i'm somewhat confused by this. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- finish up in the laundry

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

- shower

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

what i'm going to do is the following.

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

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

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

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

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

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

america wanted a president with no ideology besides might makes right and it got one. it's not all bad. america should be taking notes on what nihilism means. it's a worthwhile experiment, on some level.

the clearest conclusion we can come to is a blatant explanation of why why don coyote has been married three times and would be looking for #4 if he wasn't on the brink of death.

donald will have has magical thinking. the iranians will submit. he's the dom. except he's not, he's the biggest beta male i've ever seen, and everybody just takes advantage of him and fucks him in the ass, and he asks for more.

yeah, the dust and dirt and ash is thicker in the garage, and a layer of it has settled almost everywhere n here, including areas i wouldn't really vacuum. i'm starting to change my analysis from the ash being caused by the vacuum to the ash breaking the vacuum. and i'm starting to realize it smells like cigarettes. 

it's second hand smoke from upstairs. 

that's utterly disgusting. 

i'll have to just keep cleaning and keep getting that aluminum up. and i hope that canadian tire replaces the vac.

i expected the stalker to come in here when i was sealing up the hole. it's why i did the work outside before i bought groceries. it's possible they tracked their dirty boots in here and it's a part of the problem. it's also possible that some of it is dust from mixing concrete.

but this filth is dark black, it's thick and it's ashy. it looks like it was created from burning something.

i suppose it might have also been partly caused by the wildfires.

whatever the cause, the solution is to get the shop vac in the garage and then to reclean everything. and this needs to be the priority. i guess it will give me the chance to reclean some spaces i recently cleaned and finish setting them up.

i've lost the day unfortunately. 

i noticed last night that my shop vac appears to have developed a short in it and exploded, which is slowing down the cleaning and requiring me to reclean everything. i'm going to try to get it replaced as defective. right now, i have a layer of black ash all over my floors, walls and stuff. 

the motor doesn't look damaged. it may have sucked up some cleaning supplies, but it's a dry/wet vac. i tried to clean it but it looks like it was too late. it was running loud and smelly, then generating smoke, generating bright green light, throttling, dying and then dead. i've never seen a motor act like that, but the idea that it had a short circuit does seem to explain it.

the switch and fuses are totally clean and brand new. there's no obvious blown component, which is why it looks like a short in the motor. it's only a few months old. in fact, the fuse even gave me a mild shock, which i believe is evidence it's working and there's a short in the motor. there must be a burnt out connection somewhere inside the motor.

i have a multimeter on order, which is something i should have but don't. it should prove the fuse is not blown. but if i'm wrong i'll try to swap it out.

i actually think there's enough evidence to decide i should throw out the motor but i'll wait for the multimeter.

my understanding is that the only likely causes of this are factory defect and exposure to chemicals or moisture. i was cleaning up dirt off the crumbling old concrete floor in the garage when it started smoking. the concrete strangely dried dark black, like asphalt. and now there's black filth all over the floor.

if i can fix this i will and then leave it in the garage. i'll get a new device for the inside areas.

i had also bought a floor scrubbing device so i guess it's time to use it. 

i will need to do some further serious cleaning in here before i do anything else.

i'm finishing up in the laundry. i'm going to pause but i'm probably done.

i put cardboard boxes up on the ceiling in the main part of the room with a mix of duct, packing and weatherproofing tape. i used a lot of duct tape, it turns out, because the wall is concrete and the joists are wood. i crammed insulation in the corners where i know the holes are and blocked a number of holes in the walls from the laundry to inside the walls of the house. this completely seals up the main room.

i did not seal anything in the water closet, and i left the corridor into the furnace open, for now.

i did this because i realized there are still smaller rodents running around in there. i didn't see anything and i've heard very little. even the evidence of droppings is very small. but it's enough. i think they're just staying out of there because it's not appealing to them anymore. there's no food. it's bright and clean. i legit kicked them out.

i want to block the entrances i think they're most likely to use but i also understand that cardboard and duct tape is not going to keep a rat out. bright light and no access to food will. so, i want to keep an eye on it further. i don't want them hiding food from the upstairs kitchen downstairs;  my laundry is not their burrow. i don't want them running into the laundry from the upstairs bathroom. i don't want them coming in from the backyard.

i will seal the furnace room itself but i think i want to keep access between the furnace and the laundry open and i want to observe a lit bit more before i seal up the water closet, if i do. 

the laundry should essentially be spotless, now. if it isn't, where is the filth coming from?

i am probably going to avoid the aluminum in the laundry because it'll be better applied elsewhere. i'm probably going to skip the bathroom, too. it's not a good idea to do this in the bathroom. i mean, it is if it's done properly, but if i make any mistake at all it could be a mess. it's not worth the risk of finding a rotting hole in the aluminum in a year or two.

it's a better idea to put the aluminum up in the kitchen.

so, i'm gong to need to finish up in there, do a secondary general clean, take another shower and then move back into the bedroom to focus on doing the cataloging and the coffee table book for a few days, before getting back to room 3 again, the kitchen. i'll post a video update for the laundry as well.

the big kitchen  update  is still to come and is the next big thing to do.

there will be people that will try to justify the attack by hamas, or question the reporting around it. there are people that deny the holocaust. 

you should let them explain themselves, understand their words and never speak to them ever again.

the legitimate purpose of the fully justified military operation launched by israel after the barbaric terrorist attack by hamas was to permanently remove hamas from power. virtually any response by israel would have been justified. the complete annihilation of gaza was not even yet a proportionate response to a massacre that far outside of the boundaries of civilization. 

hamas had to be removed from the planet in response. anything less would have been insufficient.

the removal of hamas from power is the definition of victory. the rest of it is mostly trivial. 

israel suspended the rule of law in response to these attacks, and it was justified in doing so, but this must come to an end. normal governance must return to israel asap.

it's over.

it's the best outcome possible.

the question as to what sources of light in the sky are valuable and what are pollution is turned on it's head by the fallacy of naturalism. the light that comes to us from stars is in many cases billions or trillions of years old. it provides us with absolutely no useful information about the current existence of the universe, as those stars are long dead, and whatever exists in the space those stars were once in has no connection to what is there now, in whatever dubious way you're defining space at all. you could never go to those stars. the light they throw into our atmosphere has no utility to anyone or anything and should in truth be rightfully thought of as pollution; if we could clean all the starlight out of the sky, it would allow us to see our direct neighbourhood more clearly. all that the light from these long dead galaxies is really doing is blocking the closest planets out.

but it's not like the mirror eats the light or something. it's not a black hole. that light is still there. you can put a telescope on the moon, or in orbit, you just can't look into the sky from your bedroom. but that's an utterly middle class concern. who gives a fuck.

i might take a position that astronomy isn't going to be very valuable to humans in the near future, until we colonize the area around us. we should be focusing on blocking out the distant past from the night sky and honing in on the areas directly around us, for now. there's not much that we can learn right now, and we have enough data to sort through to last us for centuries anyways.

the applications of the mirrors are more valuable than bourgeois concerns about light pollution, which are in truth backwards anyways. the stars are the ones polluting the sky; let's clean it up by getting rid of the stars.

i'm overwhelmingly in favour of this as it has tremendous potential applications. i don't know where this anti-science streak in society came from all of a sudden, but stupid hippie bullshit should never be listened to, ever. naturalism is exposing itself as the single greatest threat to human progress in our midst. these people that are opposed to ai, to automation, to technology, etc are opposed to human progress. they must be educated and defeated.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/reflect-orbital-approval-fcc-9.7287535

cancelling oil exports - or mineral exports - to the united states would eliminate a tremendous amount of wealth in canada. making ourselves poorer seems like a dumb way to stick it to the man.

it's a better environmental argument to leave it n the ground, and arguably worth supporting on that basis, than it is an economic argument to shoot ourselves in the face. it is abundantly clear that it will not change american behaviour, it will just destroy wealth in canada.

it makes more sense to try to recover losses by levying export taxes on americans. retaliatory import taxes and export blocking are both dumb tactics.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-trump-oil-tariffs-negotiations-9.7289518

i have spent a fair amount of time with this and the topic has two notable points of scientific interest, namely (1) it's the only thing you can quote (stephen) jay gould on directly without being pretentious (but don't do it too much) and (2) it's one of a small number of legitimate contributions to science made by richard dawkins, even if he often heavily cites eo wilson. there is something called the dawkins-gould debate about punctuated equilibrium or gradualism, about the nature of natural selection, defining debates about how to interpret the fossil record.

my hegelian synthesis (this argument is really a false dichotomy. gould was a gradualist, too. his supporters misrepresented him.) argues that the error is really in the cladistics model rather than a debate over evolutionary theory. due to linnaeus, and ultimately due to aristotle, who attributed a crude evolutionary theory to the "chaldeans", we've been using the wrong mathematical model to imagine evolution for centuries and centuries. we use something called directed graphs to model evolution - trees. we refer to the tree of life. this is inherently hierarchical and intuitively erects theocratic conclusions that aren't actually supported by the data. in the dna era, the solution to the underlying gould-dawkins debate has increasingly been identified as hybridization, which the models previously rejected as theocratically deviant, but which more and more data has increasingly identified as repeatedly arising naturally in areas where ecological niches overlap. contemporary environmentalists may be surprised to learn that polar bears are on a path towards genetic introgression back into the grizzly population and that it's being increasingly realized that this is a general demonstration of actual natural selection in real life, due to climate change, which happens often. this evolution is normal. the ideal of nature in a fixed state is not science, it's conservative religious ideology.

another example is the interbreeding of coyotes and wolves in eastern canada, which would create a large shift in the fossil record. coyotes all of a sudden are going to increase in size. it's the wolf dna and we know it.

so, the premise of all of these different species in the human fossil record is dubious. every researcher wanted their own species. every minimal change was presented as a novel variation. the question of whether they could fuck or not requires more rigour, and we can assume that they did if they could, and probably tried even if they couldn't.

a better mathematical model for evolution is a complicated graph with crossings that captures hybridization events (often due to climate change), which actually appear to be an extremely common evolutionary mechanism.

the footprints themselves may not hold up to scrutiny but it's not the more important point. the more important point is that the hierarchical spencerian tree model is ignorant and backwards and it's theological implications are consequently wrong. evolution is stochastic, statistical, chaotic. natural selection cannot be assumed, it must be proven that the shifts in population genetics are not genetic drift, which is a null hypothesis. the graph theory is more complex, but it's also a rich and profound theory.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/article/ancient-footprints-offer-rare-glimpse-into-lives-of-extinct-human-relatives/

aimlessly trying to bomb iran into submission is not a reprise of dubya's 00s iraq policy, it's a reprise of the clinton-gore iraq strategy during the 90s. trump is constantly clinton redux. he is aggressively avoiding regime change, when it would be the better strategy in iran (and was the worse strategy in iraq). he's tryng to force an oil for food type program but the iranians won't accept it.

i don't support this policy. it's not going to make the region safer. it's not going to have a pragmatic outcome. the americans will fail to force iran into submission, and somebody else will step in and push through regime change in the end. it's putting off the inevitable at a great waste of time and money. the result will be the same. and the process of regime change in iran is necessary and the outcome will be justice for the people of iran. this is a fascist regime that poses a threat to global stability, regional order and global peace and an ideology that needs to be eradicated. aimlessly attempting to bomb them into submission and failing will cost more money and kill more people than is necessary to get the job done. it's the most inefficient, ineffective approach to the same ultimately necessary solution of regime change in the end, because trump fears the  outcome of an iranian socialist movement on the ground and won't sign off on it.

but, despite realizing that this won't help much, that doesn't mean i have much sympathy for iran right now. they need to get their shit in order and take this decision away from people in washington. this is their future. this is their state to burn down. the decision should be theirs, but they need to make it.

as an openly identifying socialist, my politics are far closer to john fetterman's than they are to aoc's or mamdani's, who both strike me as well to the right of centre. this free groceries for rich kids scheme is about the most bourgeois thing i've ever heard. i would reject it as stupid because i'm a socialist. there's nothing socialist about it at all, it's just a handout for rich kids, and it would get paid for by a hike in union dues. it's a redistribution of wealth from middle age working class union members to upper middle class children of corporate executives. that's not socialism. that's the literal opposite of socialism.

the problem is that, in the united states, all politics is just code for race politics. nothing else matters. you can't be brown and conservative at the same time in the united states, despite the actual reality that the overwhelming majority of brown people are in fact extremely conservative. so everything else has to align around the delusions of archaic race politics that have little to no relevance a quarter of the way into the 21st century.

fetterman's a liberal, which is placing him in conflict with the shift to the far right that is taking place in the democratic party, as it tries to abandon any remnant of it's historical white voting base and fully embrace a religious and brown voting coalition. the new democrats are going to be extremely religious and extremely conservative (and extremely brown), but they're going to call themselves left-wing anyways, and i'm going to be diametrically deadset against them. so, he's being called a conservative, because the country doesn't know how to use language to describe what's happening. but the truth is the opposite.

the democrats have actually historically been the country's conservative party. the republicans have historically been the country's liberal party. the language in the media is orwellian, but the alliances are actually correcting themselves.

i think that john fetterman is actually to the left of his party and that the democrats are in the process of shifting to the extreme right, which is something he is resisting. if i were fetterman, i would probably feel more comfortable sitting as an independent and calling myself a liberal, and making an attempt to explain how liberals are discernibly to the left of progressives, who are really conservatives in disguise. as an adamant openly socialist leftist, i consider these progressives to be a bigger problem than republicans are, as the progressives are actual conservatives, and the republicans generally aren't really conservatives at all. it's the self-styled progressives that want to radically turn the clocks back to the 60s. republicans are broadly status quo. that makes the progressives dramatically worse. we're in the era of orwell, where everything is upside down and backwards, and everything means the opposite of what it claims to mean.

the bricks are in. i think i tried to avoid stating this too clearly. 

so, when i was cleaning in the garage area, i noticed that there was a gaping hole under the steps big enough to crawl into. like, you could crawl in from outside, if you knew the hole was there. i also found some used needles in the crawl space, indicating somebody had actually crawled inside. that might be why it frequently smelled like an ash tray in there. 

i immediately nailed the hole shut and noticed somebody had kicked it in the next day.

the landlord indicated he was going to fix it, but he didn't, it was just waiting and waiting. i wasn't able to move anything in there and set anything up in there until the space was sealed up. i finally just went around back and got some bricks out of the backyard and sealed it up with quikrete. i wanted to test it to make sure it worked before i did a second round, and it did. so, i bought some more quikrete and some more bricks last night and finished it up.

the issue is that somebody knocked a window out to run a furnace vent and just closed it up with drywall. so there was a piece of drywall facing the rain and snow and it decayed through. somebody knew it and was sneaking in there to do drugs.

it's fixed now and the leak that was there seems to be fixed as well, so i should be able to finally start moving things into the garage. i just want to wait for it to dry outside before i do a final patch run over it.

i redid a lot of the concrete steps while i was at it as there were big gaps where moisture, rodents or bugs could get in. i'm going to redo a lot of the walls in the garage as well, just to make sure there aren't any further leaks. it will look a lot cleaner with a fresh coat of concrete.

i also bought some roof sealant that i'm going to lather all around the outside to keep the water out. this is in addition to the downspout extender i put in, that has made a huge difference.

so, once i'm confident that the garage is clean and dry, i have a carpet i can put down in the corner. i also have a bicycle rack that i can lock my bicycles to, tables, lamps, tools, a heater and even a stereo. it has to be dry and sealed first. i'm almost there.

i also really sealed up the laundry the other day using cardboard boxes and that really cancelled the smell in there, which is great. it was a mix of garbage, mildew and food i'd find unappealing, as a white european. blocking the holes neutralized it entirely.

so i'm making major progress.

about a year and a half ago, the mayor of windsor acted like a dirty fascist in overriding the clear democratic will of city council to maintain tunnel bus service, out of an apparent anti-union political ideology. this ideological decision actually reduced operating revenues, leading to higher deficits, and had a clearly negative effect on windsor's struggling downtown core. the mayor apparently wants more church organized social activities and more family-oriented event funding. he's attacking the city's economy because he's an ideological conservative. he's also continued to destroy the library, and received nothing of any value for it while watching multiple physical library locations get sold off to dubious market investors, then collapse into disuse and disrepair. on top of that, he's wasted millions of tax dollars on repeatedly renovating recently renovated city halls, foolishly built a hockey rink on top of a green space downtown, spent a million dollars on a decommissioned rail car and continues to throw millions of dollars a year down the drain on an environmentally irresponsible christmas lights display intended to appeal to white christian supremacist identity politics.

there's an election this year and i want to see somebody run against these things and get rid of this shithead. cancelling the tunnel bus was stupid - it cost the city money and it hurt the local bars. the city should bring back the tunnel bus. the library has faced years of instability that needs to come to an end. the city should buy back the old library on ouellette. i'm tired of seeing the city waste money on family oriented programming that is stupid and lame. the rail car is a dumb waste of money. and the christmas lights are a waste of electricity and a waste of tax dollars to a celebrate a holiday that is largely culturally irrelevant in this society, which is overwhelmingly secular.

he's also refusing to implement overdue zoning changes and not taking federal money for subsidized housing, which is inflating property values and increasing rents.

the mismanagement at city hall is overwhelming. the city needs to unite to get rid of this guy. he's fucking terrible.

the charges against netanyahu are frivolous and absurd and the americans are right to try to shut this court down, which is behaving irresponsibly in carrying out politicized activities that are blatantly anti-semitic and without any remote evidentiary basis. the icc is looking and acting like a nazi tribunal and should be treated like one. if it walks like a nazi and quacks like a nazi, it's a nazi. europe has a civilizationial existential crisis on it' hand, as it increasingly collapses into fascism, and is increasingly requiring a serious protest movement to struggle against these rising forces of nazism and right-wing extremism that masquerade as a soft left, but are the exact opposite of it in practice.

netanyahu has legitimate corruption charges to face in israel.

the icc warrant against him is not justified by facts and should not be respected by governments anywhere. the credibility of the body is rather now in disrepute for behaving with political motivations aligned with the far right.

if canada were to act on these threats, it should be judged accordingly and held accountable for it. our international standing is currently incredibly low and falling. our institutions have low reputability. our government is extremely corrupt.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-flight-canadian-airspace-9.7288211

i'm going to do the things i need to do outside before i order more food. the stalkers seem to have come in here the last time i was outside working. i don't think they can get in except when i'm sitting outside, and they're driven enough by their delusions of faith and belief to do it. the basic problem with zealotry and self-righteousness is that you think you're right and you're just factually not. the wisdom in mill is cliched and annoying (mill and orwell. who do i think i am, christopher hitchens?), but worth acknowledging all the more for it. the basic point is correct - the issue on the table is that you might be fucking wrong, and you have to get that through your fucking head.

the pathetic losers aren't going to stop but i can keep them out by locking down. and i'm planning around next year at this point, unfortunately.

the upside is that the apartment will be finished sooner than later. i have the materials i need to finish everything up and when i get done the outside in the next few days i should be able to rapidly get to finishing up in the garage, and then it's done.

i need to get a fair amount of groceries. i've been eating small amounts all summer and am pushing down to 135 for the next meal, which is powdered chicken soup with grilled chicken breast. i am done the canned soup, but still have canned tomatoes for spaghetti. i have a pile of powdered soup mixes to sub in for quinoa and other things and will be catching up on the fruit as soon as i get through that. the diet i put myself on in may dragged that process out by a few months but it's almost there.

then, there are a small number of organizational things to do before i sit down and finish the cataloging and get to finishing the coffee table book.

so i'm making progress, this is just a crazy amount of work to do, and it's taking a long time to do it.

i got a little disoriented again over the weekend again. i have not been well lately. i'm still having difficulty with food; it goes in and goes back out. the stalkers seem to be here this weekend again as well. so, i had to stop to do some laundry and shower a little early, and it triggered me into the general clean a few days early.

the general clean applies to the

- bathroom

- kitchen

- bedroom

i had piles of books and cds in the bedroom i was cataloging first before i put other things away, but the general clean mean i put that aside and put things away first. so, the bedroom just took a big step towards being done. 

the next thing to do is seal up the laundry. i was focusing more on sealing holes in the wall than the aluminum, yesterday, and got a good chunk of it done. i stopped to scrub the rugs with the carpet cleaner as well and i d think it's working. the laundry has been largely clear of rodents since the spring, but my neighbours are hopeless tenants. the doors are constantly open. the kids leave food and garbage everywhere. etc. there's like a daycare upstairs. i think the rodents came back, but they don't bother coming downstairs because it;s so great upstairs. there's signs they're back, but no droppings down here yet.  i had better block access to the basement as best as i can. 

i just need to plug holes. generally. everywhere. the laundry is open, so there's a lot to do. i got about 65% dome yesterday.

i want to get a bit more done, get in the shower, change my sheets and focus on the cataloging until it's done. that will will segue back into the coffee table book, and finishing up in the kitchen. 

this bridge wasn't built to generate revenue. it's not about profit. the bridge was a needed upgrade in infrastructure and it will make it much easier for canada to keep drugs and guns out of the country. that's what this was about. the other bridge and the tunnel were built in the early part of the 20th century. they're ancient and should be torn down. canada needed a reliable port of entry coming from michigan that it can control access to and that it can not worry about for the next 100 years. 

the bridge is invaluable to canada.

and i live here. i'm happy to see detroit continue to transform into a nature reserve. i have no opposition to throwing more money at detroit. not at all.

that said, while trump may not have gained anything substantive and it might be optics, there's still a lesson to learn from this process. it seems like the agreement that showed up in writing was not the same thing that was agreed to verbally. that seems to be the process that donald trump uses, unfortunately: he tricks you into agreeing to something, then changes the terms in the contract. he calls that "the art of the deal". it sounds like nogoodnick thieving and scheming, to me. he's a dirty fucking scoundrel. he's a lying, no good piece of shit. he's somebody that you wouldn't do business with at all, if you weren't forced to.

nobody should agree to anything with donald trump ever, unless it's presented in writing first. that would certainly apply to any kind of free trade deal.

participants should predict that attempts to isolate parties are exactly that; the trump administration will key on you, single you out, separate you from your peers and try to take advantage of you, if it thinks you're weak. agreements made verbally with isolated parties will not be upheld in writing, but key changes will be made in the details of the contracts.

this is a historic break from america's post world war two role as the policeman of the world to america's new role as the pirate gang leader of the world. america is making new friends in it's new role and losing old friends in it. canada needs to watch what it signs with this new america. 

 

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/gordie-howe-international-bridge-deal-canada

but canada does not have a "grocery competition problem". people talking like that don't know what they're talking about, and should be aggressively called out for it.

what canada has is a poor climate, a bad geography and an increasing problem with overpopulation due to foolish immigration policies, given the minimal population that can be directly supported by the land types we have.

these losers keep succeeding in shutting things down. that's what they want.

stop cancelling queer events when religious bigots demand it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/berlin-pride-parade-car-crowd-christopher-street-day-9.7284516

when you hear people blame things on a lack of competition, it's generally a clear indication that they don't really know what they're talking about.

the reasons that food prices are high in canada are complex. much of it has to do with geography, and the reality that canada imports much of it's food nowadays. a weak dollar makes items like coffee more expensive. some larger amount of local greenhouse production could potentially reduce prices by reducing transportation costs, and these would be smaller companies, but that's not a competitive process and it would be misleading to suggest that any benefits are resulting from competition. the decreased costs would be mostly due to using less oil. this is a substantive shift in production that is slowly underway and could actually benefit from government subsidies to help it compete, not an increase in competition. much of canada's food production network is designed to eliminate competition because it's harmful.

this is a go nowhere strategy. the absolute last thing the grocery industry needs is more competition. that's just going to make everything more expensive, as the costs of competing get added to the overhead. competition = inflation.

somebody somewhere that is making decisions went to school in the 70s, apparently, and has an extremely out of date concept of capitalism. there was this whole big data revolution in the 90s and 00s that uprooted all of this. they were able to actually get the data for the first time in the history of economics and they realized the homo economicus was just wrong: no, competition, does not decrease prices, it raises prices because it increases costs.

so, the entire concept is rooted in a basic point of ignorance and reflects priorities being set by somebody very out of touch with reality. some secretary or staffer needs to quietly get to shutting this down, because it will do nothing but waste money and embarrass the government. it's ideologically incoherent.

competition is an expensive cost that companies seek to avoid. when companies are forced to compete, it will always lead to higher prices, as consumers will always pay for the costs of competition through higher prices.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-grocery-competition-carney-food-strategy-funding-food-hubs-food-terminal-9.7282701

the next candidate for mayor of new york should run on a platform of publicly funded facial hair removal for all, to get rid of all of the unwashed, dirty bums at city hall.

there's going to need to be ground troops in yemen and these barbarian houthis are going to need to be entirely eradicated. like, wiped out. no prisoners. just erase them.

biden utterly failed in his responsibility to global security on this file. he irresponsibly ignored a pressing problem that now has to be dealt with through overwhelming force.

you might think you have a clever analysis, with this talk of friends. 

the old men will spit in your face.

there are no friends in this world. you're a fool. 

i don't assign much value to friendship in capitalism. it's kind of an impossibility. everybody's just trying to take advantage of you. you can pretend people care about you for as long as it takes to knife you in the back, but you're just opening yourself up to exploitation.

if you have anything of any value, you cannot have real friends in this society. i've tried. it's impossible. i prefer not to delude myself.

but, i'm not the hegemon; i'm an aloof artist. i can't run the world by myself. and i don't want to to.

i'm going to finish what i was doing, which was waiting for items to get here, cataloging asimov books and adding textbooks to the list of books (not just fiction). i was trying to fill holes in the fiction list tht should be closed. i was supposed to get done this fairly quick, then shift to the general clean, but it's taken quite a while (and i slept a good chunk of this week). so, i'm going to push into the general clean next week, which will be an end of month clean and that should hopefully get me finishing up most of the remnant big stuff. i really am almost done. the space is in order, at least - i can clean, i can use it. the cataloging will be something i need to keep doing until it's done, but not done continually until it's done.

bc may find itself with a bit of a rude surprise if it tries to outright block the americans from accessing minerals. that might be the excuse they're looking for.

export taxes are a better idea.

why would they block it?

why wouldn't they tax it?

i am in support of export taxes. i'm opposed to import taxes.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/b-c-premier-calls-for-blocking-critical-mineral-exports-to-u-s-over-lumber-tariffs

i just slept all night. again. that's three solid days of constantly triggering into brutal migraines.

i'm finally more awake, now.

i think.

the american labour laws are terrible. it's not just the prison labour, it's the farm and other labour under the table. the real reason that the americans can't fix their borders is that they don't want to, it keeps labour cheap. and trump was known to rip migrant workers off; he's not ignorant about this.

like everything else, this is nonsense, except that it provides advocates in the united states with an opportunity to get rid of prison labour.

i missed this a few weeks ago.

it means israel won. the war's over.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/07/07/hamas-dissolves-its-governing-bodies-in-gaza-as-stalemate-with-israel-continues_6755221_4.html

the united states should have invaded yemen several years ago.

it's an embarrassment to the united states that the houthis still exist.

my diet used to regularly come way down in the summer, before i started doing all of that bicycling, and burning it all off.

i actually lost more like 2.5 days to this migraine, and that's dramatically worse than normal.

it's often only a few hours; i'm just waking up now from a migraine that started on monday night and i still don't feel like it's done yet.

i think it's being catalyzed by the diet i put myself on, but that's not a reason to go off the diet. i've eaten a little bit of toast earlier than scheduled but i'm still trying to hit 137 for the next meal.

this shouldn't be challenging for me. i have spent most of my life in the high 120s, or low 130s. i understand i might be pushing it and may want to adjust to smaller, more frequent meals.

i'm trying to get through some canned soup that is outside my  normal meal plan. the one thing i have left to catch up on is a lot of fruit. it may make sense to shift to small and more frequent fruit bowls while i continue the weight loss. but i am getting there - i'm in the 130s, now. and i'm *not* just starving myself, that's why it's taking so long.

the quality of live music has cratered since the pandemic.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/canada-nightlife-decline-9.6993902

am i going to be going to detroit in august or even at the end of july?

there's a couple of reasons why it might not happen any time soon, and it doesn't have anything to do with smelly canadian nationalism. gross.

i have lots of things to do down here. they might have got me when i was less busy, but now i'm busy. they kind of missed their chance.

however, there's also the cold reality that we're in a shitty 80s phase again and that, due to that reality, i might not be able to find many things i'd want to do.

i'm a 90s kid, but i like the 70s, and i liked the 10s. i did not like the 00s, the 80s, the 60s or, it's increasingly clear, the 20s. it's just how it works out.

something that happens in the even numbered decades is that the culture gets overwhelmingly bourgeois. the music in the even numbered decades tends to suck. more interesting music gets driven underground.

i was probably going to need to start from scratch anyways because a lot of the places i used to go to got shut down since the pandemic. there's been a campaign to get rid of all of the fun places in detroit and replace them with upper class boringsvilles. more than a few places got hit, and i'll have to see what's left.

so, it's kind of a perfect storm of shittiness anyways and at this point it might be better to wait until next year, if for no reason than that things look a little slow right now anyways.

i'll find some things. but i'm too busy working at home right now.

the world would be better off if every piece of shit crackhead, junkie and pothead in it got a bullet right between their worthless fucking eyes.

so, i lost a day to the migraine. i'm feeling better. these losers need to go die somewhere, and i may have to help them expire if they keep it up. their lives are absolutely worthless, anyways. they'd be better off fucking dead.

i was taking too long to catalog the cds and now i'm taking too long to catalog the books. i had dumped a bunch into the librarything catalog as i was waiting for some mail on monday, and i had stopped to clean a little before i passed out. it's what, wednesday the 22nd? i've got some stuff on the way. i'm going to want to do a good end of the month clean for the end of the july, so i'm going to try to get done what i'm doing, first.

i wanted to finish cleaning in the bedroom, laundry, bathroom and kitchen then just tidy as i got back to what i was doing, but i've instead been cataloging books for days. i did a quick clean in the kitchen last night before i passed out and i'm going to want to clean better in there before i buy groceries next week. now, i actually want to do the laundry first, the bathroom, the hall and then the bedroom last, as i've got laundry to do in there.

this cataloging step is time consuming and i'm probably going to put it down to get the insulation up in the laundry but it's also one of the last major things i need to do in here. the insulation is working in the bedroom, even if i got hit with something last night, i think maybe from in the kitchen. 

so, i'm going to spend a few more days cataloging books and cds and then get back to cleaning.

canadian workers have failed to fight for the environment. in return, they can be sure that i will fail to fight for them.

no solidarity for canadian nationalism.

i can tell you, though, that if i get the opportunity, i'm going to smash somebody's skull in.

i don't have a lot of patience for drug addicts.

i think they should be fed to farm animals. 

i'm coming up on 25 hours of trying to clear this filth from my system, and i still feel like shit.

i sweat so much that i had to eat a piece of toast early. i'm just drenching out buckets. as mentioned, that's meth, it's an unmistakable and unique symptom. nothing else does that.

it's a good thing that i don't like being on drugs, because these retards are doing everything they can to get me addicted to them. i used to worry about walking up somewhere with a needle on my arm, that somebody decided was their idea of a joke. nowadays, i realize i'd just puke it up and sleep it off.

i legitimately don't like the feeling.

i prefer to be in control, especially when i'm at home.

i am sick and fucking tired of the society being forced to make sacrifices so that bourgeois producers can hold to outdated production models in order to maximize profit, under arguments of threats of "job losses".

is time for canada to change.

in fact, it's long overdue.

american taxes on american citizens have absolutely no effect on canada at all.

competing with the americans is retarded and will do nothing but increase the price of goods paid for by consumers.

as a canadian consumer, import taxes paid by american taxpayers on canadian imports are not my problem, and i don't want them to become my problem. i am strongly opposed to poor people paying higher consumption taxes, which is what the retarded premiers of ontario are suggesting. this is not "fighting back" in any way. nor is there anything to fight back against. the american president has declared a war on his own people. this is not my problem, it's not my war, it's not my issue and i don't want to pay higher taxes as a result of it.

frankly, canada should just abandon dirty carbon industries anyways. there is no future in carbon burning  vehicles. it's a 20th century technology that retarded people are holding on to past it's shelf life.

as a consumer, i should not be forced to pay higher taxes to offset the costs of some stupid factory closing somewhere. i don't give a shit about stupid factories closing. let them close. good riddance.

let the workers pay the costs. it's their factory. it's not my factory. it's not my fucking problem.

canada should instead react by inviting chinese electric companies into ontario to modernize the production facilities. let the americans have their gas guzzling, dirty suvs, i don't want them here; they're not welcome here.

the migraines had largely stopped recently, but that was one of the worst i've ever had. 20+ hours of brutal pain. i slept all night, all morning, all day and all evening. 

i lost 15 pounds from sweating.

they drugged me with meth. i've been through the sweating before. it's what the drugs do to you, and it smells horribly disgusting.

i am taking a different approach.

- i'm going to try to get them arrested for unrelated barbaric cultural activities. it's more likely to result in a positive outcome.

- i'm just building a bunker to lock myself in and protect myself from harm

i'm not interested in contemporary canadian society. at all.

i'm just trying to get out as best as i can.

the uk actually appears to be adjusting to this. it appears to be the new pm's electoral mandate to reverse this. canada's government, at multiple levels, should follow the direction of the uk's labour party.

liberals and conservatives both practice this worst-kind-of socialism in canada, and the ndp largely does, too. the truth is that all three parties are exactly the same.

the policies that doug ford continually advances are the same socialism-for-the-rich policies that all modern conservatives, and all modern liberals, advocate for. this worst-kind-of-socialism privatizes profits and socializes losses. in the socialism-for-the-rich model, the purpose of the state is to dump societal losses on the poor, and spread out those losses through high taxes for the poor, low taxes for the rich and slashed social services to offset it.

while i acknowledge that the science is not yet in on the effect of homosexual marriage or polygamous relationships on the social development of children, which i would consider to be functionally equivalent a priori, and i'm willing to wait for the science to come in before officially recommending state action, i expect that i will ultimately support removing children from homosexual and polygamous situations and placing them in foster care with heterosexual and monogamous parents, to uphold normal social development and re-establish healthy societal norms. this is especially important for the children of recent immigrants, to socialize the children to monogamy and prevent the normalization of polygamy in canadian society.

the state should act strictly in the best interests of the child.

while i neither support homosexuality nor polygamy, and continue to have moral opposition to both behaviours, i would follow mill in refusing to criminalize either behavour, insofar as they relate to consensual behaviour involving adults. so long as children are not involved, i see no harm in consensual deviant sexual behaviour between adults. my interest in state intervention is related strictly to the science as it applies to the social development of children, and the state's responsibility to intervene in the best interests of the child.

the inhabitants of the apartment above me are constantly turning over. it's relatively clear that there's some level of polygamy occurring.

the reality is that it's probably just easier to pay the rent that way. your welfare check is based on how many kids you have. if you have three wives, you can have three times as many kids, and get three times as much from welfare. that's probably the actual welfare scam the muslim community is pulling off, and it seems to be happening quietly, like any welfare scam. but that's probably also how to go after them.

i don't like polygamy very much, from a moral perspective, but i don't really like lots of things, and that isn't a good reason to criminalize it. are they harming anybody? they might be harming the kids. i'm willing to argue that gay marriage might be harming the kids, too. i want to see more science, and i want the eventual policy adopted based on the science. my official position is skeptical, but awaiting better data. i'm willing to acknowledge that childless polygamy is probably harmless. that's just adults having sex; then, it's a direct citation of on liberty. it's when you get kids in there that i develop concerns. it looks like there are between two and four adult women upstairs, and they each have a handful of kids. 

but i'm also increasingly worried that some of the kids are not kids at all but (very) underage wives, and that's not acceptable. i'd send somebody to jail for twenty years on the flimsiest evidence of pedophilia masquerading as polygamy, and i wouldn't have the slightest interest in cultural relativity. that is not acceptable, it's against the law, it's unambiguous and the law needs to be aggressively enforced, because it's clear that this is happening in canada's muslim community. i will call the apartment upstairs in as an underage whore house if i see any evidence at all upholding my suspicion, but i'm not there yet. there's just too many kids, and too many of those kids are young girls.

so, i dunno.

i'm uncomfortable with this but i will abide by the harm principle and not react unless i sense harm, but will react if i do.

the chinese are acting like an empire, here. this is barbarian management.

and trump is dutifully acting like the dumb, illiterate barbarian that he is, and walking right into the manipulation.

imperial presidency? don't make me laugh. it's more like the goths overrunning and looting the capital. this conservative focus on a return of male stupidity will be remembered by history as a triumph of barbarism.

further, i will reiterate that almost all american milk cannot be sold in canada because it doesn't pass canadian health and safety regulations. the supply management is actually moot in terms of american access to the canadian market. american milk products are not of a sufficient quality to be sold in canada. there are similar issues with american meat products.

canadian milk, for example, should be marketed in the united states as hormone free and marked up on that basis. americans should be given the opportunity to pay more for hormone free milk if they want it.

again.

if the united states wants to levy taxes on it's own citizens, it has every right to do that. all evidence at this point is that donald trump legitimately doesn't understand how tariffs work or who pays for them.

canada should not respond to the provocation, except in the sectors where supply chains are cross border, where it should ensure that the duties are reciprocal, whatever they are. 

canadian industry should rather develop a marketing campaign to present canadian imports to the united states as of higher quality than american goods, and present the higher price as paying a premium for a premium good. it might be silly, but it will probably work. low profit from high volume should be replaced with high profit from low volume, via higher markups.

every time iran kills an american soldier they will pay for that killing many times over. - donald trump

checkmate, beijing.

don coyote walked right into the trap, apparently because he's lost in the 1950s mccarthyite hysteria against communism. what a fucking retard.

the smart thing for the americans to do - and i supported this - was to go in and get it done as quickly as possible and then get out. they had a contingency plan in place using the kurds as ground troops, but it would have also required arab and probably pakistani troops, because iran is so big.

the reason trump cancelled this plan appears to be because the kurds are left-wing. don coyote, in his infinite wisdom, decided the terrorist death cult in iran was less bad than socialism. bravo, for blatant mental retardation at the highest levels of the american government.

instead, he aggressively walked into what was obviously a chinese plot to pull the americans into another vietnam, and that's exactly what's developing. i strongly suspect that central command is trying to push an invasion and is carrying out strikes to get to one, but the retardo president is continuing to put a hard stop on it, because the kurds are socialists.

if don coyote is going to continue with retribution and tit-for-tat, which is tactically stupid, then, obviously, it's entirely predictable that the chinese policy is going to be to target american soldiers to generate further retribution. it's the easiest thing in the world to take advantage of this kind of macho stupidity, but i guess nobody should have expected anything different.

so, go ahead don coyote. you show the ragheads who is boss. keep asserting your hierarchical dominance. keep bombing them into submission. you're clearly too stupid to learn some basic game theory, and america's enemies are going to gleefully take advantage of you for it, and bleed you dry until you're throwing rocks in a display of empty muscle, in an attempt to show you're the bigger man.

you're in charge of ontario, doug ford. this is your job to do. 

take responsibility for your own behaviour.

apologize to the people of ontario, and the people of the united states, for cutting the wildfire budgets. 

god, what a fucking loser.

instead of taking personal responsibility for his failures and mismanagement - which are the direct results of his budget cuts - he whines and complains that somebody else isn't doing it for him.

this guy calls himself a conservative, but the truth is that he's the worst kind of socialist.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/a-bunch-of-rubbish-ford-responds-to-trump-over-threats-of-wildfire-smoke-tariffs/

the way that a carbon tax (market access fee) like this would work is that the americans would set a monthly fee for ottawa to pay washington that is proportional to the amount of carbon generated that month, from all sources. total emissions. if canada seeks to lower it's market access fee, it will need to reduce it's carbon emissions. the fee should be paid by the state, not by individual polluters. this is intended as a state-to-state interaction, to force the government to (re-)implement better policies.

if canada doesn't pay the fee, the border gets shut until it does.

the americans should really do this for everybody, not just us.

canada has failed in it's climate change obligations. we've become a failed state.

it's time for the world to get tough on canada and start imposing sanctions on it for not doing it's part to reduce global emissions.

forcing american consumers to pay import taxes on canadian goods is not putting a price on pollution being created by canadians. that's not the policy i have in mind.

however, i will reiterate that i would support a decision by the united states to levy a carbon tax on canada, to replace the one we just abolished. it would not be in the form of a tariff but in the form of a market access fee.

this is ridiculously farcical, but it's the same magical thinking defining the iran file.

there's a type of thinking popular in the business world that speciously cites quantum mechanics to argue that empirical reality does not exist, but is merely a projection of one's thoughts and desires. it follows from this anti-intellectual brand of pseudo-science that we can shape the world around us with the power of positive thinking. you hear this kind of silliness at hyper capitalist yoga businesses and upper class apple corporation symposiums. 

that's what's going on here.

it doesn't matter how absurd it is.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/referencing-art-of-the-deal-lutnick-says-u-s-will-get-50-of-net-revenue-on-gordie-howe-bridge

fiction books should always be cataloged by author. this category of "pz3", which i'm seeing show up, and which is intended to catalog by age range, should simply not exist. the determination as to what age range a book is intended for is a purely subjective opinion and not the basis to categorize something in a library. further, books can be and are often read by people in differing age ranges. it just doesn't make sense.

the source of the explosive diarrhea in the us upper midwest was going to taco bell.

you can't make this stuff up. really.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/cyclospora-outbreak-diarrhea-9.7273284

doug ford is the asshole neighbour that is nice to your face in every way except that he smokes pot on his front lawn and blows marijuana smoke on your kids, and then criticizes you for being un-neighbourly when you react to his disgusting and antisocial habits, and doesn't understand what the problem is.

"hey, you want a toke? we're neighbours."

...and this is increasingly reflective of the disgusting mentality of low iq canadians that just. don't. get it.

canada has made it clear that it is not going to voluntarily abide by it's carbon reduction obligations. we have slashed regulations at both the federal and provincial level. we've eliminated carbon pricing. we're moving backwards.

the international community clearly needs to impose this cost on us from the outside because we won't abide by our responsibilities as a sovereign society and do it ourselves.

i encourage the americans to impose this tax on us. and, in the meantime, canadians will get what they deserve - higher cancer rates, increased health care costs and lower standards of living. stupid is as stupid does.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/ford-wildfire-us-short-memory-9.7275564

i will reiterate that i strongly support enforcing financial penalties on the government of ontario for the pollution it is sending into the united states. trump's comments are refreshing and overdue, and i hope it reflects a long term shift in american policy towards carbon emissions coming out of ontariio, which are unacceptably high.

what is unacceptable is the ford government's mismanagement of the forestry sector, and it's mismanagement of the climate, more broadly. 

ontarians need to wake up and throw these losers out of office and replace them with a more environmentally responsible alternative.

the attempt by certain roman personalities to erase carthage from history is well understood and i don't want to challenge it. it's not unique, either - they did the same thing to the celts, and failed to carry through with the greek, but at one point began to try before pulling back. every paving stone was removed from the city of corinth, which then ceased to exist.

however, the fact that we have literally nothing at all written in phoenician - that nothing survived. at all. - generates some questions in my mind about the centrality of the canaanites to writing. i understand that the idea that the lebanese invented writing is something that some greeks told us, but there's lots of things that some greeks told us that are incorrect. you'd think we'd have something. we have nothing.

it's the greeks themselves that have left us the most writing, and the evidence seems to suggest that that's really where the idea came from. i think that the story in herodotus is likely confused.

it's possible that the sea peoples, or the hyksos, brought the letters from greece to the levant, that it was transformed there and that it came back. the evidence seems to be that the greeks forgot how to write in the bronze age collapse and subsequent greek dark age, and then remembered again when the idea was imported back from the middle east. in fact, that's similar to what happened in our more recent dark age.

but if the idea was middle eastern in origin, the evidence - beyond herodotus - should uphold it, and it really doesn't. we have to trot out cato to explain it, and it seems like mythology. it seems far more complicated than it should be.

if all of the evidence of early writing is in the aegean and the balkans (despite the subsequent dark age that herodotus was on the renaissance end of), i'm willing to take the leap and dispense of the conspiratorial approach to history. occam's razor is enough for me.

i am still working on the big post. i'm going to repost it in years as i finish each new reading plan for the journal series. i'm doing this now to get the books out of boxes and on to shelves.

part one is year 2/3 which is just the asimov, but i've finally finished filling in the remaining gaps. there are still items left to hunt for in goodwill bins, but it's not a priority. asimov is dead. so this is done.

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

i can't do this all at once. so, rather, the way i'm going to do this is to start with school novels. 

like everybody else, i read some boring books in school and some good books in school. i remember the good books, and largely enjoyed reading them. you didn't have to pull my teeth to get me to read something, i'd do that with minimal prodding. the good books were classic texts that i want to have copies of and, at times, have had copies of on my shelf, but sold, or lost, or had damaged, or had stolen. the boring texts were almost universally "canadian content", although they never made me read any atwood until university, and i actually enjoyed it.

i took english every year from grades 1 to 13 and was initially admitted to university as a math-physics student. i mostly took science, math and computer engineering courses in my first stint at university and then went back to study law as well. i did take reading courses for breadth and there are a number of courses in history, classics, english literature, gender studies, and other topics that i was enrolled in that it's going to take me a little bit of time to collect all of the information regarding but that i want to collect texts for. the list of novels, however, as mentioned previously, is going to be less than the list of reference texts, and the direction is going to be on (1) children's literature, because literature is more appropriate as a source of entertainment for children than adults and (2) complex, thick texts when the topic does shift to mature texts, but only sporadically, and restricted to a top 1% of authors, intellectually. i have no time at all for pop culture young adult novellas designed to waste an afternoon with specious nonsense, which is 90% of the market. you'd might as well just watch a stupid film. i have always had something better to do than that.

i'm going to update this page as i build the notes for it.

very early childhoood texts i will skip or only mention in passing:

- lots of dr seuss

- mister/mrs /miss books

- the curious george books

- beatrix potter series. i had all of these. i found one when i moved into this basement.

- shell silverstein- we may have done some in the 4th grade, but i'm glossing over it. i liked the sidewalk ends as a young kid but it's mostly empty children's comedy. a gift from nana that got handed down to a younger sister.

- the hockey sweater - my dad liked this

- the mare's egg - my dad's book

2nd-9th grade independent reading for j's journal (both real and inserted, not necessarily in this order,) that i will collect as i go through the journal phase and not before:

a) the summer before grade 3:

1. isaac asimov  [done]  [2/3, but not really. should have been 7/8/9].  first author in comprehensive journal review series. all full length novels already bought. remaining short stories anthologies (legacy txts early asimov, winds of change, buy jupiter and an updated 9 volume almost complete harper collins anthology) recently purchased. robot visions and robot dreams not anthologized and skipped. look for at goodwill or in bargain bins, as online prices are too high. not very interested in the robert silverberg texts, lucky starr, norby or in honey i shrunk the kids. grab if you see cheap. otherwise, meh. acknowledge you may be surprised but doubt it. i remember reading foundation's edge in grade 5 on a suggestion by my teacher (not for credit) and then nightfall at university. i don't recall any asimov in middle or high school, and i'd already read through it all by then, mostly in grades 5 and 6. asimov would fit best in the whoddunnit theme for grade 7 but i'm isolating it to a grade 2/3 project and assigning it as first in the list. that's a little early, but it gets it out of the way. this is a very close to comprehensive asimov science fiction collection, at this point, and will form a somewhat opaque barrier to get through the start of the journal series.

that tops the asimov science fiction collection off as:

- 9 updated and expanded and recently republished short stories collections: the complete robot, the martian way, living space, the bicentennial man, mother earth, nightfall, ring around the sun, gold and magic

- 4 much shorter historical short stories collections from before 1980 (early asimov (combined), winds of change, buy jupiter, the martian way). there are a small number of stories that got dropped and are only in the old anthologies.

- 7 foundation novels: prelude to foundation, forward the foundation, foundation, foundation and empire, second foundation, foundation's edge, foundation and earth

- four robot novels: the caves of steel, the naked sun, robots of dawn, robots and empire

- three galactic empire novels: currents of space, the stars like dust, pebble in the sky

- three other novels: the gods themselves, the end of eternity, nemesis

and that's it.

===========

note: i can find documents called circular 14 at archive.org that have approved texts for each year, 1989-1996.

it changed in 1997, but i was in the last year of the old model. i did not shift to the new curriculum. at all.

it wasn't as helpful in finding novels as i hoped but it helped me remember that grade 7/8/9 is still grade school and you're still doing spelling, comprehension and grammar assignments in english class. only a percentage of english class in those years is spent reading lit. that's the real reason nobody remembers what they read....that, and the fact that what they *did* read was probably less advanced than they want to remember it was, because there were still kids in their class that could barely read at all. like, after thinking about it for a long time, i'm now certain that we spent months reading charlotte's web in grade 7. that's at 12-13 years old. i remember it very clearly, now. it's maybe deceptively abstract as a hidden allegory, but it's not animal farm. it's intended for a much younger audience and legitimately more appropriate for a younger audience, and it was certainly below me, but the fact is that it was actually absolutely appropriate for roughly half the class, which was reading at half their age level, not twice it, like i was. they didn't split you up into advanced and special students until grade 10, in those days. no wonder i don't remember much from middle school english, and no wonder you don't, either; if you were a smart kid, the school system just slowed you down.

note: be careful buying books on amazon. lame people just print books out to 8x11 computer paper, staple it together and call it a book. it's not even properly bound. this nonsense is going to get banned. for now, you have to check or you'll get ripped off.

update: i'm shifting much of this to bookoutlet.ca or to chapters to avoid this issue. i'll cross-reference. shop, even.

i might get an ereader soon. it won't be a kindle. but it won't be my primary reading source, it will be for bus rides and supplementary. i like physical books. i'm building a shelf - it's the point, to have it on your wall and say "these are my books, this is my library". 

===========

books i remember reading in school (not comprehensive), starting in grade three

before 3rd grade (theme: asimov):

- i'm assigning asimov to the summer before the 3rd grade, and bleeding into the 3rd grade before it's done.

- this is a little too early, but that's ok. 

- already had the 7 foundation novels, the four robot novels, the complete robot, the three galactic empire novels, the old martian way, and the gods themselves, the end of eternity and nemesis

- added the early asimov (used), buy jupiter (used), the winds of change (used) and the recently published 8 volume complete short stories collection, which is close to comprehensive. amazon.

adds for 2/3 are:

- the complete robot (already had, harpercollins)

- the caves of steel, the naked sun, the robots of dawn (already had, bantam spectra), robots and empire (already had, harpercollins)

- currents of space, the stars like dust, pebble in the sky (already had, tor/orb)

 - prelude to foundation, forward the foundation, foundation, foundation and empire, second foundation, foundation's edge, foundation and earth (already had, bantam spectra)

- the martian way (already had, panther)

- the gods themselves (already had, orion)

- the end of eternity (already had, voyager)

- nemesis (already had, bantam spectra)

+

- the early asimov (found used, doubleday)

- buy jupiter (found used, harpercollins)

- winds of change (found uesd, panther)

- the martian way (complete stories vol 1) (found new, harpercollins)

- living space (complete stories vol 2) (found new, harpercollins)

- the bicentennial man (complete stories vol 3) (found new, harpercollins)

- mother earth (complete stories vol 4) (found new, harpercollins)

- nightfall (complete stories vol 5) (found new, harpercollins)

- ring around the sun (complete stories vol 6) (found new, harpercollins)

- gold (complete stories vol 7) (found new, harpercollins)

- magic (complete stories vol 8) (found new, harpercollins)

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

$115 (6 volume short story box set) + 50 (two extra volumes) + 50 (three historical subvolumes) = 

$215

i would support a north american air pollution taxation scheme, where polluters on both sides of the border (including gasoline consumers) are taxed to compensate for the externalities resulting from the pollution they generate, including health care costs. an integrated, international carbon tax would address some of the criticisms in the way that more localized carbon taxes essentially offshore pollution. that's a good idea, and i hope the governments of canada and the united states sit down and work out a serious implementation.

i just finished a major overhaul of grades 2-9 and i need to double it now for grades 10-13.

i've got piles of novels coming in, and it's overdue. the update's coming. soon.

trump thinks it's good if people don't understand what he's doing, which is retarded. if the americans had any semblance of competition for hegemonic dominance, they would nuke the white house to eliminate the uncertainty. there is nothing more dangerous than unpredictability. 

so, it looks to me like the americans are planning an invasion of southwestern iran, and that they want to go in from the sea and from iraq, in order to hold the port towns and basically blow up any remaining farce of naval control the iranians have. if the iranians continue to send missiles, the americans will put boots on the ground.

however, they are foolishly attempting to obfuscate it and they will deflect if you ask them about it.

i hope that is what they are doing. it's not the plan i would have written, but it's a step towards regime change. if you don't like the violence, if you want the killing to slow down, there's no way to get there without changing the government in tehran. if you haven't learned that yet, you have a learning disability.

jd vance is emerging as the fascist trump replacement, and the potential point where trumpism gets seriously dangerous. his rhetoric about the jewish media is right out of mein kampf.

right now, trumpism is just a 21st century update to the idiocracy of the robber baron era. hitler was broadly seen as a dunce rather than a genocidal maniac; the scary one was supposed to be mussolini. i've repeatedly argued that trump is not a real nazi, he just plays one on tv, and that he's ultimately not smart enough to be scary. trump may cause a lot of problems before he's done away with, but he's not a serious threat to democracy. vance is emerging as the more serious threat and the more dangerous successor.

rubio is emerging as the counter-revolutionary. if rubio follows trump, the republicans will likely do a lot of backtracking. that might be the preferable option.

the canadian government has cut taxes so dramatically that, instead of providing disaster relief using it's own resources, it has to import third world missionary groups, that will terrorize the local population with their extremist religious beliefs. we're like venezuela, or cuba, or haiti, at this point. it's not acceptable.

flood relief should be done by local government and paid for by taxing canadians. it's not charity work. it's a basic public service that citizens have a right to access. we have enough wealth in this society that we can tax our people to provide services; we don't need to rely on american missionary groups because we're too poor to pay for it ourselves. 

it's embarrassing.

i'm increasingly left with the question: why, exactly, do canadians pay taxes at all? our government doesn't do anything anymore. it outsources everything.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/disaster-relief-group-s-anti-2slgbtq-views-draw-pushback-in-ottawa-9.7272735

canadians and ontarians have made choices over the last several electoral cycles to abandon attempts to reduce carbon emissions, and to cut taxes instead of spend money on climate change mitigation.

those choices have consequences.

meanwhile, the federal government is trying to convince people that building dirty natural gas plants - which ontario was in the process of completely getting rid of as vicious pollution generating machines until recently - is building "clean electricity".

that is complete nonsense. it's maliciously dishonest. it's contemptibly evil.

mark carney's government is in fact abandoning clean energy in favour of a return to 20th century technology, namely gas power plants, and that policy will further deteriorate our air quality and the air quality of our neighbours. his attempts to deflect are dishonest lies. he's a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.

ontarians have made poor electoral decisions over the last decade and thrice elected a government that does not care about the environment, but repeatedly campaigned on reversing environmental regulations in order to reduce public spending. we are left to choke on our own filth, as a result. 

we got what we deserve for our anti-social voting choices.

its time to wake up and throw these losers out of office and replace them with a government that will recover some of the environmental policies that it destroyed.

this government has also all but put an end to recycling in this province and replaced it with burning garbage, which is going to make our air quality - and the air quality of our neighbours - dramatically worse. this disastrous waste management approach needs to be aggressively reversed by the next government, which needs to view recycling as a public service and not a market service and move to create a publicly funded recycling model that is run by government employees and paid for with tax dollars, at a loss. ontarians need to accept that recycling is neither free nor profitable, but is a necessary public service that the state has a health mandate to enforce, at a justified cost to taxpayers.

as is often the case in canada, it is the indigenous inhabitants of northwestern ontario feeling the brunt of and taking the hit from these conservative party budget cuts to forest fire prevention, at a time when any basic analysis should have predicted the need for large increases in funding. this is incompetence. this is mismanagement. and the government should correctly get reamed for it.

this is what happens when a society slashes tax rates for decades on end, it starts to become unable to provide basic services to it's own people. without a sufficient tax base, a society begins to fall apart.