the weight loss is proceeding. 

i had a full plate of pasta this morning and maxed out around 143. so, even when i get a big meal, i'm barely topping up over 140. i'm going to want to see that come down to 139ish, max. i'll eat next at 134, probably on friday.

a lot of the items in the list will need to come in on friday in the next grocery run.

the trick with choline is to realize you don't need 550 mg of choline a day if you get more betaine instead, but i've managed to get there, anyways, by adding soy lecithin.

the key thing is realizing that your body stores choline, both in the liver and in cell membranes. they've done studies on people not eating for days or weeks and their choline levels stay constant because your body gets it by killing it's own cells off. humans need choline and you should try to stay on it, but not by eating a lot of meat, which is high in saturated fats and carcinogens. but you're not going to run out of it. your body will reclaim it via weight loss if it needs to.

choline can be converted to betaine, which is then used to convert homocysteine, which is dangerous to your heart, to cysteine, which is a useful amino acid. or, if you get a lot of betaine in your diet, your body can use that directly and use the choline it has for neurotransmitters and lipid transport, instead. betaine is not stored but it's not cleared, either. your body will metabolize virtually all of the betaine you give it, to no clear limit. so, it's a good idea to take a whole lot of betaine, which is mostly found in plant sources like beets, spinach, kale and wheat bran, and to not go crazy on the choline by eating piles of meat. rather, as your body stores choline, you can get a bunch of it later and not worry so much about it day-to-day, so long as you actually keep up on it.

eggs are good for you. eat eggs. i just don't want eggs in my minimal meal plan. eggs are a meal.

i also think i'm actually underestimating the amount of choline in the soy-based salad dressing i use and the soy milk i drink.

but the soy lecithin gives me what i want in a predictable form that i can add to salads and meals more broadly and is going to be added to my diet more generally, so this is my update.

========

i've updated the previous post and i'm going to repost it:

- the b and c are being cut in 4 and taken every six hours instead of all at once.

- 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.

- 1000 iu d at 12:00

- 100 iu e at 0:00 every second day

- the k hasn't come in but is being taken at 6:00

- i am going to take 2 tums after each full meal as a calcium supplement for now on (800 mg elemental calcium)

- 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

- 3 tbsp of hulled hemp seeds

- 3 tbsp of hulled chia seeds

- 3 tbsp of wheat bran

- 3 tbsp of soy lecithin

- 30 g of all bran

- 1 tbsp of paprika

- 1 tbsp of ground cumin

- 1 tbsp of dried oregano

- 2 cloves of garlic

- 1 beet

- 1 avocado

- 50 g broccoli

- dried dill, caesar, hot sauce, nutritional yeast for flavour (yeast does have some b vitamins still)

with

- one banana

- one orange

- two pieces of untoasted quinoa-flax bread with unclear spread

- one tum

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.

not measured:

- chloride (i should get enough in the city water in windsor)

- iodine (i don't know if the sodium in the bread, hot sauce, all bran and caesar, the four sources in this mini meal, is iodized. it probably is and is probably sufficient. i'm going to email each of them. i should measure this.)

- 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)

i might need to add some fried eggs to boost the choline. that would get me some iodine, too. that would be my spread. and i'd add an avocado to the salad bowl of seeds and perhaps add an orange.

my options are minimal for choline.

my b vitamins came in yesterday, and i spent some time yesterday afternoon building a vitamin list to make sure i'm getting everything that had a few additions to it.

- the b and c are being cut in 4 and taken every six hours instead of all at once.

- 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.

- 1000 iu d at 12:00

- 100 iu e at 0:00 every second day

- the k hasn't come in but is being taken at 6:00

- i am going to take 2 tums after each full meal as a calcium supplement for now on (800 mg elemental calcium)

- 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

- 3 tbsp of hulled hemp seeds

- 3 tbsp of hulled chia seeds

- 3 tbsp of wheat bran

- 3 tbsp of soy lecithin

- 30 g of all bran

- 1 tbsp of paprika

- 1 tbsp of ground cumin

- 1 tbsp of dried oregano

- 2 cloves of garlic

- 1 beet

- 1 avocado

- 50 g broccoli

- dried dill, caesar, hot sauce, nutritional yeast for flavour (yeast does have some b vitamins still)

with

- one banana

- one orange

- two pieces of untoasted quinoa-flax bread with unclear spread

- one tum

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) (260% 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.

not measured:

- chloride (i should get enough in the city water in windsor)

- iodine (i don't know if the sodium in the bread, hot sauce, all bran and caesar, the four sources in this mini meal, is iodized. it probably is and is probably sufficient. i'm going to email each of them. i should measure this.)

- 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)

in 2026, chantal hebert looks disturbingly like buzz osbourne.

i just thought everyone would like to know.

americans have spent too many decades getting high discounts on canadian exports, and are clearly taking us for granted.

we should not take away the exports. we should take away the discounts. we should make them pay fair market prices.

"Selfishly, we need aluminum in this country. We don't have it. We get it all from Canada — for the most part — and we need it badly," 

right.

so, there is a high demand for aluminum in the us and a low supply. 

what would that mean in a market society (which i don't support, except right now, very sarcastically), which nafta has done more to break than enforce?

let's do what a capitalist supplier would do and increase the price of aluminum by slapping an export tax of...i dunno.....50%? on it.

i don't know whether i'm going to support carney's response or not. i think i should let him finish and react as best i can. i think that seeing a response will help me understand if i'm going to decide this is theatre or real.

i will reiterate that it is entirely plausible that trump wanted the charade and there is an agreed upon predetermined outcome that will be very bad for canada and very bad for a lot of american workers.

i may support a non-confidence vote if the response is frightening. it seems less likely the more i hear him talk. more likely is that i am going to end up critiquing a response abstractly, and stepping away from it, as it doesn't affect me directly.

but, regardless, i think doug ford deserves the bulk of the blame for this and should be the one to take the fall politically. this is mostly his fault, and he's continuing to talk about blocking energy instead of taxing it.

the economic consequences to canada in terms of lost revenue would be extremely substantive should canada block oil or electricity. that would be massively stupid, but ford is a retard. can somebody do the math on the difference in revenue between blocking american alcohol in ontario and taxing it at 100%? ontario has likely walked away from millions of dollars in revenue, while biting at the elephant's heels like an annoying chihuahua in a show of intended defiance, for sport. that is stupid! conversely, we could take advantage of this by hiking prices and profiting from it, which would be a smart response. we could do this with export taxes.

i think that western canada should be seeking to abolish what is called the western select discount. alberta oil should be more expensive than texas oil, after this.

ontario, like mexico, is actually an indigenous word that predates the colonial era. 

the names of the great lakes were not chosen by white people (except superior).

the province of ontario was named after the iroquois word for the lake.

if trump succeeds in forcing the car industry on this continent into a crisis, it may never really recover, given that it may find itself unable to compete with electric vehicles and other imports. the last time this happened, during bush II, chrysler got bought by an italian company and the united states and canada both briefly owned a portion of the other big detroit companies. 

the obama administration missed an opportunity to direct these companies to decarbonize. a second opportunity may be coming.

if the auto industry blows up again, it should not be bailed out unless it agrees to shift direction. if it refuses, the companies should be allowed to fail, so they can be replaced.

destruction is not inherently negative. sometimes, what exists must be destroyed in order to rebuild.

i'm tired of the self-serving anti-american rhetoric from the abject idiot doug ford, who is more responsible for the collapse of this trade agreement than anybody else in canada. his bitching and moaning may help his political career, as a distraction from all the job losses and mismanagement, but it is not helping ontario and not helping canada.

shut the fuck up, doug ford. you're half retarded and you're harming the economy and the culture with your ignorant ass-talking.

maybe we should just elect ace ventura if what we want is a torontonian that talks out of his ass. he's funnier than mike myers.

even the taste has gone to shit. it used to have a nice, italian, olive-y taste. now, all the heart-clogging whey and palm oil has ruined the olive taste and made it taste bland, like butter. butter has no taste; the taste of butter, like it's texture, is boring and gross.

when i buy margarine, i am buying margarine, not butter. i don't want my margarine to taste or look like butter, i want it to taste and look like margarine. it's not a substitute for butter. butter is disgusting and something i don't want in my diet - i am not seeking to replace butter, i am seeking to abolish butter.

now, i am looking for a margarine substitute to replace the margarine they ruined and i want it to look, taste, melt, smell and fry like margarine.

something else i've noticed is that the margarine has been changed so that it's all soft and gross, like disgusting saturated butter left out on the counter, a of a sudden. they seem to be putting milk in it now, and it seems like it's the milk that is making the texture soft and gross. margarine is supposed to be firm, not gross and goopy. soft butter is an utterly disgusting product that should not be consumed at all by anybody; it's almost sheer poison, in terms of fat and salt. the whole point of buying margarine is that you don't like processed milk products and don't like butter and don't want goopy gross shit on your toast, you want something firm.

so, that's cut. yuck. they've destroyed a good product by adding disgusting palm and disgusting milk. i'm not buying that again.

i'll have to do some shopping to find a firmer plant based spread that isn't soft and goopy and gross, has 0% saturated fat and is high in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats.

the canola-olive oil mix together (without gross palm oil) is ideal due to the high smoke point, the omega 3s from canola and the omega 9s from olive oil. if i can find something that's fortified, and maybe has a dash of sunflower oil and a bit of extra ala, that would be a good replacement for what i used to buy, which has been ruined by the replacement of sunflower oil with palm oil. 

they must sell a canola-olive mix for cooking oil, right?

and then i can look at some kind of hemp or flax butter for bread and salads.

the other reason i bought olive oil & canola margarine is that the burn point is so high. you add a bunch of palm oil to that, and you bog it down with saturated fat, and ruin the high smoke point.

...and i'm thinking about adding chia seeds broadly given that hemp is such a pain in the ass to buy nowadays. maybe legalization of marijuana is making hemp harder instead of easier to produce? i dunno.

yeah. 

i'm completely boycotting anything with any derivative of the palm tree in it from this point moving forward. i will not buy your product if it contains any sort of palm product. and i don't want coconut products, which are just as horrible, in my food either.

if you want me to buy your product, you'll need to remove the palm oil and replace it with

- canola and/or walnut

- olive and/or avocado

- hemp

- flax

- sunflower (minimally)

- soy

 i may start putting ground flax in my salads (on top of the hemp) for the extra ala.

palm oil should be labelled as unfit for human consumption and completely banned for any use as a food product in all advanced societies, including canada,

i also noticed the soy i used to buy, which was bought in canada by a competitor and shut down, is still available for sale in the states. this soy was nutritionally superior to the product it was purchased by (nature's own), which i've consequently decided to boycott. i've switched to natura, which is a smaller company that is sometimes hard to find. i cannot order the low protein version i'd rather order and nobody stocks the strawberry.

can i order this soy product from the states?

i'm going to sit down with this again soon.

a part of finishing setting up the kitchen will be shifting the diet blog, serious blog and access to this blog to a kitchen youtube streaming device that's a bit more capable. i haven't decided what i'm doing yet.

i want to take a look at each meal more carefully and rebuild it for nutrients and healthy fats and purge it of processed elements like palm oil and excess protein. i'll do that as a part of finalizing the kitchen build.

i'm also looking at completely removing margarine and just buying olive oil for cooking. they're not just cutting fortified nutrients and slowly reducing the olive oil, they're also adding all this needless palm oil, which is just gross. palm oil shouldn't be seen as edible at all. the result of dumping all of this palm oil in the margarine and other food is that the omega 6 ratios are jumping up. i'm guessing they're doing this to appeal to stupid arabs, who are the most obese and unhealthy people in the world (they're grosser than americans). the reason i picked the margarine i picked was due to the high fortification, the high omega 3 and the olive oil, and that's all been cut out and replaced with disgusting, nearly poisonous palm oil.

i have never bought butter before in my entire life and never will.

i might consider putting limes and kiwis in my garden salads as an example of the kind of shift i'm looking at.

if i shift my diet to just getting 100% of the following from food and worry about supplements for the rest, it's going to cut some of my meals down by 40-50% in terms of calories.

- a  from cheese, eggs, carrot, peppers

- b5 from avocadoes

- b9 from yeast, beets (still)

- b12 from yeast, soy

- choline from eggs, kale, bacon

- inositol from citrus fruits

- c from most things i eat

- e from red peppers, kiwis, avocados, kale

- iron from spices

- calcium from soy, cheese

the base ingredients of my salads and salsa are:

- tomato

- red pepper

- beet

- carrot

- avocado

- lime, orange or both

- broccoli

with paprika (As), hemp seeds (omega-3s), nutritional yeast (b9, still), dill, cumin (iron), oregano (iron) and sunflower seeds (e) added.

i eat them with fortified bread, pasta, etc.

my caesars are made with kale for e and other things. i drink my coffee with fortified soy and drink a lot of it with meals.

i put a lot of effort into this and it's still probably good as a base but i'm no longer looking towards things like yogurt and cheese to fill in gaps with fortifications. i'll be removing that excess protein and replacing it with vitamin pills.

a vitamin e deficiency actually makes sense on a number of levels. i haven't ever been tested for e.

i was tested as low for iron, d and b12 and adjusted and they all came up. i was tested for a and b9 after i adjusted and they were both high. the b9 was extremely high. i expected to be high in c and i was. i was tested indirectly for k and my ptt was normal. k is mostly for blood clotting, so you can tell if you're low on k by checking for clotting. this was free and the k test was expensive. i've been tested for every mineral imaginable and couldn't find anything, although that was in 2021, when my diet was better and i was exercising more because i wasn't being stalked and drugged by pathetic, disgusting, perverted losers.

iirc, i was going to do the e test later and then didn't after the other tests came in high. i decided i was ok. i was going to test for other b vitamins too and never did. that was in 2021, too.

at this point, i'm been off my diet so long that i wouldn't be surprised i i did have multiple deficiencies, including in iron. i would want to wait before i tested anything. i was making sure i kept my b vitamins up with the yeast, until they frustratingly cut it. those imported b complex pills should be here this week. they cleared customs and went to toronto, which is the wrong way but whatever.

i took a second dose and it created a pleasant feeling of awakeness and clarity. i've been experiencing chronic blurriness for a long time, an inability to feel fully awake and this unpleasant constant boring shitty half-stoned feeling with this awful tiredness. i've been sleeping far too much. maybe it was because i cut the menoprim and the e, and it just took a few years for me to run out, and then i never caught it.

i'll be taking a 100 iu e pill thrice a week - monday, wednesday and friday at 00:00. sunday is skipped, but i may double up from time to time, as i did this week to start.

i may ultimately adjust my diet to reduce calories (and especially to reduce protein) and just focus on vitamin pills to get nutrients instead of eating. if i'm relying on the pills, there's certain things (mostly processed) that i won't need in my diet anymore at all. this is the less preferable option but health canada has left me with no choice by cutting the fortifications on almost everything i was relying on to get sufficient levels of vitamins while keeping my fat and protein intake down. the solution i'm left with is to cut large amounts of the food out altogether, as useless calories.

my diet moving forward is likely to be about 90% fruits, vegetables, spices and eggs and almost no processed foods like yogurt or milk products at all.

if this is what they think, it's not going to work.

there is not a single senate seat likely to swing to the democrats. conversely, there's several likely to swing to the republicans and trump is replacing dissenters in his own party with loyalists.

american voters are primarily concerned about immigration right now. that's the primary ballot question. they don't care about canada. worse, many of the house seats are not in play due to gerrymandering. the united states does not have an independent redistricting process like canada, it's a politicized process.

these tariffs are not on necessities, it's mostly on luxury items. they might cause some inflation, but not much and certainly not enough to make a dent. it wouldn't matter if they did.

the most likely outcome right now is that the republicans will gain seats in the senate, and trump will have an easier time controlling it.

america is not going to save itself.

https://www.thestar.com/news/analysis/mark-carney-is-putting-canada-on-the-ballot-for-the-us-midterms/article_6991f285-a2c1-4f2a-8ae2-cf4f544c1e61.html

the media's take on el nino continues to be extremely annoying. it's a hidden rejection of climate science masquerading as real science that is mostly pseudo science.

in fact, the direction of legitimate, actual scientific research and study into the enso over the last 20 years or so has been to conclude that it's effects have been overstated and it has far less of an effect on the overall global climate than previously thought. what they're calling the super el nino is an effect of climate change converging with the solar maximum, and not a cause or driver of climate at all.

the weather where i am, at the southern tip of the great lakes basin, and the point where the midwest meets the atlantic coast, and not far from the mississippi drainage region, has in recent years seen it's weather largely defined by an unusually warm atlantic ocean, which has had the effect of blocking weather patterns moving from west to east and pushing them up further north. they keep calling for rain here and the rain keeps moving north and missing us. this is because the atlantic coast's influence is becoming stronger, as the boswash region sinks into the ocean and we get physically closer to the coastline.

if the atlantic stays warm, there should be few to minimal effects of el nino here this year at all, and the direction of the developing scientific consensus - which is that el nino is an effect and not a cause - will continue to strengthen itself.

https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/products/ocean/sst/anomaly/

i think they have a public responsibility to release the text.

this "we don't negotiate in public" bullshit needs to stop. you'd better fucking start negotiating in public, because negotiating in secret is fascist and undemocratic.

the liberal party is famous for it's shady backroom deals, and it's made a virtue out of a valid criticism of how it operates.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/conservatives-details-canada-us-trade-deal-9.7317541

i think canada should have one of these, targeted at the us.

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

why do you think milk is good for you, as an adult?

the fat? the protein?

milk is intended for infants. it's kind of psychotic that we would drink the milk of a different species, as an adult. it's kind of gross, even, and a good percentage of humans actually get sick when they try.

no.

the only reason that cow's milk is good for you at all is that it's fortified.

unfortified cow's milk is a high fat, high protein junk food.

i took my first vitamin e this morning. is it possible my vitamin e is low?

well, when they cut it out of the margarine, they removed the only stable source in my diet. i get some e from red peppers, kiwis, avocados, sunflower seeds. but, to meet the rdi without the 50% i used to get from the margarine would require consuming an unhealthy amount of calories. i'm not meeting it, with certainty, and am not sure how i could. i can say that.

due the removal of vitamin e fortification from a number of items out of absurd concerns about "over-fortifcation", i would consider it virtually impossible for a person to meet the rdi for vitamin e from food in canada today without becoming obese in the process. i might suspect vitamin e deficiency is going to become a serious problem for young people in canada over the next decade and result in unnecessary health care costs that could be resolved by returning to fortification in margarine and dairy.

the major symptoms of deficiency are dry skin and peripheral neuropathy, which is a component of the hemiplegic migraines i've been getting for the last ten years. the migraines initially went away after i added fortified nutritional yeast to my diet (i assigned that to boosting my b12), but have come back since they cut the vitamin e from the margarine.

given my absorption problem, yes, it's possible that i have a vitamin e deficiency.

i used to take a pill called menoprim made by a company that disappeared 2-4x a day that was great because it had a reasonable amount of vitamin e - 50% of the rdi. it also had a ton of b6, magnesium, calcium and phyoestrogens from soy, black cohosh, dong quai, red clover and other plants. it wasn't powerful enough to transition me, and i stopped when i went back on estrogen, but i found that a combination of menoprim, wild yam and saw palmetto was enough to keep me looking effeminate. maybe it was a placebo, and i was just noticing natural variation and the fact that i never went through puberty, but the pictures i have of me from 2005-2008, when i was on herbs and not estradiol, are in truth as good or better than the ones after 2009. the vitamin e, though, was definitely good for my skin and hair.

i probably should have found a secondary low dose of e a long time ago.

it's possible that what happened in 2016 is that my vitamin e stores finally ran out and i started to get migraines from it. i was taking the menoprim from about 2005 to about 2012, when the company disappeared. the store i bought it from said the phone number was out of service.

this was the product:

i would not want to take it now because it might block the estrogen i'm on.

but i do think it was an excellent vitamin e supplement and i should have replaced that source of vitamin e years ago. i have now.

if trump succeeds in breaking nafta, it will be up to the next administration to replace it with something. 

canada does have a substantive task, here.

it needs to convince the united states that it benefits from an open trade agreement more than it benefits from a shift towards autarky. 

there are benefits to canada from walking away from nafta in the sense of abandoning the non-trade aspects of the deal. most of the criticism of nafta had to do with the rights it gave to american investors to block sovereign canadian decisions. nafta has prevented us from doing a lot of the nation building projects we wanted to do, and it might have in the end cancelled a lot of these projects carney is pointing towards because it blocks government subsidies. nafta might cancel that pipeline through bc, if somebody wants to use it that way.

squirming out of those restrictions and starting over with a bilateral fta that is not all of these other things but just an fta - and a second bilateral fta with mexico - is potentially a better future in the long run. but we'll have to convince them it's worth it.

to the extent that canada creates retaliatory tariffs, those tariffs should be very carefully and thoughtfully crafted and bounced off multiple people in and out of government to ensure they aren't dumb and be chosen based on their efficacy. they should not necessarily be dollar-for-dollar.

there may not be enough to rationally respond to to get to dollar-for-dollar and that's ok.

if you want to keep with the stupid hockey analogies, trump is a bully but he's also what hockey people call an enforcer. what that means is that a big part of what he's about is yelling stupid shit at you to get into your head to throw you off.

a canadian response of dollar-for-dollar tariffs might be the consequence of international capital colluding across borders to create a targeted attack on the north american working class.

or it might be trump's constant chirps throwing carney off his game.

either way, i hope the pmo rethinks this.

tariffs are not inherently dumb, but they are hard and they are usually dumb and usually backfire. what i've heard so far sounds like dumb tariffs that are going to backfire.

i don't doubt that canada needs a good, careful, well thought through response that should include keynesian spending (primarily), increases in investment, targeted tax cuts, export taxes, subsidies, retraining programs and, perhaps, extremely minimal tariffs.

what i've been hearing from mr. carney so far is not that. insisting on dollar-for-dollar tariffs is not rational, it's hot-headed and emotional and irrational. it's what trump wanted and got, either through collusion or manipulation. carney has let trump get into his head and throw him off.

it's passion over reason.

while i don't have a rigorous opposition to taxing american industrial equipment (an economist would call this capital investment) for sectors like agriculture, i do have some questions as to it's effectiveness and whether it's a rational counter policy.

it would seem to me that hiking the price of equipment in the agriculture sector, which i would presume means things like tractors, is going to in the end increase the price of canadian food products, either by forcing producers to shift the costs to consumers or by forcing producers to buy more expensive canadian machinery, when it is even available at all. there is going to be some percentage of this equipment that just is not made here.

i am not a farmer, but my understanding is that the way this works today is that farmers sign contracts with machinery manufacturers, who will actually send techs to the farms to install the equipment. the farmers don't do much farming anymore, it's contracted out to what are essentially technology companies. if these farmers are locked into 10 or more year contracts, they might not have the ability to opt out. the stated goal of coercing canadian farmers to buy canadian machinery to replace american machinery might therefore not be realistic. if they do go down that path, it might literally costs millions of dollars to turn it over.

the likely result of taxing american equipment is consequently going to be inflation in the price of canadian food, making canadian products less competitive. this is the classic mistake ricardo (a socialist, btw) warned about, and exactly the kind of dumb policy that trump has been implementing. this is why i'm accusing carney of being trump-lite. to fight trump, he's become trump, and that's a slippery slope to catastrophe.

it would seem to me that a better - and more traditionally liberal capitalist - approach would be to provide tax cuts for canadian firms and farmers when they buy canadian capital investment, instead of to tax american equipment on the way in. that's the sort of policy you would expect from an economist, not a tariff on foreign made capital investment. that's actually a terrible economic policy, from any liberal capitalist ideological position.

if you just become the thing you hate, you aren't actually fighting it.

i may have little interest in this and not care much for keeping up with competitive bouts between international capital firms, like blackrock, but i don't want to pay higher prices for bread to prop up some fucker's trust fund.

one easy way to get around this is to bring back the wheat board in it's previous role. canadian farmers are going to be selling less to the american market. that would provide price stability in the short term.

i want to lay down a spectrum on this and i'm going to over-simplify it.

the right should respond to this with nationalism and patriotism and see the conflict as one between two nations, canada and the united states.

the left should be critical of this and should instead see the conflict as having to do with class. they should see an attack on workers on both sides of the border and try to build a transnational working class response to an attack by international capital.

i broadly support government spending on housing and climate change transition and mitigation. i can support that. 

i don't like mark carney very much. i don't like how he talks, his rhetoric, his turns of phrase. he really leaves me with cold with his mannerisms. i wouldn't want to have a beer with this guy.

let me tell you what i like about what he said.

- he indicated that the counter-tariffs won't target food but will rather be focused on industrial equipment. 

- he seems to realize that the solution to this attack - he suggested we're at war - is keynesian spending and has identified houses and electricity grids as things to fund. he didn't talk about military spending. i hope the next thing on the list is climate change mitigation, from sea walls to water bombers.

i can't tell you if he made the right choice. i haven't seen the details. but my concern is how this stupid competitive behaviour affects low income canadians, and i don't hear any red flags.

i will tentatively withdraw my demand for a non-confidence vote, pending clarification on what's actually about to get taxed.

some american goods i might support higher taxes on:

- guns

- cars

- clothes

- video games

- movies and tv shows

- alcohol (why don't you tax it instead of ban it?)

- cigarettes

- bibles

- gambling of any and all sorts

- internet video and news sites

- ticket sales for american performers of any types, including american sports teams. for example, a taylor swift concert ticket in toronto or a canadiens-bruins hockey game in montreal would have a tariff surcharge.

- salaries of american athletes playing in canada. so, an american signed to a toronto sports team would have to forfeit a percentage of their salary as a tariiff/tax.

i would support going ahead with a carbon tax on american imports, that levies higher taxes on dirtier goods, whatever they are.

the idea is you tax things you don't like.

but don't tax food. that makes the poor pay for the rich, and it's about time that working people on both sides of this artificial border stood up to that and said "enough".

a 50% tax on food by the federal government is a good reason for working class canadians to take to the streets and burn the government offices down.

if my government wants to hike taxes on imported food to try to force me to buy local food, my response is "fuck you", and i'm going to boycott the local producers and fight to tear down the state rather than be coerced into supporting local industry.

go fuck yourselves, nationalists.

you could look at the upside of this. what sectors are getting affected?

- lumber

- steel

- cars

if that means more trees and less pollution in canada, i'm not going to shed a tear for the loss of profits to some capitalist car company or something. we can retrain these people to do more environmentally responsible jobs.

i would like to see large export taxes on the sectors that trump exempted, which are the items the us needs and will pay for. that would include oil, uranium, potash, electricity, aluminum, etc. 

what i do not want to see is a tax hike on food staples like orange juice or coffee. i'd like to see more american food items, not less, because they have higher fortification levels, and health canada has become retarded in it's obsession about "over-fortification", which is not science but just stupid hippie bullshit.

i want to suggest to mr carney that he have a concept of class consciousness when drawing up these tariffs. there is some possibility that what we're dealing with is actually collusion and that what's happening is actually a coordinated attack on the north american working class on a level that we haven't seen since the 80s. that might be the right way for the left to frame this. if he does this the way that mr trump wants him to, we're going to have 50-100% inflation on basic grocery items, and that's going to be a stab to the throat of working people on both sides of the border. it's an opportunity to go out and march on the streets and revolt.

but if mr carney does this the smart way - something that mr trudeau couldn't figure out - the tariffs might get absorbed entirely by bad environmental actors and be directed at the wealthy, who can pay for it.

go ahead and tax luxury automobiles. whatever. who cares?

but don't fucking tax food. you fuckers.

i would encourage canadians to respond to the retaliatory tariffs by boycotting canadian producers, and leaving their money in the bank, instead, until this is done.

let's force a recession, canada. let's tear the system down.

and then let's get rid of this maga stooge in the pmo.

i am strongly opposed to retaliatory tariffs on american goods and would call for a vote of non-confidence in the house of commons to dissolve the government in response to this decision. 

retaliatory tariffs do not protect canadian sovereignty, they are a vicious attack on the canadian working class that will hike the cost of living and lead to immense job losses.

i neither want to buy more canadian goods nor do i want to pay higher taxes on american goods; i want to tear my government down and replace it with a new one.

canada should wait for a new us administration before signing any agreements with the united states.

if i was carney, i might even choose not to accept calls from donald trump or his cronies.

trump's dishonest negotiating process is predictable at this point.

1. he tells you his demands.

2. you probably reject them

3. he makes concessions verbally to get you to agree

4. then he writes an agreement with the initial demands he amended verbally

you're supposed to get tricked into signing for the initial demands after verbally agreeing to the concessions. but nobody should be tricked by this anymore. you have to demand he puts it in writing up front.

if you don't sign it, he accuses you of breaking the deal or walking back the concessions.

iran, like europe, has an indigenous religion. the indigenous religion in iran is called zoroastrianism, and does still exist. there are almost no practitioners of indigenous european religion today (there were still some lingering deep into the end of the european dark ages, and trickling into the renaissance, but they mostly disappeared with the european enlightenment. isaac newton, while professing christian faith publicly to avoid getting his head chopped off, was known to be a pagan and an alchemist and left quite a bit of this in his private writings. francis bacon preceded and the french revolution followed. there was something shady called free masonry that existed into the 20th century and was probably an evolution of indigenous european religon, and a modern kind of mystery religion, but it was kept secret to hide it from the christian totalitarians, partly because it was advocating for an indigenous european system of government called representative democracy, that survived in tact in britain while disappearing and being replaced with totalitarian/absolutist oriental christian monarchism almost everywhere else) but there do remain practitioners of indigenous iranian religion. one prominent/famous indigenous iranian and zoroastrian (not really, probably) of recent years was freddy mercury, the lead singer of the band queen from the 60s until his death from aids.

zoroastrianism was essentially a novel monotheist offshoot of the indo-european religion, which today only survives in the form of indian hinduism, which is the surviving religion most similar to indigenous european religion. 

there are surviving indo-european religion variants in small, isolated communities scattered across russia today that are difficult to comprehensively describe or catalog. there are convincing accounts of isolated pagan villages surviving in scotland into the 1700s and the behaviour of the american "pilgrims" seems to have broadly been more pagan than christian. as was often the case in "christian europe", which was overthrown in the renaissance and permanently killed off in the french revolution, the christianity was a facade enforced by the authorities, and they instantly went back to the old ways as soon as some difficulty like a famine arose. there are convincing accounts of child sacrifice in post-roman italy into the 10th century to ask the old gods to stop the famine or expel the barbarians, by what appeared to actually be catholic priests. these are not mythology. this is the real history. some europeans lived in these awful feudal arrangements governed by states and churches, but more europeans lived pretty separate from any state or church oversight, in autonomous and democratic collectives. the church had no more power over most europeans then than it does now. this concept of history as the european church being overthrown by democracy is a convenient fiction promoted both by conservatives narrating a return to a past that never existed and by revolutionaries creating a strawman authoritarian past to tear down to rebuild a new society on top of. but there were no monotheistic variants of indigenous european religion and the idea was largely seen as absurd. the entire pagan narrative collapses on the introduction of monotheism.

the jewish historical records assign themselves as the first monotheists but they are unreliable. most of this stuff was actually written in the 6th century ad, making the old testament in truth newer than the new testament. finding older sources than reformed judaism is actually very rare and when we do find them (like the dead sea scrolls) we learn that the jewish writing we have today is very different than the old jewish writing. we don't have actual real jewish sources from the time of the captivity, let alone the time of moses. we think much of it was written during the captivity but the sources we actually have are from after the fall of rome and in the early middle ages. further, it's actually fairly obvious that these jewish sources were overwhelmingly influenced by persian religion. who let the jews return to israel? the zoroastrians, the indigenous persians, under cyrus the great.

if there were more reliable jewish/phoenecian records from the period, they were burned in a historical event called the carthaginian genocide, which sought to eliminate carthaginian civilization from the historical record and largely succeeded. if there was anything left after that, they burned it in the temple burnings. what survived clearly confuses actual jewish history with iranian and sumerian history, and is probably based on older sumerian and iranian sources. we're consequently led to believe the jews invented monotheism because the iranian stories survived in jewish writings and disappeared in iran.

but it does follow that the indigenous iranians should actually be credited with inventing monotheism, not the jews, and the remaining practitioners of indigenous iranian religion are the last practitioners of the original form of monotheism, which heavily influenced judaism, christianity and islam. 

this is important to keep in mind when you try to understand iran, today, as it has yet to succeed in overthrowing islam and returning to it's indigenous cultural roots, the way that europe overthrew christianity in the age of reason. the people of iran are not what the iranian state projects them as, and the history books will no doubt get this wrong, as all sides project false narratives to advance their respective ideologies. 

i continue to stand with the indigenous people of iran in their struggle against islamic colonialism, which means supporting groups like the kurds, who are the real iranians seeking to reclaim their land, and not colonial actors like the son of the shah. 

no, listen.

it's entirely in the realm of plausibility that sweden gets in a war with germany. it's entirely plausible that it gets in a war with russia.

it's entirely plausible that france gets in a war with germany. or with the uk.

these things have happened more than twice.

the current pax americana in western europe was created by the american occupation of the german empire after it's defeat in world war two. it was not something that arose organically in europe, except in the sense of europe being conquered by hitler, by napoleon or by julius caesar. these periods are anomalous. they don't last long and they end in brutal conflict.

so, sweden was a middle power. 

in some sense, france was a middle power.

was canada actually a middle power? the americans have had longstanding designs on us but we don't really want the hassle. we were a middle power by necessity, not by choice. we always had to face the fact that they might come back.

why isn't kingston the capital of canada anymore? it used to be.

it was something we talked about during the pearson and trudeau years, which were the nixon, ford and carter years. we had to prepare for the inevitability. we didn't have the choice not to. so, yeah - we called cuba, we called angola, we called india and we called the soviets, too. we built relationships outside of nato. that was something we had to be ready for, and something we still need to be ready for now.

this administration doesn't seem to understand what american hegemony even is. trump thinks he's the sultan of the americas or something. he operates on dominance and submission. he's the oriental despot that western society has demonized since socrates. and he seems to think that's normal. it is normal, it's business normality, it's the fascist character of global capitalism. this mindfuck is a long time coming for canada, but we shouldn't pretend we never saw it coming, as we did.

the b complex vitamins i wanted to buy are...it's too much. it's needless. and that's not how i designed my diet because that's not how you metabolize b vitamins. the fact that these were capsules would mean i was stuck with them as they were.

i have, instead, put in an order for 250 b-50 tablets that i can cut in 4 and take every six hours with my hormones.

you can split the b-complex up into completely water soluble vitamins that you eliminate in a matter of minutes and vitamins that are water soluble but can be stored short to medium term in your liver.

the completely water soluble vitamins are b1, b2, b3, b5, b6, b7 and inositol. your body cannot store these vitamins at all and mostly doesn't try. you might store a little b6 for a few days and your body can actually convert b5 back and forth from co-enzyme a (meaning that b5 actually isn't true vitamin, it's like choline and inositol), but the others are completely gone in under 12 hours.

if you take extremely high levels of b3, you can get a headache and trigger into a panic attack. b1, b2, b5, b6, b7 and inositol are virtually impossible to overdose on, although if you over do it you can put strain on your kidneys clearing it.

the b-50 i bought has 50 mg of b1, b2, b3, b5, b6 and inositol and 150 mcg of b7. if i cut the tablets in four, that will be 12.5 (roughly) mg of b1, b2, b3, b5, b6 and inositol and 37.5 mcg of b7 in each dose, which is way above the rdis for b1, b2, b5 and b6, just above it for b7 and just below it for b3, four times a day. this will basically max me out on b vitamins. there is no rdi for inositol, which is the chemical previously known as b8 (because we can make it ourselves). 12.5 mg is a decent dose, and should make sure my brain has enough synapses. i will further seek to redesign my diet around 100% rdis without going too much over, and may keep the unfortified yeast because it remains a good source of b9 and a decent supplemental source of b12.

i should be constantly wired. this is a crazy energy drink, and i shouldn't crash, or shouldn't crash hard.

the pill also has 680 mcg of b9, 50 mcg of b12 and 50 mg of choline. this is a bit higher than the rdi for b9, way higher than the rdi for b12 (but way less than most pills) and a very small amount of choline. choline does not have an rdi, but you should aim for 500 mg and get it mostly from food with cholesterol. don't over do it, or you'll clog your arteries.

your body stores these three b vitamins; it stores b9 and choline for as long as a few months and can actually store b12 for years. they're water soluble, but your body uses them more like your body uses fat soluble vitamins, in the sense that it stores them in the liver on digestion and then yanks them out of the liver as it needs them. don't fuck your liver up if you want that to work right.

so, with b9 and b12 you don't want constant replenishment. with b9, it's a better idea to give your body constant small amounts, as it is digesting it to bonds in your liver. if you give it too much at once, it just gets pissed out. taking 170 mcg every 6 hours is about half of the rdi (a little less) every six hours, for about 170% of it every 24 hours. that should force me to digest it and store it to the maximum level that i can. b9 is important in development and should help with memory formation and storage in adults.

taking 12.5 mcg of b12 every six hours is like taking a dose of the fortified yeast i've been on every 6 hours. it's a big increase, even over my diet plan (about 4x as much) but it's also a lot less than any other pills i could find, many of which had 500 mcg or 1000 mcg, which is craziness. the literature suggests no clinical consequences for this, but i don't want to do that to my kidneys. 12.5 mcg is still 4x the rdi, every 6 hours, which should certainly overpower my gastric acid deficiency, without moving to absurd levels.

that 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 could'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.

i would remind canada - ms. charette, mr leblanc, mr carney - not to agree to anything verbally with this american administration. insist on everything in writing.

the yeast did come in last night and it is fortified. 

the reality is that rdis are actually not all that useful in terms of understanding how your body processes nutrients. i built my diet around them as they're the best thing we've got, but it's important to understand how they're deficient.

your body will remove essentially all water soluble vitamins from your body in something like 6 hours, so taking a 500% dose of b1 is only useful if you can't absorb it. whether you take 3 mg or 300 mg of water soluble nutrients, you piss it out in well under 24 hours and should consequently take more in less than 24 hours. with a b complex, the best thing to do is take one every 12 hours, or half of one every 12 hours. that's why i take the c in four small doses - i'm trying to maintain constant c levels. you can't absorb 250 mg of c even, taking 1000 mg is utterly pointless, unless you need that much to absorb 100 mg.

with fat soluble vitamins, your body doesn't use them at all, it stores them. when you take any amount of a, e, d or k, your body metabolizes those vitamins by storing them, and then accesses them from storage. so, how much fat soluble vitamin you have in your blood is determined autonomously, by your body, as it pulls it out of your liver and pancreas. d that you generate by sunlight is used in real time. but the idea of an rdi for fat soluble vitamins is not coherent, then, as your goal is trying to max out the storage in your liver. you can't increase serum a, e, d or k via your diet, you can only increase your stores. that's why low fat soluble vitamins are often caused by retrieval issues (like a damaged liver or a genetic enzyme deficiency) rather than dietary deficiency.

that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to meet the rdis, but with fat soluble it's probably too much 

(if you don't have a determined deficiency) and with water soluble it's probably half of what you need over 24 hours, and you should probably aim to meet the rdis every single meal rather than every day. they should be reinterpreted as recommended single meal intakes, not rdis. you should get 100-200% of the rdi for b1, b2, b3, b5, b6, b7, b9, b12, inositol, choline, c and most minerals except iron and calcium, respectively, at every single meal, not cumulatively every day.

the russian attack on ukraine is unquestionably brutal, and has exposed immense incompetence in the russian leadership, but it is not without justification in terms of russian self-defence and it does not come close to the loss of life that the americans inflicted on iraq, under far less justified pretenses. 

canada's decision to provide immense financial, logistical and military support to eastern europe for unjustifiable reasons has made us less safe by bleeding us of resources with absolutely no chance of reciprocal aid. 

yet, we are increasing aid to eastern europe today, even as the americans threaten us with veiled statements of violence, by warning us they won't tolerate retaliation in a trade war they started. the incompetence at the highest levels of our military is startling and staggering, but consistent with the general march towards incompetence canada has seen over the last several decades.

the entire concept of the "middle power" during the cold war was based on the idea of non-alignment. it wasn't some naive projection of an american empire without the americans overseeing it. that is why canada built independent relationships with non-aligned actors like india, brazil, iran (at the time), china, egypt and south africa and had a different relationship with the soviet union than the united states did. canadian leadership understood that it may get stuck in the middle of a hot war - hence the term middle power. it didn't mean middle in strength, which is what it seems to mean now. it meant in between the polarizations of the cold war, in the middle of the united states and the soviet union, which we physically and ideologically are.

canada's position as a middle power was consequently similar to the nordic countries, sweden and finland. canada, like norway, did join nato. however, it had similar concerns to sweden, in terms of realizing it wasn't actually entirely clear what side of a hot war it might actually end up on. the swedes leaned towards nato, but they were a non-aligned middle power, meaning they were in the middle of the two polarizations, geographically and ideologically. 

neither canada nor sweden are "middle powers" in terms of strength. we'd get wiped out if we tried to fight a war with either power, unless we had the support of the other. there's nothing middle about us in terms of strength. it's not what the term meant.

orwell is cackling somewhere.

the complete alignment of canada with the united states that took place under mulroney, and which chretien tried to break from but got thrown out of office for resisting, was warned against by the architects of the middle power strategy that were still alive, most prominently the elder trudeau and, in later years, most notably maude barlow. they warned against a "monstrous swindle" that would destroy our sovereignty, make us reliant on and subservient to the united states and prepare us for annexation. 

well, they were right.

and here we are.

if we want to seriously return to a middle power strategy, it means having strong relationships with the russians, the chinese and most importantly the indians. our political leadership would have to completely turn over for that to happen, and we'd have to make up for 40 years of lost time, and undo 40 years of bad policy. it's a tall order, and it can't happen before midnight est.

i've been arguing for years that it is in canada's self-interest to stop being aggressive with russia and instead try and build a positive relationship with them. our proximity to the united states is obvious, and our history is in the french and british empires, but there is no country on the planet more similar to canada in terms of the issues it faces in the future than russia. there is a strong basis for collaboration and common ground with the russians.

this week, years worth of foolish foreign and domestic policies are converging into what might be a self-imposed catastrophe in canada that may trip us over the line into true failed state status. for the first time in decades, the threat of physical attack by the united states is not hyperbolic. and who is going to stand up for canada?

not europe. not china. not mexico.

the bridge to russia, which we have so thoroughly burned, would be our only hope to defend ourselves.

the americans are over-extended, and trump is an overwhelmingly stupid person that can be expected to make substantive tactical mistakes. we could not defend ourselves and would need to prepare for an occupation, but that victory may be pyrrhic for washington in the long run.

i'm changing directions on the essential nutrients. it may be temporary.

everything i've read tells me to try to get your vitamins from food, including fortified food. supplements are often absorbed poorly, and i have absorption issues on top of it. they are often too high dosage and mostly end up just killing your kidneys.

the only supplements i currently take are

- vitamin d at 1000 iu/day (because i need it)

- vitamin c, at 250 mg (a 1 g pill cut in 4) every six hours, to superdose

- calcium in tums

that's it.

however,  i get my b12 and b1, b2, b3, b6 and b9 from fortified nutritional yeast, soy and (usually) pasta. there's some a in the soy and the margarine, but not enough. the soy is fortified with minerals.

i should get enough minerals certainly (except maybe iron) and vitamins probably from my diet, which was designed to meet a high nutrient requirement. but i haven't been following it lately and may not follow it closely for a while. it may have too many calories for my current lifestyle, which has been forced to change to adjust to the need to shelter in place while these stalkers keep harassing me. if i'm exercising less, i'm burning less calories and need to eat less in response. that means i'm less able to get the required nutrients from my diet, and this is decreasing with the decision to remove nutrients from food and make it less healthy.i may see little value in buying some foods in my diet at all. without high levels of fortification, they become empty calories that should not be purchased at all but should rather be removed from my diet altogether. these items would include things like yogurt, bread and maybe even soy milk, which is just needless calories, without the high fortification. it means i would want to shift my diet to an almost entirely fresh produce diet - fruits, vegetables, spices, cheese, eggs - and only buy the minimal sauces needed on the basis of taste.

i want to avoid potent pills, and have found a series of vitamin pills (in addition to the c and d) tht include:

1) vitamin a - 5000 iu, which i would take every third day. this is still too much but it's better than 10000 iu.

2) a b complex with:

b1 - 30 mg

b2 - 30 mg

b3 - 25 mg

b5 - 25 mg

b6 - 25 mg 

b7 - 50 mcg

b9 - 500 mcg

b12 - 250 mcg

choline  (may be a future b vitamin, like b16) - 25 mg

inositol (pseudo-b8) - 25 mg

inositol was once listed as b8 but your body can make it. it acts like a vitamin. 

choline is now considered a vitamin by some,  but your body does make it, sort of.

this is more complete than the yeast and is on the brink of being too much. it is way too much b1, b2, b6, b12 and less b9 than in the yeast i currently take. but i can't find yeast with enough b9, and my diet is low in b5. taking one of these a day would make sure i get enough of everything and make questions around insufficient fortification irrelevant, allowing me to drastically reduce the amount of calories i'm consuming, and to cut a lot of excess protein from my diet. 

if i go back to exercising more, i may stop taking these and start eating more. but if i'm exercising less, i should take more vitamins and eat less food.

3) same c

4) same d)

5) vitamin e - 100 iu, which i would take every third day, and always the day after the a. this is still too much but it's better than 400 iu.

6) vitamin k1 - 100 mcg & vitamin k2 50 mcg, which i would take every third day and always the day after the e.

7) i'm going to hold off on heme iron because i'm using a cast iron skillet to make bacon and  get a lot n my spices. i want to test it first. i could end up taking heme iron.

i don't expect i would have any deficiencies in things like potassium or magnesium. i would want to test.

so, that's ready to go for next cycle.

i need some more concrete. so i need to wait. i'd might as well get a pile of it for cheap. there's some other places in the house i might use some. 

so i spent the last few dollars on some overpriced fortified nutritional yeast, just to see if it would ship. it's a strictly us brand.

it's enough for a few weeks to start to stop me from crashing. i'm eating less generally in diet mode. but i need a clear solution.

it's a little more b6, a little more b12, a little less b9 and about the same amount of b1, b2, b3. i like the formula for the other product better, as i like the high amounts of folate and my b12 was testing great.

i may have another option. i need to look into some things.

Javani said Iran had never initiated a war and that its actions to date had been defensive, but, "from now on, every action we take, although it has a defensive nature, must take on an offensive form."

this was predictable and the obvious result of not carrying through with regime change. if you shoot somebody in the face and they live, they're going to shoot you back at the first chance they get. if you don't want them to retaliate, you need to kill them. this should be obvious to anybody with any working brain cells, but trump's clearly demonstrated himself as a low intelligence retard that can't process simple conflicts. he just expects people will obey when he yells.

we have 2.5 more years worth of trump. i don't think we can wait that long to remove the government in iran without a catastrophe happening in the region.

yeah, it makes more sense for me to use the ~$25 left in the account until thursday morning when the cdb comes in ($204) on a new dustbuster and wait to get the tools required to try to fix the other vacuums later.

but i want to wait for amazon to charge me for the shop vac first.

i'm not quite sure why they haven't, yet.

i'll need to do some shopping, but you can buy margarine in the us (apparently marketed somewhat hilariously as 'plant butter') with vitamin e.

i used to get margarine with 50% of the vitamin e requirements. vitamin e is somewhat elusive in a low fat, low protein diet, so that as very helpful. adding vitamin e to margarine seems to have been completely banned in canada. now, the olive oil margarine is rapidly disappearing altogether, and being replaced with palm oil, which is horribly unhealthy.

there's just been this movement towards making things less healthy across the board in canada, and i don't get it, but shopping in the us might solve it.

i want my diet to be

- low fat

- low protein

- high vitamin

that's increasingly hard to do in canada, because they keeping stripping out the vitamins, forcing you to eat too much protein to meet the rdis, which is going to make you fat.

it's not just the nutritional yeast that recently had it's fortifications cut. other foods i've seen lose fortification in canada are:

- cereal

- yogurt: cuts in b12, d

- soy milk: cuts in d, b12, a

- margarine: cuts in d, e, a

i have recently had deficiencies in b12 and d. i wasn't getting too much; i wasn't getting enough.

canadians do not face a concern about overfortification. canadians have serious vitamin deficiencies and severe obesity concerns. this policy of cutting fortifications is seriously wrong, as it's going to generate further vitamin deficiencies and increase obesity levels.

so, i may want to consider buying more food in the united states more generally to evade the health canada restrictions and get higher fortification levels, given that it's free to bike across the bridge. i have a small list of staples that i may rather buy in detroit. american processed food is increasingly healthier than canadian processed food, due to these stupid laws restricting fortification levels that don't exist in the us.

i'm going to give them a few more days to respond.

apparently, the correct ac adapter for this device is 25.9V output. i have 5, 6, 9, 12 volts. nothing at 26 v.

i'm going to let it sit in the 12 volt adapter i picked off the bat (for a no longer in use cable modem) for like a week and see if it clicks. it's actually telling me it's charged. these batteries get stuck when you don't use them, so letting it sit in the charger might wake it up.

but i think the adapters are not powerful enough and i need a stronger adapter. i'll have to decide if i want to pay $30-$50 for an adapter for this. it will be low priority. it's a nice looking device with advanced features and poor reviews, so i dunno. there are a lot of dumb people out there that throw out things that work because they're dirty, etc. that's not a lot for a vacuum if i think it will work.

replacing the fuse on the shop vac is going to require a soldering job, which is easy enough, but it means it won't get done until after the repair shop is set up. i'm going to need to get something else second hand for the initial project and let it break, then fix this one later.

so, i'm going to clean up in here this morning and then get out to vacuum in the garage early, after i've done a good clean up in here. the floors in the main apartment will then need to wait a few days for the shop vac to get in before they can get vacuumed again. 

i ended up sleeping a lot this weekend, and i think i did get drugged with something, but it's the same tiredness i remember feeling after passing out at the bar a few years ago. i haven't been drinking or smoking anything at all for months. i think i got drugged with a date rape drug a few years ago and they might have got me again this weekend.

there's no sign of entry into the unit and no obvious way in. i note the windows are wide open. it's 4:29 and i can hear them hacking and wheezing, but i can't smell it.

i plugged the vacuum battery in on saturday afternoon and intentionally slept for a few hours with the intent to wake up and charge it. it showed the charged symbol when i plugged it in but i let it sit. when i woke up, i made a large plate of pasta with a box of kd (200 g; i would normally boil 110 g. oops. so it was bigger than normal.) and ate through most of it but passed out after and then slept almost right through until 21:00. when i did wake up, i made some coffee and am more alert.

the battery did not charge, or there's an issue with it. it revs up and falls from charged to uncharged in a few seconds. but then when i plug it in it says it's charged. i'm trying with a different adapter and getting the same results.

let me try to understand this better.

but i lost the day due to this.

my new shop vac is shipping for the 18th. so i might just get the dustbuster in there in the morning and get the carpet down. i want to understand what the battery is doing and then order a new fuse, before the sun comes up. 

let's look at the tariff issue empirically, not theoretically or ideologically.

the theory - it is old tory, mercantilist - says you use tariffs to protect domestic industry. it's an old theory, 19th century, and broadly abandoned. that's the best academic analysis we have for this confusing policy, so the analysts continually go back to it. trump must be pushing tariffs to create jobs. right?

but is this an empirical analysis?

there are a small number of the tariffs where the intent appears to be to protect domestic industrial production for national interest reasons - chips, vaccines, drones. i have little criticism of these tariffs. i don't think tariffs are bad. i'm a socialist; i think tariffs are hard. trump is proving ricardo right. tariffs on chip or vaccines are a correct application of mercantilist tariff theory.

the reality is, however, that most of the time when trump talks about tariffs, he doesn't say anything about protecting industry. rather, trump tends to focus on tariffs being a large government revenue stream and frequently argues they are making the country richer. in fact, the theory trump is following doesn't seem to be old tory at all, but a kind of trickle down reaganomics and focused on implementing a tax shift from income taxes on the rich to consumption taxes on the general population. trump has repeatedly explicitly stated that the tariffs are intended to mitigate upcoming slashes to income taxes at the highest brackets. further, all evidence suggests trump actually believes canadians end up paying the tariffs. an empirical analysis is that canada is going to build the tax cut wall, and canada is going to pay for it, however ridiculously wrong that is.

it follows that the purpose of these tariffs is not to try to kill industry in canada or shift jobs south, but to generate tax cuts for himself. this is not really an attack on canada, then; canada is just being chosen as the hapless sock puppet that takes the hit on a policy intended to raise government revenue through a taxation stream on americans. if it does create job losses in canada, that's collateral, and doesn't matter.

canada has been making the mistake from the start of taking this seriously and trying to undo these policies by taking the arguments on directly. but the arguments are disingenuous, and it's just an excuse for trump to raise taxes. canada has to shift it's approach to fundamentally understanding this: what trump wants is the revenue stream. what trump wants is the tax shift. it's not about industry, not about jobs. 

that is the reason there's nothing canada can do to stop this; what trump wants is the revenue, and this is just the damaging way he does that. it's all theatre to enforce the tax hike and subsequent tax shift.

that's what trump has said and which the analysts aren't grasping. do the numbers add up? of course not, but that doesn't matter when it's trump. it's just the excuse he needs to cut income taxes.

canada's better tactic is to try to shift targets. the target was supposed to be mexico, not canada. how did canada get shifted to the scapegoat role? by fighting back, which drew attention to us as the insolent ones. the mexicans shut their mouths. we retaliated.

there's no deal coming because there's no deal to make. trump wants his tax hike, and canada cannot agree to the terms. nafta necessarily dies, as it cannot coexist with large tariffs.

in the end, we got outsmarted by the mexicans.

the article then explains steps that the jewish controlled media can take to censor the free speech of young muslims.

don't censor them. let them speak. it's important to understand what they're thinking. don't force them to be quiet; you'll never know there's a problem that needs to be addressed.

so, little girl, what do you want to do to make the world a better place?

get rid of ze jews!

it's easy to project ideals of universality on religious muslims. we're all the same right? they're just like us, right?

i behoove of you to try to be empirical over being ideological. choose evidence over faith. it's imperative.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/muslim-association-promises-jew-free-incident-will-not-recur-at-future-youth-events

doug ford, ontario's universal village idiot, actually went on the news and asked for california to lend us planes.

how did we fall so far into incompetence?

the answer is nafta. the elder trudeau warned us this would happen and he was right. we should have listened.

we're wasting zillions of dollars on foreign built submarines and fighter jets, neither of which have any clear utility to the national interest, but we won't support our own companies and build our own economy by buying firefighting planes that we specialize in and have a shortage of.

dum-du-dum-dumb.

dum-du-dum-dumb.....

duuuuuuuuuumb.

you want a reason for this?

it's because canada is a colonial state, not a nation state, and we're run by foreigners acting in the interests of foreign states. that's why.

this obvious policy shift will be a major struggle because it lacks support from foreign lobbying firms. and canada will continue it's march towards collapse as a failed state.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/bakx-de-havilland-canadair-calgary-super-scooper-alberta-wildfire-dhc-515-9.7307819

yeah, the entire concept of paying to get out of jail is inherently irrational. bail should be determined strictly by the threat an individual poses. cash bail should be forbidden altogether, not made mandatory - nobody should ever be allowed to ever pay to get out of jail, ever.

this will make our communities less safe by allowing wealthy criminals a back door out of jail.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cash-bail-system-changes-monday-security-deposit-ontario-9.7308738

the fact that our vehicle industry is so connected to the united states is partly what is presenting us from transitioning off carbon, and keeping us trapped in the 20th century. disconnecting from the us market will help us evolve.

good.

canada should nationalize this plant and retool it for electric vehicle production for the domestic market first, and export to a more rational united states later.

canada is better off with a domestically owned vehicle production sector.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/stellantis-brampton-assembly-plant-unifor-9.7307672

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.