we didn't get much rain here last night but the weather system knocked me out regardless. i got most of the way through my caesar and stopped to sleep and woke up to realize the power had gone out earlier in the night. i only have two chromebooks running right now and one of them has a battery, so it was a minimal annoyance, but i slept a lot longer than intended, regardless. it's reminded me to add a couple of upses to the list of studio and other computer station items.

i woke up and sorted through some purchases first and will get to finishing the caesar now.

- i have ten more containers of caulk and a container of quick drying cement coming from canadian tire

- i think i can use the quick drying cement as mortar without adding sand because it doesn't shrink (it seems to already have sand). it is probably technically a mortar, already. i hope i have enough.

- i bought a trowel with it on amazon because i don't have one

- i also bought some kitchen items: a glass replacement for my brita jug (which i leave out at room temperature, without a filter), some brushes for some of the glasses i bought that are designed for dishwashers and that i can't get my hands into because they're too skinny, a 150 watt herb grinder for extremely infrequent marijuana use (i like to keep it a substantive distance from the house and don't want to smell it where i live. i don't shit in my own food supply.), a handful of paper sized white board magnets for the fridge and these $25 usb c electric scrubbing devices for the floors, which i think need a good scrub. if they work once and break, that's fine, but i suspect i'll hang on to them.

there's going to be a charging table in the front entrance, which is going to be used less when i get the other door installed. i already have a 10 port usb A charging hub that has slowly filled up with devices. it's also going to need a usb c hub, because they aren't compatible. that wasn't supposed to happen. usb was supposed to be backwards compatible. but the money-grubbing shitheads at apple pushed that through and we're stuck with it.

as i'm trying to get the plastic out of here, and that's a major reason i'm considering buying a pop maker, i don't want to buy a pop maker with a plastic bottle. that limits my options to one model by sodastream, or a more expensive high end competitor that's out of my price range. my choices are the new duo sodastream or a used aquafizz. so i'll have to wait a bit.

it's not going to be clear where i can put a dishwasher in here until it's properly cleaned up, but i might actually want to put it in the laundry. there's more space in there, a table i can put it on and a water hook up near the laundry. that will likely have to wait a fair bit, as i'm probably going to have to pay n the $400+ range, and it's not likely to be a priority.

i've been sleeping mornings this week but i'm awake now. so, i'm going to finish that salad and then clean myself up a little and then get back to what i was doing, as i wait for things to come in. i could conceivably get some shelving installed by the end of the day.

google...

can you stop sending me to amazon.com and walmart.com and ebay.com instead of the .ca sites?

google.ca apparently no longer exists, forcing me to use google.com. i'm never going to buy anything from a us site instead of the .ca site, and they wouldn't ship here, anyways. this is stupid.

why did you get rid of google.ca? it makes shopping via google from canada almost impossible.

i didn't get as much done as i wanted last night before i fell asleep, but i did get one of those cube shelves put together, and i think it should be sturdy enough for textbooks (which is what i bought it for), so long as it stays in place. it's pretty solid. i also got another row of cardboard up on the ceiling, enough that i'll be ready to put the first row of aluminum up, as soon as i'm done recovering some corrupted video files and make a short video about it. i had to put together the cube shelves before i could get the cardboard up because i had to use the box from the shelves to get a hole around the light fixture.

i had a food processor and a titanium cutting board delivered the other day, and the food processor is absolutely vicious. it's for garlic mostly, as well as dill and broccoli and other things i want cut very closely. it just destroys it. my old plastic cutting board is smelly and impossible to clean. the metal board wipes right down. that's some more plastic out of here.

i have some rechargeable lithium nine volt batteries coming tomorrow because my landlord isn't responding to requests to replace the battery in the fire alarm. it's his responsibility. while this is negligence, and i'm taking note of it if i need to bring it up, it's not worth it to me. if i get a couple of rechargeables, i have them if i need them. i don't mind paying for that, as i can use them for guitar effects or whatever else. it is useful to have extra nine volts and these are rechargeable for thousands of charges so now i'll always have some. he is paying electricity, anyways. problem solved, although he'll need to note that i'm taking it with me in the end. i also have some concrete on order to fix the holes i'm concerned about. if i actually do that, and have to send him the costs for fixing it, the only remaining serious issue is going to be fixing a door. i'm not going to fix that door myself; if i have to do it, i'm going to hire somebody, and if i have to hire somebody i'm going to need to send him the bill. the door must be fixed. the problem is that the manager here is a massive loser that wants to maintain this property as a crack house rather than fix it. i don't have patience for that, but i don't want to fight with him, so i'm doing it myself, but i also want to avoid conflict, so i'm leaving fixing this door to the very end when everything else is done. i am within my rights to fix things myself if he won't fix it, and he'll have to pay for it if i have to hire somebody. as it is, i'm just asking for a refund on materials.

when my cdb comes in tomorrow, i'm going to need to order some caulk so i can clean and seal up the front of the apartment, which is where i'm moving all of the shelving for books and cds. once it's clean in there, i can move the shelving in, which will open up the studio part of the apartment to move my studio furniture and equipment into. further, once the shelving is in place, i can take all of the books and cds off the floor and put them on the shelves, which will open up a lot more space. there's hundreds of books and hundreds of cds in piles of large boxes. in fact, one of the things i like about this place is that i have a lot of shelving options in multiple parts of the apartment, which i'm going to maximize.

so, i'm trying to avoid getting into a fight about fixing the door, and about fixing the holes, and about the batteries and whatnot. i'm looking for less combative approaches. i have not filed any t2s at this location, but i should have by now. the smoking is minimal and often non-existent, i don't need the money, and i've been looking at a general direction of things to judge how to react. are things, broadly, getting better? then, let me be patient. they were broadly getting better, but it's stagnated since the summer. i don't know if this guy is gone for the summer or what. i can do a lot of this shit myself, but there's a few red lines of things i have to get done and that i might have to get pushy about if they don't get done and that i'm going to try to stay away from until i have to.

right now, i need to eat, and then i need to get back to the things i was doing, which include getting the cardboard on the ceiling and cleaning the front so i can get to caulking it for tomorrow.

the basic question is this: what does israel get in return for withdrawing?

nothing?

then go fuck yourself.

if i were israel, i would make it clear that the end of hostilities in lebanon requires, by definition, the complete disarmament and withdrawal of hezbollah, who are illegally occupying the country. there can be no peace in lebanon without the complete withdrawal of the hezbollah occupiers.

if the agreement between the united states and iran calls for a unilateral withdrawal of israel from lebanon without a subsequent withdrawal of hezbollah from lebanon, that would be a non-starter and something israel could not abide by. so long as hezbollah is in lebanon, israel will also be in lebanon. the agreement would need to call for a bilateral withdrawal, and the withdrawal would need to be carried out reciprocally, or it's a non-starter and it won't be abided by.

i was at 149.6 when i went to sleep this morning. i'm at 149.0 now. it's time to eat again.

i'm noticing some more substantive weight loss over the last few days (i've had to tighten my belt to stop my pants from falling off), and it's had a noticeable effect on the acne. the puffiness akin to an allergic reaction - the stupid jock face syndrome - has lifted, which is exposing a lot of blemishes under the build up of dead skin that is coming off, and that are starting to wash off. so, it looks maybe worse right now, but it's getting better. give it a few more pounds and that should clear up.

i don't think i've ever been over 150 pounds before previously in my life, and i'm 45 years old. this is highly uncharacteristic and about as fat as i'm ever going to get. the reason it snuck up on me is that i've never had to deal with it before. i've always struggled to gain weight; i've always been too thin. i caught it when my bmi started coming up over 23 and i started to notice the acne resulting from it. 

if i start getting back into my normal exercise routine soon, i shouldn't find myself that concerned about the weight. i'm just still struggling to climb out of the rock bottom i hit a few years ago due to the pandemic restrictions, which functionally ended my social life and which i never recovered from, and reestablish a sense of normality. reasserting my normal weight is a healthy part of this process of renormalizing.

it is a clearly empirical, objective, uncontestable fact that there is no such thing as god, and any individual expressing belief in god is expressing mental illness and should be recommended for treatment.

let us begin with that and start from there.

second, we need to more seriously address the problem of drug addiction, as a society. our courts have failed on this issue. repassing laws prohibiting drug use in order to recreate a social stigma around it is a necessary first step, but it's not enough. we failed to properly educate the millennial generation about the dangers of drug use, and we're seeing the consequences of that failure in education. 

the best way to educate young people about the dangers of drug use is to show them what drug addicts actually look like. they're not attractive people, they're pathetic losers, and young people will see that if you stop sheltering them from it and actually allow them to observe the evidence first hand.

no child should say "i want to be a drug addict when i grow up".

we should be spending billions to develop scientific therapies to cure people of the mental illness of theism and religionism, to start with. wiping out the mental health scourge of faith and eradicating the backwardsness of belief should be a dominant public health priority.

the irony you will find with these drug dealer pushers with this most recent snake oil scam is that the true believers think they are providing treatment for "mental health", when the truth is that the bulk of them are symptomatic schizophrenics that need therapy, themselves.

no schizophrenic idiot that believes in god should ever be looked to to provide "mental health" guidance for the mentally ill. 

https://www.cbc.ca/arts/prophet-of-ecstasy-doc-9.7237506

ok, so i have caught up on the loose ends on the computer caused by the crash at the zoom site, which i must avoid going to completely, and now need to finish what i was doing with the insulation & wiring in the bedroom and laundry, do some loose ends in the bathroom and laundry and then get back to pushing through the coffee table book, including setting up some of these shelves. and, as i'm at about 151.5, it should be time to eat again soon, too.

let me try to get the loose ends done before i eat, which will be setting up one of these cube shelving systems (unlike my closet organizer, which i had to abandon because it was flimsy, these structures are made of metal inserts and will be very sturdy) and swapping out the door knobs, before i get some more cardboard up on the wall.

are canadians ready to support a tax on male facial hair yet?

yeah, i'm probably going to get more of what i want from a linux mini pc than an android tablet. and it may be cheaper to buy it with windows 11, and even use it for a bit until i have to replace it. can i find one that won't break in six months? although this device will also be used less than my devices are and will be in a sturdy place.

it might not be so bad in terms of longevity. can you swap parts on a mini pc or are the boards soldered?

the specialized hardware i want to run will work with windows 11 out of the box, but i might have to tolerate adware. i can always install linux if i hate it. 

there are reasons why i want to use a tablet for this; they're engineered to do this. it should be the best user experience. but the access restrictions on android are frustrating, the cost to get around it with windows isn't worth it and the apples are absurdly overpriced. the mini pc is probably the best answer.

but, as mentioned, i can use an inexpensive android tablet, regardless, so i should start there and see if it works. if it works, great. if it doesn't, i'll move it to the bedroom and get the mini pc, which i'm certain will work.

there's a lesson in israel right now for the entire world: donald trump is an unreliable ally and a fair weather friend. 

it's going to be up to the administration to go around him.

and, as he becomes lamer and lamer, that will become the more dominant norm. by the end of this, he'll be lamer than his tv show was.

the rest of the world needs to be prepared for when the americans come back and finish this, as nothing was resolved. this isn't over. it won't be very long. the democrats might even have to do it. it's non-negotiable and inevitable and imminent, and it's now going to be harder than it would have been, otherwise, but there is no alternative outcome.

the problem is just that trump couldn't get what he wanted, so he gave up, but that's not real life. real life is that if you punch an ape in the nose, you have to fight it, even if you don't want to do it.

if you look at the inflation data carefully, it tells you something else - it's less that food is too expensive (it's not that bad, relatively speaking) and it's more that wages are too low. employers have done the usual scam job on us, in hiking prices faster than wages. so, real wages have fallen relative to inflation, and that's really what the issue is.

we don't solve these problems with stupid commissions on competition. that's retarded.

we solve these problems by organizing, marching and striking for higher pay.

competition is extremely expensive.

it's consumers that have to pay for it.

that's what modern economics says about competition. mr. carney's views, broadly, are not very modern. he still lives in the cold war.

so, in a stupid attempt to save money, they're going to waste millions on a study, which may suggest they enforce expensive policies that will certainly increase prices.

i learned in first year economics that competition is wasteful and that the food industry, which is highly oligopolistic, strenuously avoids competition because it would lead to higher prices in the long run, after the costs for the competitive behaviour (including advertising) are fully accounted for. i'm not sure what our fuhrer mr carney learned about competition in school, but it would seem to be something else entirely, and something less correct.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/competition-bureau-canada-food-supply-chain-grocery-prices-9.7237172

canada has a serious problem with creeping fascism in it's ruling hierarchy, and it needs to be identified for what it is so it can be attacked and dismantled.

the law is blatantly unconstitutional in several ways and overtly fascistic. the fascist idiot stephen harper passed almost the same law, and it was already ripped down by the court. this law will be ripped down by the court as well.

i would call on the judiciary to immediately refuse to enforce the law.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11907576/bail-sentencing-reform-act/

what a bunch of retards.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/magic-mushrooms-drug-legalization-conservatives-9.7236254

i am hovering around 152, which is perhaps where i was sitting a few months ago. it's still a little much. i'd be ok with 152 after a meal, but i'd rather see numbers like 148 after a meal. it does mean i've lost well over ten pounds, closer to 15. i'm starting to notice my pores open back up and the acne clear up. this isn't what i want, but if i keep the weight very low for a few months, their drugs will have no effect on me at all. it's a less bad outcome and one i might have to accept until 'm sure they've gone the fuck away.

i got sucked back into kitchen stuff last night when i started doing groceries and i just want to make a short list of things i'm still looking at:

- my glass bowls got cancelled by the seller, so i'm looking for three 25 ounce and three 75 ounce glass bowls, the former for cereal and prep and the latter for meals. i eat some meals on plates, sure. but i mostly eat meal-sized salads, including fruit salads and salsas, so i like the gigantic salad bowls and will often have to put it away for later, although these are not absurdly gigantic. i've seen bigger.

- i'm looking at a sodastream. yeah, well, i'm being comprehensive, i said that. i have two coffee makers and four blenders (a big one for soup, a small one for smoothies, a food processor for some vegetables i like chopped closely and a herb grinder for marijuana), so why not a pop maker? i will sometimes drink very large amounts of mt dew or dr pepper, especially when i'm also drinking vodka. it could save me money in the long run.

- i'm looking at a mini dishwasher. do i need a dishwasher? no, i don't. however, if i'm moving to all glass dishes, it makes sense to get one, because they clean glass better, specifically. the mini dishwashers do not require hose hookups and can take about a meal's worth of dishes from me. great. it's a bit expensive, but then i have one. can i get one for under $150? can i get one that's the right size? then i probably will.

- i'm also looking at some brushes for the skinny glasses, which is a lot cheaper, to put it mildly

- i need to replace my old plastic brita with a glass pitcher

- i'm looking at a whiteboard for the fridge, which currently has scrawled over pieces of paper taped to it

- i need to update the chromebook in the kitchen so it can access my diet blog, as well as the koala oversight committee, and also be used to make grocery lists and buy groceries

- i have a fair amount of shelving to put on the wall and under the sink.

- i have a light fixture to install over the stove

- i'm looking at getting shelving in for pots over the stove and over the fridge. i'm trying to avoid installing hooks.

- the console table on the side will have some overflow kitchen storage

- aluminum paneling. probably. the kitchen and living room might not be the best place for it. i might be better off in the halls first, trying to reflect heat back in, and in the garage, trying to keep heat in.

so, i still have a lot of things to do in the kitchen.

as mentioned, i need to do the following to update the laundry:

- rat wiring

- carpet cleaning

- door knob switch

- panels

- i still need to fix the hole in the back

and the following to update the bathroom:

- door knob switch

- paneling

- plank over toilet

- fix some broken items

- take note of things done

i'm now caught up with the computer things and can get a start on this

remember this fact: at the point where the fighting gets real, the russians and the british always find themselves on the same side.

thus, when the war against china comes, the russians will be on america's side. you can plan on that. you can bet on it. if trump has accomplished nothing else, let us hope he has reminded the russians what side they are on in the larger war, the real war.

the canadian policy is dumb. it's ignorant. it's going to get us killed.

canadians should feel extremely unsettled by our government's decision to align itself, in fact to increasingly align itself, with far right actors in germany, in italy and in ukraine, and, by extension, to align itself with an axis of international fascism that is developing right down the middle of the modern world. 

we are signing up to be on the wrong side of history, and we are going to get bludgeoned for it.

i would actually like to see a law passed that makes banning children from computers a form of child abuse that is punishable by jail time.

i have a breaking news statement to release from jd vance on the iran deal.

woof. 

woof. woof. woof.

woof, woof wwwwwwwoooof. w w woof. grr, wooof, yap, woof grrr.

*aha* *aha**aha*

rrreeeooww.

woof.

i started writing this on saturday night and passed out before i was done. i had been feeling better last week, but the migraine has me feeling exhausted and lethargic and not quite here, mentally. i know that the drugs that they are giving me are dramatically harming my mental acuity. i am, mentally, at 30-40% - blurry, fuzzy and not able to focus the way i usually am.

i'm going to finish this up as a narrative before i (1) get the machines back in order and (2) get to doing the thing i was doing in here, which is largely what this post was about.

----

i'm a little apprehensive about using android for the zoom project. i have a longstanding boycott of apple in place and refuse to buy any of their products. windows devices don't last and aren't worth the money. so, if the android tablet doesn't work to set up zoom the way i want to, the next step is to go to linux and i know there are issues with hardware that come with linux. i'm just realizing that buying an android tablet is mostly reproducing all of the things i don't like about apple devices, except that it's at a cost point where it's beneficial. the logic flips because it's dirt cheap instead of stupidly expensive. but it's still a shitty business model that shouldn't be supported.

what i'm going to do is start with a small number of devices i'm sure i can use, first. i wanted to get a tablet to run soundscapes when i was sleeping anyways, so if the android device doesn't work with zoom, i can reuse it for that instead. if i then get an actual usb phone as well, i can test it's functionality as a streaming device with keymapper. it shouldn't matter what the input device is, it should all show up as the same kind of programmable device, if i understand correctly. i should be able to test it with anything. if it works, i'll go from there in getting a midi controller to set up with the buttons, like a hardware phone. if it doesn't, i have a usb phone that should work with microsip in xp, which i was planning on setting up as a second voip phone before i decided to set up the zoom station. it won't cost much and it's something i'd like to have as a utility device. 

i just like the sturdiness of a traditional phone receiver. i find cell phones, and other types of handheld phones, to be flimsy and cheap. i also find that cell phones scream "self-importance" and "arrogance", and i don't like to project that about myself. i like to project a certain level of modesty and humility along with a working class quality about myself and avoid cell phones like the plague for that reason. these people walking around with cell phones all of the time are without exception always a bunch of self-important, arrogant dickheads that i want to punch in the face and kick in the groin. i don't want to be that person.

i spent the day (saturday) doing loose ends in here; i put some more cardboard up on the ceiling, received some items in from the mail and did some cleaning in here, as well. let me actually write this down:

- i need to reorganize some things on this computer so i'm progressing linearly again

- i need to finish the temperature adjusting things (ceilings, windows, insulation, rat wiring)

- i need to make some adjustments in rooms one and two (carpets, rat wire, doorknobs)

- i need to finish room three, the kitchen

i will make videos documenting the updates to rooms 1 and 2 before i get to room 3. the detour with the insulation, the windows and the rat wiring, along with two computer crashes caused by accessing the zoom website, have thrown me off a bit, but i'm getting back to the coffee table book as i work out a process. i did add appendices C and D earlier in the week. the first thing i need to do in the laundry is attach the wire mesh to a couple of large holes to block the rats from getting in, and then to clean the carpets up using some carpet cleaning spray that came in the other day. after that, i'll need to put some insulation up into the ceiling and cover over it with some cardboard, and then cover over that with some aluminum paneling. the other thing i want to do in there is swap the door knobs so i can lock the laundry because i can't otherwise lock that door and i've been unsettled by potential access through there. i keep hearing things smashing in there and can't figure out what it is. i'd say there's about a 60% chance that i'm being speciously paranoid, which are pretty shitty odds for this kind of thing. swapping the door handles is quick and easy and will make me feel better. the paneling will make it harder to get in through there as well. the only new things i've done in the bathroom are (1) install the aluminum sauna aneling, (2) swap the doornobs out, (3) replace some of the light bulbs with 1500 lumen bulbs, (4) buy a usb water flosser and a usb mist humidifier, (5) i have some old things to fix with crazy glue that i haven't yet, such as my hair brush from when i was a kid (6) i want to place a wood plank on top of the toilet so the things on it stay put and (7) i've had to rescrew and reglue the mirrors on the doors a few times, which goes back to what i was saying about the door. i will go over these things in the videos.

i've also spent a bit of extra time fixing up the windows over the last couple of days. in addition to getting the screens in, the windows now all have locks on them and wood blocks in them, as well as blackout curtains over them, except the ones in the sunroom/garage. i have enough extra curtains that i might use them for that, i just would rather actually get the sun most of the year in there, even in the winter, i think. i can put the curtains in if i think it will help, i just don't think it will right now. i've also put in push pins on the sides of the windows to keep the curtains open and have glued some aromatic candles to the sills in the front of the windows in the bedroom, which i hope are pleasantly in the fall.

i slowed down with the paneling for the insulation because i wanted to test it for moisture, which i wasn't really worried about, but wanted to be certain about before i went all in on. empirical testing is always superior to theorizing, even as you want to have some understanding of what you're doing ahead of time. the way i decided to do it is to connect the cardboard to the ceiling first using packing tape and then cover over the cracks with weather-proofing tape. that will create a vapour barrier between the units, but at this stage the purpose is really to keep the moisture from behind the cardboard. now, i don't think this should be an issue, but i'm slowing down and doing this carefully to make sure i'm not creating a potential problem. i believe that the real issue in here is air circulation and that if steps are not taken to circulate air, there may be moisture issues between the floors, regardless, but so long as the air circulates, there shouldn't be an issue. air can circulate in here via fans, heaters, the air vents, windows or the a/c upstairs, which is certainly working through the floor. all of this should get any excess moisture out of here, but i don't really expect much to form. any moisture should either reflect down or evaporate upwards. there's not much likelihood that it's going to get trapped in between. 

i was initially going to cut little pieces of aluminum on the board and make panels, but that doesn't make sense, on second thought. the problem is trying to get it level across multiple cuts, and block gaps between the panels. instead, i'm putting just the cardboard on the ceiling first, testing to see how well it works just on it's own, then crazy gluing what it is going to be two very big pieces of aluminum directly to the cardboard (in the bedroom) and then sealing over it with aluminum tape, maybe followed by wather proofing tape just to keep it still. this approach will leave me with a small number of big pieces of aluminum rather than a lot of small ones. the cardboard will come off the ceiling mostly painlessly, but will require a paint job in the end.

i've been quiet the last few days because that's the type of thing i've been doing, and i will get those videos up when they're done.

any claimed agreement with iran that does not result in regime change is irrelevant and won't last more than a few weeks.

canada should certainly have a trade agreement with mexico.

it should be a different trade agreement than we have with the united states.

history has largely forgotten that nafta was a result of something called the mcdonald report, named after unfortunately named liberal cabinet minister donald mcdonald, who used to have to sit at the poorly named table with hume wrong and the other badly named ministers. it was actually the trudeau government who recommended that canada pursue a policy of "reciprocity", to resurrect the failed policy of the laurier era. trudeau then famously opposed the agreement, because it wasn't a free trade agreement, but rather an investor's rights agreement he called a "monstrous swindle". 

it's worth realizing that nafta would have looked very different if trudeau had overseen it than if mulroney had. but we don't often get the opportunity to redo history.

one of the things that canada fought against very hard in the initial round of the negotiations was the inclusion of mexico. there was an initial agreement called the fta negotiated bilaterally between the united states and canada, and that was expanded to nafta, only after canada fought like hell to stop it, and there was talk of "side agreements" to do with environmental and labour considerations, which were necessary then but nobody remembers now.

if canada can get out of this trilateral agreement and sign bilateral agreements instead, it should.

i was typing on saturday night when the migraine hit and had to stop. i was also sorting through some videos on my camera. i slept from early sunday morning to sunday afternoon, made a chicken caesar salad, spent some time in the bathroom and slept early this morning. i'm awake now, but i want to pick up where i left off on saturday night, which was typing, before i pick up again today.

i got knocked out for about 13 hours by a migraine last night. that tends to happen to me when the weather shifts large amounts, as happened last night, although i also experienced the symptoms of drugging with garbage drugs, again. i was at 152 when i got knocked out (i had been at 152 since friday night, too) and woke up at 149.6. so, i lost two pounds sweating while sleeping and overshot due to sweating through the migraine. if i was awake, i would have eaten this morning at 150.x. it's just a reminder that a significant amount of the difference you see on a daily basis when you weigh yourself is liquid - blood, urine, water, proteins (hormones). you may gain more weight on a before-after basis by drinking a glass of water than by eating a piece of cake, even if the latter adds more after your body processes and stores it. the large amount of coffee i drink is inflating my weight, but it always did; when i was at 120, i was really at 110. i did decide a while back that i want to be a little more than that. if you mimic me (i'm not a doctor) in order to try to lose weight without using drugs, please realize that taking frequent readings of yourself like this is going to pick up changes in the amount of liquid you're carrying more than the amount of stored fat you're carrying. don't get obsessive; you'd be obsessing over the wrong thing. that's not the point with this tactic. the point with this tactic is that it's systematic and methodical. it requires patience, but if you're aggressive about it, it will work.

my head is actually still throbbing. i don't what these retarded idiots think they're doing, but they're actually just giving me vicious headaches and wasting my time. i've also picked up a gross cough. i can't smell them. i'm going to try to wake up, but it might not work, and i might have to repost with a lower weight when i'm done sweating it out and do actually wake up.

i'm still distracted by building the zoom device . i had decided i was going to:

- get a cheap android 15 (or 16) tablet. which is possible. these devices are manufactured for video playback.

- buy a usb c to usb, hdmi and rj-45 hub so i have all the connections you'd expect on a pc

- get a used monitor and cheap keyboard and mouse (the android probably has a touch screen, which is yuck)

- get a usb phone interface

it's the usb phone i'm having difficulty with. options are minimal, and i'd really like to get a sip videophone that i can use as a usb phone. but neither option has a high likelihood of compatibility.

so, i thought about it that much more carefully.

the usb phone interface is just a sound card with some buttons. in addition to being a sound card, i need it to read the keypad buttons (the numbers) and some functions on the phone, like hold and mute and speaker. that can't be that hard?

it turns out that this is actually very hard in android due to the access restrictions. there are no drivers, no proprietary software; i'm back to the underlying linux kernel with this, but it's worse due to the increased access restrictions. there are some apps, and they usually work, but they're written for gaming. i'm making a guess.

it's also the case that if i'm building an ad hoc zoom device that i want buttons on my videophone that are not on videophones, like share screen, hide camera or raise hand. i really want a midi controller that i can program, maybe with a couple of knobs for volume and camera zoom. and, if that's the case, why not buy the sound card and the keypad separately, too?

i'm left with a different approach. i could get one of the following three options for the sound card:

- a usb phone (legacy, hard to find)

- a sip videophone with normal desk phone capabilities and a usb connection that i can hack into android for now and put aside for later (was really never manufactured at all)

- a usb sound card shaped like a receiver, without any buttons on it, or with a couple, often to mimic a cordless landline phone (for sale at amazon for cheap). i'd rather just get the receiver for the sound card and delegate the keypad, but i'll look at it carefully.

only the latter is really realistically going to actually work. i already have a working headset, i should note, which was bought for microsip via windows xp. this system also won't touch my cisco 7941, connected to voip.ms as an office phone, in my bedroom.

in addition to the sound card, i am also going to want to get a programmable controller for zoom that can let me expand the set of buttons on a legacy office phone to the set of buttons in a zoom device, or a programmed controller designed for this purpose, and i am going to want that regardless of what sound card option i pick. in fact, i think that the way android works is that i would need to program the keys in the usb phone, as though it is any other controller. it won't plug and play. there's nothing special about a usb phone - it's just a composite sound card and controller, read as a hid device. given that truth, why bother searching for something i can't find and guessing it will work? why not just build it myself as:

- the usb sound card in the shape of the receiver (maybe with some buttons)

- the numerical usb key pad for zoiper, along with extra programmable phone buttons

- the programmable usb controller for the zoom buttons (mute, hide video, raise hand, share screen, whatever else), or a pre-programmed one, with a volume control.

these controllers are currently on the market for gaming, music production, zoom and other reasons. a company called elgato manufactures a device called a stream deck that is licensed by zoom to write apps for this reason. i would want to get a different device for exactly that reason, to make sure i can program it.

i should probably start with the following

- get a cheap android 16 tablet, with 6+ gb of ram and an octacore 2.5 ghz processor. these devices are manufactured for video playback. zoom won't cut them off for years. ~$100.

- buy a usb c to many usb a, hdmi, vga, rj-45, headphone, etc hub so i have all the connections you'd expect on a pc. $30.

- get a used monitor and cheap keyboard and mouse (the android probably has a touch screen, which is yuck). i have things i can use, but it would be $25 each, for about $50.

- get a usb phone soundcard receiver, maybe with a keypad and some other buttons. ~$10.

- download an app like keymapper to connect those button to functions in zoom and zoiper

- also get a usb keypad, with a few other buttons that can be programmed to do what an office phone does, in software. i can reuse this as a usb calculator in the long run. ~$25

- and then also get a controller for the zoom buttons, and program it to do what a theoretical hardware videophone zoom phone would do. i can reuse this as a midi device in the long run. $~75

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

$290

i'll pay more than that for a deprecated yealink device that is running android 9.

i'm likely to wait for the last part and get the first part pretty soon. i want to make sure the app works first.

i'm also looking at a drawing input (i have an xp pen for the other room) and a clicker to go through presentations.

i do strongly support government money for greenhouses in canada, but i don't see how subsidizing small businesses helps worker benefits, and probably harms them at the benefit of fake bourgeois capitalism. i see no value in buying groceries from an independent seller instead of walmart, given that the employees at walmart are certainly going to be better off. that doesn't help advance socialism. nor is propping up bourgeois grocery owners with public subsidies any sort of accomplishment; you're not actually helping anybody or anything. 

i would rather see a government bill that forces walmart to accept unionization.

big unions in the food industry would be a step forward. government subsidized small businesses are a step backwards.

151.8.

but i won the super bowl seven times. i'm a winner. i won.

right.

tell it to the hand your dick is in, pal.

the longer the americans operate forces in the gulf area, the certainty of something getting shot down approaches 1. 

as t--->∞, p(something getting shot down)--->1.

in that sense, trump's stubbornness in trying to force the iranians to sign an agreement rather than enforce regime change with violence is making the same mistake that putin has been making in ukraine for years. the russians have overwhelming dominance and should have won years ago, but they are refusing to win the war because they fear the outcome and, by refusing to win the war, they are guaranteeing they will eventually lose. the barbarian management strategy made sense for byzantium, precisely because they were in a position of structural weakness. it's a losing strategy in the long run, but it drags the process on and, in byzantium's case, bought them centuries of life past their death. there was always some possibility that the east would suffer a bought of the plague, or the west would slowly hellenize. it didn't happen. it could have happened; it was their only chance. they had to literally hold the fort and wait it out, but their chance never came (but, you might note that this is what the crusades were about). they really ought to have collapsed some time around the year 750, but the barbarian management strategy kept them going until the mid fifteenth century. russia may fear the outcome of winning the war in ukraine more than it fears the consequences of prolonging it into perpetuity, but it is not in a position of structural weakness. it's a strategy rooted in cultural association with orthodox christianity, rather than in an accurate analysis of the facts on the ground. i hate sports, but it's the most intuitive way i know to explain this probabilistic argument: the more often a team plays, the more likely they are to lose a game (because they are not truly independent events). if you keep playing over and over, you're eventually going to lose a few games. i actually won my dad's office football pool in 2007 by picking the giants, on the argument that the patriots were extremely unlikely to win, because they hadn't lost a game in months; the patriots would have been more likely to win the super bowl if they had lost a game in the regular season. my smart mathematical analysis won me almost $1000 that spring, along with snickers and guffaws from my dad's friends for years afterwards. because everybody else picked the patriots.

do you get it? do you understand the mathematical argument? even if you're overwhelmingly favoured, the math says that, the longer you fight the war, the more likely you eventually lose. you can't win repeatedly indefinitely, no matter how dominant you are. 

"that's why they play the games."

another intuitive argument comes from legal litigation. if you ask the average lawyer, they'll tell you they hate going to court. smart lawyers do everything they can to avoid getting things in front of judges, because they know that all bets are off once you actually put it in front of a judge. even if you have the best argument, and your opponent has no chance, you still try to settle, because you just never know what judicial whim of fancy you'll have thrust on you. and, the more cases you fight, the more often you are to lose. lawyers understand this; they're taught this, and they learn it the hard way if they don't listen.

by using a tactic intended for a position of weakness to fight a war from a position of strength, putin is doing tremendous long term damage to the russian state. he understands that, but has calculated it's less bad than the alternative. we can't truly know if he's right or wrong, we can only see the conseqeunces of refusing to win the war, and insisting on dragging it on, instead.

trump's stubbornness in refusing to fight and win in iran is causing similar damage to the united states, but it's in terms of it's reputation rather than it's strategic dominance. trump has never really appeared to understand the importance of american projection. he's gone on the news and stubbornly insisted that he'll take his time, he won't be rushed in, etc. because this is about him, apparently, rather than about the united states.

if the americans continue to drag the process on by insisting on signing an agreement with a psychotic and delusionally insane terrorist death cult without carrying out the necessary regime change action first, more and more things are going to get shot down. it will not change america's dominance in the region, but it will embolden the lunatics in iran to deny it. and, it's important to remember a dictate of the last war: it doesn't matter what the truth is, it matter what people think the truth is. the americans need to be refocusing on their projection of power by hurrying up and getting this job done, in addition to enforcing the reality of it. otherwise, they're eventually going to lose, and be left with their dick in their hand, like a divorced tom brady in the boston cold.

the israeli government should be using eminent domain to expropriate and annex the west bank, not just "stealing it back from the thieves that stole it from them" using bulldozers and guns. i'm not interested in morality. but, too much time has passed to claim that just driving them out is some process of justice. 

there is a better way to carry out annexation (which i support) than this.

however, that kind of criticism of israeli policy is really not a good excuse to place sanctions on israeli cabinet ministers, which is a political action. canada has no business deciding that there should be two states in the region, which is clearly a delusional policy to project that will never actualize on the ground. that's none of our business, and we have no business interfering in the affairs of the area on those grounds. the israelis are right to point out that it's a political act intended for an anti-semitic liberal voting domestic audience because it has no possibility of successfully altering policy on the ground in israel, and it might even be a reaction to the massive pro-israel street protests in toronto over the weekend.

i once again condemn the anti-semitic behaviour of the liberal government in canada, which has demonstrated a pattern recently of outright fascist and nazi-sympathizing policy. canadians should be extremely uncomfortable with the policy direction by the government on this file and this topic.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/pushback-from-israel-as-canada-sanctions-more-extremist-west-bank-settlers/

152.0

it's also long overdue that the primary role that confessional religions play in the cause of almost all mental health problems be acknowledged and addressed by the state institutions, who should be taking a greater role n stepping in between children and their parents to prevent parents from enforcing their cultural values and religious beliefs on their children. religion is a disease and mental illness that is at the root cause of virtually all problems in society. children need to have their right to say "no" to their parents strengthened by the state, who should be stepping in to enforce those rights.

social media has incalculable social, political and economic benefits for people of all ages.

video games are a completely worthless brain-rotting waste of time with no redeemable qualities whatsoever, and which should not exist at all.

banning young people from social media will severely stunt their social development in the modern world and put them at a severe competitive disadvantage in the global economy. it will also eliminate a means for them to organize against state institutions, in order to demonstrate against government policies that they can't vote against, in addition to it being petty and draconian and tyrannical. it's a severe attack on the democratic, social, economic and political rights of young people.

there is no scientific evidence at all whatsoever that social media causes anything it's being scapegoated for. this fear of social media is a classic moral panic rooted in conservative ignorance that should be resisted by all liberals and all socialists and everybody else on the left. rising conservative technophobia is a serious social problem that needs to be addressed and resisted.

i would rather see a focus on root causes than an attack on symptoms, which would mean a ban on video games, a dramatic change in culture around competitive activities like sports and a crack down on drug use and drug culture.

we haven't had a good round of civil disobedience and legal non-compliance in canada for a long time. our governments, and our courts, are getting arrogant and complacent. they need to be reminded that we tell them what to do, they don't tell us what to do. that is our legacy as a northern european society, based in germanic legal traditions.

it is up to young people to disobey this law with force and it is up to the companies to empower them to disobey it. and then it's up to canadians to vote this fascist government out of power.

when governments intentionally restrict individual freedoms, they break the constitutional social contract and lose the right to govern. if they don't resign, they must be torn down, and violence becomes justified as a means to an end in achieving that outcome.

the correct way to respond to this is with mass protest, general strikes and civil disobedience, using the protests in iran against the iranian government as a model.

canada is no longer a democratic society and can no longer be treated as one.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11894610/canada-social-media-ban-teens-online-harms-bill/

it took me the better part of the last day, and there were other things i was doing, but i have now installed all of the screens in the windows. i did five windows and took four different tactics, depending on what i had to start with. i've also put a bit of cardboard up on the ceiling, i've cut board stops for some of the windows, i've put some shelves up and i've decided to wait until tonight before i finish up in the laundry, to make sure i'm not trapping anything in there. that was all out of schedule, which i should get back into quite soon.

the canadian content requirements are something the government should dig in on. operating in canada as a canadian company should mean you have certain responsibilities and obligations to canadian culture.

the goofy subsidy scheme for canadian journalists, however, which is propping up canadian news media that should be allowed to die, should be completely abolished.

https://nationalpost.com/news/crtc-to-require-online-streamers-to-pay-15-of-annual-revenues-to-support-canadian-content

my wire mesh came in today and i'm going to focus on this first. 

i was thinking more about this "air gap".

if you have a conducting material facing another conducting material with a small air gap in between, you would not expect the air to act as much of an insulator, but rather functionally behave as a conductor. convection would just be conduction, in context. it would basically be the same thing. however, if you had an insulator in the other side, the gap would just fill up with heat until it got to equilibrium. the gap would then become a part of the insulator, but only because the gradient is reversed. the gap itself would slow the reflection down, not help it.

yet there may be some scenarios where you do want an air gap between aluminum and an insulator that have to do with preventing moisture building up, rather than implementing the radiant barrier. that air gap would have no effect on the reflective or insulating properties of the aluminum-foam combination, but it would prevent water damage behind the foam. those issues did not cross my mind, but they are not relevant to me, because i am insulating a basement. i don't know if i would have thought of moisture as a concern if i was trying to block an a/c from below me rather than above me (i would not need to do this if the a/c was below me. i would just open the windows full blast and blow the heat in with fans. placing thermal barriers on the floor wouldn't make any sense, as they would block the heat from rising. instead, i'd be trying to push heat down from outside. i might have guessed that would create moisture.), and don't want to be pretentious, but that's not what i'm doing.

i think this page is helpful in going over the different contexts and why it's important to be careful.

in the context of what i'm doing, i want to eliminate intentional air gaps and push the insulation tight against the wall. my analysis was correct. however, any inevitable pockets of air that continue to exist will allow for humidity to escape upwards. if i could theoretically completely eliminate these gaps (i know i can't), i would create humidity issues. but, i can't, and i'm not worried about that.

https://joneakes.com/jons-fixit-database/2259-air-spaces-in-walls-myth-and-science---overview#a06Drywall

there would be something staunchly ironic about a bassline written by two british rock icons, one of them iranian, being the most memorable thing about america's 250th birthday.

bowie thinks you're all a bunch of fucking idiots, anyways.

i actually heard that vanilla ice was under pressure to pull out of the america birthday thing.

the zoom website has completely blown up my chromebook twice this week. it has done that before when trying to open a session, but even trying to log into the forum to ask a question has cratered it twice. 

zoom is demonstrating itself as an antisocial company that should be boycotted, but dealing with them is required, until the government drops them, and i expect they will. zoom is going out of it's way to generate unnecessary, recurring costs. somebody else is going to undercut them. zoom's days are numbered.

it would be nice to eventually be able to buy something like a vp59 without being certain that it's going to be phased out in a few months,  but that's not reality right now.

i'm looking at a few usb phones, but the only things you can find nowadays are engineered for microsoft. really, the phone needs to launch as a usb sound card, in the zoom context. that's what zoom should load it as. it should act as a usb phone for zoiper or softsip, but it's just a phone shaped sound card with a few specific buttons, like mute, for zoom. really.

after locking myself in all week, i have not had a headache this weekend for the first time in a while. the acne is also clearing up. it's clear what the truth is.

what i can do that's affordable and will last is this.

- get a cheap android 15 tablet. which is possible.

- buy a usb c to usb, hdmi and rj-45 hub

- get a used monitor and cheap keyboard, mouse (the android probably has a touch screen, which is yuck)

- get a usb phone interface

the usb phone interface will connect to a softphone in the tablet and act like an office phone, whereas the tablet can run the android zoom app, until it can't and i can do it from the web instead. i can send it out to the monitor and use the normal computer peripherals. i can hack it eventually, or find one with ubuntu on it to start so i don't have to. but i'm going to get better hardware with the android 15 devices, i think.

these devices are designed for video and they work well for that reason. they will not have performance issues and should be compatible until well after 2035.

realistically, that's what a videophone is going to end up being, but with an older os you can't update and with less potential peripherals. but i can go through the yealink vp-59 and make sure i'm not skipping any features i want, too.

what i'm looking for appears to be widely available for consumers in china but is non-existent here. our corporate sector is going to destroy itself through greed, and slow us down in the process. zoom's days are numbered.

all american telecom companies seem to die the same way. it makes capitalism look terrible, but only the japanese have been in any position to react, for years. the chinese are making us look incompetent, truly.

my aluminum came in but i got sidetracked looking at zoom devices. 

i've been trying to find the right cisco videophone that i can install, and struggling, but it just clicked that this is the wrong approach. these devices will enter end of life. they're designed to be phased out. that's really not what i want. i've been focusing on finding the right licence, but the licence is going to expire, and then it's a paperweight. i suppose i could still use it to video chat, if anybody else did that; nobody does. people just waste their money on proprietary systems and then pay to upgrade them over and over. i am not going to do that.

it's the operating system that's going to get forced into obsolescence by zoom and the only way to get around that is to use linux. anything else will get tied to the hardware. you could upgrade the firmware, but they'll block you, and they run the servers. what i'm doing with this ancient cisco phone, which is flashing the operating system in the device and then using it to connect to a non-cisco server to provide a service, cannot be done, or at least not yet. zoom is not making the mistake that cisco did; cisco avoided the servers. zoom is selling the servers, and selling access to the servers, and getting more and more aggressive about controlling access to the servers.

i want to hack an old cisco videophone and i am seeing them come up for $30, which is the price i paid for this office phone. i just don't have a use for it, so long as zoom is broadcasting imminent end of life. i also wish they had a vga or hdmi out, and a usb data in, and none do. the lack of data interaction is a potential utility issue.

so, the newer versions by companies like yealink and grandstream update the concept by using android, but they ship with android 7 or 9. you can't even install zoom on android 7 at all and android 9 is facing obsolescence in 2028. these devices are cheap, but they're actually worthless. you could upgrade them, but you're not allowed; perhaps you could force it, but i haven't seen an answer. you could try to run it from the web, too.

you can, however, get a linux tablet that you can upgrade for fairly cheap. if you get relatively recent specs (2.5 quad processor, 16 gb ram), it could last for this function for a while; if they try to force you to upgrade the os, you can do it without getting blocked. it probably has a camera and a mic and an hdmi out. you can input files from external drives. i'd be struggling to look for an ethernet out but could use a usb dongle if necessary. it's probably the best option.

the idiot trump is doing everything he can to stop a necessary and beneficial war in iran from happening, and he's doomed to fail.

i still don't know why the media wants to talk about ending the war in iran.

the inevitable regime change war in iran, which is more inevitable and certain now than it ever has been, hasn't started yet.

153.8. 

time to eat.

it's almost time to eat and i didn't spend the day doing what i intended to do.

i sat down and very carefully tried to be as thorough as i could in getting everything done in the kitchen and i came up with:

- paper towel holder (i was going to make one, but i bought one)

- knife sharpener

- 32 ounce plastic cups

i was also looking at a mini food processor, specifically for garlic and dill because it's hard to cut it close, but i'd use it for broccoli topping and other things as well, and also at a new cutting board, but i had mostly decided against it by last night. i have three metal bowls and a fan in a cart at walmart awaiting a cancellation on something else.

when i woke up, i realized i had to address the temperature, as well.

the cardboard is actually a good insulator, and taping cardboard over the ceiling will probably help quite a bit in itself. i have a lot of cardboard. i should do that. but i was looking at buying some foil or some tape to reflect the heat back in and i wanted to make sure i understood what i was doing first. 

i am very much doing the opposite of what most people are trying to do when they look into this. most people are trying to reflect the sun's light out and keep the cool air in; i'm trying to keep the cool air out and bounce the heat back down. for that reason, what i'm doing is likely to actually work, while it's not that likely to work in most other situations. i would not recommend doing this if you were trying to cool your space down.

if you want to create a thermal barrier that traps heat into your space and blocks cold air from a cooler space above you (in my case, an air conditioned main floor), the best heat reflecting material out there is simple aluminum of a thickness greater than that in alumnium foil, but you need to be careful that you aren't just conducting the heat through the foil, because aluminum is also a strong conductor. 

it is argued on the internet that if you want full reflectivity then the way to do it is to create an air barrier between the foil and an insulating material that is large enough to prevent conduction through the aluminum but small enough to prevent radiation on the other side. i think that this is wrong, but thinking it through helped me better understand. my take on this is that this is probably a fool's errand, and that this supposed air barrier is probably going to inevitably result in convection, and there's probably no way to actually get this middle point between convection and conduction other than by heating the gap up. you should probably be more concerned about preventing convection than you are about preventing conduction and as such be careful to make sure there is no air gap at all; convection is more likely to break you than conduction, especially if you pick a good insulator on the other side. the aluminum is not going to store the heat radiating into it, and the heat isn't gong to disappear into the quantum void, it is either going to go through the aluminum to whatever is on the other side (including by convecting) or reflect off of it, back into the room. that proposed air gap is probably just giving the heat somewhere to go, until it gets hotter than downstairs and starts bouncing back; a flush insulator will stop it from building up in the gap and just push it straight back. i'm consequently going to warn against this idea of creating an "air gap" as being bad advice and instead advise you to push the aluminum flush against the insulator to minimize any space where the heat can build up. certainly, you want to ensure the aluminum is not touching any other conductors, as well, but that's not the point, and that advice does not extend to trying to prevent it from touching insulators.

in fact, that is the advice given by the company that makes the aluminum insulation that i just bought 400 square feet of. the sheeting is a roll of insulating styrofoam-like plastic sandwiched between a relatively thick sheet of aluminum (much thicker than aluminum foil). to maximize effectiveness, they suggest making sure the aluminum is pushed as flush against the wall or ceiling as possible, to eliminate air gaps. i think that is actually correct and that the advice on the internet is wrong.

i am going to use looped over packing tape to connect these sheets of foil-sandwiched insulating foam to large pieces of cardboard, and then use more looped over packing tape to connect the cardboard to the ceiling. i may also use pink fibreglass insulation in one space where there will be a gap, for added insulation. the layering will be as follows:

(cold air)

- flooring (either wood or plaster)

- (insulation, where it is open wood)

- corrugated cardboard, mostly from walmart or amazon

- aluminum

- foam

- aluminum

(hot air)

i want to keep the hot in and the cold out. the aluminum on the bottom, as insulated by the foam, should keep the heat in. the aluminum on the top, in context, should have little utility - it might reflect any light coming in from upstairs, but that should really never happen. rather, it will continue to reflect any heat that gets through the foam back into it, the other way. it will keep the heat that is upstairs, as little as it may be, up there, too. that heat would not flow downwards, anyways. the systems are designed to reflect heat in in the winter and heat out in the summer, depending on where the source of heat in the thermal gradient is sitting. the cardboard on the other side of the aluminum and any insulation on the other side of it will act as a final barrier to prevent any heat that got through the foam and the second aluminum from escaping, pushing it back down to the aluminum. a gap will develop between the foam and the cardboard, consisting of the heat that got through the foam and can't get through the cardboard. that trapped heat will act as a barrier between the two apartments and a buffer blocking any cold air from upstairs, which will get neutralized between the floors and have less effect on me. 

this will allow me to open the windows without triggering the a/c upstairs, so i've bought a large amount of metal meshing to screw over the windows from the inside. this will keep out bugs, rodents and bad guys.

most of it will be here before monday.

when i stopped yesterday, i wanted to sort through some posts made in may to make sure i was keep tracking of plans i made and wrote down, without abandoning them due to the headache. these processes are interrelated and will finish together, it's just that this is a sorting process that requires space in ram to move things around in before i can have more space to move things into their right places. i want to make sure i don't skip anything and then have to come back to it.

i will need to sort through my pile of boxes before i can get the radiant barrier up. i will need to get into that space, first, which requires cleaning around it. i need to have somewhere to put it, which will require moving the boxes of books, which will require installing the shelves, which is what i was starting to do the other day before  fell asleep. 

i'm not gay and don't care about gay pride. trans women are not gay men and don't like being categorized as queer. i identify as heterosexual and female.

you will see lots of transvestites - drag queens - out and about. they are gay men and do identify as gay. they will celebrate gay pride and be frequently seen at gay parties, because that's what they're all about. they are not transgendered. it's not a small or subtle difference.

i'm relatively liberal and open about the whole thing, partly because i transitioned late and know better than to think i can sidestep the issue, but most transgendered people don't want to be deadnamed, identified as members of their previous gender, considered gay or even outed as trans at all. trans pride is not something that's visible the way that gay pride is. we do not want to march down streets or celebrate in queer subcultures, we want to blend in to normal society and not be noticed as trans at all.

i am going to be making what i hope are some last kitchen purchases today, but i also need to deal with the temperature in here. the tenants above me prefer the temperature around 18 degrees celsius, and i prefer it around 28 degrees. it's warm out, and they have the air blaring. i want the breeze from outside, but there's some kind of negative pressure working down here that's stopping the outside air from coming in. it's very weird. it might just not be warm enough out yet, and the gradient might be too small. but, i'm struggling to get the heat in and keep the air out.

if they set the a/c to 25 i could probably deal with it but they seem to want to set it to about 17. as a tenant, there is nothing i can do to stop them from running the air conditioning. the way a/c works is that it doesn't just reduce the temperature to a warm 25 in the summer, but sucks all of the warmth and humidity out of the air, leaving you with a wind chill like a/c effect. 25 in the a/c is more like 19. 17 in the a/c feels like 10 degrees. i can't tolerate this freezing cold and need to find ways to block it from affecting me.

i have a lot of windows in here but a lot of the screens are broken so i need to get some wire. i can just screw it in from the outside. a cross breeze will help circulate warmer air from outside in here and mute the effect of the a/c.

however, the same area in the back that the rats were in is going to be a problem because there's barely anything separating the units. i can smell their food in there, and the a/c is practically on full blast. the insulation blocks a hole to outside but doesn't address the lack of separation between the units. it's blocked with heavy doors and fairly isolated, so the rest of the place isn't so bad, but it's freezing in there.

i'm going to just tape some cardboard boxes up, but i want to get some insulating tape or something to put over the boxes. that's minimally invasive and should work in blocking both the cold and the smell. i can even take it with me and use it to block the a/c in the next place (this isn't the first time the a/c has been a problem). but i need to look into it first.

it's acne. it's gross, but i understand it and there's no utility in getting upset. it will wash off. they may have given me something that messed with my hormones with whatever they're drugging me with, or the acne may be a side effect; the only symptom is acne, once the headache has lifted. that's it.

the best way to stop the acne from building up like this is to lose the weight.

i'm currently at around 154, which is down from around 165. i need to fall to 153.x before the next meal, which i expect to be some time today. that will probably bounce up to around 158-9 when i'm done eating, then need to fall to 152 for the next meal, which will be for mondayish.

i'm not reducing portions, i'm pushing myself down through a systematic lowering process. it's not starvation. i ate last on wednesday evening and will eat again this afternoon or evening. my meals are planned to be extremely nutritious and have high calorie intakes, because i'm supposed to be doing a lot of cardio, which is the thing i haven't had time for. in fact, i should get an exercise bike in place within a week or two and that should reduce the gap. it's just extremely careful micromanagement, with no breaks and no compromises.

i'll have the 70 ounce bowl of chicken bacon caesar salad when i get to 153 in a few days and finish it probably on saturday,

a garden salad of the same size when i get to 152 on probably monday night,

another one on wednesday or thursday when i get to 151,

and a 70 ounce bowl of tomato bacon cheddar soup with crackers and toast on friday or saturday when i get to 150

we're keeping at this until i get to 130 and then easing up until it gets back to 140. 

the acne might even be partially from the weight loss, but the weight loss didn't cause the migraines and auras over the weekend.

yeah, i look like a 14 year-old pizza face. somebody did this to me on purpose.

it's less gross than the bloated stupid jock face or the despicable hairy ape-dog face, which is what they want. the ape-dog is an elusive creature native to the forests around number one observatory, washington dc. it comes out only to feed on couches left in local laneways, and when cynical and principleless opportunism is rife.

but it's pretty disgusting, and i'm going to need a few days for the grease to drip off and to find a way out of this enforced arrested development and back to middle age.

fuck.

losers.

laho-hosers.

wait, i think i just derived something.

after sleeping it off, i'm feeling a little better. for now. this is cyclical, based on what they're doing.

i actually think i was having an allergic reaction for the last week, which is something i've noticed before. this time, it wasn't hives all over my body, but rather manifested in my face swelling up to twice it's size (i've noticed this before as well, associated it with what seemed to be forced steroid consumption and labelled it "stupid jock face syndrome", but that doesn't seem to be the issue at this time) and giant puss-filled zits developing all over it. a couple of these seem to have little eyelash sized ingrown hairs, but they're mostly just disgusting thick zits, like you tend to see in teenagers.

i have dealt with this as i have before, which is to wash it down until it bleeds and then lather over it with acne soap. this is a disgusting process that initially makes the whole thing worse, as it results in your face wrinkling up and breaking out even worse at the same time. the soap hurts, but when it's done you'll have a dozen big grease-filled bumps to break open with pimple poppers, or just pop with your fingers. 

this time, the soap reached it's zenith this afternoon and i went through and broke open all the grease-filled blemishes this evening, before i went to sleep, as i tend to in the evening. when i woke back up, the swelling had come down and the zits had turned into bloody scabs. the result is that i look like a meth addict, which is frustrating given that i would never touch the stuff and would beat the shit out of anybody that tried to offer it to me (i would use shovels to smash their heads in. i would not show mercy. it would be messy. drug dealers do not deserve human rights. i don't support capital punishment for rape or pedophilia, but i would support it for drug dealers. it's a worse crime.), but also probably something approximating what my body has been going through, and something these stalkers are doing to me intentionally. it should wash off in the next day or two.

i had to go to the bank machine to get some cash on friday night for the couch, which gave the losers the opportunity to get in here. i had migraines all weekend, resulting in the swelling, which is coming down, now. they seem to have moved in upstairs.

i'm left with no option but to barricade the doors shut until i can understand what's going on.

my immediate focus is healing from the effects of the poisons i was drugged with. i'm a little groggy and i look disgusting but i think i'm ok and i'll be ok when i wash up.

the correct solution is to put these people in jail, but the canadian justice system is irrevocably broken and i've learned that i can't rely on the system to come to correct outcomes. the cliche is that the asylum is being run by the inmates, and that is very much what is really happening in canada. i will need to seek extralegal solutions, because the legal system is no longer able to succeed in arriving at correct outcomes due to a mix of systemic corruption and systemic incompetence. the judiciary in canada was recently intentionally redesigned to be hopelessly ignorant and incapable of solving or working through problems in a way that benefits anybody except the interests of capital.

i've also learned over the last few years that you cannot move away from the drug problem in canada. there are too many drug addicts, and they are distributed too widely. again, the court has created this problem via it's incompetence. citizens cannot evade it, and cannot use the system to address it, but will need to find ways to address the problem using methods outside of the legal system. 

what i'm dealing with is something a little bit different than that, but i essentially need to address it the same way. i'm left with no option but to address the drug problem using vigilante methods, because the system has taken away everything else.

i am being drugged with something, and it is familiar, and it's the same losers, but it's not testosterone or steroids anymore. it appears to be some kind of hallucinogen.

what happens is i get a migraine headache, complete with aura, i feel like shit for a little while, i pass out and i wake up dehydrated and filthy. it has no effect on me except that i feel filthy and shitty until it wears off. the idea that being filthy and sick is some kind of beneficial "therapy" is utterly retarded. i don't even understand. i can't imagine anybody reacting remotely positively to this. it's utterly horrible.

i haven't done these kinds of loser drugs since i was a little kid. i tried it a couple of times, i decided it wasn't much fun and i haven't touched it in like 30 years. i have no remote interest in it now as an adult. you'd have to have something seriously wrong with you to get any enjoyment out of a splitting headache and some stupid flashing geometric patterns. it's tedious and boring, and a horrible waste of time.

these poisons are doing substantive long term damage to my internal organs, to my hair and to my skin. 

these people are not doctors and they are not doing research, they are petty criminals and they should be in jail. i don't understand what they want, but they're just making me tired and sick and sad and wasting my time and theirs alike.

i got cleaning behind the couch out of the way, which is a substantive thing to do, but my old coffee table is too big to fit in the space. it's like 25" x 48".  i need it under 15", and preferably around 36" at that width. i need a skinny side table on the other side of the couch, too. but not right this minute.

i can probably put my big coffee table right at the foot of the side stairs.

there was a nice entertainment unit in here that i will make proper use of, with a full stereo system, and that needs to take priority in installing by clearing out the space. only once that is set up will i make decisions about further tables around the couch. i will need to clear the library area out first, so i can move the shelves and books and cds out of the way, so i can move the stereo desk in.

it took me a few days, for a few reasons, to finish planning out the rest of the kitchen, the side entrance and the listening/library/studio space. i'm still not able to move anything valuable into the garage until i get the entrance dealt with, but that could happen over the weekend.

i'm going to be slowly moving the remaining ceramic bowls and plates mostly out of the cupboard altogether and to under the sink, with the exception of the 8" plates, which i use mostly for cutting things. 

- the 10" plates will get shifted to being used for holding glass bowls, and won't get eaten on directly

- the ceramic bowls will be moved to under the sink and used to hold things like doritos, although that is not something i do that often anymore. i haven't generally bothered putting the chips in a bowl in quite a while. i want to get a few very big metal bowls while i'm at it, as i let standing water sit in my old metal bowl for too long in the last place. i've also decided to get some plastic cups after all, just to be complete, which i'm being extreme about. i'm getting everything done now. 

i don't think i mentioned the cast iron pans. i think i did mention the two new blenders.

 

it's also taken me a few days to get to the point in the coffee table book where i can move to building or installing the first skipped item, which is all of those stackable cubes i want to use as bookshelves. in fact, i have cleared enough space in here that i can start setting up the shelving more generally, which will open up a ton of space in here as it will clear out the centre of the room and get this pile of 20 or so boxes of books and cds off the floor. 

i've also planned out a few more floating shelves in the kitchen. there ended up being four extra wall shelves in the bathroom (for now, all very small) and there are currently five extra shelves in the kitchen, with five more to come, and potential plans for a few more after that. i like this approach of just popping shelves on the wall with these cheap pegs without having to screw or nail anything into walls that should not be nailed or screwed into. the double and mostly even matching shelving (except one) on every possible open space in this kitchen maximizes what can be done with the space (which is big for a small kitchen. any bigger at all, and it might no longer be small, anymore.) and does a lot to make it look like a fancier kitchen than it is. this is the bottom half of what was a turn of the last century mansion; i know it's really, really old because there's still a chimney vent for the coal down here. it wouldn't take that much effort to make this place really nice. 

i'm getting there.

regarding the laptops, i'm getting annoyed enough with the crashing old chromebook in the kitchen that i'm planning on replacing it with the one i'm typing on, but it's going to be a process. i need to make sure that i can't just swap the ram first. if i can fix it by swapping the ram, that's a better choice, although there are some annoyances, such as the inability to play bandcamp audio. that said, if i can stop it from crashing, i may still consider swapping out the os on it. i need to test the ram, which is replaceable in this thing because it's really a laptop with a chrome os chip. it might be easy. it's too bad the front panel is busted, really. but i've been over this a few times - this is why i stopped buying laptops, and i'm going to get to that. laptops will break. i don't have the money to waste. i'd rather buy $100 chromebooks that are expected to break or expire, anyways.

there is still going to be a zoom device in there as well and i'm trying to figure out how to do this. i want to get a videophone with an external monitor out. this will delegate the processor work to a dedicated videophone device but still give me a bigger screen. ideally, i should also be able to plug a usb key into the videophone for use with the zoom platform.

zoom actually is shifting to hardware, but they are moving to a corporate licensing model and this is leaving me in a hole. i could in theory buy a 20 year old cisco video phone on ebay for $100 and it should work perfectly fine, so long as zoom lets me connect, which it looks like they won't. i need to buy a license, intended for corporate use. that doesn't make sense to me. zoom's insistence on pushing a proprietary hardware product is becoming a problem and i want to drop this on them. they need to change how they're approaching this.

right now, they are leaving users like me in a bind. as mentioned, i can neither afford to keep up with laptop hardware nor buy proprietary zoom licenses. i do not currently have a computer i can use to run zoom on; i need to buy something, and i'd rather get a videophone if i'm doing it. the videophone shouldn't lose support like an operating system well, which is a major selling point for a low income nerd like myself. i know i can set one of these things up (i have a voip office phone with two lines that is connected to voip.ms that takes incoming and outcoming calls and works just like a landline) and i know it can and should work but, right now, zoom doesn't want to let me without charging me an exorbitant fee. it will tell me the desktop version is free, but it won't let me run it, either, because it claims my computer isn't fast enough (a claim which is, in truth, dubious to clearly false). 

access to zoom is no longer a luxury in canada. zoom is increasingly exclusively used by courts, tribunals and other administrative bodies in canada, who are increasingly abandoning the court room altogether. still, in 2026, years after the pandemic has been over, the court house in windsor is still dead empty. if i was running for mayor in windsor, i may want to suggest converting the empty court house into a homeless shelter. it does not look like the courts are returning to normal any time soon, in ontario. ontarians need to adjust, which means they need access to this proprietary platform, without buying a fucking license. that means everybody, even poor people like me that don't buy new computers every six months and cannot keep up with zoom's onerous minimum requirements, which are unjustified.

i can call the court, but i've learned the hard way that that places you at a disadvantage. judges want to see you because they don't read your court documents and don't correctly apply the law, they judge you on your appearance and apply a variety of race and gender prejudices on you in the process, then make a prejudicial ruling based on nonsense. that's reality, and we can't avoid the necessity of the legal system, which governs aspects of our lives like housing in ways that we have no choice but to interact with. ontarians need a way to connect to zoom via video, moving forward. zoom needs to make this easier, not harder, or it might find it starts losing clients that can't deal with the user requirements and just want to connect to go to court because they have to.

first, i want to finish cleaning behind the couch so i can finally put the coffee table down. then, i need to clear out the space where i'm moving all my bookshelves into to clean, so i can move the shelves in. when that's done, i can get to cutting some of the wood for the kitchen, finally.

there will be a scattering of items coming in as that's happening, as well.

the truth is that while colbert may have legitimately been fired, he spent far more time sucking up to authority or trying to avoid offending people than he did speaking up against anything. he was a sellout in what's really the worst way possible, and in the end he got what he deserved for it.

you aren't likely to hear much from stephen colbert for quite a long time.

there's actually some plants popping up outside my bedroom windows. i think they're just weeds, or maybe random trees, but the increase in air quality is appreciated.

so, i like this place.

it's a shame about the losers following me around. 

i'm noticing this afternoon that my trusty house centipede guard is back on patrol. i can do a million other things using barriers and chemicals, but the centipedes are more effective than anything. i wish i could go buy some but it's not legal, apparently.

i gotta keep the humidity up for these little buddies to survive down here and eat everything else, or they dry out and die, and i find them shriveled up in the corner.

canadian trade authorities should be aggressively seeking to crack down on this.

Canada’s Connection to Prison Labour

Though our trip focused on the prison labour system in Alabama, a large portion of our time over the summer was spent examining ties between the US prison labour system, and goods sold in Canada. Our research indicated that the Canadian supply chain has many likely linkages to prison-made goods from the US, particularly in the automotive and food sectors.

When we looked into the auto industry, we noticed that many auto parts manufacturers are based in the southern US, with Alabama leading in auto parts exports in 2023. Since many companies in Alabama use prison labour, this pointed us to a potential issue. The auto industry relies on a complex supply chain, with parts often crossing the Canada-US border multiple times before final assembly—making it hard to track the origin of each part. However, some parts are only made in specific factories. If one of those factories uses prison labour, then any car sold in Canada that includes that part was likely produced using prison labour.

The food industry is another sector with many potential linkages to prison labour. In 2023, the US exported $32 billion in agricultural goods to Canada, which highlights the prominent agricultural trading relationship between the nations. The food industry is difficult to trace, due to the structure of the modern food supply chain. Raw products produced using prison labour can be intermingled with other products and heavily processed before becoming a product for final purchase by consumers. Corn is a great example: corn might be harvested by incarcerated workers, and then processed into corn syrup, which is then used to make products like candy or beverages. Still, we were able to find links to food produced using prison labour at several major grocery stores and restaurants in Canada.

In addition to these primary industries, we found potential links to prison-made goods in the Canadian supply chain in home furnishing, pet stores, children’s products, and lumber companies, to name a few. Given the trade relationship between the US and Canada, it’s likely that prison-made products are a part of the daily lives of Canadian consumers—without them even knowing.

https://ihrp.law.utoronto.ca/news/uncovering-us-prison-labour-canadian-supply-chains

a retaliatory tariff on american prison labour by all affected parties, or even an outright ban on goods and services made in american prisons, would be a proportionate response that would also send a clear political message to the americans. 

i am generally opposed to placing tariffs on goods entering canada from the united states. canadians don't benefit by paying more for orange juice, or not being able to buy vodka. that doesn't help us. it's just a punitive tax on ourselves.

but we should not be supporting the continuing reality of forced labour in the united states' penal system. canadians should not be buying goods made in american prisons. at all. period.

further, i would not support lifting that ban or set of tariffs as a part of negotiations. i would keep that restriction, until they change their laws.

Prison labor in the U.S. generates significant economic output. Incarcerated workers provide services valued at $9 billion annually and produce over $2 billion in goods.

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

The U.S. is home to the world's largest prison population and the highest per-capita incarceration rate. As of May 2020, there were 655 people incarcerated per 100,000. Prison, parole, and probation operations cost U.S. taxpayers $81 billion a year.

https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/origins-modern-day-policing