it seems like this device auto shuts off when it's dirty and a lot of users think it's broken and throw it way rather than clean it.

i might have a good vacuum for free here, which will be good if i can't fix the pet vac.

who am i?

call me steven. 

even steven, that is.

yeah, the pet vac needs long, skinny torx screws to take the top off of and i don't have that. i should have that and can order it on amazon for not much but i need to wait for the next cycle, as i had to buy pantry items last cycle, which is a once a year substantive expense, and had to replace the vacuum (unexpectedly). the upside is i have enough spices, seeds, pasta and hot sauce to last until the spring, at least, and probably until next fall (i will need to buy more soy milk and caesar dressing and i thought i had fortified yeast but now don't. i will need to get the yeast, hemp seeds and a few non-pantry items on thursday and that should catch me up on pantry items for months. bob's very graciously sent me a check for $28 us to spend on more yeast, if i have to go to detroit and absurdly smuggle it in across the border.).

these are the specs for the ac adapter i need for the stick vac:
Input:100-240V 50/60HZ

do i have that?

the one i tried was 100-120. maybe a little low.

no. i think the adapter is appropriate, but the charger may not be working well. i didn't realize i can take the battery out and charge it directly. i do now and am doing that.

the manual says to recharge it fully when removing from storage, so let me try that.

if the thing charges and i think i can use it inside for a few days, i'll get the dustbuster out in the garage, and there will be a new one on the way for inside by the end of the week or by next week. and i'll look at the fuse for the broken shop vac after i get the carpet down.

so, i think i can fix the shop vac for the garage.

but before i buy anything, i want to see if i can fix the pet lover vacuum. it might be the same issue. let's see if i can figure it out first. 

if i can fix the pet lover, i'd rather do that and use the dust buster in the garage for now. if i don't think i can, i'll keep the dust buster for inside and get the shop vac fixed. that other stick vac is expensive but had bad reviews. i'll see for myself, but i don't want to rely on it a priori. i know the pet vac works very well.

see, i was hoping to get the carpet down this weekend. that's the issue.

to be clear, it's some kind of volumizing goop for bourgeois 80s hair, back when rich white people tried to look like niggers as a pathetic fashion decision. it's hair spray or gel or something. and it's impossible to get out. for me, it's like somebody put gum in my hair, although i realize it's a volumizing product. they're trying to force it to look big because they think i should look like that, despite the fact that i don't because i'm not middle eastern. like, i'm not a jew from poland or something, either. there's a distant (i think) spanish jew that moved to philadelphia in the 1700s on my mom's side, but my dna is like 70% norse/viking. i brush my hair down, not up. flat hair is not a struggle for me. like, i'm not taylor swift. i have flat, straight hair naturally and all i should need to do for it to stay flat and straight, like i want it, is wash it and brush it. that flat, straight hair is natural. it requires zero effort. there's no irony with these people. they don't understand humour.

the stalkers are definitely here. same retards. same disgusting drugs. same failed specious "therapy" that a young child could deconstruct as moronic.

they managed to get some kind of disgusting film in my hair, which has happened before. it's intended to try to force me to have disgusting puffy nigger hair, which i find to be overwhelmingly unattractive. i think the reason they're doing this is that they're dumb arabs (is there any other kind?) and they won't give up on the false assumption that i must be jewish because i think islam is stupid and loudly criticize it online. if there''s any logic behind what they're doing, it's some kid of luddite rejection of science in favour of "naturalism". they think there's something wrong with being trans because it's not "natural", and think natural is better because they're retards, and are trying to force me into a "natural" state as a result of it. as they think i'm jewish, i should have jewish nigger hair to be "natural". but, in fact, i'm scandinavian and have extremely thin and fine hair. so the result of them putting this shit in my hair is that it doesn't get puffy and gross like nigger jew hair but instead just tangles up into knots and falls out. 

this has happened a few times. it will grow back - i have a lot of hair on my head and it actually grows very fast, probably due to the large amounts of estrogen i take. but i lost a lot of volume and a few inches.

i think they're so pathetic that they're trying to get in through my windows and may be spraying the shit on me through the windows, which have chains on them, when i'm sleeping. they seem to be living in the place the crackheads used to be.

so this is a brutal situation. it's quite different than before, even if it looks the same. i don't think it's the landlord, i think it's the manager, and he's at an arms distance. i don't think a tenancy application is the right approach. i think this is strictly a criminal issue and what i want is to get them in jail.

i'm going to need to buy some more quikrete, unfortunately. i only need a little more but it's unavoidable and it'll have to wait until the 21st or the 28th. even so, i should be able to get a carpet down on the side with the patched hole, as it is now totally dry, if i can get a vacuum done in there first.

i have one nearly broken dustbuster for the garage, a broken shop vac that might be fixable for the garage and two potentially fixable inside vacs that are not for the garage. i have a new shop vac on order for late in the week that hasn't been processed yet, oddly. i don't want to use the dustbuster in the garage until the shop vac at least ships.

so can i fix this shop vac?

i took out the multimeter and learned that:

- the switch works

- the cord works

- the contacts connecting the switch to the cord don't stay put but work

- there's no break in the brushes

- so what the fuck?

i plugged it in to turn it on just to see, and it sparked and shut itself off. i was able to do that a few more times. i gave it power and spun the wheel to kick start it and it did it again.

it looked like the components work, but something was stopping it from boootstrapping or shutting it down after a short fail. is there like a converter in there?

i was able to find a blown fuse but i'm not sure it's the full answer. it needs to be replaced, at least.

i might have enough cash to order the fuse and some alligator clips for like tomorrow. the fuse should be very cheap but i don't want to put it in there if there's a deeper fault. let me get those alligator clips to see if it closes the circuit.

it might be a very cheap solution, which is a big win.

so, there *is* at least a blown fuse, and i won't know for sure if there's another short until i complete that circuit. cost is likely under $5.

a 100% export tax on oil to the us would be a beautiful thing.

we'd make a fortune from it.

the golden seals folded in 1976. 

i guess this is trump turning the clock back to maga.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/14/trump-wants-put-golden-seals-white-house-ballroom/

that damned canoist is at it again, rowing up to the uss lincoln and sneaking in and breaking the laundry.

lincoln was publicly opposed to canoes because they took logs away from house construction. you can't live on a damned canoe. but the real reason is that he once tried to stretch out on a canoe and due to his 7 ft girth crushed it, embarrassing himself. he had a secret vendetta against the canoe after that and tried to destroy the canoe industry by banning it from using slave labour, which made it unable to compete against steamships from the north.

canoists remember and have sought to tarnish lincoln's legacy through acts of vandalism.

none of you understand that mario mangione was on the grassy knoll at the time. 

you don't know shit.

he disappeared into new york city's sewer system, and has been fighting the crocodles and dragons ever since.

all i've really heard in terms of analysis about what happened in gaza is:

Nakbah II

netanyahu strikes back

it doesn't suggest much insight into root causes or paths forward.

i really think some serious reflection is in order. if your god exists (doubtful), it clearly just abandoned and then punished you. and your god is angry and vengeful and, according to legend, prone to do that. it's the kind of thing your god would do if it existed (doubtful).

why do you think that is?

ideally, once we get the number of refugees down to something more manageable, we can go back to a reality where the number of illegal immigrants on welfare is a small problem we can ignore.

right now, it's unfortunately a pretty substantive drain on public finances that needs to be corrected, because the federal government didn't understand the consequences of not taking the issue seriously.

i don't support this change in principle; i'm ideologically opposed to it. however, i support as a short term measure in today's canada, which has been overrun by illegal immigration very recently, since 2015, due to:

- donald trump acting as a push factor out of the us

- justin trudeau aggressively welcoming migrants with little understanding of the consequences of what he was doing

this flood of migrants, many from the us, put stress on the healthcare, housing, inflation and social assistance systems. they're not 100% of the problem, but they're 75% of the problems people actually expierence. trudeau didn't acknowledge an error until his last months in office, and our government has made an attempt to adjust by restricting immigration, but it's going to be a long time before the country recalibrates.

i have argued repeatedly that the state either needs to increase social spending or make it harder for refugees to come in. letting refugees flood in and dealing with them when they get here by letting the market sort it out is just driving inflation and clogging everything up. canada isn't a free market society and canadians don't want a free market society. we have a greater need to manage our immigration more carefully than the us, and we historically have managed our immigration more carefully. trudeau's air-headed do-gooding was rooted in ignorance and it took him almost 10 years to get it. no, canada can't be the world's dumping ground for refugees; we don't have the infrastructure, and our social democracy cannot support it.

canada does not have an undocumented migrant worker problem like the us does; canada does the same thing legally through a temporary foreign worker program. canada's illegal immigrants are mostly refugees. the system works by letting them in first (as is consistent with international law) and then working out their status after. historically, canada let almost all refugees that could get here stay, but that has been changing recently. canada is deporting more refugee claimants, many of which enter through the united states, and currently has a wait list of many years to get to court. 

this change in law is mostly going to affect refugees on the waitlist, who canada lets into the country and allows due process of law for and either grants status to or deports. a large percentage of these refugees end up on welfare, partly because they aren't allowed to work.

the major entrances are through quebec via vermont or new york, but ontario is a frequent destination once they enter. a law banning access to social assistance might dissuade refugees from moving to ontario. right now, that would help ease the burden of overpopulation being felt in ontario - if it works that way. if they keep coming and have to find other ways to find income, it could generate crime and lead to faster deportation, which is one of the more painful ways to get through the bottleneck.

the question as to what to do with their kids is also real. i don't think my neighbours are here legally. they're clearly on welfare. they have something like 15 kids. they can't speak english well enough to work, whether they have work permits or not. if you take away their check, what's next? are you trying to save money? that might not work out.

this is probably also an illegal policy shift, in the end, and it might get challenged in court. canada tends to uphold international law as domestic law. it might be held to contravene a refugee convention and therefore be illegal, and the court might order the government to reverse it.

if that takes five years, that might be enough time for it to have a short term effect, which is what i'm in support of. i don't support this because i like it. but we have to recalibrate.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ont-social-assistance-9.7306269

perhaps hamas supporters should spend less time using religion to stoke violence against the jews and more time reflecting on what their god just let happened to them, and why.

i am not a jew, and i'm certainly not a christian or muslim. i would adhere to the hitchensian view (hitchens being the most recent prominent proponent) that the judaic god is a complete asshole and that while he is obviously a mythical figment of some backwards bronze age tribe's imagination, if he did exist we'd have to overthrow and kill him. the hebrew god could only be seen as an extreme threat to human freedom. the french revolution had the correct approach to this question: burn it down and bury it. violent revolution against this barbaric god would be the only approach possible for a freedom-loving culture, which is why europe had to spend 1000 years fighting against christian colonization being enforced on it by the south and barely survived in tact, before emerging stronger for having fought against christianity and defeated it.

if this asshole god existed, which is their god too, what would it do to the people of gaza? about what happened to them, exactly.

the hard truth is that the outcome in gaza is the correct outcome.

history will acknowledge the destruction of gaza as justice served cold, and viciously, and with the feeling of divine retribution, on a people getting what they had coming, because they deserved it for how they behaved.

the god of the hebrews and arabs would approve this outcome and while i don't believe this god exists, and would support overthrowing it if it did (i'm a greek at heart), i would be on it's side on this one, in converting gaza to ash and rubble for it's crimes. 

sometimes, brutal retribution is the correct response. you gain that insight with age and with maturity, if you're smart.

listen.

the reality is that almost every day in southern ontario - windsor, sarnia, london, guelph-kitchener-cambridge-waterloo, brantford, hamilton-burlington, niagara-st catherines and the us cities of detroit and buffalo but not really toronto proper because of the lake - in the summer nowadays, which starts in april or may and ends in mid to late october and sometimes early november, is pushing 30 degrees celsius, without the humidex, and over 35 when it's humid, which is very often. in fact, the official seasonal high in windsor from july-august is just a hair under 30 degrees. that's not a "heat wave". that's normal.

those are highs over 85 F, or over 95 F with the humidex, in detroit, as seasonal norms in 2026.

if you don't like that, move to saskatoon, or to yellowknife. don't come here and complain it's hot and crank the air. it's not going to get better next year. this is the climate, now, in this part of the world. it's hot here. enjoy it or fuck off.

if you do like hot and humid summers, you should come to southern ontario. the summers here are long, hot, humid and stable, with lengthy droughts and periodic storms that break the droughts.

you can grow things here that you can't grow in most of canada and we should grow more of it.

it does still sometimes get cold here in the winter but it's not as bad as it used to be or still is in most of the country.

lol.

i would suggest replacing her with a robot sex doll running a basic ai program, like the kind on google search. bonus: the robot sex doll won't go off script.

her job was to 1. brush her hair and 2. read a teleprompter. she had no relevant background, experience or education and didn't need it because the job didn't require it. she was 27 years old, practically still a child.

it's easy to lie on command when you're ignorant about what you're reading.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/13/politics/karoline-leavitt-leaving-white-house-trump

this just in

donald trump has ordered that all solid state guitar amps are to be converted to tube amps by the manufacturer, and all amps made in the future will be tube amps. he's explained that tubes are better.

whatever i may have thought or not thought about israel-palestine previously, which was always an attempt to be empirical in acknowledging that israel was in fact absolutely carrying out a "genocide in slow motion" but not particularly critical of that observation, it changed after the barbaric terrorist attack. 

back in the early to mid 00s, i would frequently find myself arguing you should stop calling it apartheid because it's not. apartheid is a type of slavery. israel actually repeatedly rejected apartheid when john kerry tried to present it as a compromise by setting up factories in the west bank for the israeli market. israel said "no, those are jobs and they should go to jews". israel just wants the palestinians gone and removed, it doesn't want to enslave them. i would frequently argue that what's happening is a genocide in slow motion, and cite chomsky, who was saying it even earlier.

i today actually would argue that palestinian statehood should be semi-permanently removed from the table as punishment for the atrocity. maybe we can talk about this again in 2050, if the muslim culture has improved and corrected itself, and there's still anything left. that can't be the outcome of this behaviour.

it should not be on the table today.

it isn't. it's magical thinking.

i don't really have much critical to say about what netanyahu has done recently. i'm more critical about what netanyahu did before 2023 than after. further, i actually support allowing jews to worship at their holy sites and consider that to be a liberal position, and restrictions on jews praying in jerusalem to be a right-wing position, that i don't support. it is factually correct that the west bank is historical israel, while gaza is not (it was the philistine pentateuch 5 city confederation, which we know today was a greek colony founded in the bronze age collapse) and most of lebanon was inhabited by the west-semitic speaking and very near to hebrew phoenecians, who were a sort of greco-jews (jews colonized by greeks).

i don't support the decision to suspend israeli elections and i do think netanyahu has to face his corruption charges in israel. my criticism is related to his conduct in the system, rather than his actual decisions.

it will be up to israeli voters to decide what direction israel moves in after this. i suspect it may be further to the israeli right. but they need to be able to vote.

i would encourage the israeli right to move to a system of just compensation and eminent domain in the west bank. if i agree that the west bank is historical israel and they should get annexation over with and move on, it would be with a rule of law inserted by an enlightened political process, which has not existed to this point.

i would like to see 100% export taxes on oil, electricity, potash, aluminum, steel, lumber, hormone-free milk and the critical minerals the us is asking about.

that money should be invested into social services to help retrain workers who lose their jobs for 21st century employment in electric vehicle production, renewable energy, climate change mitigation and local food production.

https://nationalpost.com/news/if-trump-imposes-50-per-cent-tariffs-should-canada-hit-back-trade-analysts-disagree

i want to be clear that what the data in michigan suggests is that the democratic party is undergoing white flight - that white people are abandoning the democrats, which is structurally shifting the state to the republicans, without shifting it to the right.

that would suggest that michigan is following a similar path as ohio, and it's on the path to becoming a safe republican state, and will likely start electing more republicans to the senate, house and governorship.

the result is that the democrats may get taken over by these fringe identity groups, but they will be increasingly uncompetitive in state races. this should be disappointing, as the democrats had found a formula that worked in michigan: liberal white women. this is being attacked by a small minority and, as we've seen happen often in michigan, the white majority is getting up and leaving instead of digging in and fighting.

the democrats will need to address the issue of white flight in the party, or prepare to accept minority status in the state. that's the choice ahead of it.

these things need to be regulated, clearly.

you should require a license to operate them and need to be above 18.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/e-scooters-pediatrician-survey-9.7305210

it's worth pointing out that while the results in wisconsin and michigan seem to be flipped, they were essentially the same. however, turnout was much higher in wisconsin, so the fringe candidate wasn't able to squeak in. 

this suggests the democrats are doing better in wisconsin, and becoming irrelevant in michigan.

the polling fail was also essentially the same, because the "polls" being referenced weren't really polls, they were advertising by the same central committee. floating fake polls that show your opponent so far behind they have no chance is an understood voter suppression tactic by candidates that are actually running behind to get their opponents to stay home. people missed the obvious tactic due to naivete abour the candidates being "progressive", despite running on the far right. this suppression tactic worked in michigan but not in wisconsin. but, i mean, the difference could have just been how many people are on holidays.

i want to insert a cold dose of reality into midterm predictions. there's a narrative in the media about the democrats winning control of the senate because voters are angry about iran.

i don't see the data to support that.

likely changes, from what i can see:

michigan---->republican

georgia---->republican

new hampshire---->republican: toss-up

virginia------>republican: toss-up

the senate appears to be somewhere between r+1 and r+4, with i think a 2 seat pick for the republicans being most likely. the republicans don't have a single seriously in danger seat at all.

further, trump is going to have some of the republicans that voted against him replaced with loyalists.

trump is going to pick up something close to 5 seats in the senate.

nothing has really changed in the house. each party has about 210 solid seats and there are about 15 tossups. given that the republicans have won two close elections, and nothing has changed, i don't see any reason to forecast a democratic flip. can you show me the seats the democrats will flip? 

to be clear: the democrats are not out of it in the house. i think they have no chance at all of flipping the senate, and are actually going to lose senate seats. they might win the house. but it looks like you'd have to give them something like 40-60 odds, given they failed to do exactly the same thing twice. what's the definition of insanity?

it's still too early to make clear predictions. i might change my mind in november.

for now, i'd say,

odds that republicans increase seat count in senate: 95%.

odds that republicans keep house: 60%. ish.

the us version of the yeast is still fortified.

the best thing to do is probably to bike over to detroit, buy it and bring it back.

i'm realizing that this is somewhat of a longstanding issue in canada. there is apparently an outdated law in canada that attempts to regulate the amount of b vitamins placed in yeast. foreign produced fortified yeast products have been targeted several times.

- in 2014, they briefly banned marmite (uk) due to high fortification

- in 2025, they banned vegemite (aus), and the prime minister had to step in

- now they're banning nutritional yeast (us)

the claims that this is about protecting public health are utterly specious. the reason this is a good product is that it's low protein and low dose. the alternatives are unhealthy high protein beef or higher dosage vitamins. the amount of b vitamins in the yeast are less than in b-complex vitamins or in other fortified products like soy milk. further, these are water soluble vitamins with little chance of creating adverse effects.

there is no rational basis to the law.

rather, there is an ecclesiastical feel to the law, as certain religious groups don't allow the consumption of yeast. further, banning b vitamins from yeast would benefit the beef industry.

the issue would appear to require a more general change in the law.

but, i would also advise civil disobedience. do not obey this law. it has no basis in science.

i want to correct a public health misperception.

there is an air-headed chauvinistic, macho belief that being overweight is ok if you're muscular, and only bad if you're fat. these airheads will even criticize the public health models by arguing it stigmatizes masculinity, and attempts to clinicize them for being strong.

there is no scientific basis whatsoever for the idea that being overweight is less harmful if you're muscular.

excess weight s excess weight. it doesn't matter if you're muscular of flabby, you're still fat and need to lose weight. weight loss goals are absolute and not mitigated by converting fat to muscle. that's a myth.

muscle building diets will give you a heart attack the same way any other high fat diets will.\

calorie restriction is the only correct path to a long and healthy life.

i sent a letter to bob's red mill, who makes the fortified nutritional yeast i buy and they responded by explaining that the fortification was removed as a response to a change in canadian regulations. so, how about that, it's not their fault after all, i need to get on my government.

the american version is still fortified.

there's some disinformation on reddit (which is a bad source of information) that "bob" recently died and they shifted corporate direction, but i see that isn't the case. from what i can tell, canadian regulations regarding animal feed changed and it forced them to defortify:

https://inspection.canada.ca/en/about-cfia/transparency/consultations-and-engagement/completed/yeast-derived-gut-modifier-ingredients

so i have a round of government letter writing coming, and in the mean time i'm going to need to order the item from the us as an import.

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.