Friday, September 11, 2026
The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.
that's a verbatim quote from a social media post that was obviously a marketing stunt.
i looked into this much more closely a few months ago. i am not an ai expert but i've read the textbook and done the homework assignments for a graduate level course on ai, and i am a quasi-expert on computer mathematics (the theory behind ai). i'm about as good of a source as you'll find outside of finding somebody that works in industry. i understand what they're saying, can deconstruct it and can analyze it. and i'l tell you that what they're describing isn't likely to kill you. but it does look like it's likely to hack your personal devices to generate hyper-personalized ads.
i repeat: this technology could be a paradigmatic shift in how corporations advertise their products and could be a multi-billion dollar industry in creating personalized ads. this bs about computers taking over the world looks like smoke and mirrors when they get accused of stealing personal data.
"i didn't do it, the ai did it."
right. hey, they got 11 of 12 jurors to fall for "post-partum psychosis". how hard can it be to convince a jury that the ai stole your data, not amazon or google or microsoft?
i don't see the use for this technology, as an individual, and i don't foresee ever having any legitimate use for it. but, i'll tell you - if you think the ads are bad now, wait until the ai really gets running. you'll be dreaming ads - and you'll wake up to sales pitches.
as for the russians themselves, occam's razor suggests their propaganda analogy is probably more due to laziness and ignorance than malevolence. they were trying to make a point; but the analogy is utterly terrible.
i do not stand with ukraine and would not sacrifice a single hair on the head of a single canadian to protect ukraine from russia. canada does not have shared cultural or historical ties with ukraine. ukranian self-defense is not in canada's self-interest. ukraine is not a member of any defense cooperation agreements that canada is in and canada therefore has no legal obligations in ukraine.
the russians should have used texas or cuba as an analogy, not canada.
while the comparison of canada-us relations to ukraine-russia relations is ridiculous and not grounded in history or fact, there is a very strong analogy that is impossible to overlook, and it is that russia's relationship to ukraine is directly and overwhelmingly comparable to canada's relationship with quebec. quebec's size was inflated with the inclusion of parts of rupert's land. lower canada, which also included most of labrador, was more comparable in size to ukraine, but slightly smaller. that said, canada is much smaller than russia, so the ratio remains static as both sides of it decrease.
a smart sovereignty movement in quebec would take everything that the federal government has said about russia imposing itself on ukraine and throw it back in it's face, as it has aggressively created the arguments for it's own collapse, by following the direction of bad russian propaganda, that it should have instead easily deconstructed.
i was hoping that the removal of chrystia freeland would make the canadian government a little less gungho on this crimean war bullshit. i guess not. rather, it's becoming increasingly clear that the canadian government is intentionally comparing itself and even defining itself as similar to ukraine, and the united states as similar to russia.
16 Sudan 1,878,000
to suggest this is unhinged would be an understatement. it requires a severe distortion of both current and historical facts to get to that conclusion. worse, it was the kremlin that originated the comparison, which then showed up on a spate of alt-left websites and youtube channels that are clearly on the kremlin's payroll, that routinely post nonsense and that lack any sort of credibility as news organizations. the apparent truth that an analogy devised by russian propagandists appears to be at the core of current canadian foreign policy opens up a legitimate question: to what extent are canada's decision-making civil service members being influenced by dubious alt-left internet sources, much of it ultimately being russian propaganda? the chinese don't have the infrastructure to do this yet, but the kremlin has huge media tentacles and piles of useful idiots on the payroll, and they have never dropped the alt-left bent they had during the cold war. it's clearly more effective than an attempt to influence conservative media voices. the arab fascists realize this, too - they go after dumb, naive leftists. they don't even try to sway conservatives, despite being ultra-right wing.
i'm not going to list examples. i could give you a list of 200 alt-left news personalities on youtube (mostly) that are obviously getting pay checks from moscow if i sat down with it. i can't prove it but it's clear enough from listening to them. this would include talking heads, authors, academics and in some cases the youtube news sites themselves. this is far more credible interference than the nonsense pushed by rachel maddow about russian bots on facebook (which has largely been debunked and discredited). this payroll of useful idiots is a network set up by the soviets, that never entirely disappeared and has returned as the primary means of russian influence in the west, after the banning of russian television, which i found to be relatively moderate, compared to the crazy shit you can see on fox news.
but whether it was the kremlin that made the comparison in arguing that canada is to the united states as ukraine is to russia - as it was defending it's actions in eastern europe - or not, what are the facts here? just how awful is the comparison?
in a list of countries by gdp, where does ukraine stand?
45. Portugal 380,637
46. Nigeria 377,365
47. Kazakhstan 360,456
48. Finland 337,669
49. Algeria 317,713
50. Greece 307,554
51. Iran 300,293
52. New Zealand 278,636
53. Hungary 271,122
54. Iraq 264,784
55. Cuba (estimated)
56. Ukraine 225,337
57. Qatar 217,416
58. Morocco 194,333
59. Uzbekistan 181,502
60. Kuwait 172,920
.
.
.
64. ecuador
65. dominican republic
66. puerto rico
67. guatemala
as we can see, ukraine is a very small country, economically, with a gdp comparable to that of cuba or iraq, and significantly less than that of iran or kazakhstan. the comparison to kazakhstan - which is practically empty and has been run by a ruthless dictator for decades - is important to make, as ukraine and kazakhstan are the next two largest successor states of the soviet union, after russia.
while it has recently fallen out of the top 10, canada has historically had one of the largest and most powerful economies in the world.
this comparison would consequently appear to be fairly unhinged, but it would also suggest that canadians are dramatically underestimating ourselves. what else would we expect from a country that puts statues up everywhere of a guy that died less than halfway through a cross-country marathon? we constantly align ourselves with losers and failures and then wonder why we're falling out of the top tier of global economies.
the ukrainians are clearly losers. they're a small, insignificant country that might be better compared to cuba, or even to ecuador or guatemala, than to the large and wealthy country of canada.
how much bigger is canada than ukraine in terms of size?
1 Russia 17,098,246
2 Canada 9,984,670
3 China 9,596,960
4 United States 9,525,067
5 Brazil 8,510,346
6 Australia 7,741,220
7 India 3,287,263
8 Argentina 2,780,400
9 Kazakhstan 2,724,910
10 Algeria 2,381,741
11 Democratic Republic of the Congo 2,344,858
12 Saudi Arabia 2,149,690
13. Greenland (Denmark) 2,166,086
14 Mexico 1,964,375
15 Indonesia 1,904,569
16 Libya 1,759,540
17 Iran 1,648,195
.
.
.
45 Ukraine 603,550
the answer is 16.54x the size.
for reference, this is the size of some areas in north america with historical independence movements:
alaska: 1,723,337
quebec: 1,542,056
texas: 695,662
alberta: 661,848
(ukraine: 603550)
california: 423,970
ukraine is more comparable in size to alberta, texas or california than it is to canada.
what is the basis of the comparison?
canada and the united states share the same language (just like russia and ukraine)
the russians would agree, but the ukrainians would not. most ukrainians would find the idea offensive, although it is largely correct. ukrainian has often been categorized, scientifically, that is by linguists, as a dialect of russian. ukrainian nationalism has rejected the claim, and it's worth pointing out that ukraine has a large polish-speaking region.
canada and the united states have a shared history as allies in members of alliances or in the same empire (just like russia and ukraine)
that is the argument the russians want to make, and there is some truth to it, but not recently. in fact, ukraine largely aligned with the nazis in world war two and it sought independence during the russian revolution but couldn't get it. ukraine as a country developed out of the collapse of mongolian power and has historically been more of an idea (the frontier, or the borderland) than an actual country. ukraine and russia were both colonized and built by swedes, were both converted to byzantine christianity, were both conquered by the mongols and both emerged from the collapse of mongolia as a geopolitical entity, but russia emerged as a nation state and ukraine (the border region) emerged as an idea that is something like the extension of austria (the eastern lands). what made ukraine not austria is that it was orthodox and not catholic, like russia, so therefore not in the sphere of papal supremacism, which was a secular concept until the age of reason (the pope was a kind of emperor that would depose and install rulers in client states, which ukraine was not one of). ukraine was then conquered by russia at roughly the same time as the american revolutionary war and has been under direct russian rule since about 1800, excluding a few years of tentative independence. since 1991, the russians have sought to integrate ukraine via membership of various groups, and have been in a proxy war with the americans over which direction the borderlands ate going to lean, which has included coups launched by both sides. ukraine has seen a large buildup of nato military weapons that threaten russia directly.
this is not very similar to canada, which has never been ruled by the united states and which has no foreign weapons in it at this time, but is actually deeply militarily integrated with the united states via nato, norad and other arrangements.
to the extent that the comparison holds at all, it's backdated to c. 1200, before the mongol invasion. it's worth pointing out that a more united rus might have been more successful against the mongol attack, and that the infighting between the swedish colonies contributed to the ease of the mongolian conquest. it's further worth noting that the mongolians were by this time using chinese built weapons and that the so-called mongolian invasion of russia was in truth really a chinese invasion of russia.
if you want some more useful comparisons.
ukraine is a democracy fighting for freedom against a corrupt and autocratic russia (like canada fighting against the us)
again, unhinged is an understatement. this is objectively absurd, it is insane and crazy, but it provides a window into the mind of the pmo, which seems to be a very paranoid and very scary place.
ukraine has essentially the same political system as russia. it is beset by corruption, fraud and kleptocracy. elections in ukraine are neither free nor fair. zelensky has actually suspended democracy, like a typical dictator does. media freedom is minimal. it's system of conscription is despotic and tyrannical.
canada, by contrast, is a stable democracy with a good voting system and the united states, for all it's problems, is still a free society, and still one of the freeest in the world.
if there's a comparison to draw here, it may be that ukraine's system of conscription has similarities to the one that lead to the conscription crisis in canada during the first world war. that system of conscription is seen today in canada as a mistake and as a historical wrong that our political leadership has never fully taken responsibility for.
this may be a good time for carney to apologize to canadians - and to quebeckers specifically - for the state's decision to conscript canadians in world war one and send them off to their death, as cannon fodder, in a senseless war that had no purpose and can never be repeated. it's a good time for the pmo to confirm that it will never kill off another generation of young canadians for no reason ever again.
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so, this is a headscratching argument, at best. canada is a dramatically bigger and more prosperous country than ukraine is, and the idea that there's an analogy to make requires making russocentric arguments that would actually enrage most ukrainians, and are in truth historically unsound.
is the ghost of igor gouzenko running the pmo?
or does the civil service require better standards and need deeper protection from foreign interference via online propaganda?
el nino is not a cause of climate change. a strong el nino is an effect of anthropogenic climate change.
ocean currents in the pacific will have some effect on the local temperature and weather patterns in the eastern pacific, and perhaps an indirect effect on weather in the western pacific.
there is no statistically significant historical data, no discernible mechanism and no logical cause and effect relationship between el nino and temperatures or precipitation patterns in eastern north america. that is climate denialism, and it's right-wing propaganda. it's utter bullshit.
but keep an eye on ocean temperatures in the atlantic. higher ocean temperatures in the atlantic (as a result of global warming) will have an increasingly moderating effect on areas further inland and that's an effect that should increase to a very statistically significant signal in the upcoming decades.
it is not likely that the warming atlantic will be nullified or reversed by melting ice from greenland. that is likewise a right-wing myth.
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
it is absolutely imperative that the philistines in the gaza strip and the converted hebrews in historical israel stop blaming the israeli state for what's happening and instead take some responsibility for the consequences of their own behaviour.
the recent polling is a smidgen of hope.
but the rhetoric from entitled bourgeois politicians in europe and canada is not helping in that outcome.
as canadian and european bureaucrats produce yet another statement of support for a two-state solution in the historical israel, it's never been clear who they are speaking for so much as it's been repeatedly clear that they are speaking against israel.
polling amongst "palestinians", who are mostly arab speaking hebrews, in the geographical space of historical israel and historical philistinia has repeatedly shown that large majorities - 70%, 80% - oppose the two state solution and rather want to drive the indigenous israeli population into the sea. it was yasar arafat that opposed the idea when clinton presented it. the israelis were willing to sign off on it. so, they certainly aren't speaking for "palestinians".
for many years, they would have actually been speaking for liberal jews, although even liberal jews have taken a step back over the last three years or so. today, they might increasingly be speaking for unelected despots in distant countries that otherwise refuse to help the "palestinians", but they would hardly care about statements released by european dignitaries, and they don't generally have much invested in the issue.
almost nobody anywhere today supports two states. it's an idea that is dead on the ground and that nobody in the region is trying to save. the fact that the europeans keep bringing it up is the only thing stopping it from evaporating entirely.
so, it seems that they were actually probably talking to themselves. patting themselves on the back. high-fiving themselves.
they can appear to themselves, every day, on closed circuit tv. to make sure they're still real!
except, wait.
there's some polling out of the gaza strip this week. it's still an outlier. but for the first time in decades, it suggests that a (very slim) majority of "palestinians" think terrorism isn't in their self-interest. they are apparently even tying this to israel's justified response to the terrorist attacks on oct 7th, 2023.
now, this is one poll. but it's a little bit of hope that they might be capable of learning and adjusting and might be willing to vote for a democratic solution. that would be a dramatic shift in direction from a population that has consistently been yelling WE DON'T WANT PEACE for decades, and which has been ignored the whole time by western politicians that would rather talk to themselves in the mirror.
that would be pretty optimistic. and i doubt anybody saw the polling ahead of time.
so i'm left to ask this point blank.
who does anita anand and mark carney claim to represent on the ground in historical israel in their support for a two-state solution in the region?
jamieson greer is right in pointing out that carney's reaction is unhinged and emotional, and not careful or thought through.
is trump worse than mckinley or hoover? no. he's not worse than bush II. he's not worse than reagan. he's about the same as clinton.
going off on rants about the sky falling and the global order rupturing because you didn't get the deal you wanted right this minute (but will get it if you wait a few years) is not careful, steady leadership, it's governing via hysterical fits. it's the mirror image of trump himself.
a couple of weeks ago, the weather forcecasters were trying to argue that el nino results in colder than average falls in eastern north america, by pointing out that the long term averages were 0.1 degrees lower in the last handful of el nino years.
0.1 degrees.
they've never taken a statistics course, clearly.
now, as the forecasts have firmed up and it's clear that eastern north america is going to have a warmer than normal fall, it's because of el nino.
this schrodinger's el nino is a complex phenomenon, indeed.
the chinese have publicly stated that they want to depopulate north america and colonize it with chinese people. they consider it terra nullius.
this is not a solution. they are infinitely worse than the americans, and it's not because they're too communist, it's because they're hyper-capitalist. i would oppose this, as a socialist.
there has never been a more unequal society that exploits it's working class worse than modern china. they're better described as a fascist state than a communist state.
this is alarming and i again need to call for a non-confidence vote.
these losers are hacking my router again.
i don't want to waste my time competing with people. go away.
i'm frustrated and depressed that they won't leave me alone. i don't want to compete. i don't care. i want to finish setting up my apartment and i want to focus on creating art.
competitive behaviour is boring.
what have i been doing?
my last updated plan was aug 20th:
that (the b complex) should be here in late august. i have enough fortified nooch to last until then.
the upside of this is that it's also cheap - $75/year, or under $10/month.
i don't currently plan to take choline pills. but i also purchased a 100 count bottle of 100 iu of vitamin e for $10, which is about a year's supply, at every third day. that should be here tomorrow.
the shop vac should be here today and the new dustbuster should be here tomorrow.
i also bought a pile of hemp seeds, which was the last pantry item, and some more juice, which i've been drinking through fast because i'm sick, which came in this morning with another bag of concrete, which should let me finally finish setting up the garage.
my book shelf in the end couldn't stand the weight of the math textbooks. so, i'm going to move them in here until i finish cataloging them. i have two further shelves like this and will both set up a new one and try to strengthen this one. the metal poles are caving in. it's just more weight than it can stand. there are engineering solutions.
but i have to file some documents tonight as well.
so my plan now is to:
1) finish those documents
2) finish patching the holes in the garage, vacuum, get the carpet down, set the tables up, get the couch out, set the bike rack up, move the bikes in
3) set the furniture up in the library/charging area and around the studio (without installing any instruments or computers yet), set the furniture up in the rest of the kitchen, set the furniture up in the side entrance
4) finish sealing up the laundry. it's been sitting a while and i'll understand better what the remaining challenges are. and there's a new vac coming in.
5) clean the floors in the bathroom and kitchen with the new steam mop. summer should be milder from now until november.
6) clean the bedroom, including laundry
7) clean myself
8) get back to the cataloging of books and cds, including rebuilding the coffee table book
9) then work through the coffee table book sequentially to make sure all purchases are installed, and then finish in the kitchen. the last thing i set up was the first of three metal and vinyl bookcases. i will try to build the next two a little stronger, so they don't fall apart or cave in. it's a steel structure, but the connections are weak and liable to fall open. the connections need to be stronger. i think the next thing might be finally using the tablesaw i bought to cut through some wood and install some shelving. i am still looking at installing a dishwasher, a pop maker and a hot/ice cappuccino maker, amongst other smaller updates. the console table i bought for the last apartment is likely going to have appliances on it and the zoom area will be moved to the carpeted area in the front instead.
so, i was:
- waiting to get a vacuum i could use in the garage before i finished up in there, including working through a last bag of concrete
- waiting to get a shop vac i could use in the laundry before i finished up in there, too
- noting my bookshelf was broken and needed to be rebuilt
- planning on sequentially (1) finishing in the garage, (2) finishing in the library, (3) getting the shape of the studio in place, (4) finishing in the side entrance, (5) organizing the kitchen, (6) finishing in the laundry and then cleaning in the laundry and in the bathroom, (7) showering, (8) cleaning the bedroom, (9) shifting to the typing and cataloging.
that's not quite what's happened, or not yet.
i finished the documents on aug 21st and then spent the weekend and start of the week in the garage patching up remaining holes and installing some insulation. i made a substantive amount of progress, but stopped near the end of the week (around the 27th) to let the concrete dry a little. i realized i was going to need to get some better tape before i could get the cardboard up on the joists because the wood was so old and the packing tape wasn't sticking to it. unfortunately, my chromebook completely crashed on the 27th, and i lost several months worth of tabs in the process. shortly afterwards, the usb key i use to transfer documents around imploded. it looks like a cia firmware virus and is likely connected to these stalkers that are drugging me. i don't want to pretend i understand what is going on, but i've been convinced for a while that this is an international incident and that these people think i'm something i'm not.
odsp and cohb money for september came in on the 28th and the 29th of august so i spent these days buying food, vitamins and materials, like more tape. i intended to then get back to finishing up on the garage.
however, i noticed on the afternoon of the 30th that the deadbolt to the front of the house was intentionally damaged so that it doesn't turn, in an apparent attempt to break into the house. i consequently made a video to send to my landlord on sunday evening and had to sit inside to wait for the upload to finish. when it was done, it was too late to keep working on the garage, so i got something to eat instead, and completely shifted the way i was eating, temporarily, for the next week or so. my diet is shifting to mostly fruit for the next couple of months to catch up until it balances back out to normal. i may have ended up sleeping most of the day on the 31st.
i believe it was later in the day on the 31st, after 19:00, that i decided to rebuild the bookshelf first. i realized the shelf was failing because the metal poles were connected with cheap plastic connectors but i had to take a better look at it to understand the problem. there are these plastic pieces with round holes/sockets that you push the metal poles into and which connect the metal poles to each other; some of these connections are snug and fit tightly, but the plastic pieces in the middle of the shelf are too loose, and come apart very easily. it's consistent; it's a design fail. it might be why it was cheap. as the connection was not snug, when i put heavy textbooks on the metal shelving, the gravitational force created by the weight of the books was pushing the poles out of the socket and disconnecting the unit. to rebuild the shelving unit, i needed to tighten that connection, so it couldn't come loose as a result of weight pushing down on it.
i initially tried to squeeze it together with a pair of wire cutters, but that didn't work well. so, i ended up using most of a bottle of airplane glue to paste every single one of the metal poles into both sides of a plastic socket, like i was building a model plane, and then strengthened it all over with duct tape.
it seems to have held.
i then spent the next several days cataloging these textbooks at librarything, and putting them back up on the shelf. i was largely done cataloging on the morning of the third when i stopped to sleep in the morning. i will need a second one of these shelves immediately as the first is now completely full, and it's going to require some extra costs for crazy glue and duct tape, but i want to finish in the garage first and then clear the items out of the hall by moving them into the garage in order to make more space for it.
i fixed the lock myself on the 2nd.
however, a major rain storm came in on the afternoon of the third and dumped a huge amount of rain on the front porch, exposing some leaks from around the door into the garage. it is not the first time i've noticed this, but it only pours like that very occasionally here. i'm actually glad i caught it while i was in the middle of doing it. i kept most of the water out of most of the space, but there was a small area i hadn't finished yet and also a region i had overlooked. further, it exposed the need to address rainproofing the door itself. then, when the rain stopped, somebody broke the deadbolt again and i actually filed a police report about it early on the 5th. so, i needed to place a pause on working in there for a few days, which was fine, as i wasn't done cataloguing the books. as of early on sept 7th, i had a list of over 500 texts in four major overlapping categories
- reference library (the shelf i just fixed)
- fiction shelf (the shelf i'm building in my bedroom for novels)
- read but unowned (these are books i took out of the library for academic reasons, or downloaded pdfs of)
- books that disappeared (books that were stolen, lent out, sold or damaged in storage (and disappeared) at my parents from 2011-2013)
i still need to catalog the manuals for my devices and i can also use librarything for cds and will do that in parallel to discogs. it is a cleaner system than discogs, although discogs has some unique features, too. i would like to use both systems, not to choose.
i also have not added the pile of fiction texts i compiled for grades 3-13 or gone over course notes for the 13 years of university courses that i took. i'm also continuing to try to find lists dated to 2011 and to 2002. that 500 book list is still quite minimal, overall. i actually have quite a lot to add to it, still, but i am done cataloging the books i currently physically have in my actual possession at this time.
there is a link to the librarything pdf here:
my chromebook unfortunately crashed a second time on sept 7. i spent the rest of the day on the 7th and 8th rebuilding, sleeping and eating and, as of sept 9th, i've been able to rebuild only mildly, while i reconstruct a new workflow.
my updated work flow is as follows:
1) rebuild tabs on the chromebook i lost on monday morning.
2) call the landlord in the morning and get an update on the front door. wait until it's clear what they're doing.
3) continue searching external media, etc for old book lists and then go through school files backwards to update the list as much as possible, for now. this list will, by its nature, always be incomplete.
4) as i can't finish in the garage until i get a clearer understanding about the door, i can't clear out the hall, and can't replace the items in the hall with the things that will go there.
5) i can build the shape of the studio up.
6) i can't clear out the front entrance or organize the kitchen well, yet.
7) however, i can finish in the laundry and should shift to that next.
8) i still have work to do in the garage and can't shift into working on the computer in the bedroom until it's done, but i can stop to shower nonetheless if it's going to be a few days.
i also need to note that the summer is almost over and disappeared fast than i'd like. i did absolutely nothing all summer, unfortunately. these disgusting retards continue to sit upstairs and jerk off and there's no sign that they're going to go away. in fact, there's increasing indication that a violent confrontation will be required to defend myself.
but what that means is that i need to focus on getting money into the rdsp for the rest of the year. i need to get $4000 in by the end of the year. that means i won't be spending money on buying things, but will rather be focused on ensuring that everything i've purchased already is properly installed.
that means that once i get the things described done - finish the laundry, finish the garage, rearrange the space, clean everything - done, i'm going to be sitting down to type for quite a while, and not doing much else.
i made a choice to do the bookshelf first. it's put together now. i should get the tabs rebuilt in the next few hours, and then should be able to finish up in the laundry by the end of the morning. how much more i can get done and how quickly depends on what i can learn about the situation when i call the landlord.
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
if i were the eu, i would tell canada upfront that it's proposals are driven by eurocentric identity politics, are economically irrational and that there's no benefit to either party in signing a free trade agreement.
canada may benefit by greater integration into a kind of nordic union that includes russia, the us and the uk, excludes southern europe and is focused on arctic cooperation but that will have to wait until the stupid war is over.
the historical luddites, like the historical populists, were really not precursors to marx or bakunin (the populists were chronologically later, but you get the point). they don't even fit under the definition of "utopian socialism" that engels contrasted against the "scientific socialism" of marx, which has been a misnomer to this point but is still the direction that proper socialists and anarchists need to take to be proper. it's a little bit hard to get it right, but if your socialism isn't scientific, it's not proper socialism.
the luddites were brownshirts. they were nazis. they were fascists. like the historical populists, they were very religious. they were a late medieval, pre-modern (if just barely) development of historical barbarism and one of the earliest demonstrations of what we refer to today as the extreme fascist right.
luddite ideas showing up in fake leftist circles should be raising alarm flags. when this shit gurgles up, it's not a left, it's an extreme right. worse, it's consistent with other extreme right ideas infecting and co-opting the fake left, to produce what has become an increasingly ideologically coherent extreme right.
chomsky saw this coming a little but he avoided taking it on. chomsky was pretty hard-headed and not afraid to get into a debate, but he didn't want this fight. the person that really took this issue on, and whose writings on the topic are invaluable at this point, was hitchens, who was almost prophetic at points, despite getting the basic point wrong in iraq. dawkins has been wrong about hormone science and women's rights, but he identified a lot of the fake left issues before they were serious concerns.
the broader society should see these fascist attacks on the use of technology as dangerous and as an extreme warning signal that we're on a path towards collapse and self-harm.
socialists and communists and anarchists would not have any opposition to the increased use of technology in society at all. that is not a left-wing position.
the left would support socializing the production of technology, increasing automation and the eventual jump to the superproduction of consumer goods for the benefit of the working class. the basic idea on the left is that increases in technology will lead to decreases in costs (including via economies of scale) and that this, combined with the elimination of profit and the abolition of private property, will ensure that the consumer goods made in the factory are accessible to the proletariat operating the machines, so that we don't have this depressing reality where we enslave a dominant portion of the population to make goods for the elite, which they can never afford. the auto workers should be able to afford to buy the cars they make.
luddite nonsense expressing a fear of change about the "dangers of technology" is as right-wing, as backwards and as conservative as you can get. it is in direct opposition to any sort of leftist theory and has no remote resemblance to it.
i mean, carney claims he wants to replace the united states with other countries through expanded trade deals.
but then he attacks the domestic industry with these outrageous tax hikes and sells it by wrapping himself in the flag, and pushing this chauvinistic nonsense about competing. how does he expect them to compete in foreign markets? they won't be able to, because of the local tax policies.
but he's then opening up our markets to goods from horrible places like indonesia and the uae, that literally have actual slaves in their production process and put actual poison in their food. those are going to flood the market at rates similar or lower to chinese goods, and they're going to displace the canadian goods that can't compete because of the tax rates.
these trade deals he's signing, in conjunction with the counter-tariffs, are just going to contribute to the effects of the trade war, not mitigate it. then he clarifies by pointing out that what he actually wants is "foreign investment", which is newspeak for selling canadian assets to foreign investors. it's apparently intentional. the policy is apparently designed to make canada for sale.
i couldn't create a worse policy for canadian businesses and canadian workers if i tried.
but if you're invested in some indonesian palm oil exporting agrifood company, you just got a foot into the canadian market, and preferential conditions that could even start to harm the canola industry.
we're under serious attack by our own government in ways that trump could never do by himself. all trump can do is tax his own people, which would have a minimal effect on us. but the policy path canada is choosing is going to severely damage profitable, successful canadian economic sectors with the apparent intent of opening them for sale to foreign investors, at minimal harm to the american exporters.
in the canexit analogy, alberta and saksatchewan are actually emerging as a kind of scotland, that is resisting the exit and wants to stay in the cusma. and, in the process, they are implementing more academic and less populist policies, that will lead to less self-harm, although they are bound by the foolishness of the federal government's new hidden consumption tax policy on capital inputs and capital investment.
if we're going to do this with seriousness, we should also abolish the gst.
...because the gst was created to replace a similar historical tax that existed before the fta, and was taken out as a part of the trade negotiations.
as it is, the net sum is that we've doubled consumption taxes, because we have both the gst and the thing the gst replaced in place, simultaneously. that's like a 70% consumption tax on some items. nothing could be more regressive than that. that's going to make us far less competitive, globally.
i would consequently support a policy shift by the opposition parties to completely get rid of the gst, so long as these tariffs look like they're long term. it's not a good policy, but it's a lesser evil.
these kids are going to grow up into useless, anti-technology pothead hippie idiot retard adults that are incapable of doing anything useful in the actual economy and then complain that they can't get ahead no matter how hard they work at it because their idiot parents wouldn't let them use computers when they were kids.
i will take the opposite position: restricting kids' access to technology should be seen as a form of child abuse and kids should be removed from those environments and placed in foster care instead.
this is the most anti-intellectual form of luddism that i've ever seen.
if you don't want your kids using computers at school, go fuck yourselves, first, and then get the fuck out of canadian society, and go live with the amish. i have no respect for your opinion at all and i don't want you living in my society. i don't want to hear from you at all. just shut up and go away.
if you don't want to exist in modernity, kindly remove yourself from it and leave everybody else alone to live in peace.
studies are clear that the use of technology increases educational results. it's not ambiguous. i don't want to live in the dark ages and i will very aggressively resist any groups trying to drag me back into them.
canada doesn't gain anything from a strengthened economic relationship with the european union. it is neither a likely market for canadian goods, nor a likely supplier of goods to canada. canada is further from europe than africa or russia and has higher labour standards than both. canadian goods exported from canada to the eu will be prohibitively expensive and unable to compete with russian or african goods, and european goods imported to canada from the eu will likewise never be competitive with american goods, even with high tariffs.
a basic application of ricardan theory would suggest almost no level of trade between canada and the eu makes economic sense, which is why almost none exists.
rather, it would appear to speak more to the cultural affinity of mark carney and his family, including his wife, than to the legitimate economic needs of canada as a country.
canada would be better off seeking a stronger trade relationship with mercosur and building stronger relationships with other south and central american countries. ricardan theory would suggest a stronger trading relationship with these countries would be mutually beneficial to both of us, as we can each specialize in the production of goods that the others cannot.
again, the point of putting carney in power was that he was supposed to be an economic egghead, but he's turned out to be a kind of populist dumbard, instead - a centrist version of nigel farage that puts his personal cultural preferences ahead of the country's economic well-being, and is repeatedly making mistakes that you'd expect a prime minister educated in economics would not make. he is essentially adopting the theory promoted by the don coyote school of economics, that tariffs make us rich and create jobs, which has been repeatedly rejected by repeated failed application. the point of getting an education is to learn from the mistakes of the past. carney seems to have learned nothing from the past.
what's going on in canada right now is not some brave show of independence. that is nonsense. canada is in actuality undergoing a kind of canexit for purely cultural and populist reasons out of an emotional kneejerk reaction that is going to severely harm it for years to come.
Monday, September 7, 2026
for many decades in canada, the liberals have credibly run elections on their superior economic management, and attacked the opposition as economically incompetent, largely by criticizing them for being too pro-market.
the liberals have been repeatedly elected to fix or save the economy, while "tory times are tough times". it's been a consistent vote driver for decades.
by embracing neo-liberal ideology at a level that the liberals never have previously, and by holding to these foolish counter-tariffs, carney is severely damaging the economic credibility of the liberal party by aligning himself and the party with free market tory economic policy, which has historically had terrible outcomes.
carney times are tough times, indeed. and we're shooting ourselves in the hip. much of this harm that's coming will be self-inflicted. we will have nobody to blame but ourselves.
this is the kind of dipshit that this law was intended to not prosecute. explicitly. exactly.
people all over the spectrum don't seem to understand this well, and the reason is that english culture is dying a slow death on this continent and few people read classic speech rights texts or understand much about it nowadays, but the law is not intended to punish "immorality" or censor "offensive conduct". those are ideas that have no valid place in canadian law at all, and to the extent that they are creeping in through badly written legal codes providing backdoors for unwanted civil law concepts, they are mistakes waiting to be corrected.
the law is intended to protect identifiable minority groups from imminent, foreseeable harm.
this guy wants clicks on his website. he's drawing attention to himself for personal gain, and the post is walking into it. he's an idiot, clearly. but he poses no legitimate threat to anybody or anything except his own credibility, and perhaps the credibility of any educational institution he might have attended.
he deserves a fine for property damage and a reminder that free speech isn't an excuse for property damage. i would also sentence him to community service mowing the lawn of the local synagogue every week for the next 80 weeks.
i would like to see the canadian dollar get closer to parity. i don't benefit from a lower cdn dollar; i have increased purchasing power in the united states when the dollar is more valuable, and lower purchasing value when it's higher. that means that x dollars buys less beer and less concert tickets when the dollar is lower and more beer and more tickets when the dollar is higher.
it's actually american capital that is the primary beneficiary of a lower dollar because they can hire workers in canada at lower costs. that creates jobs here, but it might displace others and the overall benefit to individual canadian citizens is less obvious.
individual canadians do not benefit from a low dollar at all. they would be better off with higher purchasing power in the united states, not with more american employers in canada.
that said, the canadian dollar is largely tied to oil. so, the dollar goes up when oil goes up and falls when oil comes down. the lower canadian dollar is mostly a result of lower oil prices. if trump wants the canadian dollar to go up, the way to do it is to create substantive longterm pressure on oil prices.
but trump doesn't want that, clearly. i actually would also like to see higher oil prices because it should reduce consumption (and increase revenue in canada) and would support policies that both hike the cost of oil and increase the value of the cdn dollar. that sounds good to me.
if trump wants to separate the price of oil from the value of the cdn dollar, so that the cdn dollar goes up without increasing the cost of oil, the way to do it is to increase other canadian exports, perhaps by buying more canadian goods. he's not doing that, either. he's trying to stop that. that will drive the dollar down further.
what we're hearing from trump is consequently something along the lines of that he wants a llama for christmas, and he wants a pony, and he wants an elephant, too - delusional expressions of desire from a spoiled brat loser that expose a level of economic ignorance that demonstrate him as his unfit for the office he occupies.
mr trump can talk out of both sides of his ass, but he can't create opposite outputs of the same function, or live on both sides of the curve. the doublethink has physical limits in objective reality.
Saturday, September 5, 2026
i get the feeling that this will go over like a lead balloon.
hi,
i'm inri.
you might remember me from such online discussion fora as,
epilogue: the mailing list for skinny puppy fans that thought the band was dead in the late 90s and wished it was dead by the late 00s.
w.a.s.t.e: the mailing list for radiohead fans, when radiohead was good, before they sucked.
alt.music.nin: where you have to read the fucking faq to know what it's about.
eh?
the muslim world - north africa, the middle east, turkey, iran - made up a substantive theatre in the second world war, with italian and german troops seeking to liberate arabs from british and french colonialism, after the collapse of the ottoman empire (which was aligned with germany in world war one). the german/nazi propaganda reflected that.
the reality is that the people around today that sound like the nazis did in 1942 are not the euroskeptics, arguing for reduced immigration. the nazis never said that.
no, the people alive today that sound like the nazis did in 1942 are the phony leftists standing with hamas, arguing for the liberation of arabs from "western colonialism", whatever that even is. that is what the nazis actually said, and what they actually did, too. the soviets picked up something like that later on, but it was a different argument. the argument you hear from phony leftist hamas and hezbollah sympathizers about saving arabs from colonialism is taken verbatim from nazi propaganda.
this was a massive part of the war, and it was a german campaign against british colonialism, with arab revolutionaries on the ground as major allies - not dissimilar to the taliban fighting against nato, or isis trying to set up a caliphate.
i'm not exactly making an argument about islam in germany here. i'm pretty distant. i think it's obvious there's a problem that needs to be addressed. i wouldn't vote for the afd for other reasons.
i'm just looking for accuracy and clarity.
the narrative is ass backwards. the "far right" sounds like winston churchill. the "progressive left" sounds like adolf hitler.
the german far-right has historically been overwhelmingly pro-muslim, stemming from arguments in a book by edward gibbon called the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire, which argued that the first reich (the roman empire) failed because christian society did not militarize to meet the challenge of militant islam (relative to medieval period definitions).
the second reich was the holy roman empire, that is the empire of charlemagne, which became the hapsburg empire until it was dissolved by napoleon in 1806.
the third reich was the comparatively short lived nazi empire, which was in fact actually geo-politically aligned with major muslim regions like iran and saudi arabia. north africa was a somewhat forgotten but major theatre of operations in world war two. iran was invaded by a joint british-soviet force in world war two to stop the nazis from being invited in (and causing problems in india or the caucasus). the saudis, palestinians and other groups were aligned with germany as a counter to what they saw as british colonialism, and out of a shared opposition to zionism. the fact that the arabs lost world war two, as explicit german allies, is of some importance in the development of events that led to the re-establishment of a jewish state in historical israel.
there was absolutely no persecution of muslim or arabs by nazis in nazi controlled areas from 1933-1945 and turks were seen as german allies, rather than foreigners. the groups targeted by nazis actually included many of the groups that were persecuted by the ottomans, including ethnic greeks, ethnic croatians, hungarians, poles and slavic-speaking groups in general. the jewish holocaust was modeled after the continuing armenian genocide. the actual thing that the nazis were actually doing as step one in the goal to take over the world was trying to wipe out the slavs, to enslave the jews and to abolish communism. muslims and arabs were variably seen as irrelevant or as allies in this task, and large amounts of nazi policy was emulating recent events in the country of turkey and the previous ottomon empire.
it's up to the german people to decide whether they're in favour of more or less muslim immigration, but the historical nazi party and the historical german far right would not have supported or aligned with the afd on this issue. on the issue of islam and the political persecution of muslims, the historical nazi party and it's officials like hitler and goebbels would have sounded more like modern "liberals", and been in favour of tolerance and integration.
one of the explicit arguments made by the nazis was that they should replace the british as the occupying power in the middle east because nazism was more similar to islamic law than british parliamentary democracy, and the arabs would not react as negatively to authoritarian nazism as they reacted to representative democracy. and they had a coherent point to make, on that concern.
the afd - like the french national rally - seems to be more akin to the historical left than the historical right and that is probably the actual reason it's being attacked by the european mainstream. it's probably not a coincidence that this district is east german, and previously communist. and what voters are probably looking for is a social democratic party that hasn't been corrupted by neo-liberalism. the technocrats in the eu consider that to be public enemy #1, so they're attacked as nazis, despite being almost diametrically the opposite thing, politically.
that doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons to oppose the afd. but this conflation of being critical of islam or seeking less migration from muslim societies with the historical german right is exceedingly counter-factual. it's dead wrong, it's actually backwards (those are positions that were held by the historical left, due to slavic nationalism often defining itself in opposition to turkish colonialism), and it should stop.
i apologize for the orthogenetic proposal. my aristotlianism is clearly sardonic. i actually believe that evolution is mostly driven by chaos and chance, and natural selection is real but not common. genetic drift is a more frequent cause of evolutionary change than natural selection, which should be assumed to not exist, a priori, and only be derived via hypothesis testing. genetic drift must be rejected to conclude natural selection. that is, if you want this to be science.
the general consensus at this point is that intergalactic travel is probably impossible due to the amount of time required. we'd die before we arrived anywhere. so we should give up on the idea of galaxy hopping aliens.
but what if an extra-terrestrial species has evolved in specific high stress conditions to live for hundreds or thousands of years?
a 200 year journey would not be so steep if you could live for five thousand years.
it should put down an expectation for us - if we find extra-terrestrial life, it will essentially necessarily have to have extremely long lifespans. we should expect that.
it may consequently be the case that a theoretical alien race has observed hundreds or thousands of years of human progress. that would be a potentially invaluable source to draw on about our own history and evolution.
and what it further implies is that what we've learned about the physics of space travel makes it more likely, in my opinion, that at least some of the historical descriptions of human interaction with god or gods are confused interactions with alien species. they would necessarily be god-like to us, in order to exist at all.
a naturalistic explanation of god as a concept may involve the biologification of the deity. and it's a reason to return to polytheism as more reasonable than monotheism.
this does continue to strike me as far-fetched, but i must also argue that it's the most likely of a collection of crazy propositions. there must be some empirical basis for so much nonsense. it can't have come from thin air. if i had to pick one proposal out of the pile, the idea that our concept of god comes from interaction with ten thousand year old aliens strikes me as the best of the bunch. it's at least falsifiable, right?
nobody else collapsed and suffered brain damage. so, the workout wasn't so grueling for the other players, and perhaps he wasn't such an elite athlete.
i would consider 31 degrees celsius to be comfortable, not scorching hot. i enjoy aerobics workouts in hot weather.
i hope they did thc tests. i suspect that's the actual cause of the aneurysm or whatever happened.
despite what i said about insanity or not criminally responsible defences, and how a science-based system of law would enforce greater sentences and not lesser sentences on people found to be not criminally responsible (it shouldn't be a defence to a charge, it should be a sentencing criteria that increases the severity of sentences), i actually would reject the argument if i was the judge.
the kids were aged 3, 5 and 8 months.
that's not post-partum anything. those are toddlers. it's a lot of bullshit.
i would flat out find her guilty of three counts of first degree murder and sentence her to three consecutive life sentences, with no chance of parole.
Friday, September 4, 2026
fuck alberta.
there's some refineries in new brunswick and there's oil in newfoundland. that's a better source for eastern canada.
we need refinery capacity for national security and we should have built it eons ago. but canadians should be trying to shift off oil. the better idea is building more hydro plants.
in the long run, newfoundland is a more practical, economical and environmental source for the minimal oil canada will continue to require, post-transition, than alberta. let the western shitheads starve in their debt.
this is similar to the argument i was making.
does carney really have much decision making influence or authority in the pmo, or is the civil service really directing policy, and doing so foolishly?
this recent current case is a good demonstration of why it is that the way the courts approach intent is currently backwards. we have an ancient system of law that is fundamentally about obeying the king's orders interacting with modern science, and the system is sputtering, and then trying to assert it's authority to prevent itself from changing rather than adjusting to what the science says.
currently, the way this works is that the woman will be declared not guilty - or not criminally responsible - if the defense can demonstrate that she wasn't capable of forming intent. but who cares? how does that have any relevance in determining how dangerous this woman clearly is to the people around her?
a modern system of science-based law would flip the logic over and instead order her to be permanently incarcerated with no chance of parole if it can be demonstrated that she lacks the capacity to form intent, because there would be no way to mitigate the threat she poses to the community around her.
it's not that the question of intent isn't of continuing value in law. it is. but this ancient medieval system of dominance and submission, that is difficult for modern people to even understand at all, doesn't interact well with what the science says. the science is relatively clear that this woman is very likely to repeat offend and that she's never going to be fully capable of rehabilitating. the system of law was devised in an era where these analyses and determinations were not of any consideration and the only real issue before the judge was whether you obeyed the king's orders.
the system is reformable. it doesn't need to be redesigned from scratch, and it has good foundations. however, cases like this demonstrate the need for the system to update itself to make the law more reactive to the science and less reactive to medieval concepts of social control through implied violence and the assertion of physical dominance.
submission to the king is not a real-world concern here, but it's still what the law is in truth actually about.
i finally bought some 28 ounce glass bowls last week, and they came in yesterday. these should be good for cereal, minimum meals and other smaller applications, but i'm about to give up on finding large glass bowls at an affordable price and use stainless steel for the salads that make up a big part of my diet, instead. they may leech nickel and chromium, but those are actually both micronutrients required for human health in unknown quantities. that's not a bad thing.
i'm consequently largely finished swapping out the ceramic and plastic for glass, steel, iron and silicon.
- i have three 750 ml glass cups that were manufactured as vases that i use for juice
- i have six 550 ml glass cups in use for water and soy milk
- i have two very large glass beer mugs in use for coffee
- there are four additional stemless wine glasses for a total of 15 glass cups
- i have swapped my plastic brita jug out for a glass water jug
- i have three small glass containers for sauces. i need some more for fruit. i don't mind storing some fruits and vegetables in old margarine containers, mostly because i don't save most, i eat the whole thing all at once. exceptions are tomatoes and red peppers for the half pasta plates (and for nachos and salsa with eggs) and pineapple for pasta. i would especially want the pineapple and tomato not in plastic nowadays.
- i have bought some canola/olive oil to replace the margarine, and some canola humus with olive chunks
- i have four 12" glass plates in use that replace the ceramic ones
- i have replaced six smaller ceramic bowl with six 28 ounce glass bowls
- i need to buy a couple more 3 quart or 4.5 quart stainless steel bowls for salads. i have one of each, and an 8 inch bowl, that i bought for utility, but it's looking like they're going to replace the 70 oz ceramic bowls i've been using for the last few years to make large salads in. i am not sure if 3 quarts or 4.5 quarts is better.
- i swapped all the plastic spatulas out with silicon and steel.
- i swapped the plastic cutting board out with a titanium one
- i have swapped my pans for eggs and bacon out with cast iron skillets
i am keeping the small ceramic plates for cutting, i still have plastic measuring cups, i have a lot of plastic tupperware that i'm reexamining and the onion soup bowls are ceramic and will stay that way.
otherwise, that's it. the ceramic and plastic is out. it's all glass and iron and silicon and steel.
i will keep the ceramic plates for holding glass or metal bowls (like a bowl of soup or salad, on the ceramic plate) to prevent spilling or control temperature and the ceramic bowls for things like chips and candy. i don't buy candy; i occasionally buy potato chips.
Thursday, September 3, 2026
i shouldn't jump to the conclusion that i had a vitamin e deficiency, at least not relative to current clinical standards. i haven't been tested. i understand that it isn't very likely, at least relative to current clinical standards.
but the e has made a positive difference in a number of ways. i won't list them, but i'm noticing big differences after only a few pills. frustrating blemishes on my face that i was starting to worry were skin cancer are peeling off. i thought the glow was from estrogen, but i'm starting to think it's from vitamin e. that persistent annoying diarrhea, which i was tying to the stalkers drugging me, has cleared up.
the a came in the other day. i've taken 1.5 and am not noticing it yet. i would expect less obvious changes. the b is replacing the yeast, remember, and not a hike in much except b5 and b7, which weren't in the yeast. and i didn't take the yeast that frequently. i am feeling a little more awake, but i'm not sure yet.
i think a better analysis is that the rdi for vitamin e is currently too low.
i really actually don't think this needs to be nearly as big a deal for canada as some would imagine
there's no doubt that we buy things from the americans, but we could replace them almost entirely with a combination of brazil and mexico, who together have roughly the same population. neither are substantively further away. the things we can't get from latin america, we could get from japan or europe, and both have substantive populations to sell into.
there's likewise no ambiguity that we need a market to sell things to, but the fear that the americans are going to stop buying is overblown. the selling point about the us is gdp, but it's gdp per capita in a grossly unequal society, and if canada stops buying us goods, the us gdp will actually cave in because they rely on us for their own sales. if we start buying our fruit from brazil and mexico instead - and pay attention at the store. we already have started. - the subsequent decrease in american gdp will undo their own propaganda as the us being this giant market. it's really not. it's 4% and it's overridden with extreme poverty.
i'm not convinced that brazil is a worse market than the us. as the us is also attacking them, we have a unique opportunity with the brazilians, as they can replace the us for us as a supplier of food (mostly), and we can replace the us for them as a supplier of finished goods. it's a great way to apply the theory of comparative advantage. we should be all over each other.
but i know that the budget juice i buy is sourcing from brazil nowadays. the mangos and grapefruits are from brazil. almost nothing is actually coming in from the us. this is happening because the transnational capital of walmart and loblaws opens up those supply chains. and the truth is the us is actually getting cut out.
we should be putting a specific focus on latin america.
these are the koppen climate zones here:
the snot green is humid subtropical, while the two shades of blue above it (detroit-windsor sits between the two shades of blue) are humid continental. the lower shade of blue is defined by hotter summers.
the snot green is humid subtropical, while the two shades of blue above it (detroit-windsor sits between the two shades of blue) are humid continental. the lower shade of blue is defined by hotter summers.
but as the subtropical zone moves north it swallows up st louis, detroit and chicago. it's only the smallest, most southernmost part of canada, but it's a place to enjoy the warmth.
i will reiterate my call to windsorites that don't like the weather: get lost. go to winnipeg, go to toronto, go to ottawa. leave this city for those that like the climate.
In recent history, Windsor has had about 22 days each year when the temperature gets up to at least 30 C.
But if climate change continues unchecked, these very hot days will be more frequent, according to projections in a new report from the University of Waterloo's Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation. Windsor could see 30 C days 79 times a year by the 2050s.
by my count, we've had 36 such days above 30 C so far in 2026. and we had a slow start to summer.
as mentioned, it rarely gets below 27 degrees from mid may to mid oct. that's no longer a barren frozen north. that's not even temperate anymore, that's subtropical. we're increasingly seeing hot days linger into november or december and starting as early as late february. the winters here now run cold but short from c. dec 20th to feb 20th and we get long bouts of spring in january and february. the cold comes in short, intense bursts.
a city where the temperature is above 20 degrees consistently from mar 1 to dec 1st, which is where we're going, is no longer one that people seek to escape due to the cold, but one that people seek to travel to to enjoy the warmth. windsor and the region should see that future and prepare for it.
the idea of windsor-leamington as a tourist destination makes some sense. we're surrounded by water. the weather here s beautiful for 6 months of the year, and growing. if that gets to 8 months, 10 months, it might be a high yield investment projection.
come to windsor to enjoy the humidity and play in the lakes. we've got trails for bicycling, fresh fruit off the trees and plenty of places to grab a beer.
note, however, that a ten degree boost in hudson's bay means -15 instead of -25. it doesn't make the land more useful. it doesn't open the northwest passage. it may make driving in the winter more annoying.
southwest ontario is becoming a rainforest and may end up as a subtropical tourist destination. but the bulk of southern canada, including the prairies, is going to get hit by this, while the north will see little benefit. optimistic predictions are not well-informed.
the areas we grow in today in canada are going to turn into the badlands of montana and wyoming and we can't just move north because we ruined the land with tar sand development.
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
there's two parts of canada that really aren't much like being in canada, in terms of climate.
- the very southern part of ontario, not including toronto but including windsor, london, kitchener, hamilton, niagara.
- the okanagan valley
these two very small regions do not have weather that is very canadian at all. windsor is further south than minnesota, wisconsin, iowa, most of michigan, a bunch of states moving west to washington and oregon and and the entire northeastern us, including almost all of new york. even toronto is a tad further north of boston.
this doesn't seem weird anymore. rather, i'd be surprised, today, if the opposite happened - if i needed a jacket in september.
but this would be considered baffling a few decades ago.
in windsor, in 2026, sept 1 is not the end of summer, it's mid-summer. sept 21st is not the end of summer.
oct 15th is the end of summer, here, nowadays, and you would expect high humidity and heat here and to be out in shorts and tank tops until mid october at the earliest. we've had summer linger into november here recently on several occasions - meaning consistent 20+ highs.
for the americans, 35 C is 95 F. 45 C is 113 F.
this is a canadian suburb of detroit.
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
the reality is that the jails in the united states, a country that has long enforced these kinds of draconian rules that conservatives like ford want to enforce here, are full of retards that never get properly diagnosed or tested and will never rehabilitate because they can't. we do the opposite and call it humane and hopeful, but it isn't humane and hopeful, and the outcome is not much better. the last thing canada should want is to get in the habit of throwing retards in jail, like the americans do. but the evidence is also clear that not giving them the support they need frequently leads to terrible outcomes. the middle point is returning to the institutionalization model that was abandoned due to neo-liberalism.
there is little question that this crazy law will be struck down. this is not consistent with canadian law.
the courts have repeatedly blocked things like mandatory minimums and cash bail and it is clearly frustrating conservatives, who are no doubt asking "what can we do to keep people in jail?", and what they aren't learning is that the science is clear: jail doesn't work.
there is a subset of criminals that legitimately don't understand what they're doing due to fas, complications of shs exposure, drug abuse as adults or other causes of mental retardation. the system has not dealt with this well; it's dealt with it backwards. it argues that an inability to form mens rea makes guilt impossible. but nobody is of greater threat to the community than a severely mentally damaged person with a history of lashing out. there needs to be a way to get the mentally damaged into hospitals, rather than jails, and keep them there, against their will. these people will never be rehabilitated and that's not the point of incarcerating them. they need to be humanely warehoused out of the general public.
if this was done effectively, it would lock up most repeat offenders. but this is a hole in the criminal law that isn't going to be patched with draconian laws that order people to behave and beat them with dominance if they refuse. they're retarded. they don't understand. it needs to be addressed with science.
what's left is mostly "crime of passion" where intent can be established and the courts mostly already refuse bail for this and property crimes which are mostly the result of poverty and need to be addressed with greater social spending.
the courts won't let the government break the system like this, at least for now.
the other option, of course, is to stack the benches with ignorant judges, and the harper, ford and trudeau governments certainly tried, but perhaps ran out of time. we're going to need to get the conservatives out of ontario very seen if we don't want to threaten long term damage to the tribunal system, but that's separate from this.
this is a shitty way to bring up a valid criticism about the direction of canada's military, which i've brought up myself.
there was a big attempt to eliminate sexual abuse in the army under the trudeau pmo. this was driven by the pmo's backwards ideology, and not by the direction of the military. in fact, there was a major purge of army people for resisting it.
conservative feminist ideology argues for the state to act as a leviathan so that women can walk around naked downtown at 4:00 am without fear of being assaulted. i exaggerate only slightly. it's less that i disagree in principle and more that i'm concerned about the unintended consequences of getting to that end point. but the military is an exception.
a state that acts as a leviathan to protect soldiers from sexual assault will be useless on the battlefield. soldiers that cannot defend themselves are useless to that state and should not be soldiers. yes, enemy forces will use rape as a tactic, and it's required to understand and react to that expectation.
canada needs to put less of an emphasis on protecting vunerable soldiers from harm and more of an emphasis on developing soldiers that can protect themselves when required. that is not necessarily gender-based, but it will require telling some women that they don't make the team and will have to accept it. that's the point of an army.
the military is not a social assistance program, but canada has treated it like one for too long, and the last pmo took disturbing steps into parody in the way it expanded that that should be reevaluated and reversed.
Sunday, August 30, 2026
i spent $450 on groceries, $220 on cleaning and bathroom supplies and $150 on supplements, and i'm now entirely stocked up on everything imaginable until the spring, when i'll need to do that again. grocery bills will be for perishables - fruits and vegetables, breads and eggs and cheese. that's how i keep my monthly bills down - i buy pantry items in bulk ahead of time. it requires a little bit of expenditure up front to appreciate the savings in the long run.
let me do this again.
- the b and c are being cut in 4 and taken every six hours instead of all at once. they are here and i've been doing this for a few days, now.
- 100 iu of e at 0:00 on mondays, wednesdays and fridays, with sunday left optional.
- i am going to buy a kelp tablet i can cut in 4 and take 1/4 of the tablet every day at 6:00. this will give me a little more than 150 mcg of iodine/day, which is the rdi. i have sent an email to jamieson to ask if these kelp tablets contain epa/dha as well. they are marketed as "kelp, which contains iodine" and not as iodine.
- 1000 iu of d at 12:00
- the a is being cut in 1/2 and 1/2 is being taken at 18:00 daily. this is 2500 iu daily. this is between the rdis for women and men, and probably right for me. i ordered this yesterday and it should be here this week.
- i am going to take 2 tums after each full meal as a calcium supplement for now on (800 mg elemental calcium)
- i'm deciding not to take pills for vitamin k. i eat a salad-based diet and i take a lot of estrogen. so, i want my blood a little thin and might be concerned about overdoing it on vitamin k creating clotting risks. this is the one vitamin i want to keep a little low. i have seen no symptoms of a difficulty coagulating.
- i'm going to take a tbsp of flax dissolved in a glass of water daily at 15:00 for omega-3s. i should meet the rdi of them, at 1.7 g of ala, if i do that.
- i'm going to note that i drink at least 250 ml of soy and 4 mini cups of coffee a day and usually closer to twice that
- i have devised a daily minimum meal made up of:
a bowl with:
- 3 tbsp of raw, unroasted, unsalted, hulled sunflower seeds (longstanding)
- 3 tbsp of hulled hemp seeds (longstanding)
- 3 tbsp of hulled chia seeds (bought, added)
- 3 tbsp of wheat bran (longstanding)
- 3 tbsp of soy lecithin <------not yet
- 30 g of all bran (longstanding)
- 1 tbsp of paprika (longstanding)
- 1 tbsp of ground cumin (longstanding)
- 1 tbsp of dried oregano (longstanding)
- 2 cloves of garlic (longstanding)
- 1 beet (longstanding)
- 1 avocado (longstanding)
- 50 g broccoli (longstanding)
- dried dill, caesar, hot sauce, nutritional yeast for flavour (yeast does have some b vitamins still) (longstanding)
with
- one banana (longstanding, bought)
- one orange (longstanding, bought)
- two pieces of untoasted quinoa-flax bread with unclear spread (longstanding)
- one tum (longstanding)
that has
- in total, 12+ g of omega-3s
- 23+ g of omega-6s
- 55+ g of mostly complete protein, which is about right on the rdi for my weight, maybe a little more. i would prefer to barely meet the rdi or just miss it for protein. excess protein is hard on your body and stored inefficiently as fat. high protein diets are stupid.
- minimal saturated fat for absorption (some in the dressing, avocado, soy lecithin)
- some carbs. whatever. carbs aren't worth measuring.
- it's all stored the same way. your body uses less energy to process carbs and more energy to process protein but it does the same thing with excess amounts of them, which is store it as fat. what i'm more interested in is the fact that flax, hemp, chia, soy, quinoa and in fact also sunflower are all complete proteins and have all 9 essential amino acids, although the sunflower seeds are low in lysine (and high in vitamin e, selenium, omega-6s). i'm not aiming for a protein salad, but this would be pretty effective if i was.
- 180%+ rdi for magnesium
- 160%+ rdi for phosphorus
- 110%+ of the rdi for potassium
- 120%+ rdi for calcium
- 210%+ of rdi for manganese
- 30+ mg of iron (elemental) (300% of a 10 mg amount but i have absorption issues and need it)
- 195%+ of rdi for copper
- 125%+ of rdi for zinc
- 125%+ rdi for selenium
- 110%+ rdi for molybdenum (not including the high amount in soy milk that isn't bioavailable)
- 175%+ of the rdi for choline (960 mg) & an additional 100% in the form of betaine (550 mg).
- some sulfur in the garlic
- some inositol and salicylic acid in the orange
- extra food-based vitamins (carotenoids, b vitamins, a little c, some d, a fair amount of e and some k)
- around 950-1000 mg of sodium. ish. which is a decent minimum meal amount.
this will be taken at 3:00 am or 9:00 am on days where i didn't eat a full meal the previous day and will be intended to ensure i'm meeting daily rdis while i continue to lose weight. this may mean i go longer between meals. but this isn't a meal, and is not intended as one. it is not high in calories but is very high in nutrients.
the bread is still pretty fortified and the flax-quinoa bread has a fair amount of ala. the soy has lost a lot of vitamins but is still worthwhile. the all bran in canada has been stripped to almost nothing, like the yeast, but it's still a good source of betaine. i'd like to get some better caesar dressing as i eat a lot of it.
i did not initially measure iodine because i assumed the salt in the bread, caesar and hot sauce was iodized. in fact, the salt in the bread and the soy or not iodized and i have not yet heard from frank's, or contacted great value or all bran. i feel this is a failure by health canada, which should be mandating iodine in soy milk, bread, cereal and sauces like frank's and casear. what is a good source of daily iodine, then?
don't tell me to just eat salt. health canada stupidly tells you to eat a teaspoon of table salt a day. that's 6 g of salt. the mayo institute says to keep it under 1.5g. you'd need to eat around 4g of table salt a day to meet the iodine rdi. that's a disgusting amount of salt that is going to make you fat and give you heart problems. in fact, in 2026, table salt is not a feasible source of iodine for healthy people to use because the fortification level is way too low. it should by increased by roughly 5x so that you only need less than 1g of table salt, which is still more than you should eat, to meet the rdi. further, there should be a recognition by health canada that fewer canadians consume table salt today than in the past. i do not use table salt for any purpose at all (i don't even buy it) and i am no longer an obscure minority. there should consequently be further iodine fortification mandated in soy milk, bread, pasta and other processed foods, under the realization that iodine is scarce in the diets of healthy people, today.
when i was doing my initial diet design, i wanted to include seaweed, but it never happened and it still looks to be infeasible.
i don't drink cow's milk because it's utterly disgusting and i don't eat seafood because it's not worth the risk for mercury and other contaminants.
that leaves eggs and cheese as the only substantive sources and i'd have to eat an unrealistic amount of cheese, daily, to meet the rdi.
i'm left with the reality that i am going to have to take an iodine pill due to insufficiently mandated iodine fortifications in the utterly backwards failed state we call canada. this should be included in bread and soy and i shouldn't need to worry about it. i'm consequently not including iodine levels in the minimum meal because it's in the supplements list.
not measured:
- chloride (i should get enough in the city water in windsor)
- chromium
- boron
- fluoride (windsor's water is back to being fluoridated, that should be fine)
- nickel
- carbs (who cares?)
- glucose (this should be low)
- calories (calories are irrelevant to human health)
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