the collapse of intel would be very bad news for the united states. the government should ensure that does not happen.
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
i'm a socialist, but this isn't socialism. socialism is when the workers have control of the means of production. that's not what this is at all, it's the opposite of that, it's letting the government take control away from workers.
trump's economic system is not anything resembling socialism. what it is is an old tory economic system called mercantilism, associated with the british and canadian tories.
canada used to have a fair amount of state owned industry, and it was mostly set up by the old tories. this was sold off in the 80s and 90s. i agree with the elder trudeau, who vociferously argue this was a tremendous mistake canada would live to regret.
i don't think there should be limits on the amount of force a person uses in self-defense, and i don't think there really are. it's not really about reasonable force, so much as it's about proportionality. you may need to shoot somebody in the face several times to defend yourself, and a court should let you do that, and would.
however, there's a difference between self-defence and assault. if you're not defending yourself anymore, it's no longer self defence. this would be things like shooting at people that are trying to flee.
my take on the issue in kawartha lakes is that the charges by police are unjustified, and the individual will likely have the charges dropped, or be acquitted. that looks like self defence to me. this is why we have courts - cops are quite often very dumb people, and frequently don't understand the law very well.
in context, the officer should have sought a warrant for the individual's arrest. that is the step that police skip too often, and need to be retrained to do instinctively. police officers should not be making decisions like this independent of the courts. the courts should be doing all of the thinking; the cops are just dumb muscle, sent out as enforcement. they aren't paid to think, and should be explicitly forbidden from trying.
i doubt a judge would have approved a warrant in this case, and that would have been the end of it. as it is, i hope the process of acquittal is not too long or too inconvenient.
the media commenters have apparently all forgotten that the individual is innocent until proven guilty, and entitled to due process of law.
what i'm thinking about is trying to bring the party back from the dead via a series of entertaining debates during the nomination process. it's more about generating headlines and raising profiles. this of course isn't building a worker's movement, but real life can sometimes confuse cause and effect. it's probably a better idea, right now.
if you think you can participate and have some free time, sign up.
if engler does win unopposed, you can forget about the ndp. they're done.
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
lavrov has been relatively clear about why a meeting between putin and zelensky cannot happen, and why putin sought a meeting with trump, and why zelensky would need to meet with lower level officials instead of with putin directly. this is not being reported because it's not understood.
in the old language of international law - and putin is an old timey conservative, like a disraeli or a churchill, although this is even older than that - dignitaries need to meet at the proper levels. this is actually why the american presidents, before trump. wouldn't meet with putin. they were spitting this back in his face.
emperors meet emperors
kings meet kings.
governors meet governors.
mayors meet mayors.
diplomats meet diplomats.
putin, as an emperor, demanded to meet with an equivalent dignitary in the west, namely the president of the united states. obama and biden both responded by refusing to meet with putin, in an attempt to enforce the idea that russia and the united states are not at equivalent levels, that russia is a subservient state and america is the hegemon. putin could meet with john kerry, or anthony blinken. the russians rejected this as inappropriate.
putin, as emperor, could not possibly meet with zelensky, who is at best a governor and perhaps merely a mayor. zelensky would need to meet with an undersecretary below lavrov. that would properly enforce zelensky's status.
zelensky, by demanding to meet with putin, is essentially being uppity.
the russians won't tolerate that. zelensky must meet with his equals, at a lower level of function, as is the convention in the lost world of hierarchy that the russians continue to exist in, and which the rest of the world barely remembers or understands.
there was no possibility of this ever happening, and trump's insistence on it was either ignorance or dishonesty.
fwiw, the indigenous people of the crimean peninsula were a proto-iranic (proto-slavic) group that the greeks called the tauri, three proto-iranian groups called cimmerians, scythians and sarmatians, in sequence, and probably peasant slavic groups first identified by herodotus as scythian farmers. slavic is a weird language. it is a satem language, making it more similar to iranian than to german in some ways. herodotus indicates the ukraine had a peasant class of farmers and a ruling class of mounted warriors and they were slightly different ethnic groups. it has long been thought that the slavs were there the whole time, as the underclass to the iranians, but that it was not well recorded, except by herodotus. the cimmerians are the earliest known group from the crimean area, as recorded in contact with early semitic texts, but when the greeks showed up and started building settlements, the people they met, also iranians, were named as taurii. they did not know that the region had been inhabited by indo-european and proto-indo-european speakers for many thousands of years, but they did note the presence of a slightly different group of farmers along the dnieper (borysthenes), in addition to the ruling class of mounted warrior kings.
you might try to build a map from scraps of stones found in assyrian ruins, but the archaeology in ukraine itself is more useful:
you might imagine the greeks might have had some interaction with assyrian history during the period of persian hegemony. in fact, the greeks famously found the ruins of the assyrians when they entered the area behind alexander, and they did not know what culture the ruins belonged to, or what they had found. grecian curiosity of course found the answer. the assyrians were forgotten under persian hegemony, due to their cruelty. nobody wanted to remember them; everybody wanted to forget them. it took a lot of effort to remember them.
the persians left us no writing of any sort, which is bizarre. we know they could write, and appeared to prefer to write in aramaic. while there is no clear historical record of it, it seems that the arabs must have systematically burned anything related to persian writing, during the great translation event. anything the persians might have left us about assyria was lost in this process. the last persians appear in history as kurdish scholars during the pax arabica in baghdad, which was further destroyed during the mongol invasions. it is possible that some ancient persian writing was converted to arabic by kurdish or other scholars, and then burned and forgotten; there is no record of this. we simply have no surviving writing of any sort from thousands of years of persian civilizaton, and future historians will be forgiven for concluding they must have been illiterate, which is false.
this is a greek map, c -500.
the greeks called the area the cimmerian bosporus and set up a greek client state which was half greek and half iranian. the greeks were replaced by the romans, who were driven out by iranic groups and then colonized by east germanic groups (the goths). the huns then swept into the region and killed everybody, generating waves of germans and iranians to the west, where they invaded the roman empire. it's not widely understood that there was substantive iranian migration into france during this period; the name alain is iranian in origin, and france has tons of iranian place names.
the huns were the first turkic group into the region, and their migration into it is well documented, if a little blurry. they were followed by other turkic groups like bulgars and khazars. these people are not indigenous to the region, but violently displaced the indigenous iranian people and then held on to their conquests for a few centuries.
the khazars were defeated by a confederation of swedes, who set up colonies in the region to trade with the romans, and indigenous slavs. the old legends claim that the slavs actually asked for the swedes to rule over them. i can believe that the slavs may have sought an alliance with the swedes to expel the turkish groups and, together, the two of them did. this new confederation, called rus, took control of most of modern ukraine in the 9th century, including crimea. the greeks, however, had come back and set up new trading posts. something akin to antiquity reasserted itself, with the swedes as the new royal scythians, the byzantines as the new greeks and the scythian farmers, the slavs, continuing as they always had. after the schism between catholics and orthodox, italian traders took over for byzantine traders in crimea. the populations continued to speak greek under italian control.
the mongols destroyed russia in the 13th century, and took control of the crimean peninsula in the process. this is where the crimean khanate originates from - a recent migration from east asia. however, they had a hard time maintaining control of the greek cities on the coast, who kept revolting. eventually, those cities were conquered by the ottomans, and the tatars became a client of the turks.
the scythian farmers of herodotus, the actually indigenous slavs, had since regrouped and had begun to expel mongols and turks from their homeland. they were eventually usurped by a german-speaking ruling class, a new royal scythian, and this new german-slav confederation moved south to reclaim crimea from the usurping turks a second time, this time in the 18th century. the new slavic mega state reincorporated the conquered regions - which correspond closely to the regions putin has recently reclaimed - as new russia.
the tatars were tolerated to an extent, as conquered and absorbed turks were elsewhere in the new slavic megastate of muscovy, but it should be remember that the slavs were expelling a violent occupier. the crimean tatar economy for centuries was based on capturing and selling ukranians to turks as chattel slaves. this is where the name ukraine comes from. if the indigenous slavs wanted to enact some level of revenge on their cruel overlords, they had every justification to do so.
slavic history is attractive to a marxist, or an engelian (?), because it has so much process. an enslaved, oppressed indigenous group (the slavs) rose up and overthrew it's cruel rulers (the turks), expelling them from their land and reducing them to tribute. eventually, stalin just shipped them back to mongolia, where they came from, and while that might have been an overreaction due to a perception that hitler tried to take advantage of them, who can blame him for it, really?
the narrative that tatars are indigenous to crimea is not merely historically wrong, it is grossly offensive. the tatars were a vicious, oppressive group of invaders that enslaved the actual indigenous people, the slavs.
this is western propaganda at it's worst.
i don't support a full russian annexation of all of ukraine. what i support is the legitimate expression of democracy in the half dozen former soviet provinces in question.
however, this map would be impossible for russia to defend from an attack by germany, which is their justified concern. hitler and napoleon both tried the same basic thing, and they both failed. if the russians don't have a way to protect the massive flat land they exist on from attack by germans or franks, it will happen again.
the river is not impenetrable, but it provides a natural barrier. i'm reminded of mccarthy starting the korean war by getting too close to the yalu river, which the chinese told him not to do. mccarthy got too close, and the chinese pushed him back. the russians could conceivably use the dnieper the same way.
this is the maximum extent of russian annexation that i would support on purely democratic grounds:
however, this map would be impossible for russia to defend from an attack by germany, which is their justified concern. hitler and napoleon both tried the same basic thing, and they both failed. if the russians don't have a way to protect the massive flat land they exist on from attack by germans or franks, it will happen again.
a better idea - and i haven't talked about this in a while but i've been through it - is to try to split the country off at the dnieper. this map has this major river running through it:
the river is not impenetrable, but it provides a natural barrier. i'm reminded of mccarthy starting the korean war by getting too close to the yalu river, which the chinese told him not to do. mccarthy got too close, and the chinese pushed him back. the russians could conceivably use the dnieper the same way.
this would require occupying an area of ukrainian speaking territory and abandoning an area of russian speaking territory, but the next river is the vistula and while that might be better, it's also impossible.
if the russians were to hold the areas of ukraine east of the dnieper, it could arrange population transfers, like was done between greece and turkey. the greeks left ionia and went back to attica. russian speakers could transfer to the east of the river, and ukrainian speakers could transfer to the west of it.
the major reason the russians haven't been able to do this is that they won't bomb out the bridges over the dnieper. the ukranians have bombed the bridges to prevent a russian advance. the russians refuse to bomb the bridges that the ukrainians are using for supply lines. if the russians would just take the bridges out, ukraine would be unable to supply it's troops on the other side of the dnieper, and this would end very fast. my understanding is that the russians refuse to do this because they think it's barbaric, and because they think they don't have to.
this would be over by now if they had done that. without supplies, ukrainian defenses would quickly collapse and the russians could move to occupy the area east of the river with relative ease. ukraine would have to surrender. that also means the russians couldn't get over the river to take the rest of the country.
these considerations should no longer be seen as realistic. barbaric or not, if the russians don't take these bridges out soon, they could be dealing with a substantive counterforce intent on using them not just for supplies but for soldiers. they should have done this years ago. they no longer have a choice to pretend they don't have to - yes, they do have to.
this is a realistic way to actually end this. ukraine will need to accept the reality of heavy russian fortifications on the dnieper. however, the flip side of that is that ukraine itself doesn't need to be in nato to act as a further disincentive against russia. the fact that there is no geographic boundary west of the dnieper until you reach the carpathians and the vistula, both in nato, is good enough.
the next step would need to be the russians pulling nato out of poland, first. it would be pointless to continue a war against the western part of ukraine, with no geographic boundaries in ukraine that can provide them with position. the position they seek is the dnieper.
if the russians were to keep pushing further west than the dnieper, i would join the side arguing they need to stop. but, they won't.
Monday, August 25, 2025
this is the liberals' analysis:
“[The Premier] can eliminate development charges, right now. He can streamline approvals and harmonize zoning across the province right now."
right.
because you fix a market failure by modifying trivialities.
there are bigger, more fundamental problems here rooted primarily in immigration that are not going to be solved by changing zoning laws.
the market has failed. it's time for government to intervene to fix the problem.
these are the results of the oct 30, 1995 referendum in quebec:
should canada have merely abandoned the red areas?
no, we should have sent the army in to occupy them, and if quebec wanted to fight back, we should have told them to go ahead and try.
i cannot understand how our government doesn't see the parallel or the precedent in international law that it is trying to advance when it's so glaringly obvious.
but, the west only uses international law when it's convenient. when it's not convenient, it just fills the airwaves with lies, and tells them to you with a straight face and a shit-eating grin. we'd be supporting any breakaway region from russia we could find, even if it was led by a nazi dictator, against the will of the populace. and, we'd call it "democracy" when we did.
this narrative is completely ridiculous, hollywood nonsense.
all empirical evidence indicates that the people in the regions occupied overwhelmingly support reunification with russia.
the premise that ukraine is fighting for democracy is an absurd, malicious lie. ukraine itself is a kleptocracy, and not a democracy in any meaningful sense. the political system in ukraine is the same as the political system in russia. the democratic will of the people is to join russia - and it's been expressed repeatedly. the occupier is ukraine, not russia.
canadians should understand this. imagine if quebec declared independence from canada (which is similar to ukraine declaring independence from russia, except that ukraine and russia have almost identical languages and share a similar cultural background, which is less true about quebec and canada). if you lived in montreal or gatineau, you would oppose that - you would vote to go back to canada. that is the situation that crimeans and residents of what the russians call the donbas regions found themselves in after ukraine declared independence - they were a part of a country that existed geographically, but not culturally, and they resented it and wanted to return to the country they wanted to live in. they didn't vote for independence, it just happened.
the event in 1991 was not a democratic process. a handful of people made a decision in moscow to dissolve a confederation, and the borders of ukraine (expanded by khrushev to include historical parts of russia) poofed into existence out of no historical process, and with zero democratic legitimacy.
i can imagine being a montrealer waking up in the country of quebec on november 1, 1995 - which, unlike ukrainian independence, would have at least been a democratic process. i can imagine welcoming a canadian invasion to reclaim gatineau and montreal as being liberating forces, to overthrow the new found occupation of montreal by quebec. i can imagine the new country of quebec kicking and screaming and throwing a fit and demanding it's territorial integrity be respected, and it would be wrong to do that. the canadian government would be doing the right thing in sending the military in to take back strategic regions by force.
this government's cluelessness of the precedent it is setting - which is that quebec is indivisible, and trying to reclaim canadian-identifying regions that overwhelmingly want to stay in canada would be some kind of war crime - is baffling, and irresponsible. canada should be in 100% support of the right of russian speaking regions of geographical ukraine to self-determination, if for no other reason than to prevent itself from an inevitable collapse into a failed state, on the eventuality of quebec independence.
but this is the fucking dumbest country in the world.
no. they don't get it.
mexico is not seen as a competitor, but as a client. canada is seen as a real competitor. this is the fundamental problem that isn't being understood: some spook in the deep state behind trump has (probably correctly) identified canada as america's dominant threat in the upcoming 50 years.
mexico isn't seen that way, so trading with them isn't a problem.
i'll say again that the expectation of pride in this context should be to criticize palestine and other muslim countries for their ongoing criminalization of homosexuality.
that's the issue that is of relevance, in context.
pride otherwise has nothing to do with the israeli-arab conflict, and it should say that.
i wasn't able to load the usb key in gparted at all. it's an old version of gparted. i haven't tried from arch yet.
- peel and segment one lime. chop each segment in half. put on same plate.
- add 1 tbsp of processed pesto
it took all day just to get out to do some groceries, but i'm almost done, and i need to do some laundry. i bought a small container of fresh hot sauce and we'll see what happens. i should point out that i did eat the rest of the chicken and the results are inconclusive; while it didn't generate unwanted erections, and i have been waking up completely limp, it did create some weird reactions while defecating, some weird sensations and a minor spike in unwanted hair growth, although you also saw the amount of progesterone in my system. i can't make a clear determination which is more true. the 100 g of chicken, in two 50 g chunks, would have produced a minor outcome, at most. however, i have to take note of it, even though it was barely noticeable and passed very fast.
meat on it's own might generate a minor testosterone boost in men that have testicles, but that doesn't make a lot of sense in my case, because i don't. the only testosterone i produce on my own is adrenal, and it's not influenced by vitamin d or by zinc, the way that testicular testosterone is. that idea should be scratched out.
...except that the effect was so minor, that maybe that was all there was to it.
i haven't touched the bison. there's also a pile of fresh chicken breasts that are frozen. so i still have a lot of meat to eat, but i bought some bacon, for now.
the tariff that is pissing me off the most is the one on coffee. the cheapest brand is $15 for a standard sized tin (it's cardboard, though) of coffee, and you won't find it cheaper. that's 50% inflation, overnight, due to the tariffs. there's no canadian source of coffee, and currently no way around going through the us, like there is with orange juice. i did find a sneaky approach, though, which was to buy imported espresso from italy.
the cheapest coffee was $15 for 925 g. the espresso from italy, however, was $5 for 250 g. espresso is more powerful than coffee, so if you put espresso in a coffee machine you should use half to a quarter. so this is really $5 for the equivalent of 500g of coffee, minimum. that would be $10 for 1 kg, which was the standard price in canada, previously. the italian espresso didn't transit through the united states on it's way to canada, so it didn't get taxed.
but, this is absurd. imported italian espresso is supposed to be more expensive, per g. it's not supposed to be cheaper to buy espresso, which is a luxury good, than normal coffee. i like strong coffee, and i make it in a single cup brewer, so i might even switch over to this permanently, if i like it. i'll just use one scoop instead of 2.5.
i want to update this again so i can add up the skipped items from this week:
- june 16th: doubled up salsa with chick peas, cheese, spices and vitamins.
- june 17th: onion soup bacon poutine
- june 18th: basic doritos nachos and french onon soup with bacon
- june 19th: doubled up salsa reprise
- june 20th: caesar salad without subs
- june 21st: 2nd onion soup poutine with onion soup and last chance salad
- june 22rd: 3rd onion soup poutine with onion soup with beets
- june 23rd: caesar salad without subs
- june 24th: caesar salad without subs
- june 25th: bacon and eggs without subs, no salsa
- june 26th: bacon and eggs without subs, no salsa
- june 27th: ad hoc pad thai
- june 28th: broccoli soup
- june 29th: fridge-clearing meal (oranges & garlic bread)
- june 30th: kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 1st: kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 2nd: kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 3rd: 10 packages of instant oatmeal, in 5 installments. spaghetti-os + spices & vitamins (cumin, cayenne, pepper, oregano, paprika, sunflower seed, hemp seed, nutritional yeast, frank's).
- july 4th: a can of stew and a can of corn, plus spices & vitamins.
- july 5th: a package of jasmine rice i had put aside as a quinoa sub (it probably isn't), with a can of peas and a can of tomato soup, plus spices and vitamins.
- july 6th: a can of beans cooked in a can of vegetable soup, plus spices and vitamins.
- july 7th: two cans of chicken noodle soup, plus spices and vitamins. tim's xl double-double coffee in morning. two builders protein mini bars in evening. 7-11 coffee with jalapeno taquito late at night.
- july 8th: food bank junk food eat through - two bags of "real vegetable chips" (one big, one small), a bag of goldfish crackers, one mini crispy crunch, some strawberry licorice, prime energy drink, two tim horton's donuts, little ceasar's pepperoni pizza with unlabelled chocolate milk product.
- july 9th: another prime energy drink with another unlabelled chocolate milk product, unlabelled food bank ginger bread (two loaves)
- july 10th: pasta with minor subs (1), third energy drink, sour cream n cheddar chips
- july 11th: sour cream 'n' bacon, sour cream 'n' onion chips
- july 12th: more licorice, pasta with minor subs (2)
- july 13th: jalapeno cheddar chips, pasta with minor subs (3)
- july 14th: 10 baby cookies, pasta with minor subs (4)
- july 15th: i ate most of the 14th pasta on the 15th and followed it with the remaining baby cookies (which are actually french butter cookies, not baby cookies. they look like baby cookies). i did not make pasta for the 15th.
- july 16th:. pasta with minor subs (5)
- july 17th: pasta with minor subs (6)
- july 18th (on the 19th): pasta with minor subs (7)
- july 19th (on the 20th): cereal (one bowl of vector and all bran with paprika, flax, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds and soy, as per my normal diet and one bowl of instant oatmeal with a little real milk and an apple)
- july 20th (on the 21st): pasta with minor subs (8)
- july 21st (on the 22nd): pasta with minor subs (9)
- july 22nd: cereal day 2 in cycle 2 (final cycle 2 cereal day): one bowl of vector and all bran with paprika, flax, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds and soy, as per my normal diet and one bowl of instant oatmeal with a little real milk and two apples, one in the oatmeal and one standalone.
- july 23rd: cereal day 1 in cycle 3
- july 24: pasta with minor subs (10)
- july 25: cereal day 2 in cycle 3, same as 22 and 23, with the addition of 6 mini apple sauce containers.
- july 26: pasta with minor subs (11)
- july 27th - guac with white rice and canned corn. two pieces of white bread with plum better.
- july 28th: pasta with minor subs (12)
- july 29th: guac with white rice and canned corn. two pieces of white toast with olive oil margarine, and then two pieces of white bread with plum butter after. four more pieces of white bread, with plum butter and strawberry jam.
- july 30th: pasta with minor subs (13), including fried chicken for salami.
- july 31st: a larger piece of fried chicken alone. pasta with minor subs (14), including a mix of buffalo and chicken for salami. six pieces of white bread for peanut butter and strawberry jam.
- aug 1st: four pieces of white bread and the rest of the peanut butter. quinoa without subs (on aug 3rd).
- aug 2nd: four marshmallows, two bananas and a chocolate bar. quinoa without subs (on aug 3rd).
- aug 3rd: pasta with minor subs (15), including the buffalo/chicken mix for salami (on aug 4th). two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 4th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (on aug 5th)
- aug 5th: pasta with minor subs (16), including the buffalo/chicken mix for salami. two pieces of toasted italian bread. (on aug 6th)
- aug 6th: guac with yellow pepper, homemade hot sauce and canned corn (on aug 7th).
- aug 7th: monterrey jack tuna salad melt with bowl of cilantro lime monterrey jack rice (on aug 8th).
- aug 8th: pasta with minor subs (17), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (on aug 9th). . two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 9th: guac with yellow pepper, homemade hot sauce and canned corn wth cilantro lime monterrey jack rice (on aug 10th).
- aug 10th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (on aug 11th)
- aug 11th: pasta with minor subs (18), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (early on aug 12th). two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 12th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (at midnight on aug 13th)
- aug 13th: pasta with minor subs (19), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (early on aug 14th). . two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 14th: potatoes with gravy, cheese, sour cream, bacon and dill (early on aug 15th). no av.
- aug 15th: onion soup + side salad (as posted) (late on aug 15th). no av.
- aug 16th: potatoes with gravy, cheese, sour cream, bacon and dill (early on aug 17th). no av.
- aug 17th: onion soup (mid day on aug 17th) and side salad (as posted) with two pieces of toast (early on aug 18th). no av.
- aug 18th: pasta with minor subs (20), including bacon for salami (early on aug 19th). no av. no juice. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 19th: pasta with minor subs (21), including orange/lime for pineapple and bacon for salami (early on aug 20th). no av. no juice. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 20th & 21st: cereal day 1 & 2 from cycle 4 together in one big bowl. (mid-day on aug 20th)
- aug 22nd: pasta with minor subs (22), including orange/lime for pineapple and chicken for salami (early on aug 21st). no av. no juice. no broc. no hot sauce. two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 23rd: pasta with minor subs (23), including orange/lime for pineapple and chicken for salami (early on aug 22nd). no av. no juice. no broc. no red pepper. no hot sauce. i had the rest of the italian bread, and four extra pieces of brown bread with cheddar cheese, on the morning of aug 23rd and otherwise didn't eat on the 23rd. this is the bread for use with cycle 7, eaten early.
- aug 24th: pasta with minor subs (24) (early on the 24th). this was the last of the penne and shifted the pasta source to a box of kd, for now. no av. no juice. no broc. no red pepper. no hot sauce. no pineapple. no salami. no caesar. no dill. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine. one xl tim's double double.
- aug 25th: (early on the 25th) is going to be a tomato sandwich one from cycle 2 and an instant meal chicken "sidekick". no av, as it's not ripe yet.
- aug 26th: pasta with minor subs (25). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine.
- aug 27th: second tomato sandwich meal from cycle 2 with a package of (cooked) chinese noodles.
- aug 28th: pasta with minor subs (26). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine.
- aug 29th: doubled up salsa with kidney beans, cheese, spices and vitamins. cycle 2 salsa.
- aug 30th: pasta with minor subs (27). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine.
- aug 31st: first cycle 2 quinoa, with lentils subbed for quinoa and a can of kidney beans.
- sept 1st: pasta with minor subs (28). pasta source is a box of kd. bacon subbed for salami. two pieces of toasted brown bread with margarine.
i will need to do some more groceries at this point, if i haven't moved yet.
missing items to be distributed through meals in the next two weeks:
- 10 avs
- 150 g of pineapple
- 6 glasses of juice - 4 used in unlisted meals (two poutines, two cilantro rices) = 2 glasses of juice
- 2*0.5 = 1 red pepper
- 3*25 = 75 g of broccoli
- i used extra bacon on aug 19th, because i thought i'd be out the next day, so the skipped bacon was accounted for.
- i subbed the caesar for kd sauce on the 24th meal.
- extra dill and hot sauce can be forgotten about, as it is nutritionally useless. i used extra cayenne for the missing hot sauce. it was missing a zing, but good enough.
let me update my pasta recipe, to where it's at right now:
pre-prep
- on a large flat plate add - one tomato (preferred) or four-five mini tomatoes or 100 g of canned tomatoes or 85 g of arrabiata pasta sauce or 85 g of dried boxed tomatoes or 85 g of canned pasta-style tomato sauce, one half a red pepper (diced), one avocado (diced), two cloves of garlic, one carrot, one beet, one tbsp of oregano, one tbsp of thyme, one tbsp of basil, some fresh dill (chopped). add one tbsp of processed pesto (includes italian cheeses).
- chop 150 g of fresh pineapple into small squares on a small plate. i purchased four actual pineapples at reduced price at the grocery store across the street because they were ripe, which is a good thing (who wants crunchy pineapples? it's better if they're a little soft.). i should get around 900 g 750 g of usable fruit per pineapple. i've eaten 3 of 4 of these ripe pineapples and am about to go to pineapple 4 and they are in fact nice and soft. somebody at the store really didn't get it.
- if you can't find pineapple, you might sub with one orange and one lime, each segmented and with each segment cut in half, as i did for the week of aug 18th.
- slice and chop up 50 g of salami into small squares (i'm using spicy genoa sold in a 600 g amount). i finished the salami at pasta plate #12. the food bank also gave me an unusual amount of frozen meat, which includes fried chicken and ground bison. i combined these for meals 13-16. i took these out after pasta meal #16 and used bacon for meals 17-21, and then tried just the chicken for meals 22-23. 24 was meatless. 25 will be bacon, again, until i am 100% certain my hormones are stable.
- i fry the salami in olive oil margarine until a little crispy. i am cooking the bison the same way. the fried chicken is pre-cooked and i'm microwaving it. i cook the bacon in olive oil margarine as well.
- chop off the top of 25 g of broccoli florets and place on a small plate. place any stems in a bowl in the freezer, which is cumulative. this will eventually be used for broccoli soup.
- grate 100 g of marble cheese. i did use mozzarella for the week of aug 18th.
- weigh 110 g of dry pasta, preferably fettucine, but i will not be using fettucine for the foreseeable future. i went through three days of egg noodles and four days of fusilli. day eight will be half fusilli and half penne. i ate through two 900 g packages of penne from day eight to day 24, which was half kd. i will be eating through 5 or 6 boxes of kd, next. i still have several packages of spaghetti, after that.
- cook to al dente in a covered pot.
preparation:
- add pasta on top of vegetables, right out of the pot. flatten pasta.
- add 1 tbsp of olive oil margarine on pasta.
- add pineapple and lime on top of that. flatten fruit.
- add salami or other meat on top of that. flatten meat.
- add 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast, 1 tbsp paprika, 1 tbsp hemp seeds, 1 tbsp sunflower seeds (or just chomp the last one). distribute these items evenly.
- add a lot of ceasar dressing (this is the pasta sauce), and bunch it up in the middle.
- add the grated marble cheese
- microwave for 2:00
- sprinkle crushed broccoli florets
- add frank's hot sauce, black pepper, a tbsp of cayenne pepper (sprinkled).
served with
- serve with some bread and olive oil margarine. the food bank gave me a lot of bread, including garlic cheese buns (first up), a baguette (second), a loaf of unsliced italian bread (third) and a loaf of brown bread, which i'm finishing up with cycle 7.
- serve with tall glass of 25% grapefruit, 75% orange juice
tomato sandwich meal
my tomato sandwich recipe is as follows:
- put two pieces of quinoa/flax bread on plate
- use olive oil margarine first
- put one clove of garlic on each side
- put a half an avocado (diced) on each side
- put a tbsp of nutritional yeast, a tbsp of paprika, a tbsp of hemp on each side
- slice five pieces of cheddar cheese on each side
- put two pieces of bacon on each side
- put caesar dressing on each side
- put half a tomato, sliced, on each side
- franks & pepper
- served with 25% grapefruit/75% orange juice
i also did not explicitly type out my bacon and eggs recipe. i usually eat it with salsa, but have split the salsa into a separate meal while i eat through the food bank food:
bacon and eggs (no salsa)
- put two pieces of quinoa/flax bread on plate
- use olive oil margarine first
- put one clove of garlic on each side
- put a tbsp of nutritional yeast, a tbsp of hemp on each side
- slice five pieces of cheddar cheese on each side
- put two pieces of bacon on each side
- put two fried eggs on each side (four eggs total)
- you can add caesar or pepper as you desire. i usually don't.
- served with 25% grapefruit/75% orange juice
i need to eat first, then clean up in here then maybe do laundry.
Sunday, August 24, 2025
while the idea that we live in a computer simulation is worth thinking about for fun, a serious analysis quickly concludes that it is thoroughly debunked by the work of kurt godel. the easy way to understand godel is that it breaks the idea that the model is reality, which was disappointingly pushed heavily by stephen hawking even after godel. hawking shouldn't have made that error, but it's basically his fundamental philosophical position, and it's entirely incoherent in a post-godel framework. that said, godel really just proved what the platonists imagined thousands of years earlier (but godel didn't realize it. he hated plato.). if we live in a simulation, then the simulation is a model; it's a computer program, so it has to be inconsistent or incomplete. this is different than what godel proposed, which is that any theory of reality is inconsistent or incomplete. godel proved that you can't build a consistent and complete model of reality. but, that is exactly what a computer simulation of reality would be, so it couldn't possibly exist.
even if you could find breakdowns in space time that you could prove you can't prove exist or don't exist, and yet can observe empirically anyways, which is what would be required to exist if we live in a simulation as per godel, it still wouldn't be enough to save the idea, because the model - the simulation - could never describe everything that exists. due to godel, if we did live in a simulation, there would necessarily have to be components of reality outside of the simulation that the simulation cannot describe, which is a contradiction in terms.
you should move on from the idea. it is easily mathematically debunked with basic predicate logic.
if these pieces of shit try to conscript me, i'll burn down the fucking parliament.
i strongly disagree with this policy, and i severely reject the use of taxpayers money on killing people in eastern europe, when the government is bitching about the size of the public service. this is mismanagement on a treasonous level.
not one person should lose their job in canada to pay to fight a war in europe.
the pmo is apparently upset that they weren't invited to the ukraine thing last week. they sent the foreign minister to chat with little marco, which resulted in a phone call between carney and trump.
the purpose of the meeting was to sell weapons to ukraine by using european financing. canada wasn't invited because we had no role to play in the transaction.
did canada's government really want to help finance the ukrainian military that badly?
our government is constantly utterly clueless. we keep showing up everywhere thinking we're the real hegemon, not the americans, and we're constantly making ridiculous fools of ourselves. if the problem with trudeau was a lack of political experience and knowledge, replacing him with a complete rookie that had never run for office was hardly any sort of rational solution.
it's going to take a very long time to undo this.
Saturday, August 23, 2025
i want to change the narrative around "arctic defence" in canada.
the tory media is increasingly telling me i need to sacrifice things to save the arctic from russia - things like health care, and a functioning civil service.
can you explain to me why, exactly, i would give a fuck if russia conquered baffin island? because i'm struggling to care.
i think we should call the yankees' bluff on this one and keep defence spending down to focus on heathcare and education instead. if they want to protect the arctic from russia, let them do it. i don't give a damn.
this is tricky.
the liberals are correct in pointing out that the counter-tariffs are stupid. putting tariffs on the united states is not a reaction to protect workers. counter-tariffs are also an attack on workers, or most of them are.
it is in our self-interest to determine which counter-tariffs are a shot in the foot and remove them. that is the correct thing to do - not as a concession, but because it is hurting us and it was a stupid reaction in the first place. i don't know who consults austin powers for economic advice.
however, the americans will interpret it as a concession and push back harder. that is also true, even though it isn't a concession.
tariffs are hard, and justin trudeau's not a smart guy. this is what happened.
my legs are sore from squatting yesterday.
my workspace isn't set up and probably won't get set up here at all, so i have a tabletop on the floor where my workbench should be. i had to squat to fix the windows 98 pc. it's booting into windows 98, i just have a few more minor tasks to finish before i can put it back where it was. this is a major relief for me. i actually had a god cry when it didn't boot, but i'm under a lot of stress.
last night was so disgusting it triggered my asthma, even with the windows open. i slept all day. i'm waking up limp like i should, but i can also hear them talking when i wake up, tricking themselves into thinking their therapy was successful because i stopped yelling at them, and it's extremely disconcerting.
i had a lot of things to do this week. after i get the studio area cleaned back up, i'll need to take the gparted cd (which i was taking out of the windows 98 pc. it sits in there because the machine does have a windows xp partition, and i find the best way to dual boot is to go into gparted and change the boot partition. the only other way that i know of is to install grub in a linux partition, but i'm actually using a pata hard drive (it's a p3b-f. this is a very good asus board from the late 90s. it has ide channels, no sata. so the dvd players are ide, too. it has a floppy connector.) and it's only about 80 gb. the triple boot with a linux partition might make sense if i had a larger drive, or wanted to use two drives. but my old psu couldn't handle two hard drives and two dvds at the same time. it doesn't matter. i need the machine to run the soundblaster live! with the input bay, which i need to finish period 3 recording projects. it will need to hold out at least that long.) back to the windows 7 laptop and see if i an get my usb key back.
i need the xp partition because windows 98 has difficulty reading usb keys. it can barely read dvd players. the board has two usb 1.1 slots on the back.
i need to get out to do things this weekend, hopefully. i am feeling and looking better, i just need my hair to behave.
Friday, August 22, 2025
i'm paranoid that it's booting into a virtual machine because there's this boot from network option i hadn't seen before, even with no network card.
i can't even figure out how to clear the cmos on this board. there's no jumper. there's support to be a pin to short, but it isn't even there at all.
this computer is old. however, based on what i learned about ime, i know that if somebody were psychotic enough to do this - as these losers are - simply flashing wouldn't be good enough. this board wasn't designed for this, so it doesn't even have these jumpers.
deep breaths.
it doesn't matter right now. i'm not using this device. just reassemble it and put it aside for later and get back to the usb key.
the gparted cd was in the tray for one of the dvd players in the windows 98 pc, so i went to turn it on to open the tray. no power. i disassembled the machine and realized the power supply was broken. i was immediately suspicious, as that shouldn't be the case. the idiots probably tried to overclock an asus p3b-f with a pentium III in it to play some kind of stupid video game. that's how they bricked my p5b.
this was a minor crisis because the motherboard has a 20-pin connector, and where can you find that kind of power supply today?
the answer is in a pc i found in the apartment when i moved in. yeah. what are the chances, right? in fact, they had the 20 pin psu plugged into a 24-pin board, so that had to be swapped out, anyways.
this is admittedly an old power supply. it's from 1999. it's visibly rusting. looking at it, the cables might have fallen out, just due to decomposition. i admit a new psu was a good idea, and it actually looks like the psu i found in the apartment (i asked and was told nobody owns it) is relatively new and unused. i was going to use this pc i found as a replacement for the 90s laptop, because the specs are almost identical and that's what i wanted to do anyways. i can buy a new 24-pin power supply for this pc for $20 or something; the 20-pin power supply would have been difficult to locate.
i swapped it out and it turned on and i pulled the gparted cd out. however, i still have to put it back together, which requires plugging it in and turning it on.
in addition to the psu being non-responsive, the cmos was apparently cleared and the hard drive wouldn't initially spin, although i got it to spin after a few tries. now, clearing this cmos is actually relatively difficult, as you have to take the battery out and short it with a screwdriver. no wonder the psu got damaged.
it's relatively clear that the machine was tampered with when i was out.
this ancient computer is extremely fragile and needs extreme care to continue to last. they already broke my old vintage laptop, which was sad but not catastrophic. if my windows 98 pc was lost, i would be shattered. it's my oldest friend. i love it dearly.
what do these barbaric idiots want from me?
it's just constant senseless destruction, with no purpose.
Thursday, August 21, 2025
i don't think the saudis are even smart enough to do this.
if i determine somebody put root access on this usb key remotely from a guest account on a chromebook, it's a very small list of suspects.
- americans
- israelis
- chinese
- russians
- germans
i don't have a good reason to think any of them would be after me, or any of them would pretend to be muslims in the process
it's more likely to be a rogue element working for organized crime. i think.
this happened this afternoon. i put the usb key into the device twice to log into facebook and cra and when i plugged it in a third time, it wouldn't read.
it's backed up, but i want to understand what happened, and if it can help me adjust.
what exactly do i do if i find out some rogue element in the saudi or some other arab government is stalking me to try to rape me? do i call the rcmp? do i call their embassy?
the cops are useless idiots.
i'm logged into this device as a guest.
it should be almost impossible to do this. but i'll have to see what the attributes are and react.
what do i know about these losers?
- they're muslims
- they appear to have access to unlimited wealth
- they appear to represent a government of some sort, or an organized crime network. these are basically the same thing.
the drive is fine. i pulled everything off of it - file by file - using recuva. no corruption.
i think this is what happened:
diskpart reads it as RAW. i can set the read-only flag to yes or no, put i can't change the current read-only state.
i'm going to boot my windows 7 laptop into gparted and see what it says. i'll then boot into arch using a recovery usb key and see if i can verify that the above is the case.
i don't know what the point of this. it's some stupid monkeys from a backwards religion trying to assert some kind of jungle logic.
it's a waste of my fucking time.
it would suggest that they have access to the root account on my chromebook, which i've suspected for a while. i would need to restore from firmware and probably flash my router, but i don't have fucking time for this. i don't want to waste my life doing this boring bullshit.
it looks like i should be able to recover the usb key they just mangled, but i have it backed up, regardless.
i think they put a write protection on the partition.
this is like stuxnet, or something. it's like a hardware worm. i don't have the slightest interest in this. it's a waste of my fucking time.
yeah, the hackers are back.
i don't know what they want. i'm a disabled person on welfare. i have nothing.
these are terrible fucking bullies and thugs. go prove how smart you are by beating up an impoverished disabled person, you fucking retard. fuck.
i understand what they're doing, but i have no interest in wasting my time getting modular on it. they've somehow found a way to hack my usb ports. they're breaking the file system on my usb keys, but they don't seem to be actually stealing data. the purpose is strictly destructive. they don't seem to want to steal, they just seem to want to break.
it's so senseless, so stupid.
i don't get it.
i think this is the position they should have taken from the start.
the "negotiation" should have always been to immediately release all hostages, or face complete and total destruction and annihilation. and they should have burned a few parts of gaza down to the ground to demonstrate the point.
you can't negotiate with barbarians, and you shouldn't try to. that is the lesson to learn from this sad affair.
there is a surface comparison between the swiss cheese settlements in palestine and the bantustans of apartheid. it sort of looked like israel was creating bantustans in the west bank, granted. however, the comparison was strictly based on the geography, not the motives, and it was a surface deep analysis that missed the point of what israel was doing, which was occupying land in a way that isolated palestinians from each other and prevented palestine from claiming it. that has essentially no similarity to the bantustans, which were intended as segregated areas for coerced and forced labourers.
i should clarify what i meant by "genocide in slow motion" when i started saying that roughly 20 years ago. i never meant that they intended to starve them like in the holocaust, or mass slaughter them like what happened to the armenians during world war one. i meant a cultural genocide, intended to chase them out and assimilate them over time. this would be something more like the genocide of the scots or welsh in the united kingdom, or the bretons in france.
the point i was trying to get across is that israel does not intend to enslave the arabs, it wants to get rid of them. that's a conceptual point people were confused about in using south african comparisons. in fact, when john kerry was secretary of state, he had the insight and initiative to realize that the absence of any kind of economy in the west bank essentially made statehood impossible, so he went out of his way to try to build factories that palestinians could work in, which would have almost entirely served the israeli market, and the israelis had a hissy fit because it was taking away jobs for jews and giving them to muslims. israel remains built on kibbutzes and the labour party. never forget that, and never forget where the jews escaped from. they are not likely to resort to enslaving anyone. i was seeking more descriptive language to get away from a bad analogy, mostly by following chomsky's lead. chomsky was visibly irritated by the south africa comparison and repeatedly explained why.
i have rejected the claims that israel is starving gazans. the evidence suggests the opposite. it's just factually wrong, no matter how much you dislike the israeli government.
you can define genocide strictly as per the geneva convention and that has legal value in it's place but it's never what i meant. i meant the broader idea of eliminating a culture, a language, a religion, etc through less overt or violent methods. it's not the same thing, but if the end result is the intentional elimination of palestine, it does remain genocide in the broader sense.
my hair is being extremely stubborn. i spent all day fighting with it and i'm making some progress but it's extremely dehydrated and needs to sit with conditioner for hours. i can still smell the bleach in my hair, which is suggesting it might have got stuck in it and dried in it.
i have extremely straight, thin hair and it gets tangled extremely easily for that reason and is also prone to breakage for that reason, which makes the tangles worse. it tends to be fine once i can wash it out, but something like a bleach job can generate a mess. unlike the other parts of my body, i can't clear the testosterone out of my hair. estrogen produces nicer, softer hair and testosterone makes your hair coarse and gross, but those changes happen at the root level. if anything, i might find that getting the testosterone out of my system might lead to breakage, as the hair will weigh more at the ends. this will take several years to fully turn back over, and it might have been the reason, in hindsight, why i had to shave my head in the first place.
if i realized this at the time, i wouldn't have done it. i thought it was the best way to fix the split ends, which seemed impossible. i didn't understand what was going on.
it should be another day or two, max, i think.
i still have a lot of canned and dried food, but my fridge is almost empty and i need to fill it up soon.
- june 16th: doubled up salsa with chick peas, cheese, spices and vitamins.
- june 17th: onion soup bacon poutine
- june 18th: basic doritos nachos and french onon soup with bacon
- june 19th: doubled up salsa reprise
- june 20th: caesar salad without subs
- june 21st: 2nd onion soup poutine with onion soup and last chance salad
- june 22rd: 3rd onion soup poutine with onion soup with beets
- june 23rd: caesar salad without subs
- june 24th: caesar salad without subs
- june 25th: bacon and eggs without subs, no salsa
- june 26th: bacon and eggs without subs, no salsa
- june 27th: ad hoc pad thai
- june 28th: broccoli soup
- june 29th: fridge-clearing meal (oranges & garlic bread)
- june 30th: kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 1st: kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 2nd: kd + chick peas + fridge clearing exercise
- july 3rd: 10 packages of instant oatmeal, in 5 installments. spaghetti-os + spices & vitamins (cumin, cayenne, pepper, oregano, paprika, sunflower seed, hemp seed, nutritional yeast, frank's).
- july 4th: a can of stew and a can of corn, plus spices & vitamins.
- july 5th: a package of jasmine rice i had put aside as a quinoa sub (it probably isn't), with a can of peas and a can of tomato soup, plus spices and vitamins.
- july 6th: a can of beans cooked in a can of vegetable soup, plus spices and vitamins.
- july 7th: two cans of chicken noodle soup, plus spices and vitamins. tim's xl double-double coffee in morning. two builders protein mini bars in evening. 7-11 coffee with jalapeno taquito late at night.
- july 8th: food bank junk food eat through - two bags of "real vegetable chips" (one big, one small), a bag of goldfish crackers, one mini crispy crunch, some strawberry licorice, prime energy drink, two tim horton's donuts, little ceasar's pepperoni pizza with unlabelled chocolate milk product.
- july 9th: another prime energy drink with another unlabelled chocolate milk product, unlabelled food bank ginger bread (two loaves)
- july 10th: pasta with minor subs (1), third energy drink, sour cream n cheddar chips
- july 11th: sour cream 'n' bacon, sour cream 'n' onion chips
- july 12th: more licorice, pasta with minor subs (2)
- july 13th: jalapeno cheddar chips, pasta with minor subs (3)
- july 14th: 10 baby cookies, pasta with minor subs (4)
- july 15th: i ate most of the 14th pasta on the 15th and followed it with the remaining baby cookies (which are actually french butter cookies, not baby cookies. they look like baby cookies). i did not make pasta for the 15th.
- july 16th:. pasta with minor subs (5)
- july 17th: pasta with minor subs (6)
- july 18th (on the 19th): pasta with minor subs (7)
- july 19th (on the 20th): cereal (one bowl of vector and all bran with paprika, flax, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds and soy, as per my normal diet and one bowl of instant oatmeal with a little real milk and an apple)
- july 20th (on the 21st): pasta with minor subs (8)
- july 21st (on the 22nd): pasta with minor subs (9)
- july 22nd: cereal day 2 in cycle 2 (final cycle 2 cereal day): one bowl of vector and all bran with paprika, flax, nutritional yeast, hemp seeds and soy, as per my normal diet and one bowl of instant oatmeal with a little real milk and two apples, one in the oatmeal and one standalone.
- july 23rd: cereal day 1 in cycle 3
- july 24: pasta with minor subs (10)
- july 25: cereal day 2 in cycle 3, same as 22 and 23, with the addition of 6 mini apple sauce containers.
- july 26: pasta with minor subs (11)
- july 27th - guac with white rice and canned corn. two pieces of white bread with plum better.
- july 28th: pasta with minor subs (12)
- july 29th: guac with white rice and canned corn. two pieces of white toast with olive oil margarine, and then two pieces of white bread with plum butter after. four more pieces of white bread, with plum butter and strawberry jam.
- july 30th: pasta with minor subs (13), including fried chicken for salami.
- july 31st: a larger piece of fried chicken alone. pasta with minor subs (14), including a mix of buffalo and chicken for salami. six pieces of white bread for peanut butter and strawberry jam.
- aug 1st: four pieces of white bread and the rest of the peanut butter. quinoa without subs (on aug 3rd).
- aug 2nd: four marshmallows, two bananas and a chocolate bar. quinoa without subs (on aug 3rd).
- aug 3rd: pasta with minor subs (15), including the buffalo/chicken mix for salami (on aug 4th). two pieces of toasted italian bread.
- aug 4th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (on aug 5th)
- aug 5th: pasta with minor subs (16), including the buffalo/chicken mix for salami. two pieces of toasted italian bread. (on aug 6th)
- aug 6th: guac with yellow pepper, homemade hot sauce and canned corn (on aug 7th).
- aug 7th: monterrey jack tuna salad melt with bowl of cilantro lime monterrey jack rice (on aug 8th).
- aug 8th: pasta with minor subs (17), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (on aug 9th)
- aug 9th: guac with yellow pepper, homemade hot sauce and canned corn wth cilantro lime monterrey jack rice (on aug 10th).
- aug 10th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (on aug 11th)
- aug 11th: pasta with minor subs (18), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (early on aug 12th)
- aug 12th: bacon and eggs (no salsa) (at midnight on aug 13th)
- aug 13th: pasta with minor subs (19), homemade hot sauce and bacon for salami (early on aug 14th)
- aug 14th: potatoes with gravy, cheese, sour cream, bacon and dill (early on aug 15th). no av.
- aug 15th: onion soup + side salad (as posted) (late on aug 15th). no av.
- aug 16th: potatoes with gravy, cheese, sour cream, bacon and dill (early on aug 17th). no av.
- aug 17th: onion soup (mid day on aug 17th) and side salad (as posted) with two pieces of toast (early on aug 18th). no av.
- aug 18th: pasta with minor subs (20), including bacon for salami (early on aug 19th). no av. no juice.
- aug 19th: pasta with minor subs (21), including orange/lime for pineapple and bacon for salami (early on aug 20th). no av. no juice.
- aug 20th & 21st: cereal day 1 & 2 from cycle 4 together in one big bowl. (mid-day on aug 20th)
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
i will eventually narrate some of these stories in the liner notes when i can finally get back to work.
like, for example, the time i stole the school mascot, blew it up with a stick of dynamite and put it back in it's official resting place.
they thought it was an attack by the rival school across town.
i remember about 1995 or so, one of my dad's friends tried to tell a joke.
netscape and yahoo recently announced a merger to take place in israel. do you know what the company will be called?
i waited about 10 seconds for somebody else to get it, a lesson i'd been taught by my grade five teacher, who was pissed off that i answered all the questions, often sarcastically, and wanted me to shut the fuck up.
netanyahu, i said.
the guy looked at me, stunned. i was about 15.
that was thirty years ago, which is an unusual amount of time for anybody to stay active in politics, anywhere.
the difficult part about this is that netanyahu is essentially right.
however, he should tone it down. the bunker mentality has the potential for unintended consequences and verbally attacking people with anti-jewish biases doesn't help anything.
netanyahu is nearing the end of is career and potentially of his life. he will need to leave the job of reairing relations to his successor. he should focus on what's in front of him, and not concern himself with the perceptions of those in far off or far flung places.
i'm not old enough to remember it, really. i remember the 1992 election. i remember george w. bush. i vaguely remember ronald reagan, but not really.
i remember getting the berlin wall and the wall by pink floyd confused. i thought they were the same thing, initially. the innocence of youth.
to adults that lived through it, the end of the cold war must have been a terrible disappointment. the whole world was waiting for the car crash to happen so they could see the carnage, and it didn't happen. everyone survived. what a downer.
what's next?
do we get jobs and start families? i thought we were all going to die soon. this sucks.
it's like the most inverted form of existential dread imaginable. it must have been an incredibly depressing moment, to realize we're all going to live after all, and there's not going to be this catastrophic war.
then 2014 happened, and it must have all come rushing back in this deep flood of optimism that we can all die horrible deaths after all. fuck this bullshit. let's all finally kill each other. hooray!
how much of this is conscious and how much is subconscious, i don't know. i know that you can kind of see it in the eyes of these people, and it's a different thing than the old men. biden has to be the last dinosaur, and for him, he was settling scores, like it always was in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s. this younger generation is different - they have a real death wish. the return of meaninglessness is of immeasurable value to them. they get giddy about it, as though their childhood fantasies are finally unfolding before their eyes.
take that ruskie. bang. boom. pow. shit, where's the bathroo...too late.
my heart is in gen x. really. but, it's sort of important that the broader western world realizes that star wars and rocky and rambo just irreversibly warped a generation of young men. we need generational overturn, and fast.
if finland and sweden hadn't joined nato, they'd be obvious choices to potentially provide security in ukraine, given that ukraine was initially founded as a swedish colony. that said, i'm not sure how that could actually work in a way that makes sense.
the necessity of ending this before it accidentally goes nuclear should be apparent to any sane person, and i have little doubt that trump was sincere. i think perhaps he didn't fully understand the issues. he seems to now.
the russians are doing what they have to do, which doesn't mean that putin isn't an asshole. he is. he's cynical, he's viciously logical and he's oppressively cruel when he needs to be. it's hard for anybody with lofty ideals to walk away from putin without being at least a little bit crushed, and trump is hardly an idealist.
there's not going to be a meeting between putin and zelensky. everybody knows that.
if the war is inevitable, and your opponent is a cynical logic machine, the only thing left to do is profit. you can't blame the americans - the europeans want a war.
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
on some level, income taxes are kind of stupid, because you're not really taxing labour. labour doesn't generate wealth, directly. income taxes are in truth taxes on property, and are in reality paid for by the employers, not the workers. income taxes are taxes on the profit of the employers, not taxes on the labour by workers. income taxes are consequently a kind of hidden corporate tax. you could just cut wages and shift the tax burden to the employer and it wouldn't make any difference in terms of collecting taxes, but it would help in eliminating ignorant attitudes in the working class. when you put the income tax on a person's pay check, you trick uneducated workers into thinking the money is being taken out of their wages. this can have extremely negative social effects, as it can generate poor attitudes about government in the working class.
my understanding is that this was initially done to show the workers that the government does something for them. it's supposed to make the workers say "i'm buying government services with my taxes, so my taxes are justified". instead, it tends to harbour resentment in the working class, which misunderstands who is paying the tax and thinks it's getting ripped off. this has backfired and should be undone.
the only deduction on a pay check should really be for public pensions. income taxes should be shifted to employer taxes, instead. it's a trivial accounting shift that only happens on paper, as employers are the ones that truly pay income taxes, anyways. you'd do this by asking employers to pay a kind of head tax based on the number of workers they employ, and the number of hours those workers worked. if the employer pays out x number of hours of labour at n % income tax, it would pay x*n% in taxes. it would need to file that with cra at the end of the year, and workers would still need to send their stubs in to verify their hours worked, but the actual taxes would be done and paid for by the employer, not the employee. tax credits would work functionally the same way.
this would lead to stagnating or declining wages (not real wages, though.) for a while until it balanced out, but you would hope it would lead to more positive attitudes in the working class about the value and function of government services, in the long run.
today was a cloudy, humid, cool rainy day. i like rainy days, just not every day. we haven't had a day like this here since june. days like this tend to generate a vicious ache in my stomach, which is due to apparent sensitivity to atmospheric pressure, and consequently knock me out for hours at a time. however, the increased humidity in the air, which is noticeable, also helped speed up the rehydration process, which is just about finished.
i have been waking up limp the last few days. it seems to be out of my system. i'm just about ready to get another blood test, which is key to the package of documents i'm presenting to police to get this creep arrested with.
i wanted to get something done today, but instead spent it sleeping, due to the weather. i should be able to get something done tomorrow.
so, that's what we're supposed to accept as truth - that little innocent ukraine was attacked by the big bully russia for no reason, and nato is coming in to protect them, and without any interests in the region of their own.
that's the statist narrative. we're supposed to believe and repeat that.
ok.
i'm just trying to understand the western media narrative.
does it expect that people are so ignorant and misinformed that they don't understand what the war is about, and actually believe that putin is just a bloodthirsty dictator out to conquer the world for self-aggrandizement?
i suppose that if you push the following line continually, that ukraine was randomly attacked for no reason, then it follows that putting nato troops in ukraine to protect them from random russian thuggery is being done for security and protection, rather than conquest and expansion.
but, what kind of reader or viewer would be that ignorant? if you're going to read the news at all, you'd think you'd at least have a basic understanding of what was happening.
i remember the old quip from a few decades ago that fox news viewers were less informed about events than people that didn't watch the news at all. it seems like that might be the expectation about people that watch any news, nowadays.
the romans - intelligently - realized that there were endless streams of perpetual barbarian hordes. you could fight one horde to the death, only to get ambushed by the next one. trying to actually defeat the barbarians was a sisyphean task of endless futility that made existence mundane. you can't be an artist, or a philosopher, if you have to waste your whole life fighting barbarians.
instead, they'd get the barbarians to fight each other. they'd trick them, constantly. they'd get one group to make deals against the other, they'd spread false rumours (did you know that gog, leader of the gazundhites, is gay? or that his family dresses like peasants?....who say this about gog? grrrrrar. the gazundhites will blow you out of existence.....), they'd arm both sides, or pay one group to protect them, and the other to fight. they set up a kind of conveyor belt so that the closest barbarian was always fighting the next furthest one, but then they'd always make sure the closest one would lose by turning on the closest one, and then getting the one that replaces it as the new closest onr to fight the next furthest one. this was referred to as imperial treachery, and it was like something out of a long running saturday morning cartoon. i'll get you next time, basileus!
so, the history is full of these tactics utilized to get the barbarians to fight each other instead, and it was always just to get them to war outside of the empire instead of in it.
hey, it worked for a thousand years. in the end, it was really the french that destroyed them, not the turks, and the romans made the mistake of letting the french in the city. their tactics didn't fail them. they got stabbed in the back.
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