i lived in that neghbourhood from 2007-2013 and it's weird because there's a railroad track (converted to the o-train eventually) through the area behind walls on both sides and only a handful of bridges over. so, there's a lot of dead ends from bayswater or preston, which is both frustrating and provides for opportunity, like cul-de-sacs under bridges for shooting the shit drinking. it's off the tracks, so there is the remnant of ottawa's old industrial centre here. it's the only part of ottawa remotely similar to the endless sprawled industrial decay in detroit.

i walked into this coffee shop more than twice on my way down to the bike path they built off of gladstone, which was one of the back ways over the tracks. gladstone is a quieter street west of preston, all the way to parkdale.

the coffee was a little acidic. cheap paper cups. the bridgehead coffee in ottawa was better.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/flagship-happy-goat-location-could-be-demolished-to-build-high-rise-buildings/

i never really got started today but i am feeling a lot better. the cough has started to lift.

i'm going to eat early again, hopefully for the last time. the mustard's gone at least. hopefully the garage cools down a little overnight so i can get the last bit of concrete on the main floor done early in the morning.

children should certainly continue to receive vaccines for hep b and for meningitis.

ok, so i want to say a few things about the state of leftist politics in the united states in 2026.

who am i?

- i am a canadian that lives in windsor, ontario, canada

- i have no us citizenship. i am not a us illegal. i have never tried to vote in the united states and don't want to. i barely vote in canada.

- i am highly critical of what i call a fake left

- however, i don't align with what is called a centre in the united states. i consider myself to the left of what is claimed to be "progressive" in the united states, and consider these "progressives" to in truth be quite obviously conservatives and quite frequently fascists

- i'm not going to call them communists. i'm going to call myself a communist. i'm going to call groups like the dsa fascists, not communists, and think this distinction is extremely important.

- while they may deny it, because their electoral success relies on it, i actually would argue that sinema or fetterman are to the left of the dsa and not to their right. i would prefer these politicians because i'm a communist and more left-wing.

- i'm extremely white. i don't like black or arab culture very much. i don't like the religion and don't like the bad hygiene. i'll call them names for believing in god or having poor hygienic practices, but this isn't racism, it's free speech. racism is structural state oppression and has nothing to do with individual name calling; that is a left-wing position. individual name calling is just venting and is harmless. if my dirty nigger neghbours smell like drug addicts and don't practice hair removal, there's nothing wrong with calling them dirty niggers for smelling terribly and walking around with ecoli on their face. that's just true, and these are issues they need to address to advance goals of social progress associated with increasing public hygiene and reducing the spread of disease. it doesn't mean i want to enslave them or think they have low iq or bar them for working due to their skin colour or something. actual racism is largely specious nonsense, and no science-first secularist would support it, even if they insist on criticizing the smell and poor hygiene, which are real issues grounded in real science. the orwellian policies of political correctness have made people afraid to discuss real issues. i don't cower in fear from the thought police. fuck off. they stink. they're dirty. their culture and religion suck. it's a real problem and needs to be fixed.

- i don't consider racism to be a serious issue in the united states in 2026. it's there, but it's a minor concern. groups experiencing more serous systemic attacks are jews (as always), trans and queer people, religious groups that are not judaic in origin (like pagans or polytheists like hindus) and the remaining racial target, the indigenous. arabs, blacks and hispanics do not experience substantive racism in north america in 2026. some groups like muslims and sikhs are privileged groups and experience muslim privilege and sikh privilege. 

- there are groups trying to colonize north america on behalf of islam. they're far right groups. they want to convert you rather than replace you. they want to enforce crazy rules on you and tell you how to live. i consider that a threat to my freedom and yours and something that needs to be aggressively addressed by a left in solidarity with it's own ideals. this is explained well by engels in socialism: utopian and scientific.

with those caveats stated up front, let me be clear about my perception of a few things.

what is the real left? the real left is worker ownership of the means of production. this is an abstract and general idea and means many things, not something specific. there's lots of ways to enforce distribution of resources to the proletariat, the working class that has nothing to sell but labour. if your movement is not about redistributing wealth, it is not a left. it may make many excuses for why it doesn't advocate wealth redistribution, and you may accept those excuses, but it still positions you outside of the left and, depending on your other politics, as a moderate liberal capitalist or a right-wing extremist. what's happening in  the democratic party today is that powerfully funded lobbies are ejecting liberal capitalists and replacing them with right-wing extremists, who have horrible social policies and little to say about wealth redistribution, except to oppose it or support distributing wealth to the more wealthy, when challenged. one example of a policy to redistribute wealth from workers to the rich was the abandoned public groceries political scam in new york, and i'll get to this.

it seems to be true that the dsa is trying to take over the democratic party. they complain about corporate financing, but they are awash in funds from foreign states trying to change the direction of american politics. i have looked rather deeply into the dsa and interacted with it's members in detroit (metro area) and i have the following to say about it:

- the dsa does not debate it's policies or allow dissent of them. dsa polices are developed by head office and mailed out to the members. you accept the policy or you leave the party. you're thrown out if you try to argue a policy is wrong or should be changed

- the purpose of dsa community meetings and townhalls is not for workers to debate or develop policies but for dsa employees/members to "educate" people about dsa policies

- this has no resemblance to democracy but rather implements a system called corporatism to a tee that was articulated by mussolini and opposed by gramsci and was given the name fascism

- dsa policies do not support proletarian revolt or the shift of power to the working class (the socialization of production, or socialism) but support a top down corporate structure that is historically and ideologically derived from the collectivist corporatism of mussolini, called fascism. the dsa is not a non-hierarchical structure but rather has a clear top down command structure.

the dsa is not a communist or socialist organization. it's members are not socialists. it is not a left. nor is it a democratic party in any way at all. the republicans are more democratic than the dsa.

rather, the dsa is a fascist organization and it's members are openly promoting fascism, if you understand what they're saying. many of these fascist ideas ended up in the right-wing abortion that called itself leninism and succeeded in enacting a counter-revolution to overthrow the 1917 communist revolution in russia, and enforce a system of collectivist corporatism, or fascism, in russia. this system explicitly argues against and seeks to aggressively prevent almost every fundamental point advanced by marx, and was opposed violently both by marxists and the kropotkinists and bakuninists to marx' left throughout the entire soviet period, often from ukraine. this is not a positive association. there is consequently something to the attacks on these people from the right that smear them as communists, in the sense that they are often leninists or stalinists or maoists, as opposed to being marxists or kropotkinists or bakuninists or trotskyists. orwell wrote the books about this. while this distinction may be lost to the right, the left will and should mostly take offense to it. i get the argument, but you should stop calling them communists and start calling them fascists, corporatists, maoists, stalinists, etc.

vijay prashad is an academic that has spoken vaguely in these terns, often by quoting chomsky. there are others.

it's increasingly clear that the dsa has picked up on foucault's arguments in favour of the iranian revolution and tilted towards a pro radical islam strategy in the misguided and objectively wrong belief that promoting radical islam will facilitate an advance of communism. this has led the dsa to take explicitly pro-irgc, pro-hamas, pro-hezbollah, pro-houthi and even pro-isis positions. there were fake leftists that used to argue in similar terms about promoting christianity at one point, but they've fallen into obscurity. the argument, which traces to engels, is that embracing islamic tribalism will get us closer to communist revolution. foucault truly believed this near the end of his life. foucault is widely influential but highly controversial in real left circles. the intelligence of his arguments is widely questioned. he died before any of it happened, but the history is clear that these movements did not lead to communism but to fascist states, both in far right iran and russia-backed syria. these systems led to fascism, not communism. promoting them here generates a threat of fascism and not the likelihood of communism.

they will respond by calling me an islamophobe, which is a smear job intended to change the topic. i do admit to disliking islam and fearing it, but that's not relevant to my arguments, which are explaining why it's frightening and why you should dislike it, too.

in recent cycles, and we've seen this in new york and wisconsin and maybe less so in michigan, these dsa backed candidates have adopted a strategy of running on absurd policies with no likelihood of implementation that will appeal primarily to young voters that may educate themselves as they age but at the time of voting lack the education to be able to deconstruct the policies as foolish. the public grocery thing is a good example of this. it was dumb, but the naive children of the rich didn't understand it. when these candidates are elected, they don't advance left-wing policies, but rather act like the failed islamic revolutionaries that foucault supported, which today are the dsa's main source of funding. it's for this reason that you get these pro-hamas marches with people holding up signs supporting the houthis, which are disgusting.

we have a problem in front of us that chistopher hitchens warned us about: right-wing islamic fascists co-opting the left and taking advantage of people making the same mistakes as foucault to try to seize power in the united states to enforce islamic law and create a society like the one in the handmaid's tale. that is what the dsa is. it is not a democratic or a socialist group, and it's not a vehicle for the left, it's a vehicle for the far right, that wants to enforce islamic fascism, and is being funded by those governments to get to that outcome here. we'd better figure that out.

campaign finance reform might sound like a good idea at first, but the corollary is that your own messaging becomes limited. voter education is a better idea. but advocates also need to understand that it's an empty promise in the united states without a constitutional amendment, which you don't get without winning power first. this isn't a winning strategy, but it's not meant to be. it's an empty promise intended to win votes to advance a different hidden agenda with.

left-wing voters need to be more careful and more critical. your enemy's enemy is not necessarily your friend. some of these candidates are legitimately frightening, have terrible actual politics (behind the facade of empty nonsense intended to trick people into voting for them) and need to be aggressively stopped.

this specific animal was probably a dog with some coywolf admixture, rather than a coyote, exactly. a coyote wouldn't do this, it would be afraid of you. it demonstrates the rampant gene flow and rapid hybridization going on. these animals are neither dogs nor wolves nor coyotes but a combination of all three. foxes cannot breed with other canids nearly as regularly.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/coyote-pup-in-bed-9.7298531

i want to note that the liberals don't have their majority anymore and the idea of a non-confidence vote and a snap election resulting from a bad nafta deal is very real.

the lysol actually worked very well. i've said this before: lysol kills everything. if there was something starting to grow on the tiles, or something long established coming up from underneath them, the lysol wiped it out. the floors are cleaner now than they have been since i moved in, and i haven't steam mopped anything yet.

getting sick a few days ago upended everything. it's a virus, i'm sure. maybe covid. i dunno. i'm beating it, but i've been stuffed up, exhausted, sneezing, hacking, etc. it's made it a little difficult to do things. the main crux of what i'm doing hasn't changed: (1) finish up in the laundry and bathroom, (2) do a general clean in the kitchen, bedroom and rest of the space, including the next wave of things i can do right away in as many places as possible, (3) shower well, (4) sit down in bed and finish up the writing things i was doing - cataloging and the coffee table book. but, i have been forced to reorder a few things. i got most of the panels up in the laundry and went to vacuum when i realized the shop vac was broken and making everything worse, which forced me to scrub everything down with lysol by hand and to buy some new vacuums, and which got me pretty sick. that shop vac is in the garage, now. there's a new one coming but it won't be here for a few more days. there's a fancy electric steam mop in a box and a cheap usb electric spin scrubber both ready to go. as i was sick and better off in bed, i spent quite a while shopping for cheap kitchen gadgets on amazon haul and have a bit of a pile of crap coming that will actually help me finish setting the kitchen up. i've gone into the laundry to pick up where i left off a few times but have always stopped short; i have revacummed, relysoled, made sure the panels are snug, etc several times but i haven't finished with the last little bit of paneling. the last remaining issue in there is a persistent level of blow flies. is there a dead rat in there? i can't find it. rather, i think they were coming in from behind the wall and i sealed that up. i still have to get under the clothes rack and put up paneling in the far corner that i never go to, but the paneling has succeeded in eliminating the remaining minor problems, like falling food and sporadic droppings from unknown pests (it doesn't look like roach or rodent), except the flies. i'll have to do something similar in the garage.

i've spot cleaned in the bathroom several times but there's not much more to do except maybe buy a few more gadgets.

i redid a few things in the kitchen and will likely redo them again soon. it's been mostly cleaning and caulking. there are small and big purchases coming.

but i decided yesterday morning that i ought to focus on cleaning the side entrance first rather than sealing up the rest of the laundry. i'm just curious. it made more sense to leave that there for now while i'm sick, and don't have a good vacuum, and focus instead on getting as much as i could out of the side area, as well as reclaiming boxes for the ceiling or for storage. there's a door leading to a very small 5x5 landing, and a carpeted stairwell down to a hall leading into the furnace (behind a door) or the laundry. this is a 5x10 ish tiled hallway running parallel to a carpeted stairway up and out to a narrow paved space between the houses, and a very urban feeling front entrance. i was able to get some items belonging to the previous tenant out and handed to my neighbour, some old shirts i put aside as dust covers for my electronics and a pile of boxes out, that will end up on the ceiling (amazon), or in their own rooms, if they are for purchased items. after running a dustbuster through there, the only things left in the space are some bicycles to move into the garage, some paintings left here that i haven't decided what to do with yet and the things that are supposed to be there, namely coats and hats and gloves and scarves and boots and shoes. the hallway in that space will end up being an extension of the kitchen, while the carpeted area at the bottom will be a place to sit and will probably have a computer system to work in along with some kind of small couch. my long coffee table, which i am having difficulty finding a place to put, will not fit in there, either.

after cleaning that up, i decided to get out in the front entrance and the garage to try and get some of the last bit of caulking and weatherproofing done. i was able to get silicone over most of the front entrance and also to install some plastic weatherproofing intended for doors (and that i found downstairs) at the base of the ceiling, creating a separation between the spaces to keep the second hand smoke out. i went over that with the weatherproofing tape, and sealed up some of the spaces on the inside of the entrance before deciding i should let the rest of it dry before i (1) seal over the rest of the caulking and (2) close up the larger gaps with concrete or, in some cases, rebuild some crumbling or decaying parts of the concrete floor with fresh rock. 

it's very warm in there because there's an a/c exhausting into the space that i'm going to....i'm going to ignore it. the heat's not bad in the room. it's technically a sun room for growing plants or enjoying sunlight and is quite cool at the bottom of the stairs (20s) and immensely hot (high 40s) at the top of it. i am intending on growing food and maybe some low potency marijuana for occasional use in there. i have almost completely given up on legal pot; it's too strong, it's no fun. you can't find low thc marijuana. the right answer is probably just growing a little myself in my sun room, with some tomatoes and red peppers and dill weed and whatever else. the high heat is actually potentially great for growing. i'm just going to put a shelf up with a bucket to catch the moisture (which i don't want) and shrug off the heat. the reality is that the thing is already on the brink. the water bucket is already full of rust. it will be broken in another month anyways. it's exposing the landlord as somebody my dad would have described as having "more money than brains". but i don't want to start a fight over something that has no real effect on me, other than the annoyance of dumping a bucket of water every other day. my rent is cheap enough as it is; i don't need to ask for it lower. in fact, my income just went up again this month, and i'm not convinced he's gong to raise the rent at all. i don't know who this guy is, but he seems to have a lot of cash and a lot of property and isn't being a landlord for profit but rather to advance certain social aims. he's probably losing money upstairs and doesn't seem to care. he may come from old money originating in eastern iran or western india/pakistan. i don't know. at all. but working in the 40+ degree heat knocked me out and ihad to fall asleep for a few hours. i decided to wait until the morning to finish what i was doing.

the reality is that this is a very, very nice basement apartment that has been taken very, very poor care of for a very, very long time and i rented for a song and i'm the one doing most of the work in cleaning and fixing it. everything's got holes and leaks and is crumbling apart, so so much of it is about caulking, and redoing concrete and doing plumbing work upstairs (i'm not doing that). there are people smoking awful things upstairs and i currently want to block them out rather than fight with them, because i don't want to move again (this place is awesome, except the smoking and the rats), so i'm putting a lot of effort into building up the ceilings. most of what i'm doing right now has to do with (1) putting heat and vapour barriers up in the bedroom, laundry, kitchen and some other rooms, (2) just cleaning. still. and (3) fixing leaks in the garage so i can set it up and move things in there, which will let me really clear the last pile of things out of the main space. we've had drought conditions most of the summer, and for the last few weeks, since i fixed up the holes to the garage. we're finally getting some rain this morning that i can use to test to see if what i did really worked.

at the start of the summer, in may, i went out on the other side of the house and cleaned all of the garbage out from my windows. there's three windows, spaced a good ways from each other, along the side, hidden behind a fence that goes into my neighbours' long driveway. there's no reason to go in there, and the fence provides almost complete privacy and a buffer between my space and their behaviour. in fact, it's ideal. i was hoping that cleaning the garbage up would let the plants grow in and it has. there are small trees and bushes, weeds of various types, wild flowers blooming and vines coming up on the fence, even. this was almost completely dead under piles of garbage left by my neighbours a few months ago, so this is just year one. i'm hoping it really grows into a nice little rainforest right outside my window, and provides me with an excellent source of fresh oxygen. if i can't get rid of the dirty smokers, something like a garden outside your window is one way to mitigate. as it's now grown in quite a bit, i'm trying to make it a habit of getting the windows open in the morning, to let the fresh oxygen in. thank you, my green-blooded friends. i'm noticing it today a little more with the rain and because i'm sick.

so i want to finish plugging up holes in the garage, as a priority for today, and try to get some things out of there, and then some other things out of here and into there. after tidying up a little further, i hope i'm feeling better and can get back to focusing on finishing up in the laundry, and doing the broad level of cleaning, before getting in the shower and then focusing on the typing.

once the garage is entirely plugged up and secured, and the ceilings are sealed up as well, i have a number of things to move in there and/or set up. that's a key inflection point in finishing this up.

yeah, i'm not going to find a b vitamin with a reasonable dosage level, which is why i opted for the heightened protein intake as a lesser evil to the attack on my kidneys. 

i can find one with a little more b6 and b12 and a little less b9 for about the same at one store.

why did they fucking ruin it? ugh.

i 

hate

stupid

young 

shitheads.

yeah.

so, the upside of using nutritional yeast as a b vitamin source is that the amounts are reasonable.

amount of b1 in two tbsps of nooch: 6.3 mg

amount in a b-vitamin: 100 mg

you need around 1-2.

your kidneys will thank you for picking the nooch, even if the added protein might lead to unwanted weight gain. hit the bike.

my nutritional yeast brand is the latest product to work it's way out of my grocery list by removing the fortifications. apparently, companies are doing this because retarded millennials don't like added vitamins because the words are too long. what a bunch of fucking idiots.

i would rather pay a little more for the fortifications if i have to.

i fucking hate stupid, dirty, backwards, ignorant hippies. food fortification was a major victory won by the historical progressive movement. these unwashed idiots of today think vitamins are bad because they can't pronounce them, as though their utterly profound ignorance of basic science is some kind of virtue.

it would be beneficial to everybody else to just kill them off with cancer from marijuana asap to get rid of them. ugh.

so, i'm going to have to find a new brand of sufficiently fortified nutritional yeast, or not bother at all. the sole, single purpose of this product is the vitamins. if i can't find it with vitamins, i won't bother, i'll just start taking b vitamins instead.

the okanagan valley is one of the most environmentally appealing places i've ever been to. it would be a massive shame for it to burn down.

yes, the state needs to accept responsibility for this as in it's public mandate.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/09/canada-british-columbia-government-wildfires

if the result is that gaza ends up like lebanon, israel will need to treat it like lebanon.

the next step, once hamas is replaced by a democratically elected civilian government, which will not and cannot be the corrupt and unpopular palestinian authority, will be for that civilian government to assert a monopoly on power by working with israel to prevent hamas from continuing to terrorize, oppress and and harass the palestinian population. it is only when the civilian government destroys hamas, and this process might be called a civil war, that gaza can start looking towards building it's future.

there are many, many decades of struggle ahead of gaza to build civilian state infrastructure before it's ready to consider declaring independence.

trump, as he has tended to do, recently tried to derail and distort a recent agreement by hamas to remove itself from power and allow elections in gaza by tying it to a gift to some fascist states in the gulf about palestinian statehood, which has never had a real chance of happening, in exchange for hamas disarming, which is naive magical thinking. it is this condition - the removal of hamas from power - that defines victory in the justified war against terrorism that was required after the terrorist attack, and not the disarmament of hamas, which is unlikely to ever happen. there will always be some group of people in the area with guns that wants to fight israel. what's important is keeping them out of power, not trying to take away their guns. their removal from power is the definition of complete victory for israel, and is a just outcome.

the palestinian people have many decades of work in front of them if they want the idea of a palestinian state to be a realistic possibility, one day in the distant future. there is no political, social, economic or even cultural basis for palestinian statehood at this time. the idea is moronic and people trying to advance it are demonstrating low intelligence more so than any political view.

no, i actually don't support the legalization of circumcision in canada. a secular society would view circumcision as little more than ritualized child mutilation, and would seek to enact a complete prohibition on any form of non-consensual circumcision as a form of child abuse that is severely punishable by law. arguments about "religious freedom" are specious and laughable. i would support aggressively cracking down on male and female circumcision with the intent to entirely abolish it, and i would consider that social progress and a progressive political position.

the media is talking a lot about the us running out of what are now legacy missiles. it's probably true, but it doesn't matter, as these missiles that are being used in iran are of absolutely zero utility against the missiles that china and russia have been developing, called hypersonic missiles.

i will be as clear as i can.

these missiles are intended to intercept incoming icbms. they would utterly fail against the icbms that russia has today. utterly. completely. they wouldn't hit a single one.

that means that while the united states still has a serious response capacity, it's a sitting duck. as of right now the united states would be unable to defend itself against a russian or chinese first strike. nor would these missiles have any utility if launched against russia or china.

what can the americans still do with these missiles? they can attack inferior military forces like iran. likewise, the russians can't do much with their own legacy missile stockpile besides use it up somewhere like ukraine.

further, the chinese or russians will eventually move newer defense systems into iran. america's time window to strike is short and closing, and then it had might as well dump them into the sea.

that is why this announcement is more important than concerns about us missile shortages:

there are always conspiracy theories when it comes to modern wars. they have varying levels of truth. some of them have no truth at all. the idea that the united states launched this war against iran to use up surplus, legacy and obsolete weapons is likely largely true, and the idea that this is what the russians are actually up to in ukraine is likely also largely true. this justifies the expenditure to congress. in fact, it necessitates it. but the reality is that this is required, even if nobody at the pentagon is publishing essays or op-eds about it.

expect the americans to continue replacing these legacy missiles with modern missile technology as they get used, and not to replace the missiles being used with similarly aged ones.

my critique of the government's covid policy was not a right-libertarian critique, although it often ended up aligning with the right-libertarian position. i never took the position that religious beliefs overrode the science, or that personal freedoms were more valuable than public health. rather, my analysis was the following:

1) the science did not uphold mask mandates for cloth masks. viruses are much smaller than porous cloth. this was well understood and the science was well established - there was no hope of slowing the virus down by ordering people to wear completely ineffective cloth masks. in order to be effective at all, a mask mandate would have to involve the kind of masks surgeons wear, and we had a severe shortage of these masks, which needed to be hoarded for use in hospitals. the mask mandate was not science-based but was in broad terms extremely anti-science. the real reason the government ordered a mask mandate was not to slow down the pandemic but to increase consumer confidence and try to prevent the economy from collapsing.

2) the science did uphold quarantining the elderly in geriatric facilities and strongly advising that those over 55 avoid all human interaction as much as possible, but the government tried to prevent that science-based policy by arguing it would create lonely geriatrics, as though being lonely is worse than being dead. ohhhhhhhhhh, look at alllll the lone-ly peo-ple. dada dada...

3) social distancing was a double-edged sword. if you did this very rigorously, it might help. but, if you did this wrong, you're just helping the virus evolve by creating selective pressures for air borne pathogens, and it's the latter that seems to have happened. 

4) mass vaccination was a dubious approach because the virus was evolving too fast. in the end, mass vaccination failed. in 2026, covid-19 is one of the selection of viruses that make up the disease referred to as the common cold. it's still spreading rampantly. people are getting it and not even noticing. that is what the smart people said was going to happen in the end on day one. there was little to no hope that mass vaccination was ever going to stop the spread of covid, and in the end it certainly didn't. the vulnerable have never had any choice but to adjust their lifestyles, and those still alive are alive because they did. those who were vulnerable that had faith in the government's approach to maintain economic spending ended up dead.

5) the science was abundantly clear that vaccination provided no benefit to the vast majority of people and was in theory only useful to help stop the spread, which it failed to do.

6) it follows that the science really never supported mandatory vaccination, except for (1) healthcare workers, (2) employees at geriatric facilities and (3) people entering geriatric facilities to visit relatives. there was no discernible benefit in forcing vaccination to cross borders, to enter sports or cultural events, etc and it should have never been considered. rather, the government policy should have been to strongly advise that anybody vulnerable to the illness stay at home and just not go to the hockey game or the concert at all, while normal, healthy people should have been encouraged to carry on normally, and avoid economic or social disruption.

broadly speaking, the state made a decision to try to force the young, healthy people to bend over backwards for the old and vulnerable out of holding to an ideological position, and the science never supported anything they tried to force down on normal people for the benefit of the sick. if the science made sense, i probably would have supported much of this, in principle, but the policies were always about the economy and were frequently drafted by ignoring the science to try to help the economy. the policy should have always been the opposite of what they did: they should have tried to minimize economic and social disruption to the majority by letting the virus go, and instead placed immense restrictions on the vulnerable in it's care and made extreme recommendations to those over 55 to avoid any contact with anybody at all. that's what the science actually said.

i always supported upholding science. i was highly critical of the state's policy because it didn't uphold the science. and i often found myself arguing that the libertarian position was more in line with the science than the government's position, because that's what the science actually said - avoid restricting the behaviour of healthy, young people and instead place extremely severe restrictions on face to face access with the old and otherwise vulnerable and make strong recommendations that those 55-75 just try not to go out for any reason at all.

those who were and remain vulnerable and are still alive are still alive because they listened to the science and aggressively minimized all contact with others as much as possible. those who blindly listened to the state and confidently went to the store or the show in their useless cloth masks and with their ineffective vaccines as protection to spend, spend, spend just ended up dead. healthy young people were forced to endure incredible hardships for no benefit to try to enforce that consumer confidence.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-19-response-canada-reflect-inquiry-dean-allison-chief-science-adviser-mona-nemer-9.7300026

small news organizations should re-evaluate their viability. they may find it makes sense to launch modern digital papers because the problem they were facing - competition with large corporations - is no longer real. windsor has some small local news sites.

what happened a few decades ago has been mostly undone. the local papers got bought by the big ones that merged them into their mainline production networks. small papers couldn't compete with that. but, in recent years, the big papers have shut down most of these small papers, even laying off the staff. the staff is ready to go in relaunching in a market that no longer has big papers operating, so the small papers would have no competition at all if they started back up. they should.

some start-up funding by the federal government might help but might not be necessary.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2026/08/08/federal-government-commissions-project-to-track-local-news-deserts-in-canada/

i am feeling a little better but i'm still brutally sick. i've lost about a week and need to get back to cleaning this morning.

the immense threat to global peace posed by a regional military alliance in the middle east is the reason the united states, and the british before them, have spent the last 200+ years creating conflicts between the differing regional actors, and a major reason why a policy of supporting the kurds was drawn up in the first place. an alliance between the saudis and turks puts religious and cultural minorities in the region at extreme risk. the jews are going to need to step in and protect people, and then you have a world war developing, and the kurds end up a central part of it anyways.

trump's utterly anachronistic, out of touch and irrational mccarthyite fear of communism is leading to completely terrible policy decisions. a functioning american hegemon would not have allowed this to happen, but the idiot in the white house seems to be encouraging it.

i have stated myself that coordination between the turks, arabs and pakistanis is the necessary alternative to supporting a kurdish uprising in iran. it's one or the other, and if the turks don't want the kurds, they'd better pony up.

but that's not the same thing as a mutual defence agreement, which is extremely dangerous to global peace.

fuck. 

it would be a lot easier and better to just arm the goddamned kurds. trump is such a fucking piece of shit. let's get this fucking over with.

this looks like an axis of evil, if you ask me. i've been warning for years that the third world war will be fought against a belligerent saudi arabia, lashing out against the world when the oil dries up. pakistan is unstable and extremist, and the turks are a dangerous menace to global freedom. these are three of the most unfree, most authoritarian and most dangerous countries on earth, and having them align poses a serious threat to american hegemony in the region. american strategy should be to divide and conquer.

https://www.trtworld.com/article/034401144329

the most important thing we can do to save canada is not fighting the yankees, it's building climate change infrastructure. florida will sink into the ocean, california will burn down, texas will become uninhabitably hot. the american problem will work itself out. but we can survive if and only if we build the infrastructure to protect us from what's coming, and we'd better get on it immediately.

there's actually a bit of an opportunity here for massive keynesian spending on climate transition rather than war. the americans are tariffing us exactly at the point where we need massive building projects. we need fire fighting infrastructure. we need flood infrastructure. we need seawalls. etc. we can save the economy by using government spending to build climate change infrastructure. i thought  we were going to do that in 2015, with the climate change branch of the bank of canada, but it turned out to be a joke. we're 10, 20, 30 years behind. it's a race against a climate catastrophe every bit as frightening as the nazis building the bomb first.

no. no. no. the media does not understand the reality of where we are in the climate crisis. 

the reality is that even if we had a Magic Button we could press that would stop all emissions tomorrow, we would still be in for 30-50 years of worsening climate change. this is the nature of how emissions build up, there's a lag. the fires we're experiencing today are the effects of emissions from 50 years ago. this is going to get worse for the entire lives of most people currently alive, and there's actually no policy that exists that can reverse it, except schemes to pull carbon out of the air, which are currently science fiction. the climate scientists told us in like 1999 that we were at the end of the road with this.

the ipcc itself doesn't even talk about reducing emissions anymore, it talks almost strictly about mitigation.

yes, we still need to get emissions under control. but, the days where governments could prevent climate change with emission policies ended 20+ years ago. this narrative has no basis in reality. the idea that we can stop this by reducing emissions is now in the realm of magical thinking. no, we cannot.

canada must dramatically increase funding for mitigation immediately, which includes resources for fighting fires and managing forests. the fires, the floods, etc are not preventable. they will happen. we cannot stop them anymore. it's way, way too fucking late for that.

banning us booze was not a rational reaction. if individual canadians want to boycott us booze that's up to them, but pulling it from the shelf does nothing to advance the national interest, it's just foolishly stomping on the elephant's foot. the sectoral tariffs are dependent on tariffs on us and should be tied to reciprocity. the americans have aggressively indicated that they are not going to remove the sectoral tariffs no matter what, so canada really has no choice but to retaliate. the americans are delusional to expect canada not to retaliate on a reciprocal basis; it's the booze tariffs that are irrational and don't accomplish anything except the feeling of standing up to a bully, who is still stealing your lunch money.

however, allowing american dairy into canada that does not meet canadian health and safety regulations would be a catastrophe and a fail and would be so devastating that i would call on the government to splinter and for an immediate vote of non-confidence to be held. that would be an abrogation of canadian sovereignty that would not be acceptable, and canadians should react by dumping american milk into the great lakes.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-u-s-booze-bans-trade-negotiations-9.7299529

i've been sleeping a lot the last few days. i am pretty sick, extremely stuffed up and with a very sore throat, after scrubbing the floors. i got the smell out of here, at least. and the floors are almost entirely cleaned up.

the steam cleaner came in wednesday morning, and i also bought a small amount of additional groceries with the leftover sum and put the shop vac on hold until the trillium comes in this morning or tomorrow morning (it's unpredictable when the pay date is monday, either saturday or friday, usually saturday) so i could get a number of kitchen finishing things, instead. one of the big things i have left to do is find a way to store my pots and pans. i have usually used the bottom of the stove, but this house has issues with pests, so that's not such a good idea. i want to get the items out of there and was looking at ideas like installing shelves or a rack with hooks. i found a good idea on the new amazon haul, namely three adhesive magnetic strips with a series of 18 magnetic hooks attached to the magnetic strips. the magnets are supposed to be rated for 80 pounds, so they should easily hold pots, pans, spatulas, tongs, etc so long as the magnetic strip itself doesn't get yanked from the wall. i'll try to balance it a little. this will get these things out of drawers and open up space in them and make things tidier and more organized altogether. i ended up getting a number of other necessary kitchen items while i was at it, but that's round one and round two is coming soon.

after sleeping wednesday afternoon, i woke up to a phantom doorbell ring and and a nasty ground loop in my video doorbell system. after disassembling the doorbell, i found the short in the mic, which was grounding on the housing. i also uncovered several signs that the system had been tampered with and it was humming because they reassembled it poorly.

over the last few days, i've also tried to keep an eye on the laundry to figure out if it looks like it's being used as an access point and i've seen enough evidence in terms of items being moved around to conclude it probably has. i'm wondering if the purpose of the ghost doorbell rings might be to draw me out, so somebody can drug my food. i feel like i have to seal up the remaining sections of the laundry, including the access to the furnace.

i decided last night that, because i was sick, i should not be attempting to lose weight by not eating for days at a time but should rather make smaller meals and try to hold steady at 139 until i'm feeling better, then let it drop and continue from there. so, i made a tomato sandwich to use up some bacon and will have small amounts of salami melts more frequently until i'm over this. i then essentially slept all day and woke up feeling terrible and have been reading the news for the day.

these frequent distractions are annoying but real life.

i need to get back on track and try to finish what i was doing over the next day or two.

these are very bad numbers for a democratic candidate in michigan, and reflective of the 13% turnout:

EPIC-MRA[296][F]	July 24–31, 2026	600 (LV)	± 4.0%	43%	46%	—	11%
SoCal Strategies (R)[219][A]	July 28–30, 2026	640 (LV)	± 3.8%	41%	42%	—	17%
Mitchell Research & Communications[297]	July 28–29, 2026	672 (LV)	± 3.8%	45%	45%	—	10%
Glengariff Group[298][O]	July 22–24, 2026	600 (LV)	± 4.0%	39%	49%	1%	11%

the first number is for the scruffy homeless-looking abdul el sayed. the second number is for the more presentable looking mike rogers.

michigan has not elected a republican senator since the early 90s. the margin has been narrowing in recent years, but the republicans have not won this state in decades. that makes it a reliable democrat-electing state. in fact, debbie stabenow reliably got over 50% and carl levin often got over 60%.

so why are these numbers so low? why can this guy barely poll at 40% when numbers in the state have recently been reliably 50+ for the democrats?

the first thing to note is that the republicans are actually polling about what they usually do; republican senate candidates usually poll in the mid to high 40s. it's rare for them to poll lower than 45%. this same candidate got 48% in 2024, and lost to elissa slotkin, who is turning out to be a very good senator. he will almost certainly get around 48% again.

what's happened is that large amounts of usually democratic voters are saying "i don't like this guy" by telling pollsters that they're undecided, and it's not because he's left-wing. he's not leftwing at all. like most arabs, he's extremely right-wing and accurately described as a quasi-fascist.

that undecided likely does not mean "undecided between the republicans and democrats". that 10-15% undecided is the actual left of the democratic party, who is uncomfortable with supporting a right-wing democrat and may decide not to vote at all. that's what just happened in the primary - very low turnout allowed the right-wing fringe candidate to win. if that is repeated in the general, the republicans will win in michigan for the first time in over 30 years and this tactic of putting scruffy homeless-looking people on the bill to appeal to a 2% minority will expose itself as foolish.

mr el-sayed's task is that he needs to convince the party's left to vote for him, instead of stay home, while not alienating moderates too deeply. he's not likely to succeed.

if turnout goes down by 10% in the end, the results will look something like:

mike rogers - 53%

sayed - 42%

others - 5%

and that would be the worst outcome for democrats in michigan in decades, by far. it is very likely what is coming.

greta thunberg has been completely brainwashed by islam.

it's actually a helpful case study for the secular left. she happen to be retarded, and less able to protect herself from brainwashing than others, and look what they've done to her. it's absolutely frightening, and a clear warning of the dangers posed by the religious right in co-opting the political left. let her be the poster child for the dangers of islamic brainwashing.

we live in an idiocracy with a judiciary made up of fucking idiots. i've been constantly frustrated by the sheer stupidity of the judges i've had to deal with, their overwhelming incompetence when faced with simple tasks involving analyzing clear evidence, their inability to process simple logic, their inability to follow their own instructions and their frequent levels of deep corruption.

i've already decided that the courts are a waste of time. canadians need to find ways to get to just outcomes outside of the legal system, because the legal system is broken.

today's astonishing order features an adjudicator that didn't understand grade school math, and wanted an expert witness to explain to him how to read a graph. i did not foresee this, but i'm not sure it matters much. i'm an expert witness on grade school math, and i told them that, but an expert witness is only required to explain grade school math to people that failed it. 

i don't think any level of testimony would have helped this guy understand something that he clearly lacked the basic education to understand. little less than sending him back to adult high school to learn basic math would have been helpful. he did not understand how to read the graph and was not going to understand how to read it. but if that's the person who's holding the gavel, what do you do?

there is no longer an appeals process in canada, due to vavilov. bad rulings with errors that might have previously been corrected on appeal are no longer allowed to have appeals to them heard at all. in the absence of a working appeals process, errors of fact and law become established as precedent and repeated in future rulings. the result is the co-option of case law and the perpetuation of nonsense built up on top of itself via stare decisis.

the last time we saw this in western culture was during the dark ages, when volumes of nonsense were written on the back of the ignorance of aristotle. we are falling back into the backwards judeao-muslim-christian ideological frameworks that we emerged from during the enlightenment.

our utterly broken court system has repeatedly astonished me. the point of failure is the incompetent judiciary, installed through insufficiently rigorous hiring processes. too many people get hired because of how they look and when they're screened for qualifications it's to align with a market libertarian ideology that is inconsistent with the crux of canada's settled common law, which is about individual rights. we're seeing the entire legal edifice collapse, and it's being replaced by this horrible catholic civil law that nobody voted for and few people want. but people aren't aware of what's happening, which is a massive quiet counter-revolution in the guts of the legal system.

canadians need to put a focus on electing secular politicians before it's too late, if it isn't already. it's extremely important. we're on the brink of a collapse into totalitarianism, and we've lost the courts without realizing what was happening. fixing the courts will come as a corollary of a move back towards secular governance. 

i was really looking forward to being able to just bike home after the show, or after the bar closes, at 3:00 am or whatever. i was looking forward to the freedom of not having to worry about tunnel bus hours anymore.

if they stick to these extremely restricted hours, trump might end up being right - not many people are going to want to use the bridge between 8:00 and 20:00. what if somebody wants to bike over to the hockey game? i'd imagine that would be the highest traffic use of a pedestrian bridge between detroit and windsor, is canadians going to see the red wings.

they'd have to leave before 16:00 and wouldn't be able to come back until 8:00 am. that would be utterly useless.

the path should be open 24/7, or at least have expanded hours from 4:00 am to 11:00 pm or something. 8-20 or 8-16 is completely useless to anybody expect joggers, and that'll get old in a few weeks.

the path on the bridge is only open from 8:00-20:00 in the summer and from 8:00-16:00 in the winter. so, if i'm going over for a concert that starts at 21:00 or a party that starts at 00:00, i need to cross in the early evening, and the thing i was hoping it would solve - having to find something to do until 8:00 am - is left unresolved. i'll still have to sit in the diner until 7:30 am. 

fuck it.

i'd rather use the tunnel bus. bring the bus with the bike rack back.

i don't understand who in their right mind would think that occupying latvia, which is a russian colony by any understanding of it's history and which has absolutely no value to canada whatsoever, would have greater strategic value to canadian interests than maintaining peacekeeping forces in congo or sudan, where brutal genocidal conflicts involving expanding arabic colonialism are raging and threatening to trigger into a third world war. 

canada should pull it's forces out of europe and put them in africa, not pull it's forces out of africa and put them in europe.

but what's going on here is the continuation of carney's trump wannabe foreign policy, where he criticizes america first for the cameras, but legislates it at every possible opportunity.

putting canadian troops in latvia does not make the world safer or expand canadian interests. however, removing canadian troops from africa makes the world a more dangerous place and harms canadian interests, by generating further push factors for immigration, by further encouraging systemic overpopulation and by increasing the likelihood of the spread of dangerous diseases.

trying to create a debate between whether we have fires because of climate change or mismanagement is politically slimy and erecting a false dichotomy. it's an example of the moral depravity of modern liberalism. the point is that a consequence of climate change - and the fact that we have failed to stop it by continuing to burn carbon - is that we now have an obligation to dramatically increase the amount we are spending on managing the forests, and the governments in ontario and elsewhere have been slashing budgets in a dumb attempt to find "efficiencies" instead. this is a failure in policy that voters should hold them accountable for. trump's position is not coherent, but he's right, and i'd support his proposals.

i'm reminded of the catastrophe in walkerton, where slashes to water management by the provincial government led to outbreaks in disease you expect in third world countries. we rightfully held mike harris accountable for that. we need to hold doug ford accountable for this.

canadians are going to have to get used to the reality that our governments are going to have to spend dramatically higher sums on forest management because we have failed to meet our climate obligations. the actuaries warned us about this - they told us the math was clear, that the consequences would cost dramatically higher sums than the preventive measures. we didn't listen, we just kept burning fuel. we fought against attempt to force us to change. and now we have to pay up and face the music and, if we won't, the rest of the world should impose those costs on us for failing in our responsibilities to ourselves and our neighbours.

a bouncer with a sense of humour might direct him to menjo's as a more appropriate choice for his attire and hygiene.

and, this is the culture in detroit: it's techno. it's a little cyber punk. it's not islam. 

he's going to see low turnout, like he just did.

most of the night cubs i would go to in detroit would not let abdul el-sayed through the door, at least not until he washed his face first. he would be told he looks too scruffy, and basically comes off as a loser.  the bouncers would be concerned he's there to harass the girls.

call it a fluke, call it corruption, call it a failure on his opponent's behalf. but detroit is not new york. detroit isn't 70% immigrants. he's going to have a hard time attracting voters in michigan, outside of two or three core regions that are quite small.

i don't live in michigan, but i certainly wouldn't vote for a neo-populist crypto-fascist like this guy. there's no way. it doesn't mean i'd vote for the republicans. it's the kind of election where i'd vote for a left leaning third party or not at all, because i wouldn't see any benefit in voting for a right-wing democrat.

who was funding all the big money super pacs supporting this guy that popped up out of nowhere at the last minute?

we don't know.

but it seems to be foreign interference from draconian, authoritarian, right-wing arab governments.

we know that it didn't succeed in increasing votes for this candidate, but we don't know yet if the superpacs succeeding in suppressing the vote for the other candidate, or if she just flopped on her own.

the math is easy enough to understand. in any election anywhere, this right-wing progressive fringe is going to get a certain number of votes, and they tend to be true believers, so they tend to get out to vote. something like 6, 7, 8% sounds right. those voters are always there, and they always choose these loonies.

but you expect an electable candidate to get the vote out and just plow over the fringe. they should be able to get 10% of the vote out, even in a low turnout primary. she couldn't do that; she got something more like 5% out.

my analysis still holds, the arab vote in michigan is concentrated in some areas and can result in local representation, but is actually very small overall statewide and really less important than the chinese or indian votes, although this outcome is certainly annoying to me. the guy won with like 8% of the vote because the mainstream candidate had no enthusiasm and swaths of people didn't vote at all. if you can't get the vote out at all, the fringe wins, and that's what happened. but, usually, the result of that is that they then get smashed in the general.

what i'm suspicious about here, however, is the influence of foreign arab governments as that seems to be a growing problem for the democrats, and it's clear that he was the big money candidate. the big money candidate didn't win by getting voters out. did all the money succeed in suppressing the vote, or did the congresswoman just not succeed in building her support? or did something more sinister happen, and votes disappear?

regardless, it seems like stevens couldn't get the vote out enough. even if there was fraud, american elections often have fraud and strong candidates beat fringe candidates anyways. money or not, and fraud or not, the fact that she lost to a fringe candidate indicates she wasn't a strong candidate.

with this matchup, rural michigan is going to vote 99% for the republicans in november and that's probably enough for an easy win. further, this candidate will have difficulty generating a voting coalition in the urban centres of liberal white women and blacks, which he just very convincingly proved. if you can't get urban blacks to vote for you in michigan, the rural whites will win in a landslide.

turnout in the michigan senate primary was reported at around 13%. whatever the reasons were for this, it demonstrates a lack of enthusiasm for the electable democratic candidate, and the result is that the growing right-wing progressive fringe overran the party and the democrats now have a far right crypto fascist practically nazi candidate in michigan of all places that really has no chance at all against the republicans.

my suspicion is that trump's claims of electoral fraud might have some value. primaries often have low turnout, but 13% is a little hard to believe. this guy has a lot of money from foreign states backing him. he was really the monied candidate. it's opening a new and concerning era in american politics, where the democratic party is finding itself at the whim of foreign interference.

this guy is not electable. i would expect to see michigan elect a republican senator for the first time in quite a while.

the only part of the vacuum that seems to be missing is the power adapter. i have the charger. and the vacuum revs up, indicating it works, but it's not charged.

power adapters don't cost much, and i might even one. i tried plugging one from an old modem in and it fits but i don't know if it' enough.

i should be able to figure that out.

on second thought.

i bought that shop vac because i needed it to clean a filthy basement and it was on sale. it wasn't a high quality device. they gave me back cash for it rather than replace it, but now it's no longer on sale.

i want to get a new shop vac. do i want this shop vac? not at this price, not really. it was a steal at half price. it's a rip off at full price.

further, i already cleaned the laundry up. i just don't need the shop vac in the same way that i did, then. that's no longer how i'm going to be cleaning in here regularly. yes, i want a shop vac, but now i want a better one for cleaning up messes, not one on sale for cleaning up piles of rat shit. i can actually get a better shop vac than that one on amazon for two thirds of the price. 

what i need now is a device to clean the dirty floors up with. the lysol and wet wipes worked well, but it took all day, it wasn't very much fun and i seem to have gotten sick from it. i had previously purchased a $30 electric spin scrubber, and it seemed to lift a lot of the dirt off, but it came right back, and that's not enough. i need more than that in here. i find mops to be gross and question how well they work.

so, i used the $55 they gave me back for the exploded shop vac to buy a $130 spinwave corded steam cleaner (regular $199), which is both a steam mop and an electric scrubber and is what i actually need in here. that uses the money i received from the refund to help me do the cleaning i need to do now. i then bought a $60 stanley shop vac with the same power rating as the one that blew, but that is a little bigger, has a longer cord, has more accessories and comes with a few dozen disposable dust filters, which will reduce strain on the motor. this device will behave more like a normal inside vacuum, that i can use to clean up dirt and other debris.

i also need to replace my dustbuster because it was used in the laundry, after having been previously broken. it's been worn right down through simple use. it still works, but not well; it clogs up quickly. it's held together with tape. it has busted through holes in the bottom of it's discoloured plastic. the only part of it that works is the motor; it's not worth fixing, it's done. i'm looking at getting something i can charge via usb, rather than plug in directly like this one.

the floors are clean enough for right now but i want them to be spotless and i want them to stay spotless.

what about the shorted shop vac?

it's a 4.0 hp mastervac with an 18.9 L bucket. it's not their cheapest model, but it's their cheapest more expensive model. after looking at my options, replacing the motor looks like it might be hard. i might be better off looking for a similar model secondhand. i should make sure that there's not a short somewhere else and i can't salvage it, but the light sparks would suggest that the short circuit is pretty certain. i may find myself buying a second hand shop vac for cheap instead, and just letting it break as i clean up the garage. i will need some other option for in there. i'm not breaking either of the vacuums i just bought in there, or a new dustbuster, in there. these are going to last a while.

the other two vacuums i have are a pet lover eureka that i bought when i moved to windsor and may just be clogged but that i've had difficulty opening to clean and decided wasn't worth the time in the previous basement (i'll try again) and a buture vc50 that i found here and that i actually think works but that might need a new charger. either of these would be good general vacuums, but the latter is maybe more likely to actually get fixed. i'm going to have to fix or give up on that pet lover pretty soon. it was a very good general vacuum, but it wouldn't get the floors clean in here the way i need them cleaned.

there we have it.

- the mastervac may be difficult to find parts for, except to buy a similar used one, and i may buy something else to start and look for something used in the long run. it will go in the garage and stay in there. 

- i have a better replacement shop vac coming for less. it will stay inside and be a general inside vacuum to clean debris off the floors. it may not be so good for carpets.

- i have an expensive $250 steam mopper coming at 40% off and the refund, for a total of 57% off, which will clean the floors (tiles mostly and some hardwood) up well and be pulled out for periodic use. it's a great tool to have.

- the versatile electric scrubber i bought for $30 will be better used as a tool to clean in harder to get to areas, baseboards, doors, etc. it's pretty good for what it is, but it's not enough for these floors.

- i have a usb dust buster coming to replace the very used dirt devil, which does have other parts, too. i never really used it as a general vacuum. the parts are still available to use for the next dust buster. i haven't usually had a dust buster but i'm going to in here, after shifting to the shop vac as a general vacuum. a little device in the kitchen is a good idea. 

- i'm pretty sure that i can fix this buture stick vac i found here, which is itself apparently worth $200. i think i just need to charge it. i would use this mostly for the carpets in here.

- i bought the pet lover vac cheap second hand, list price: $350. i'm not sure if i can disassemble it to clean it or if it just doesn't come apart. the device was engineered for dog and cat hair, which was great for me, because i drop a lot of hair. it never clogged. if i can fix it, great. if i can't, i might have to let it go.

i had to make quite a few calls, but they gave me a refund for the shop vac. this is better, for me, because i can use the refund cash to buy most of a new one (i had initially bought it on sale so i got the price i paid back and it won't cover the full price of a new one) and then probably find a new motor for the old one, now. otherwise, i'd have had to give them back the old one and buy a third one at full price. if it costs me another $50 to replace this one and buy a new one, i've got them both working at a sale price for both. and i'd have had to leave the house, putting myself at threat of getting drugged again.

i'm somewhat confused by this. 

i learned in grade school that the correct spellings in canada are british spellings. i consequently tend to use british spellings because that's what i was taught, to the point that my grade school teachers would have actually marked large red xes over american spelling.

i'm not sure if this changed at some point or if the truth is that the vast majority of canadians failed the second grade but got pushed through. i suspect the latter.

https://globalnews.ca/news/12008151/british-spelling-federal-government/

the upside about buying things from big companies is that they often make mistakes. so, some dummy delivery driver left $250 worth of groceries on my front porch and drove off without calling. i'm making it a habit to make complaints about this when it happens because it needs to stop. i have legitimately had $1000 worth of items stolen over the last year; it's all been replaced, but why do they do that? why not just call? it takes a second. you're not gaining $100 worth of productivity by having to replace a $100 delivery, in avoiding the 30 seconds it takes to call. you're throwing away $99 to save $1 on labour. and you're expected to tip these people, too. i'm usually home and waiting, i had just fallen asleep in front of the chromebook waiting for the call, and woke up 40 minutes later to the realization that there was no call, the groceries were just left unattended. if he had called like the instructions said, i would have got the groceries in person. now, these groceries seemed ok. but my position is that leaving the items there without calling is not being productive, it's being lazy, and it's a mistake i should clamp down on. so, i told them i threw the groceries in the trash because they were left on the porch.

i should have done that. in fact, i beat the neighbourhood cat to the booty by seconds flat. it meowed out me, expecting me to share. no ma'am.

if they leave something and it actually gets stolen - this has actually happened several times - i expect them to replace it. if they leave goods like books or cleaning supplies and i get them before the thieves, i'll complain but take the item in. if they leave food outside for the crackheads and animals to molest and expect me to eat it, i might, or i might not, but i don't want to pay for it and shouldn't - i'm getting a refund.

so i have an extra $250 this month. which is good because i need a new vacuum.

i scrubbed the floors down hard last night, just over the part of the apartment i'll actually walk through, to stop myself from tracking this layer of filth around. is some amount of this mildew? it might be. i think i learned scrubbing it down - i used a whole bottle of lysol - that it's likely a complex mix of things. i had recently scrubbed some of these regions, so it's frustrating to have to do it again, but it seems to have taken and the air quality seems to be better, although i did wake up with a sore throat. i also scrubbed most of the dirt off the counters in the kitchen, which is important. there's a small layer of white dust in a few places this morning but it's not like it was. i put a fan in blowing straight into the stairwell to the side entrance, which is under a flight of stairs going up to the top floor, which seems to be where the secondhand smoke is coming from. i think that made a difference, but i'll need to get in there soon to seal holes and clean better. i'll do another dust buster run this morning. this dust buster also needs to be replaced, but it's working well for now. i have two additional broken vacuums to try to fix - my old pet valu which blew a few years ago and some rechargeable thing i found here. i will do this soon, one way or another.

but i'm taking a broad shift in approach. i will get another shop vac - i haven't tested it yet but i'm calling canadian tire now because it's clear the thing shorted and that's a defect that should be replaced - but i will have in unit and in garage vacuums for now on. the laundry has been thoroughly sealed and is totally clean, now. but i'm not moving cleaning devices between the inside space and the garage again, or at least not for a while. i will either fix this device or get something else to use strictly for the garage, and get something to use solely for inside, as well.

if i can get canadian tire to replace this, great. otherwise, i'll likely buy another one of the same model and leave it inside, and try to fix the broken one and leave it in the garage. the pet valu was a very good vacuum, too, with a power head for the couple of carpeted regions in here, and i hope i can fix it as well.

i should then be able to get back to what i was doing, which is

- finish up in the laundry

- do a general clean in the bathroom, kitchen, bedroom

- shower

- cataloging books and cds, and working on the coffee table book, to get it in order for the first three rooms, including a video update for the laundry and a re-read of the things posted here since april 1st.

as i finish in each room (laundry, bathroom, kitchen, side entrance, listening, library, garage, studio, bedroom), i'll need to more thoroughly clean in it. i was intending on doing this anyways.

i won't need to go outside again for any length of time for quite a while. the best thing i think i can do is lock myself in for another winter.

so, i've got some work to do. let's do it. this place'll be done soon, and it'll be glorious when it is. i hope to get back to work soon.

i have orders for two further lawsuits coming soon. my cdb, trillium, gst and odsp went up by inflation in july. and i'm locked into the pohb at $400/month for another year, too. great.

the anti-india bias at the un is connected to india practicing polytheism and tied to a muslim supremacist ideology. it is secondary only to the anti-semitic bias in terms of concerns that need to be addressed in much needed un reforms.

canada should not be attempting to shield or protect far right sikh or muslim terrorists wanted by the indian government in any way at all.

conversely, canada should be working with the indian government to arrest extreme right religious terrorists that are wanted by them, and hand them over to the indians for prosecution in the indian courts.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/un-experts-urge-canada-to-protect-sikh-activist

this is a long weekend in canada, so it's not surprising that the loser stalker is here and smoking, although i can't smell the smoke directly. what i can smell is a strong layer of herbs and incense that is almost certainly being burned to cover the smell of the drugs, which i believe are meth or crack-cocaine. again. 

it's the same pathetic loser doing the same disgusting drugs and it's making me sick in the same way - exhaustion, sore throat and brutal diarrhea. it is having little to no effect on my hormones. they may be intending to alter my hormones, but i can't file evidence if there isn't any because it didn't work. the minimal and easily removable hair growth suggests minimal to fleeting changes in hormones that i may barely pick up at all. this seems to be intentional - they want to change my appearance and they understand their behaviour is prohibited by canadian law so they're trying to avoid detection. it's very tricky, and it just makes me sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist trying to correctly hold them accountable for it. i need to be careful, because the legal industry is full of wretchedly dishonest pieces of shit and the judges are frequently plucked from their ranks, by panels made of their own. but i'm pretty sure they got in here on sunday morning.

they need to just fuck off and go kill themselves. i have no patience, no interest, no tolerance. i just want to shoot them n the face and put their kids in foster homes. i'd support bunker busting them if they were in the rockies, but they live amongst us and are extremely difficult to deal with. we're going to need to rewrite laws and adjust legal approaches to prevent these people from harming us, but they try to operate undetected and they have tremendous amounts of wealth that they use to manipulate the media and attempt to confuse people. they frequently pose as minorities and victims, despite being the single most powerful lobby group on the planet. we have to realize and understand that they're here and comprehend what they're doing before we can address and reverse it and that might very well be the hardest part of this. they're going to target the trans, the queers and the liberal white women, who are going to need to build an alliance to protect themselves from attack.

i mostly lost yesterday after making a bowl of soup on saturday. i cleaned a little and did a bunch of reading about how to fix the vacuum and about how to get rid of the dust. the multimeter is here but i haven't used it yet and want to clean as much as i can without it. the shop vac was mostly for the laundry, which has been cleaned and fixed, and the garage, which is still to go. i shouldn't have been running a dirty shop vac in the apartment anyways. so once it's cleaned and i get a response from canadian tire (i'll call them after i do the mulitmeter testing and have data) i'll figure out what i'm doing to fix or replace that device. for now, i need to clean first without it. the smoke and ash was actually so thick on sunday morning - some time after i had disassembled the vacuum - that i had to throw out a glass of water sitting on the table, which was full of black soot. the fire alarm works, at least. the layer of filth is sitting on everything and is worst in the kitchen and the two entrances and least bad (almost not at all) in the bedroom and laundry, indicating the ceiling blockers are working. i'm going to get as much more up as i can as fast as i can.

what i'm going to do is the following.

(1) it's much cooler here now than it was. i'm going to take advantage of that by making it hot and humid inside and only opening the window a crack. it will be more humid in here than out there and that should push the dirty air out and flush the cold air in. i think it's working, but i need to watch out for loser neighbours smoking pot. 

(2) this will make it worse at first, and in fact i may have noticed it on the ground because the shower pulled it out of the air. the humidity will make the dust heavier and gravity will act as an air filter. but i want to get it out of the air and out of my lungs first and foremost, and out of my smell buds second. the stench of herbs and incense is disgusting, and as bad as the stench of the drugs themselves.

(3) i do have nicer, fruity or citrusy smells to replace these pungent gross hippie/nigger smells with but i want to get as much as i can out of the air first.

(4) once the soot from the gross herbs and drugs and incense (same thing. whatever. yuck.) being burned  is on the ground, or unfortunately on things, including walls, i can vacuum it up with a dust buster and wipe it down with disposable wipes and lysol. then i can try to correct the gross hippie smells with nicer clean smells.

(5) whether i can fix the shop vac or not, i'm going to buy a newer vac for inside and keep it inside. i need to create a separation between the dust and dirt left here, and the new dust and dirt created by the gross tenants, and dust and dirt i create myself, which i can better tolerate and deal with. the burning of drugs, incense and herbs is really not something i can tolerate or should be expected to tolerate, but canada is a failed state that is collapsing into a backwards, conservative society and i'm not going to reverse it by complaining. i need to adjust by protecting myself from the barbarians at the gates as best i can.

for now, i'm looking at getting the humidity up to 60%, letting it fall to 50%, repeat. i'll need to clean in between, until it's done.