was one of the most publicized outcomes of climate change, the collapse of the gulf stream. all of the factors surrounding climate change will lead to a hotter atlantic, and don't let people trick you into thinking otherwise, but these things are cyclical, and they oscillate. this will cycle out and come back, but it's something new and different, and the patterns are legitimately novel.
this is something that has changed.
- if it made sense to build an oil pipeline to nova scotia, the private sector would do it. they aren't because it doesn't. this is an expensive boondoggle that the government should avoid.
- i actually like doug ford's tunnel idea in principle, but i want to see a serious feasibility study. the basic observation, that the 401 is brutally congested, is correct. you don't want to see more giant highways built further north. a better idea may be to try to reduce the amount of traffic moving by truck and increase the amount moving by electrified rail, and if they do end up digging, they might want to consider expanding the subway network under the 401 and pairing it with freight traffic moving parcels.
Friday, May 30, 2025
new swans out today and i'd grade it as interesting but i have to listen to it a lot more first.
i take the atypical position that swans was best in the 90s and are better at being psychedelic than at being metal.
(more likely, it is about courtney love. but there's a real chance it's about madonna.)
let's not overreact or be sensationalist. as a strong critic of islam, i've constantly been forced to try to maintain levity in recent years.
trump's disdain for the educated is not fascism. it is not anything close to fascism. however, he does have a very real stalinist streak and what the united states should be seeking to avoid right now is the kid of devastating anti-intellectual purges that occurred in the soviet union under lenin and stalin.
the soviets killed or locked up all the smart people, then wondered why they couldn't compete. america may be driving the smart people away, or in the process of deporting them, but they are not killing or imprisoning people and there is really no good evidence that they are on the brink of it.
we remain in the era of orwell. don't forget that. trump is in truth overseeing american decline get itself over the hump, and start free-falling off the cliff.
onion soup round two this morning, tweaked slightly.
- sprinkle some grated cheese on the bread (i'm using mozzarella, which i bought)
- i then added the rest of the container of vegetable soup broth they gave me, which filled the pan up, and let it go for another ten minutes, until it was broiling.
- melt 3 tbsp of olive oil margarine in a large saucepan (i bought this).
- add one onion (i have two purple onions) and four small cloves of garlic, 2 tbsp of thyme, one tbsp of basil and one tbsp of cayenne pepper. i also put some (onion) salt and pepper in. i then let it cook on medium for 25 minutes.
(note: try it with fresh spicy peppers, habanero maybe, and let me know)
- dump a can of chick peas in a large bowl (not a normal purchase, a food bank specialty)
- i don't have fancy bread, but i broke up two three slices of brown bread that they gave me
- i don't have wine. i do have tamarind soup mix, which they gave me. this is an asian thing. it's a fruit they eat with fish soup. i dumped it into a one quart mixing bowl with a bit of vinegar and stirred it up. it smells like wine.
- after the onions were brown, i dumped the tamarind soup and two beef soup cubes (which they gave me) into the pan and let it come to a boil before reducing heat.
- i let that simmer for about ten fifteen minutes to let it boil off a bit
- i then filled the pan up with vegetable soup broth. i didn't measure this. i might have used chicken, but i have vegetable broth that is older. i let it come back to a simmer and then sit for another ten minutes.
note that you want to be stirring this regularly through the process from the start.
- i put a tbsp of paprika, a tbsp of cumin and tbsp of hemp seeds (i bought these and put them on everything) in the bowl and dumped the soup in.
- i put all of the mozzarella on top of the soup (i used 200 grams, grated)
- i added some frank's and some more pepper. i would have added a tbsp of nutritional yeast but i'm out.
i am serving it with a side of avocado and orange for key vitamins.
Thursday, May 29, 2025
onion soup is not something i have a lot of experience with. i've had it made for me by friends of friends, and i've had it in restaurants. i've never made it before. it's the kind of food my mom would eat, but i don't remember her ever making it.
the chick peas are helpful as a meat sub. good idea.
the tamarind soup subs as a fruity red wine very, very well.
it doesn't need extra salt and i may cut out the added salt next time. besides that, i have to say it's pretty good.
so, here's my hacked onion soup recipe, based on some guides online. i never buy onions, this was given to me by the food bank.
- melt 3 tbsp of olive oil margarine in a large saucepan (i bought this).
- add one onion (i have two purple onions) and four small cloves of garlic, 2 tbsp of thyme, one tbsp of basil and one tbsp of cayenne. i also put some (onion) salt and pepper in. i then let it cook on medium for a while.
- dump a can of chick peas in a large bowl (not a normal purchase, a food bank specialty)
- i don't have fancy bread, but i broke up two slices of brown bread that they gave me
- sprinkle some grated cheese on the bread (i'm using mozzarella, which i bought)
- i don't have wine. i do have tamarind soup mix, which they gave me. this is an asian thing. it's a fruit they eat with fish soup. i dumped it into a one quart mixing bowl with a bit of vinegar and stirred it up. it smells like wine.
- after the onions were brown, i dumped the tamarind soup and two beef soup cubes (which they gave me) into the pan and let it come to a boil before reducing heat.
- i let that simmer for about ten minutes to let it boil off a bit
- i then added the rest of the container of vegetable soup broth they gave me, which filled the pan up, and let it go for another ten minutes, until it was broiling.
- i put a tbsp of paprika, a tbsp of cumin and tbsp of hemp seeds (i bought these and put them on everything) in the bowl and dumped the soup in.
- i put the rest of the mozzarella on top of the soup
- i added some frank's and some more pepper. i would have added a tbsp of nutritional yeast but i'm out.
i am serving it with a side of avocado and orange for key vitamins.
and i'll let you know in a few minutes.
i had eggs again on monday (same thing, exactly) and quinoa on tuesday and wednesday morning. i found some cheap quinoa at the food basics. i did add a can of corn to each bowl, as well as some cherry tomatoes, which are not a part of the standard meal, but it was otherwise pretty much what's on the diet sheet. tonight, i'm making some onion soup, which is a bit of an experiment.
the idea i've settled on is that i'll use the food bank items to embiggen my diet sequence and in the process slow it down a little. i've doubled up on this run, which i do sometimes anyways, because there were items i wanted to eat quickly. i can replace some items - the slim jim can replace the salami or bacon, for example. there are a handful of things i'd buy anyways, but these are largely unusual food items for me, and i asm learning a few new recipes.
so i'm currently cooking the soup and i'll let you know the recipe and how it is, it's a little unusual to say the least.
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Monday, May 26, 2025
at this point, it's relatively clear that the republicans are not going to give putin what he wants and needs, in terms of security guarantees, to pull back from the dnieper. the change of tone from washington has been to be more condescending towards the russians, and that is not helpful. the russians are not quite equals, but they want to be treated with equity and not with disdain and superiority. trump is sending the wrong message and putin is correctly reacting to that wrong message.
putin wants bill clinton back and it doesn't look like he's going to get it, and trump is probably the best he's going to get, big macs and all.
one thing that has changed is that the white house seems to understand the urgency of the situation, and biden did not seem to understand the seriousness of what was unfolding. trump actually appears to have picked up more where obama left off, whereas biden was trying to carry on from the second bush administration. that's a shift in the right direction. however, i'm not convinced they're attaching enough seriousness to the situation.
there is no doubt that the russian response demonstrated deep operational incompetence. they hadn't done anything like this in quite a long time, and it showed; if some older generals in the kremlin, behind some bunker in moscow, thought they could just dust off the world war two manuals, they were misled by their longer concept of history. the whole world, including the russian intelligentsia, could see that the russian defense forces needed some work.
well, they've now had three years to work on it. and i want people to stop to think about that.
biden seems to have been trying to win a final battle in the cold war, so his name would be in the history books as the one that conquered, but it spectacularly backfired and he will instead be remembered as the boob that made a mess of eastern europe right when it was getting itself back on track (helping only his adversaries, the chinese). rather than knock the russians out, it has provided them with a catalyst to rebuild a continental sized military empire with new technology, new weapons capability and new military objectives. biden has awakened the russian bear, and we are beginning to see it start feeding.
the fool biden made the same mistake that hitler and napoleon made before him and he made it because he was ignorant of the history. trump may extricate america, but the real threat lies in a war in europe in the next ten years between germany and russia.
Sunday, May 25, 2025
my friday meal was the kd + chickenballs (spaghetti & meatballs).
my saturday meal was composed of items i missed last week - a grapefruit, some raspberries, some ice cream, some carrots, etc. none of this was food bank items and i bought it all on friday night.
i didn't trust the eggs the food bank gave me so i wanted to eat them next. they seemed ok. eggs and bread are both a normal part of my diet, but these other items they gave me are not:
- beef cubes
- home fries
- slim jims
this is what i did.
first, i made some gravy with the beef cubes, which are intended as a base for soup, by using twice as much. it came out pretty good, and there's still some left. then i fried the home fries in olive oil margarine until they were scallop-y. in a bowl, i grated some mozzarella cheese (that was on sale. i bought it for the onion soup.) and put some more grated mozzarella aside. you put the homefries on the cheese, the gravy on the fries and the rest of the cheese on last and just let it sit for a few minutes, to let the boiling gravy cool down and the cheese melt. i added pepper and frank's (i have no ketchup). it's actually pretty good.
then i chopped one slim jim up and threw it in the pan. i let that fry for a few minutes as i made some toast. the fried slim jim comes up on the plate, and three eggs get fried in the remaining olive oil. i chopped some cheddar cheese for the toast and an avocado on the side.
excellent breakfast. wish i had a glass of juice. alas.
if you're curious, fried slim jim tastes similar to hot dog.
Friday, May 23, 2025
movement is very loud in the new apartment and i don't really mind. i wouldn't usually go to the main festival, which has something like 100,000 people (gross), but i like to go to the smaller shows overnight, the ones that run from 11:00-7:00 in abandoned warehouses around detroit. i don't know how many i've been to over the years, now.
right now, the problem is the weather. it's not a little chilly. it's fucking freezing. i'm not stuck inside anymore, so i'd find a way to get there, but it's not any fun when it's freezing out.
the point is you put on minimal amounts of clothes and sweat it out in the heat. singing songs around the campfire in a parka has it's moment, but it's not the same thing.
next year.
maybe.
if i'm not too old. we'll figure that out over the next ten months.
the problem with the missile defense system 20 years ago is that it wasn't continent wide. it was designed to shoot down missiles shot at america over canada. we were even supposed to agree to the use of our airspace to get our cites destroyed as collateral. it was crazy.
this system is going to built much further north and it's a necessity to keep the russians out. like at kiev. we need some way to shot these down over the ocean.
it's not a decision to make. it's a no brainer.
will it work, though?
i went to the food bank last week because i'm broke until the first of the month. it will balance out in a few weeks.
they gave me a lot of food i would never usually buy or eat, including several large cans of chick peas, raw onions, cucumbers, chicken nuggets, kraft diner and vegetable broth.
i held off of the chick peas tonight (i had some in my guac the other day). but i made the kraft dinner with vegetable broth as a sub for milk and margarine, which i don't have, and also fried the nuggets in the vegetable broth, which is actually really tasty. i then put the nuggets in the kd. i added paprika (vitamin a), hot sauce (sodium), cumin (iron), nutritional yeast (b vitamins, inc b12), two avocadoes (b5), garlic, pepper, caesar dressing and some cheddar (these are core staples for me) and it's actually an awesome spaghetti and meatballs.
i will be making some onion soup, cucumber soup and brocolli soup - which i never make - just as soon as i get some olive oil margarine and some more cheese. i got some home fries for my eggs.
and i learned that goldfish crackers are an excellent source of iron.
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky agree on almost nothing politically but both say that anti-Semitism was deeply rooted in the United States in the last century. They made the specific charge about Harvard University speaking in very different settings this spring.
I think the first Jewish maths professor was appointed while I was there in the early '50s. One of the reasons MIT (where I now am) became a great university is because a lot of people who went on to become academic stars couldn't get jobs at Harvard-so they came to the engineering school down the street.
it's not that trump doesn't have a point, it's that this is a stupid way to deal with it.
However, Chomsky questions the wisdom of boycotting Israeli academic institutions. "If we boycott Tel Aviv University because Israel violates human rights at home, then why not boycott Harvard because of far greater violations by the United States?" Chomsky writes. "Predictably, initiatives focusing on [academic boycott] have been a near-uniform failure, and will continue to be unless educational efforts reach the point of laying much more groundwork in the public understanding for them, as was done in the case of South Africa."
i haven't seen a survey, but i would strongly suspect approximately 0% of academic jews support a boycott of harvard to combat anti-semitism. i would challenge you to find me a single jew that supports this. it's utterly foolish, and it will severely harm the united states.
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
we don't have trucks worth of free food from the united nations coming to canada to feed our starving poor.
we have volunteers in soup kitchens that never have enough to get the job done. this should be a government responsibility, overseen by paid staff funded by tax dollars. it shouldn't be run by volunteers.
i would call on the liberal government to stop politicizing the issue and get taxpayer money out on the street to feed the starving poor here in canada.
there are more hungry people in ms. anand's riding that are starving from the oppression of false scarcity in capitalism than there are in gaza, which is the biggest and best taken care of welfare state on the planet, and which doesn't deserve your sympathy or empathy at all. these are horrible people with terrible value systems.
the problem is that ms. anand exists in an informational bubble. she gets her data from unreliable sources, doesn't question them and doesn't seek any kind of balancing of information. it results in a phony perspective based on alternate facts in a make believe universe.
despite what you may have heard, there is no famine in gaza and there has been no use of starvation as a political tool. ms. anand, as a minister in the government, should have better fact checking mechanisms available to her, so that she doesn't repeat falsehoods spread by social media.
our cabinet ministers cannot be getting their facts from facebook or twitter and, when they are, it demonstrates a deep level of overwhelming incompetence.
Monday, May 19, 2025
if we can't or won't present peacekeeping as a replacement for active participation in ongoing conflicts, there is no longer any self-interest in supporting peacekeeping, and doing so becomes rather foolish. we're just squandering resources for nothing in return. it becomes a waste of our tax money that would be better spend on building more subsidized housing in canada.
the point of supporting peacekeeping was to avoid involvement in conflicts like ukraine by telling the americans "look, we'd rather contribute like this.".
but, canada is actually essentially leading the offensive against the russians in ukraine.
so, what is the purpose of canadian peacekeeping, now, then?
we've lost the plot.
i'd like to remind or teach everybody, as the plot has been completely lost, that the purpose of pearson-trudeauvian peacekeeping at the height of the cold war was to avoid nato war commitments in conflicts we had ideological problems with.
so, rather than send troops to fight alongside white supremacists in angola or anti-communist forces in vietnam, we talked the americans into agreeing with us that it was valuable to stabilize africa by sending them food and textbooks.
from 1965-2005, canada was the most non-aligned member of nato. it's a difficult balancing act, as we had to try to align with the parts of american hegemony we liked while avoiding participating in the parts we didn't. and it didn't always work.
it's not clear that trump will accept these arguments. lbj did. nixon did. carter did. clinton did. reagan didn't.
peacekeeping is not something canada has ever done out of unselfish altruism. it's been a way to avoid harder war commitments in conflicts we conscientiously objected to.
frankly, there are not any such conflicts like angola, or vietnam, or iraq, in which america is currently involved in. canada went to afghanistan as a part of a un mandate, and that was the right choice. i would support canadian involvement in yemen, as these are legitimate bad guys and vicious barbarians that need to be wiped out. the closest thing to an iraq or vietnam is ukraine, and we are taking a very uncanadian position on that conflict, in supporting bellicose war rhetoric and very hot war that the americans are wisely trying to de-escalate. unlike iraq, a war of regime change in iran would actually be a noble enterprise. etc.
it is plausible that we might get asked to participate more in some of the proxy wars in africa, and support brutal parties that we are ideologically opposed to. that is the kind of thing that we invented peacekeeping in order to avoid, but there's a lot less of that in the world today than there was in 1970.
i'm not a twang guitar player. the songs i learned to play on the hondo telecaster included stairway to heaven, black magic woman and squonk - all les paul standards. yes, i was that kid playing the stairway solo at age 12. i replaced the telecaster with an ibanez with a locking bridge that was kind of not very strat-like; it was more like a prs. i have a replacement for that already, too. my hands are too small for les pauls; that's why i bought an sg. however, i am going to need a tele for the period 3 recordings, which are far more focused on live guitars than the period 2 recordings were, and i'm going to need everything to finish the period 4 material, which is psychotically dense and over-produced.
this rebuild consequently isn't going to merely be a performative exercise. i will use this stuff, and i will be anxious to get going, but i need to follow this process, and the mess of the last several years has just slowed me down that much more and made the need to adhere to process that much more clear.
at the least, once i get through 1989-1995, 1995-2003 should be relatively fast because it is mostly done. i will then mostly pick up again at 2003, where i left off in 2017.
i understand that listeners might be frustrated, but i have to get the entire package finished. for me, this is integrated. everything goes together. you'll have to wait, and that is more clear now than ever before.
i'm about 30% of the way through transporting items out of my storage unit and into my new apartment, which is about an hour walk, both ways. i'm a little out of shape, so it's actually good exercise for me.
i have mentioned that i'm going to be refocusing several times, now, and have been trying to kick back into some kind of productive cycle since the start of the pandemic, but keep getting distracted or sidetracked. at this point, trying to pick back up at the start of period 3, or trying to parachute back into the alter-reality would be difficult to even make sense of.
i am instead going to need to just start at the start and work forward. that means starting with the journal, in 1989, and just working through linearly. no alter-reality. no lynchian split narrative. just starting from the start and moving forward.
that means i'm going to be focusing mostly on building the offline writing, but also that i'm going to be restarting a number of blogs in real time, including the diet blog.
something i've been meaning to do since i moved to windsor is sample some of the local restaurants. the last month and a half has thrown me out of my diet and forced me to order food, which has got me back to thinking about that. i am intending on weekly restaurant updates at the diet blog, in addition to the diet blog itself. i've mostly eaten fast food over the last month, but i'd like to expand that to more of the local restaurants one by one.
i also need to rebuild sections of my studio that were lost over the years, which is something i was doing before the house got bought and i had to deal with the legal fight over housing. i'll be doing that linearly, as well, as i go through the journal. i will get my first acoustic guitar, then my first electric guitar, and need to have emulations of them in my studio, for period 3 recordings. the first electric guitar was a hondo telecaster copy, which i have replaced with a hannah montana mini tele. it's actually a nice little washburn. i could repaint it a solid purple. the thing is that i have freakishly small hands, so i actually prefer miniature scale guitars. i also have an epiphone sg jr and a fender mini squire, both solid red. i will be looking for a comparable acoustic guitar, which my dad sold to buy me the tele. i still have my first amp, from 1992. i also need to get a recorder, as we had recorder classes in elementary school. my younger sister played piano from a very young age, and i also had that around. i'll rebuild slowly from there, and replace everything that was lost. i'll also need to fill in minimal missing sections of the existing discography, inri000-inri100 (1995-2005), but this is mostly a writing project that i've been eating away at since 2017.
i'm basically in the same mental position i was in in 2013. i'm overwhelmed and having difficulty focusing on any one thing. if i pick up somewhere in between, i'm just going to start running around in circles again, like i've been doing since 2017. 2013-2016 was extremely productive, but i started in 1995 and should have started in 1989 and i focused only on the music and have since expanded the scope of the project to include video, writing and other types of media. this time, i'm starting in 1989 and moving comprehensively forward.
but i will also exist. i will eat. i will go to shows. i will have political opinions. i would like to start vlogging again. etc. all of these things will happen in real time, in the way that they must.
what i can't be doing is trying to exist in ten different spaces in time. i'm not a tralfamadorian. i can do two things at once. that is all.
that means that this mass of writing and video from 2013-2025 is going to have to wait until it comes up in sequence before i can finish it, and that's going to be quite a ways into the future. that's fine.
when the journal is done, it's done.
regarding the stalker, i don't seem to have shaken them, but the depth of the harassment is clearer now than it was two years ago and it is now crystal clear that i'm going to have to get them arrested and put in jail. that was not clear before. it is now. i'm dealing with a true believer. this person will not stop voluntarily, they must be forced to stop, and i will have to force them to stop.
Sunday, May 18, 2025
the reason that trump has been keen on the russians is because - and he's right. i said it myself. - he realizes that the west needs russia in a fight against china. we will lose a war against china if we can't pull the russians back into our orbit, first.
trump is, however, dealing with realizing the unpleasant reality that putin is an asshole and any realignment has to deal with that fact, first, as a pre-requisite.
so, he's dusting off biden's plan, which was to arm the arabs, instead. right. when was the last time the arabs won a war against anybody? if china invades the middle east, they may have to deal with endless arab bombing attacks, but that is not the same thing as fighting a war, and the chinese can avoid the annoyance by not invading. the arabs lucked out on oil wealth, and spend trillions on weapons, but they don't know how to use them. they buy these 100 million dollar planes from lockheed martin and then pay american pilots to fly them. there are american military bases all over the middle east with defensive weapons systems and american military guys operating them. do you think these countries are going to fight for democracy and human rights when they have to? the middle east is a liability to defend, it's not an ally to align with.
where should america align, then?
well, who has defeated the chinese before?
1) japan.
2) vietnam.
3) mongolia.
4) china, itself.
all of these are self contained to the chinese geographic space except mongolia. the last time that chinese siege technology took on arab fundamentalism, the result was 100 million dead muslims. i see no reason to think the same thing won't happen again.
only the russians actually beat the mongols, although other slavic groups (poles, ukrainians) also fought them off.
the geography determines the destiny and there's not any other possible outcome. yes, you protect the pacific. yes, you try to control indochina. does this stuff sound familiar?
but, at the end of it, we need the russians fighting on our side, or the chinese march straight through to france. there's no other way to parse it.
Saturday, May 17, 2025
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