i heard this from a cop this evening, after i told them that there's litigation pending.

"if you want to be in good standing in the court, you should destroy the evidence in front of you and move the fan."

i keep saying this: orwell v huxley misses the point entirely. orwell, mostly - yes. but, the one that really got it was kafka...

the absurdity of everything is incomprehensible.

i'm going to give her the opportunity to commit to installing a wall fan. i mean, she's wrong on every point. i'm not breaking the lease agreement. i'm not breaking the fire code. you can't disrupt evidence during litigation. and, you can't interfere with my enjoyment of the premises.

but, if she agrees to install a wall fan then that negates all of the non-arguments. and, if she refuses to do so, she's really burying herself on the litigation: it's another non-refusal to mitigate where she's legally required to.

she should call a lawyer, really. she has no idea what she's doing...

I should point out at the beginning of this that I daily vlog my life and consequently have a large amount of video documentation of things that people would not normally have video documentation of. I am willing to provide this video footage upon demand.

The tl;dr of this (but, please read it) is that I am dealing with an issue of second hand smoke in my apartment and that the landlords are not just refusing, point black, to make any reasonable accommodation (they have literally answered “no” when asked the question in these terms), but are even going to the point of obstructing the accommodations that I am making on my own. Given that they are refusing to co-operate, or even to acknowledge the existence of a problem, I am seeking the structural solution of building a wall in the foyer to keep the smoke out, as well as extreme rent abatement until the issue is resolved.

I moved into a small building in Windsor, Ontario on Aug 1, 2013. At the time, I had been struggling with quitting smoking cigarettes for many years, with various levels of success – I would quit for a few months and then smoke for a few months. I was always an outside smoker, preferring to maintain clean air for indoor spaces. I smoked lightly-to-moderately, depending on lots of things.

The actual truth is that I would not have been able to meaningfully identify a building with second hand smoke issues at the time I moved into this unit. I was in a smoking phase over the summer and could have consequently easily walked through a smelly room without really noticing it. I could have – and did – periodically notice particularly strong smoke build-ups in the hallway and front area of the apartment over the next several years, but at this point I would not refer to it as a nuisance or something affecting my enjoyment of the space. I would have been more likely to describe it as somewhat of a worrying curiosity – I noticed it, and took note of the possible health implications but did not have the prerogative to address it due to the fact that I was still smoking more often than not. However, I need to reiterate that I always smoked outside during the period from 2013-2016. I was actually diagnosed with chronic bronchitis as a child due to the effects of second-hand smoke, utilize a puffer from time-to-time and have needed to always avoid indoor smoke as much as possible, whether I was smoking or not, due to the fact that it can trigger the bronchitis. I had this discussion with the landlord during the process of signing the lease, so he has been aware of my concerns with second-hand smoke (and especially indoor second-hand smoke) for the whole time. In fact, I need the puffer more often before I started smoking. I will concede that the behaviour of nicotine addicts is not always strictly rational, but the fact is that my smoking habits are only weakly correlated with my use of a puffer (certainly, quitting would not eliminate my periodic reliance on it, as it is the result of permanent damage from exposure at a young age).

I made a decision at the end of 2015 to quit smoking over the course of 2016. This was a difficult process, but by march of 2016 I felt justified in calling myself a non-smoker. Slowly, the smoke in the hallway seeping into the living room became more and more of a problem to me. There were a few days in February, 2017 where it started to noticeably bother me by seeping into the living room and attaching itself to towels and other clothing in that space, and I felt the urge to find a way to keep the smoke away from my living space. The smoke at this point was certainly affecting my enjoyment of the space, but I did not at this point feel that the issue required litigation; I thought I could mitigate the problem by taking a set of simple and non-invasive steps.

The smoke is a mixture of tobacco and marijuana smoke. I am not interested in determining the legality of the source of marijuana smoke; I support the oncoming legalization, and simply do not want to walk down that path, although I realize it may afford me with more draconian options. However, I also think that persistent second-hand marijuana smoke should be treated the same way that persistent second-hand tobacco smoke is; I do not think I should have these more draconian options. I am merely attempting to point out that the smell of marijuana is not periodic, but nearly as strong as the smell of tobacco. Again: I do not know the legality of the situation.

Besides on the day of this writing (March 31, 2017), it’s hard for me to state exactly when I decided that the smoke was substantially interfering with my enjoyment of the building, but this is a function of my hope, up to this point in the narrative and beyond, that the issue could be dealt with by a set of simple mitigating actions. The fact that I took the steps I did is illustrative of the smoke functionally interfering with my enjoyment of the space, but I wasn’t cognizant of it at the time because I had that hope of a solution. I suppose it was at the point that I lost hope at a simple answer and realized the need for litigation that the realization finally sunk in.

It is unclear what, if anything, could have been accomplished by bringing the issue to the attention of the landlord. The building is arranged in such a way that smoke from the upstairs is going to seep through the doors and envelop the entire front entrance space. Short of demanding that the tenants stop smoking (which is not a request I would even make), there really wasn’t anything that the landlord could do to keep the smoke out of this space. So, I did not consider involving the landlord to be a productive task. Further, it was not clear how I could even contact a landlord at this point, as the property had changed hands. There is a live-in superintendent (Paul Ratko) that is a member of the family that owns the building, but I do not believe that he is mentally capable of carrying out this role and prefer to avoid him due to his short temper and tendency to verbally harass and at times even threaten me. I think that the unfolding of events demonstrates the wisdom of my choice to avoid this superintendent, as all he ever does is exacerbate situations and escalate problems to absurd levels by being excessively authoritarian and aggressive and demanding. I’ve long sought to speak with somebody that is less interested in ordering people around like a bully and more interested in reasonable discussion. A lot of what develops is a ramification of this individual’s personality, and the negligence attached to giving somebody with a mental disability a sense and position of authority. This is another issue altogether.

The first thing I tried to do was air the space out a little bit. I spent the afternoon of Feb 17, 2017 (which was unseasonably warm) attending an opened front entrance of the building while reading a book. This tactic was not as effective as I had hoped it would be.

The next thing that I did was install a fan at the foot of the stairs directly in front of my apartment. This would have been done early on the morning of Feb 18, 2017. The hope was that this would blow the smoke up and away from the entrance. This was actually initially intended as a short term measure, but what I found was that the smoke very quickly filled back up at the base of the stairs upon dismantling the fans. The fan has consequently been in place more or less constantly since this time.

While the fan does not resolve the issue entirely, it makes a substantial difference. As mentioned, dismantling the fan almost immediately degrades the air quality around the door to my apartment.

I put an air freshener in front of the fan at some point shortly afterwards. I could determine the exact date by analyzing receipts and video footage if determined relevant.

I did not receive a complaint or comment about the fan between Feb 18, 2017 and Mar 29, 2017.

Again: it was not an ideal solution, but it was clearly the beginnings of one. From time to time (often on Sundays), the fan became overwhelmed by the smoke. I could maybe even suggest that the fan spent all week pushing the smoke out only to get overwhelmed on Sundays and have to start all over again. The issue is also strongly weather-dependent, and I wanted to give the weather time to warm up. By the evening of March 26^th, I had convinced myself that the fan alone was not enough and that further steps were going to be necessary to mitigate the problem.

My immediate thought was that I should get a more powerful air freshener. However, as my primary issue is health-related rather than odour-related, I decided to avoid that approach. Rather, a health-related mitigation strategy should have to do with pulling the smoke particles out of the air. A little research suggested that my options were either an expensive filtration system (that I would not have been able to install in the hall, anyways) or a simple process of setting down adsorbents in the space to suck the chemicals out of the air with. The cheapest and most plentiful adsorbent available to me was charcoal. I did, however, still need to mask the lingering smell, as well – even if just for the short term. Frankly, the smoke was very bad on that precise night. So, I decided upon a hybrid strategy of placing coal and vinegar in strategic places around the lobby in order to mask the odour and clean the air. In hindsight, is there any doubt that the smoke was substantially interfering with my reasonable enjoyment of the rental unit?

I did not know if this was going to be effective. If it was effective, I did not know if it was going to lead to a longer term strategy. For example, if the charcoal was effective then perhaps some activated carbon filters could be installed on the wall. What I was really doing was experimenting with mitigation tactics, with a final outcome to be determined by what results could be observed.

So, I purchased a small amount of vinegar on the night of the 27^th and put some of it out in a tupperware container directly in front of my door. I put a smaller amount in a cup on my side of the door, as well. Vinegar is merely a masking agent, but it is a powerful one.

I then picked up some all natural charcoal at a grocery store on the morning of the 28^th. This charcoal is created by burning wood in the absence of oxygen and does not contain additives like lighter fluid; it is nearly pure carbon, and chemically almost identical to the material found in a water filter or a carbon air filter, the difference being a slightly higher level of impurities in the charcoal. The effect of carbon, in context, is that it should suck moisture and gasses out of the air and into itself, thereby cleaning the air of volatile compounds (particularly, compounds with open hydrogen atoms). My sleeping schedule is erratic (I live on disability), and I happened to sleep in the afternoon on this specific day, so I didn’t have time to put the charcoal out until early in the morning of the 29th. The charcoal was placed in used plastic strawberry bins, which were placed in out-of-the-way areas that were neither in the direct line of anybody’s transit nor in areas likely to be affected by weather. I also put some coal in socks and hung them from the railways. I happen to have recorded this process for my vlog, if there are any questions as to the exact placement of the charcoal or whether or not the placement would lead to issues with blowing soot.

It really never crossed my mind to think that this would bother anybody. Carbon is not a dangerous chemical; we use it in our water filters and our air furnaces. Granted, we should not smoke carbon, nor should we allow carbon that has been trapped underground for millions of years to enter the atmosphere in unchecked quantities. But, in the form of unburned charcoal placed in the corners of the lobbies? It just didn’t cross my mind that it would upset anybody, or that it would be something I should ask the other tenants about. I might acknowledge that as an error (I perhaps should have realized other tenants would have questions about it and taken the time to seek out their concerns), but such an error should not have led to the outcome that followed.

I fell asleep in the afternoon of the 29^th, to be woken up by a loud knock on the door some time in the middle of the evening, perhaps around 6:00. I opened the door to the superattendant, who started abusively yelling at me to clear everything out of the way. I was half asleep and not interested in being talked to in an abusive manner, so I grouchily told him to fuck off and went to go back to sleep. I was not fully awake and do not remember the exact terms of the conversation, but I do remember that the bullying and demanding tone from the superintendent was both typical of his demeanour and not something I was able to deal with, half-asleep. He seemed to be incredibly angry.

I did not fall back asleep, but it took me upwards of an hour to wake up to the point where I could deal with the situation. The charcoal had disappeared, and the fan had been unplugged. So, I plugged the fan back in and went upstairs to determine what had happened.

I asked the smoking tenants if they had complained about the charcoal, and was told they had. I asked them what their concern about it was, and they hesitated and she said something about it bothering her stomach. This is not biologically plausible, as coal sucks things in rather than expels things out. The only biological explanation for this is the highly unlikely scenario that the coal put her into withdrawal. So, I do not know what their actual motive for requesting the coal be removed was. The reason their motive matters is that they might have had an incorrect understanding of what the charcoal was meant to do, and what it’s effects might be. Ultimately, though, I was phishing for the feedback on mitigation that I perhaps should have sought in the first place.

They were not interested in discussing the issue further.

The next thing I did was go to the superintendent to acquire about the whereabouts of my coal, and whether he intended to refund me for it or not, as the coal did not belong to him. He responded in a raised voice intended to intimidate me, and followed it be charging directly at me in the manner that bullies do, which forced me to raise my own to overpower his and indicate that I will in fact not be intimidated, at all. I made it clear at this point that I have rights and was not going to be pushed around by him. He reacted by threatening an eviction, which I fully understand was spurious – but is indicative of the broader problem. He expects that he can yell at people and intimidate them as he wishes, and threatens eviction at anybody that yells back. This constantly confrontational and combative tone leads to escalated problems that are otherwise easily resolvable – but I know that, in a broader sense, it is not his fault. He shouldn’t be being placed in these scenarios. It is a type of negligence that he is. There should be a landlord on call to deal with things, and the other tenants should be told to avoid him.

I realized, quickly, that I needed to talk to the actual property owners, who I did not have a direct means to contact. I had to find their phone number using 411.

I spoke to Tammy Allen (co-owner) for about ten minutes. She requested that I send her an email explaining the situation, which I did. She also suggested that she might inspect the premises on the next day. The crux of this email was to explain the situation from my perspective and then lay down a proposal to take steps to remedy the problem by scheduling a meeting where the smoking tenants and I could sit down and have a communal discussion about ways that we could work together to mitigate the problem. A suggested outcome was the installation of (activated) carbon filters on the wall, rather than charcoal on the floor.

I spent the night researching various aspects of the situation (mitigation strategies, legal realities) and came to the conclusion that it would probably be better to just let the vinegar sit for a while to let everything blow over. For me to experiment with carbon filtering is one thing, but for me to expect a landlord to get involved without clear benefits is another. I realized that I should be focusing on discussing ways to further experiment with smaller amounts of carbon filtering as a first step, and then talking about things like installing wall filters only after it’s been determined to be an effective strategy or not. I was clearly jumping the gun and everybody – myself included – would probably be more rational about the situation next week. I expressed these thoughts in a follow-up email, and expected to get some better sleep in the afternoon.

It was about 11:30 on the morning of the 30^th that I got another knock on the door from the superintendent’s daughter who, amongst other things, insisted I dismantle the fan. She unplugged the fan twice, and I plugged it back in twice. The two of them are both mentally challenged, and equally deeply unequipped to deal with a complex situation where rights are being weighed against each other: they merely demanded I do what they say, or else. I had to physically position myself in front of the fan to prevent them from dismantling it – this is a literal and classical breach of the covenant of quiet enjoyment, where an agent of the landlord is physically interfering with my right to fresh air. There was even a moment where they threatened to call the police, but they seem to have backed away when I made it clear that I would actually like an officer present. After a little while, and some childish yelling and taunting back and forth that I must engage in when communicating with them out of default necessity, they eventually went back upstairs. While they claimed to be attempting to enforce the fire code, I do not think they had any understanding of what they were doing, beyond the need to enforce themselves.

It was at this point that the breach of covenant made itself abundantly clear, and I understood that I had no choice but to litigate. They were literally trying to steal my fresh air. I sent a third email to Tammy indicating that the only solution is to build a wall between the two stairwells and I would begin litigation on April 10^th should I not get a proper response before then.

It was Ryan Allen (co-owner) that knocked on my door on the evening of the 30^th. He insisted that I dismantle the fan due it blocking the  pathway and breaking the fire code. My analysis of this claim is that it is spurious: the fan was not blocking the path at all, and was thus not in contravention of the fire code. As I knew he was merely using the fire code as an excuse, I tilted the chair by 45 degrees to make it abundantly clear that it was not blocking the exit. He then began making things up, and I stopped listening and changed the topic to the second hand smoke. I asked him whether or not he intended to make a good faith effort to mitigate the second hand smoke, and he looked at me point-blank and said that he would not. He made it abundantly clear that he had no interest in dealing with the issue, and wasn’t going to do anything about it all. He then suggested that I was “full of shit” when I told him his attitude was the reason I require a legal remedy.

Eventually, I thanked him for his time and informed him that I would see him in court. As he had threatened to remove the fan if I did not do so, I took the fans and vinegar out of the hallway with the full intent of reinstalling them when he was gone – and did. While they remain in place at the time of this writing, if my fans (they are two general electric table fans – I have pictures) are stolen between now and the point this case is heard, I will ask for them to be replaced or returned as a component of the remedy in the case.

As Ryan Allen made it clear on the evening of march 30^th that he did not intend to do anything about the situation at all besides attempt to prevent me from breathing clean air, there is no reason to wait until the 10^th. A fourth email was sent to update the situation.

I am seeking the installation of a wall between the units (this will require twinning the front entrance) because it is the most direct way to deal with the problem of mitigating the second-hand smoke. I initially wanted to deal with this problem incrementally, by experimenting with different approaches and eventually settling on something that is cost-effective and non-invasive to everybody involved. However, the behaviour of the family that owns the building (really, all of them) has been so deplorable and obstructionist that it is abundantly clear that an incremental and cost-effective approach will be met with nothing but resistance and obtuseness. Rather than deal with months or years worth of juvenile conflict, I would like them to just jump to building the wall and have the issue dealt with and put aside for good.

I am additionally seeking a rent abatement to get the point across to them that second hand smoke is a serious health problem that requires a serious response, and act as an incentive for them to mitigate. At the core of their dismissive attitude seems to be the view that second hand smoke is not a real problem. How can this be true, in 2017? Cutting my rent down to the maximum odsp allotment would hopefully send the message that this is, in fact, a problem that needs to be taken seriously and incentivize them to work quickly in building the wall to mitigate it.

I am additionally seeking $8.00 for the cost of coal that was discarded and, as mentioned, the cost of the fans, should they also be stolen.

again: carbon is broadly harmless.

you can drink it. you can eat it - and you do eat it. lots of it. you're mostly water, but after that you're mostly carbon.

you're even carbon-based. you are.

do you know what the term organic means? it means carbon based.

there is only one caveat with carbon: it's dangerous when you inhale it in the form of smoke. like, when you buy a pack of cigarettes, for example.

but, whatever. i'm moving on.

$479/month sounds like about right for rent, to me.

i don't bluff.

i don't play games.

i don't bargain.

i don't "make deals".

what i do is analyze probabilities and present them to opponents to observe. if they are smart, they do what i want the easy way. if they are stupid, we have to do it the hard way.

that said, i also certainly strategize using tactics that are designed to put my opponents in situations where they have to make poor choices.

but, if you ever think you're calling my bluff, be warned - i'm a cyborg. i don't have time for that shit. if i say i'm doing something, i'm doing it; and if i'm not going to do something, i won't tell you i will.

it's going to be a beautiful wall, let me tell you. not a single smoke particle will get through this wall. you'll be breathing so fast that you'll hyperventilate, and your head will spin.

by the way, who's paying for the wall?

the smokers are.

an entire family of people managed to do everything wrong from start to finish. there's a half dozen people involved here, all related.

and, you know why? honestly?

privilege.

i'm not good enough for them, and their upper middle class wasp bullshit.

but, this is why we have laws, and why we're all equal before them.

pro-tip: when your tenant asks you what you're going to do about a serious problem like second hand smoke that is universally acknowledged in the tort system and you say "nothing", what you're really saying is "whatever your dreams are, they may come true!".

like, i asked him point blank if he was going to do anything, and he said no.

he even had the stupidity to admit he didn't care.

ka-ching!

i can't sleep. and i actually haven't slept.

i'm pissed off.

the actual property owner came down today and indicated that he was not going to make a reasonable effort to mitigate the second hand smoke, which is the important part of the case law. what they are obligated to do is listen to my concerns and do something about them. in the end, what they do may not work, and then we're all fucked. but, should they choose to not make an effort - as they are now - the consequences can actually be quite severe.

basically, the harder they try the less they get dinged. if they don't try at all, they're going to get nailed. and, i'm going to nail them as hard as i can.

i'm looking for a combination of rent abatement and the building of a wall between the two staircases. well, they gave me the gift of total assholery. i'm going to cash in as best i can.

at the very least, they have to do something. i'm going for the prize all at once...

oh, and i'm going to want my filing cash back, too. and my $8.00 for the charcoal.

j

hi.

i started the day off with an attempt to put the issue aside for the immediate future, only to have the upstairs tenants not only demonstrate a lack of good faith in negotiation (which is required by law) but an active obstruction in my attempts to remedy the problem.

i no longer believe that it is useful to be collaborative.

rather, i am demanding the following solution: please install a wall between the upstairs and downstairs, and twin the doors. that way, the upstairs tenants will not enter my breathing space.

should i not receive the proper response, i will launch a litigation process on april 10th.

j

https://www.nsra-adnf.ca/cms/file/files/pdf/2007_quiet_enjoyment.pdf

so, i've done a little bit of research into this and there's two possible outcomes:

1) we can install some carbon filters the easy way or
2) i can initiate an arbitration for breach of the covenant of "quiet enjoyment" and ask for the specific remedy of eliminating the smoke via installation of carbon filters, plugging holes and other far more expensive options. the precedents are actually on my side, here.

easy way or hard way.

they get to pick.

if you sort through this mess, you'll see me talking about this somewhere or other...

private property? well, look up. i'm not a fan.

that said, you have to understand private property for what it is, which is a theory of how some dead people thought things ought to work. like this theory or hate it, you must fully realize that walking around a court room throwing around the idea of private property is never going to get you anywhere at all.

maybe it's the greatest idea of all time. maybe it's shit. we can have these debates - but they exist purely in the abstract.

in reality, private property is not a well-formed legal concept. it does not describe how we govern relationships, and it especially does not describe how we govern relationships between tenants or between tenants and landlords.

the reality is that the rules are set not by a property owner but by the state. the state writes and enforces just about every aspect of a tenant agreement and resulting tenancy that you can imagine, including the process of eviction.

and, if you think you're a smart landowner and can trick your tenant into signing away rights? nope. that piece of paper you signed is functionally worthless.

if you read the laws closely enough, something kind of odd jumps out: it's almost as though the legal reality is that we live in co-ops. odd.

so, why don't we act like it, then?

when i talk about behaving as though i live in a co-op, there's more than hubris to it and more than some starry-eyed concept of anarchism. the co-op model is just that - a model. it does not perfectly describe the reality we live in, either. but, it is a lot closer to the reality we live in than the private property model and you will consistently get to more accurate real-world analyses by utilizing the co-op model than by utilizing the private property model.

i'm ultimately not sure why the upstairs tenants contacted the landlord instead of contacting me, but it reflects a defect in their thinking. instead of seeking me out and looking for a way to collaborate on a solution to the problem, they deferred to an authority that doesn't truly exist. in the end, i am on firm ground in demanding that the so-called property owners take steps to mitigate the smoke issues, and i will win this fight one way or another. it would have been a lot easier on everybody had the tenants realized the greater explanatory power of the co-op model and jumped to working with me rather than against me.

as it is, the next step is going to need to be all of us sitting down not with the live-in landlord but with the actual property owner. i feel that the property owner should not need to be present. but, the other tenants are insisting upon it.

maybe a better concept of understanding, and a change of mindset, will come out of the meeting. we only need management if we insist upon it, but that means we won't abolish it if we continue to rely upon it.

the only other thing i can think of is that the idiots don't know the difference between coal and charcoal.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-coal-and-charcoal

hi.

i told you my name was jason, and that is legally correct, and thus the right answer in context, but i'm also transgendered and thus communicate informally as jessica. basically, i still need to sign things like leases and rent checks as jason...

as mentioned, i had been finding the second-hand smoke moving downstairs to be an increasing nuisance and had taken various steps to counter it. the issue comes and goes with the weather, often reaching the worst states in sudden weather shifts that increase the temperature gradient. so, it was really bad on that night last week where it dropped 30 degrees over night. the stubborn refusal for spring to set in is making the problem linger.

i've put a couple of fans at the foot of the stairs, and while it helps to keep it away from the very front of the door on all but the worst days, it's not good enough.

the next thing i tried was some open vinegar, and it had a larger effect. but, i wanted to make use of some carbon, as well, as it is very effective at adsorbing odors.

so, last night, i placed about $8.00 worth of coal around the front of the lobby. it was portioned out into used plastic strawberry containers and also into used, hole-y socks. the coal was in out of the way places, and it is very hard to believe that it was bothering anybody.

briefly, and i don't understand it perfectly myself, but coal is a very strong adsorbent because it has 4 open electrons (it's adsorbent properties can be increased by increasing it's surface area). so, volatile compounds (with open hydrogens) stick to the coal when they come into contact with it. the purpose of the coal was to clear the air of second hand smoke.

coal filters are also used for drinking water and in air furnaces. your father no doubt has a coal filter in his unit. some cigarette brands also use coal in their filters. so, coal is widely used for this purpose, and seen as of no harm to human health - unlike second hand smoke, which is known to cause a wide number of illnesses.

apparently, the tenants upstairs complained about the coal. the claim appears to be that it upset their stomach, but this is frankly absurd given everything in front of us, including their habit of heavy smoking. does filtered water upset their stomach? does air from the furnace upset their stomach? does the filter on their cigarette upset their stomach? i think that what is closer to the truth is that the sight of the coal hurt their feelings. while i understand that smokers have the right to smoke, they also need to understand that their actions cause harm to others and that their feelings cannot be the dominant priority, here.

the coal was then removed by **** in an angry fit of irrational rage. he also unplugged my fan, which i've since plugged back in.

the reality is that coal was a non-invasive solution to the problem of second-hand smoke, and i am going to insist that some kind of carbon filter be installed to absorb the pollution and purify the air in the lobby. in my mind, i even think that they are obligated to pay for it, but i will not push the point - although i would like **** to give me my $8.00 back for the coal that was thrown away.

moving forwards, i would like to sit down and have a discussion about ways to clean the air in the lobby that includes the upstairs tenants and balances their presumably aesthetic concerns with my health concerns. i thought the coal was a non-invasive way to clear the air. but, i picked coal because it was cheap. if there is some aversion to coal because it hurts their feelings or makes them embarrassed when they see it, perhaps we can mount some furnace filters on the wall or find some other way to install some carbon in the area to bind to the pollutants and suck them out of the air. i'm not picky about *how* the carbon is placed, but i am insistent that it *is* placed and do not think there is any serious grounds to oppose it, other than refusing to acknowledge the effects of their smoke - which i think is unacceptable.

other than requesting that **** refund me for the coal he discarded, i would prefer a collaborative approach at this time to a confrontational one and will leave it at that.

considering the context, maybe i shouldn't answer the question of whether or not i've had (consensual) sex in the women's toilets or not.

:P

in fact, i was so drunk i can barely remember it. but, i do remember that i wasn't initiating.

you guys have got this thing backwards, i'm telling you.

i'm not going to follow this story further, but i just want to bring to everybody's attention that tomi lahren will be 25 in less than six months.

that's like, 93, in airheaded-bimbo years.

there's a serious discussion here, but i'm not doing it.

so, obviously the whole transphobia thing is a divide and rule tactic by the elite, who are looking for a minority group to attack. how many practicing muslims do you expect to rally against transphobia? and how many do you expect to align with the conservative groups that are otherwise out to get them?

here's the frustrating thing: the conservative muslims will do everything they possibly can to find common cause with the conservative christians, and yet the christians will never budge on their attacks on them. the conservative christians are more interested in converting the queer folks, because underneath everything else they're white supremacists, too. and, while a certain segment of useful idiots on the left will continue to reach out to them, the muslims are never going to budge an inch, either. it's the most dysfunctional love triangle you can imagine: muslims chasing christians, who are chasing queers, who are chasing muslims.

don't look at me, man, i'm just watching from a distance and writing down what i see in front of me. you don't get anywhere shooting at scribes; i don't make reality, i just observe it.

anyways.

this is what it is: an attack for political gain. and, we know that it works. but why does it work? are the religious really that stupid and ignorant, or is there something else going on?

my observation is that you get the most push back from men, for some reason. it's not that women never care, but they don't get angry so much as they get annoyed. now, i'll acknowledge that i only have my own experiences, and my own experiences are that of an attractive, androgynous white person. but, i've never had a woman yell at me or express any notion of feeling unsafe. i've only ever had women give me bitchy looks for not being into them, or exasperated expressions that indicate frustration at the current ubiquity of metrosexuals.

but, i think that this is actually at the core of the pushback you get from men. the messaging i get from women is never that they're afraid i'm going to touch them, but sometimes is that they're annoyed that i don't want to touch them. that is what i think transphobic men are picking up on.

but, it's not just jealousy, it's a control issue. if you're a jealous, controlling male you have a constant, glaring problem in your dominance: you can't follow her into the bathroom. no matter how alpha you are, no matter how much she recognizes your superiority, she can always sneak into the bathroom and cheat on you and there's nothing you can ever do about it.

as absurd as this sounds - and is - a controlling male will never get over this. he will spend his entire life freaking out over what happens when she's in the bathroom. he will never be convinced that she's really, seriously going to come back. he will always fear that she won't.

this perpetual fear is bad enough as it is. now, the government wants to let guys into the bathroom - the very place where she can cheat on him, and he can't stop it? worse, they only want to let the cute ones in that he knows she's attracted to? what? this madness must be stopped! and right now - before she leaves him for good.

considering that women tend to be curious or frustrated, there's even some surface logic to the fear, right?

except there isn't, because we're usually not functional. it's really, honestly just a question of understanding the chemistry. once you grasp what's actually happening in our bodies, there's no basis of any fears.

notwithstanding the need to abolish the patriarchy, of course.

degenerative diseases?

riiiiiiiiight.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/27/15077864/elon-musk-neuralink-brain-computer-interface-ai-cyborgs

more broadly speaking, i actually think it's kind of important for queer people to declare their autonomy and pull themselves out of this kind of bourgeois coalition on the soft-left that is designed to co-opt their identity and assimilate it into something that aligns roughly with the hetero-patriarchy.

the queer movement used to be the most radical movement out there. we've lost that; we've been colonized by democrats and liberals that just want to warp us into a stable voting bloc. declaring our autonomy means escaping these conservative, christian/patriarchal ideas of marriage equality and labour rights. let the church have it's institutions; join the fight for universal health care, instead.

being queer used to mean something - it used to mean taking a stand against the establishment, of existing outside the rules and rejecting authority. we need to get that back.

we should be at the front of the anti-capitalist resistance, not complaining that some fucking church somewhere won't accept us, or that we can't get jobs working for the government.

fwiw, don't expect me to stand up for gay marriage much, either, because i actually oppose the institution of marriage altogether.

i mean, i guess if we're going to have marriage at all, it shouldn't discriminate based on gender. but if this is your issue, i'm not your ally - you'll never get much more from me than a set of weak statements.

if you want to talk about abolishing marriage as an outdated tool of patriarchal control, i'd be more likely to rally around your cause.

actually, i'd kind of rather them not have data, as they're not going to do anything positive with it.

let them fire shots in the dark. maybe they'll take a few of their own out.

more broadly speaking, this actually demonstrates how stupid the administration is. it's exactly the kind of thing that people are going to look at in five years and derive a blowback out of. when applied more generally and broadly, it's exactly the attitude that will either take the administration down, or take the country down with it.

as a queer person, my fears of government oppression are in the realm of eugenics. that requires data - big data. and, if the government doesn't have that data, it's going to be limited in what it can do to stomp us out.

again, though: i'm not celebrating this is as moderate. i'm just pointing out that their stupidity is likely to work in our favour and that, at the end of the day, the preferable outcome is for the government and the media to drop the issue altogether and just leave us alone.

http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2017/3/28/breaking-trump-administration-removes-lgbtq-people-2020-census

when i was between drug store hormones in the mid 00s, i experimented a lot with these "natural phytoestrogens". i was just intending to maintain a broad kind of girlishness until i could get back to the transition.

i eventually settled upon this concoction, and i actually kept taking it when i was on hormones, until they discontinued the product.

i was in the drug store looking for niacinamide and i started thinking about it. i'd like to find a replacement, i think. i kind of just forgot about it.

they didn't have the type of b3 i wanted. they had the cyclic version, which i wasn't expecting and didn't research. or they had b complexes, which i thought about and decided against.

i got some coal, though...

if i end up in a health food store again soon, i'm going to see if i can find something.

i always found that the herbs were useful less for secondary characteristics and more for skin & hair. the intent was to maintain a youthful girlishness, and i have to say it worked.

https://www.windmillvitamins.com/product/menoprim

so, i'm picking up today where i left off on the....18th? 22nd?

i needed a break on the 18th. and the budget was released on the 22nd. and i guess i got lost overnight, woke up on the afternoon of the 24th and then went to a concert on the night of the 24th. i didn't get home until the morning of the 25th, and then slept the day off. i finished reading the budget over the 26th and 27th, then spent the bulk of the day dealing with the air quality down here and researching the safety of vitamin b3 supplements.

we got a nasty cold snap some time last week, and the sudden drop in temperature in the basement flushed all the pollution from the smokers upstairs down to the bottom floor. it's really absolutely disgusting, and it's probably going to take weeks if not months to air out.

i didn't initially grasp how bad it is, and thought i could just push it out by cranking up the heat. i've turned the heat up and down, and i just can't have the heat down - the pollution just overwhelms every time i try it. so, i don't even know when i'll be able to turn the heat down, but probably not until the temperature turns over to summery weather. i'm not going to give it another chance, as it gets worse every time i do.

i guess i assumed that the pollution would lift on it's own, but it's not going to. i need to find a way to actually scrub it out, in addition to leaving the heat on to push it out.

i started with some vinegar last night, and am going to have to get some charcoal tomorrow. i need ways to actual capture the volatiles.

it's disgusting. truly. even when i smoked, i smoked outside. you have to be truly revolting to actually choose to smoke in an enclosed place. it's truly disgusting; there's no other way to describe it. the law should be forcing these people to change, not protecting their "rights" to poison me. but, this is the world we live in - the state exists to protect every kind of piece of shit you could imagine, and that's exactly what these people are and exactly what is happening.

the other part of the day was spent looking into the b3, and i posted a bit of it here. what i really need to go out and get today a few days before the end of the month is bananas, because the store didn't have good options when i was there last week. i honestly think this is worth playing with, but also that i'm probably too young to see any effects. still. let's see what they've got...

1) bananas.
2) vitamin b3.
3) charcoal.

and, i'm actually not going to get anything done at the moment. i'm going to go wash my face. i'll be back in a few hours.

A)  TOXICITY: A minimum toxic dose has not been established.
    1)  After ingesting 11,000 mg of niacin within a 12-hour
        period, a 56-year-old man developed severe, persistent
        hypotension (BP 58/40 mmHg) in the absence of cutaneous
        flushing. Following supportive therapy, he recovered
        completely.
    2)  A 16-year-old girl developed epigastric discomfort and
        rash after taking 330 mg of niacin daily (more than 25
        times the recommended daily allowance for a teenager).
        Symptoms resolved upon discontinuation of therapy.
    3)  Two teenagers developed hepatotoxicity and acidosis
        after ingestion of 5 and 6 g of sustained-release niacin
        over a 48-hour period.

i think that what is more concerning to me is that b3 is often used to reduce bad cholesterol, and my bad cholesterol is already kind of dangerously low. i know: this isn't even a first world problem, because the first world is so overwhelmingly obese. but, if i shut my ldl off altogether, i will literally melt into a puddle of goop in front of you. we need cell membranes.

while we're on this topic, when are we going to bioengineer ourselves a proper fucking cell wall, anyways? that's a wall i'd enslave a million mexicans for. no, this is typical - the republicans are always decades behind the curve.

i want a cell wall, dammit.

and, i want to photosynthesize, too. how's that for a plan to abolish capitalism? fuck your wage slavery - i have chloroplasts, now. you're fucked. freedom is inevitable.

anyways.

if i take it, i'll take it at reasonable doses with the intent of giving my cells a bit of a boost and not as a fiend trying to chase immortality and take myself back thirty years. but, it's nice to know that even 11 g of the shit probably won't kill you.

there's a suggested adult dose at the bottom:

 Initial: 500 mg orally once daily at bedtime for 4 weeks,
       then 1000 mg at bedtime for 4 weeks; titrate by
       tolerability and efficacy but no faster than 500 mg every
       4 weeks; usual maintenance dose, 1000 to 2000 mg once
       daily at bedtime; MAX 2000 mg/day. 

if there's a bottle at the store for a reasonable price, i'll probably grab it. what's the worst thing that could happen?

https://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+1237

i'm not going to start popping pills until i weight the risks. relax.

most of the studies i've seen suggest that b3 is protective against type I. and, this chinese research team placed the curious claim that we live in a world of over-nutrition in it's abstract. i've been told repeatedly that the food we eat sucks, and that we don't get enough vitamins. but, maybe the politburo rejects this.

i'm going to take this one skeptically. but, it's there.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091222105449.htm

i'm probably not old enough for it to make much of a difference, but what's the harm in taking extra b3?

right?

wait. careful...

you can overdose on some of these pathways. make sure you do enough research.

but, if you're trying to boost your NAD+, there's actually several ways to do it.

http://www.wikipathways.org/index.php/Pathway:WP2349

“The government should be run like a great American company."

it's hard to make sense of what this means.

if taken literally, he would mean that the purpose of government is to maximize profit. which means what, exactly? we know they don't like tax increases.

i suppose the shareholders of the government are the people that own the debt. so, is he saying that government should be operated in such a way that maximizes return on debt? is he working for the chinese?

i had this problem with harper. half of the time, i couldn't even criticize him, because i couldn't understand what the fuck he was even trying to say.

there is no way to make sense of that statement. governments are not like businesses.

let's try a few comparable statements:

"the army should be run like a broadway musical."

maybe you like broadway musicals. but, how do you run the army like a broadway musical? this is incoherent.

or, how about this:

"this popsicle stand should be run like a world class science lab."

what?

ok. i'm done with the budget. the rest of it is accounting bullshit.

like i say: it's a weird document. it's full of blatantly dishonest language, and appears designed to mobilize untraditional segments of liberal party support at the expense of it's traditional base.

but, i hope i've decoded bits of it.

the issue over the next year may come out of right-field as financial deregulation. this was not discussed by anybody in the last election. it wasn't even an issue at all. the conservatives will support deregulatory legislation, but they wouldn't touch it when in power. let's hope the ndp picks up on it and reacts to it.

yeah. that's deregulation.

keep an eye on this.

in fact, the stability of canada's banking system was cited far and wide. we had no bank failures.

this strikes me as typically orwellian language from this government. i would keep an eye on this, as i suspect they are planning on deregulating, and packaging it in an obfuscating way designed to confuse us.

this is some good news, and it follows after a bit of an uproar regarding following through with an arms deal to saudi arabia that was signed by the previous government.

it remains to be seen if we'll uphold the commitments. but at least we're signing it. that's a good thing.

more haitian slave-labour!

i guess this is what they mean when they say they want to help under-represented groups find low-wage jobs?

don't buy shit from haiti...

i'll admit i may be misunderstanding this, but it looks to me like they're budgeting millions of dollars to spy on potheads.

but, trust them. they're not planning a harsh crackdown. nooooo. that's not why they're budgeting millions to spy on potheads.

it's so they can legalize it afterwards.

obviously, right?

ugh.

wake up: they're trying to smoke you out so they can cuff you.

mr. feminist prime minister...

ask your mom how she knows she's bipolar. what is the diagnosis based upon?

did they give her a blood test and measure hormone levels?
were they able to identify an area in her brain that was behaving a specific way?

or was it based on the results of an opinion survey, and the intuition of the wise magician?

whatever it is, it's not science.

what we actually need is a crackdown on psychiatrists, and an insistence from the state that they base their diagnoses on biological determinants if they are to receive funding. we need greater regulation in the sector to ensure people aren't being taken in.

this is a fiasco on multiple levels.

why is he doing this? because his mom blames the obvious ramifications of being arranged to wed an old man on a mental illness. i would rather suggest that any other outcome would have been absurd, and margaret was likely of sound mental health the whole time. instead of blaming her behaviour on a mental illness, we may want to have a second look at the practice of betrothing teenagers to old men. the people trying to argue that she was suffering from an illness should be ashamed of themselves. where's mr. feminist when the topic is the patriarchy attacking his mother's character? i mean, what was she diagnosed with, anyways? hysteria?

my own experiences with "mental health" professionals is that they're a bunch of con artists. i've been over this in this space. they do not provide for objective tests. most of the so-called conditions that they diagnose can never be confirmed or falsified. broadly speaking, they're not even wrong.

psychology, as a science, is a useful thing to fund. it examines the effects of brain chemistry, and does experiments that use the scientific method. you get no such thing by funding "mental health". you get a bunch of magicians, many of whom are pushing dangerous drugs for personal profit.

rather than increase funds for "mental health", i'd rather see the system liberalized to better pursue the concepts of free will and individual choice. as a random example, i'm a transgendered person who will probably never get through the psychiatric component of the transition. but, i don't think i need better access to a psychiatrist; i think the requirements that i speak with a shrink should be waved.

worse, he's overstepping his bounds on this.

the provinces may think it's a good idea to shrug this off, but they're setting a terrible precedent. everything else aside, including how useful these funds would be if spent on something useful, the provinces need to send the message that the pmo doesn't allocate health monies.

even if i agreed with the allocation, i would reject the interference.

this is an abuse of power and should be called out as one.

the housing bit is probably the only real upside of this budget that i can see and i just want to put in a little context regarding the framing...

the most substantial pushback that the government got on the refugee resettlement was always that it didn't make sense to bring in and house refugees when you've got homeless people on the street and indigenous groups living in third world conditions. how do you explain to these homeless people on lists that the government is bringing in refugees, they're higher priority and you'll just have to wait? and, how can you expect that not to generate racialized resentment, and not just amongst the people that got passed over but also amongst observers, passive and not so?

it's good that they listened on this file.

but, will it actually happen?

wow. lol...

for the 800th time, i would never call myself a "progressive".

i'm a libertarian. true libertarianism is socialism. i'll pick liberals over progressives - who i consider to be conservatives - every time. i'd prefer a socialist, if i can get one....

so, if i ever vote for a "progressive", it's out of cynicism and a poor spectrum. as far as i'm concerned, progressives are just conservatives with a conscience - and i see no issue with using terms like "progressive" and "tory" interchangeably.

i'm certainly never going to go out and organize with them.

i want to expand on my "running for election in california" quip, because i've said this before but never really got into it.

trudeau is actually probably more popular in the united states than he is in canada right now. this is recent: his numbers have crashed over the last three months, to the point where he's running in the high 30s. now, canada has a multi-party system, so running in the 30s is not the catastrophe here that it is there. regardless, if you're looking at raw numbers? he's running at 36%, compared to trump's 37%.

so, i'd suspect trudeau is doing much better in california than he is in canada right now. there was really never the kind of coverage in canada that you saw on sites like vox. our press is overwhelmingly conservative, but, even in the small left press, it just didn't happen. there was just a lot of skepticism.

in fact, i might suspect that trudeau and his advisers pay more attention to vox or even daily kos than they do to canadian sites like rabble, partly for the reason that canada has a left and the left-press is more interested in that left than it is in the bourgeois liberal party and partly for the reason that being bourgeois in canada means you probably spend a lot of time in the united states.

the liberal party intelligentsia has a lot of these bourgeois canadians that have spent good portions of their lives in the united states, and are consequently more connected to american politics than they are to canadian politics. some of them went to school in the states. particularly awful is that some of them went to law school in the states, and learned about the wrong constitution and the wrong system of government. some of them sought careers in the states. they all came back different people than they were when they left. and, if you realize the nature of the problem, it's actually very easy to point it out.

there are a number of issues on the table right now where the liberals sound exactly like democrats, and are being applauded for it by democrats. but, as this is happening, they are being nailed in canada by liberals for exactly what they are being applauded for in america by democrats. and, it's not always clear that they even realize it, because they've spent most of their lives disinterested in domestic perspectives. they seem to get their validation from the democratic-leaning sources that they've always consulted, and then don't even realize that they're getting nailed at home.

the previous leader - michael ignatieff - was absolutely roasted by the previous government for basically this issue. he spent a lot of his life globetrotting. he was a talkshow host in britain and a professor at harvard. he came back with subtle arguments in favour of torture that would go over astoundingly well at the fucking brookings institute or something, and seemed unable to grapple with the premise of leading a party that voted against the war in iraq on the grounds that it was illegal under international law. he was in a culture shock. but, he put a lot of the party that trudeau inherited in place.

i'm not even trying to attack anybody the way that the conservatives did. i just think that it's imperative that the ruling party ground itself in it's country of origin, and take steps to ensure that it is being directed by people that understand the views of the people that live in the country.

so, when i say that trudeau and his team of advisers think they're running for re-election in california, this is more than poetic license. there is a starkly dangerous level of truth to it. the reality is that a lot of them would be more comfortable discussing american politics, and that a lot of them see canada from outside in rather than inside out, or ground their perspectives in absurdly misinformed premises like "canadians and americans are basically the same".

if this government wants to survive, it will need to change it's perspective on how it sees itself in the world by cleaning it's house of americans.

so, what have we learned here?

1) canadians don't like it when you use the state to persecute religious minorities.
2) canadians don't like it when you use the state to prevent the persecution of religious minorities.

it sounds like canadians want a separation of church and state.

i know: it's a bleeding edge concept. maybe we'll get there, one day.

Forum Research has found that only 14% of people support M-103, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid's anti-discrimination motion that singles out Islamophobia.

if you go back a few pages, you'll see me argue that supporting the motion without defining the term wasn't worth isolating voters over.

The federal Liberals are now the first choice of 36% of decided and leaning voters, down from 39% last month. Meanwhile, the Conservatives, who are in a leadership campaign, have the support of 38%, up from 35% at the end of February.

they're idiots.

they seem to think they're running for re-election in california, or something.

they should have thrown the bill and it's author under the bus.

even irwin fucking cotler said this was stupid and divisive.

also, what they're talking about is vitamin b3. all of those acronyms mask that.

if you have a healthy diet, you probably get quite a bit of it as it is. and, if you're old, you should probably be taking quite a bit of it, anyways.

the effects of gravity, alone, will kill you, eventually.

i came to somewhat of an epiphany in 2008: given the inevitability of death, the only task worth accomplishing is finding some way to achieve immortality. and, i could go through a history of this, from eating the hearts of your enemy to drinking the blood and eating the flesh of the god-man in the christian ritual (it's kind of the same thing) and beyond. we've always known this.

i did not merely come face-to-face with the futility of existence, i realized the only way past it was to conquer it. and, so i set myself upon a goal of finding a way to eliminate mortality.

the question of chemistry is something that arose, but in the end i rejected it in favour of a process of shape-shifting that i believe is beyond the computational limits of my life-time. it was around 2010 that i decided that this is a poor bet, and i'm better off enjoying the life i have than wasting it chasing something beyond it. but, it was always with the view that the cutoff is likely very close (somebody 5-10 years younger than me may live to see it...) and with the understanding that i could even be wrong.

but, i don't think that the chemical approach is likely to work. i understand that biological aging is a chemical process and that it follows that you just need to reverse the chemistry in order to reverse the aging. but, it places the issue in a kind of a vacuum. a treatment like this may keep people's organs alive indefinitely, but it wouldn't reverse skeletal damage and it probably won't reverse dementia. so, you can live to be a thousand years old in a wheelchair, and have no memory of the last 900 years.

so, you can talk about replacing skeletal tissue with metal and finding ways to stop your brain from decomposing. but, you're going to get to some point at the end where you just can't do it anymore.

if you're serious about this, you need to separate the mind from the body and allow it freedom to roam. and, we will not be able to do this with conventional computers due to the prevalence of np problems.

that doesn't mean i'm going to avoid the stuff. but, it's not the answer i sought - and it's not the answer you seek, either.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/03/harvard-scientists-pinpoint-critical-step-in-dna-repair-cellular-aging/

i'm not sure if i've been over this in this space...

why does putin keep winning elections? the western narrative is that he rigs them. but, this is a poor understanding of things, and only works if you're ignorant of what's happening there and has been happening there for the last several decades.

westerners are used to very narrow political spectrums. you can vote for the left bourgeois party or the right bourgeois party. there might be a fake socialist party, or maybe some puppets of capital pretending to be libertarians. but, it's all strictly in a tiny sphere of neo-liberalism.

russia has a massive political spectrum. the options are communists, capitalists and fascists. putin's party is neither liberal nor conservative in western terms, but a broad capitalist liberal-conservative front against the commies on their left and the fascists on their right.

the main opposition party in russia is still the communist party. no other party has overtaken it. there is a very small movement towards social democracy, but the force most likely to threaten putin at this moment is a right-wing nationalism led by the likes of navalny.

this is why putin and his party are unassailable: the other options are literally soviets and fascists. literally. and, if the vote ever split, the communists would almost certainly win.

alexi navalny is not a liberal, he's a hard-right white nationalist. whether you like putin or not, this man deserves to be under deep scrutiny, and any movements he's leading should be stamped out with force.

he's a nazi.

i actually don't doubt their honesty. they believe what they're saying.

but, you can't take them seriously, or entertain their delusions. and, in a few decades, this will be seen as a historical curiosity.

just end the prohibition already and get on with it.

there's an easy way to check if m-103 is a threat to your freedom of expression, or if you're being taken in by right-wing demagogues, and that is to test it out by insulting islam everywhere you can. i'll start:

mohammad was a hamster and smelt of elderberries.

let's try another one:

islam is mind control, and it's adherents are brainwashed idiots. 

and how about:

religion is at the core of all evil in the world, and islam is amongst the worst religions on the planet.

this is a good one:

fear of muslims is rational because their religion is completely batshit insane.

one more:

religion is the greatest active threat to freedom in the contemporary world and must somehow be abolished. islam must be abolished.

am i going to get a knock on the door? i doubt it.

try it. it's fun. 

but, let's take a step back on this.

we know that the koch brothers are not stupid people, at least. so, if we take them at face value - and let's keep in mind that these people are all about choices. as neil peart said, even if you haven't made a choice, you've still made a choice. my dad was a rush fan, and i made fun of him every day for it. - we're left to believe that they made the following choice:

instead of:

(a) incrementally repealing obamacare. i mean, maybe the ahca wasn't what they wanted but it was a step in the direction they wanted, right? they could come back for the kill, later.

they chose...

(b) vote against an incremental repeal, and instead do nothing.

maybe the thinking is that they're waiting for donald trump to create a fourth branch of government, so that they can dominate that in 2018.

considering that we know they're not stupid, we have to conclude their hearts weren't really into it - that they never intended to do this, and the whole thing was a ploy.

i saw this from a distance because i understand that the political system is all theatre. the system is designed to prevent any kind of real democracy by continually confusing and distracting people. and, they always get what they want.

they wanted obamacare, and they got it and now you're stuck with it.

as an aside, as a canadian, this was one of a small number of issues that actually affects me. if this is shutting down, it's going to remove a big part of my interest in american politics - or at least until the next cycle, when i throw my support behind a single-payer candidate.

people don't like salespeople because they're perceived of as liars.

people want to put in a day's worth of honest work.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sales-jobs-for-young-canadians-1.4039537

i'm actually a little bit shocked that the media is giving time to somebody that is arguing against laws that restrict driving under the influence of marijuana.

i present myself as an expert on all things, but of all of the things i'm an expert on, being stoned is one of the things i'm most qualified to talk about. when you're stoned, something that happens is that you experience a delay in reaction time. maybe you've seen this presented to you in movies - this kind of memetic joke of a burnout taking a few seconds to react (and then speaking slowly), or the ritual of waving to a space cadet to bring them back from staring at the wall. this is a realistic portrayal of the effects of marijuana.

the delay in reaction time that marijuana produces, combined with the fact that most people only require a puff to get stoned, should actually imply an almost zero-tolerance position. you should never drive when you're stoned.

marijuana is not a medicine, and i actually really hope that legalization negates all of the absurd talk that it is. i mean, people used to refer to alcohol as medicinal 100 years ago, too, as absurd as that seems, today. but, even a bottle of cough syrup tells you not to drive under the influence. this isn't singling them out.

marijuana advocates need to be aware of how absurd these arguments are to the general public (and how wrong they are, too) and distant themselves from them.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-marijuana-legislation-1.4039047

tomi lahren was obviously always a scripted actor.

no.

stop.

scripted.

i don't know what she thinks, or particularly care, either. i mean, maybe she was faking it in college and is truly a right-winger. maybe she's realizing her career is being restricted by holding certain opinions. i don't know; i don't care. but, i can tell you that she didn't write a word of what she said on her tv show - and anybody that is paying any attention at all can see that.

there's a reason she had difficulty answering questions in real-time and had to resort to yelling people down, and it's that her job was to just read shit off the teleprompter.

that said, she could even be secretly brilliant. who knows? i don't. and, i don't care...

but, i've posted about this previously. there was never any use in arguing with her, because she wasn't actually expressing her own views. if she was pissing you off, what you wanted to do was figure out who her script writer was and track (probably) him down and go after him.

but, again: i'm not brilliant. it was obvious. if you fell for it, you're an idiot.

i should also point out that i'm reacting matter-of-factly to the idea of being monitored because i've been aware of the reality of it for years.

i think i first became aware of being trailed around 1998 or so, as a result of the opinions i expressed in debates over usenet. there was a specific van that seemed to follow me all over the city of ottawa, for years. i was just a kid; i didn't think through the consequences of ranting on the internet.

i've lived most of my life with the understanding that i'm being followed. there are actually some upsides to it, if you think it through.

i don't think the guy at the bar last night was random, and i was cognizant of it as the discussion was ongoing.

it's not exactly clear to me what it is that some shady political establishment thinks it would accomplish by convincing me that a god exists. i mean, i can guess that they may possibly be thinking that it might make me more industrious - that's the anarchist deconstruction of religion in the first place, that it's a tool used by capital to maximize productivity and keep good order. i'm not really interested in being a criminal, so trying to convince me, specifically, would have to be with the aim of making me more industrious.

i don't pretend that the preachers and politicians and other "enforcers" have any real faith in anything. it's only the ignorant at the bottom of the chain that actually believe any of this stuff; the enforcers are behaving pragmatically in the interests of their benefactors, as they always are. so, where the real debate lies is not in the validity of religion, but in the value of it. will religion actually make people more industrious? what the atheist argues is that it will not make people more industrious, or more moral or more pliable and may actually even make them less productive, less moral and more rigid. i think the only point we agree on is that religion is essential for generating jingoism and promoting war - you can't successfully declare and wage and win a war without using religion to generate support for it and that is a truth that has demonstrated itself repeatedly over the centuries.

i'm trying to imagine what i'd actually be like if i legitimately, honestly, seriously believed in a god and i have to think i'd probably actually be some kind of jesus freak missionary. if you took away my fear of death, i'd be a lot more willing to take risk and my threshold for pain would be a lot higher. so, i'd probably end up as a full-time political activist. what would change is probably that i'd convert my cynicism into a sense of self-righteousness and find myself more actively engaged in protest. i could very well end up in jail. and, i might end up on people's shirts.

free jessica

i'd rather just be free, thanks.

somebody was pushing pascal's wager down pretty hard in the smoking section last night.

(i'm not sure if he knew it was pascal's wager)

it's logically sound, with the caveat of quantifying it. if you think that the chances that a god exists are 50/50, it is rational to take pascal's wager and accept religion. certainly, you'd have to acknowledge that rejecting religion is taking on substantial risk.

but, if you think that the chances that a god exists are better quantified at <1%, as i do, then pascal's wager breaks down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager

on the sixth day god got crunk,
and on the seventh day she rested.

the democratic party just stuck a knife in the back of the millions of activists that have spent years or decades campaigning for single-payer, and that make up a substantial core of their activist base.

that is what trump meant when he said the democrats now own obamacare.

trump's statement about the democrats owning obamacare is the correct analysis, on this: he's right. they own this. it's theirs.

personally, i would have hoped that at least a couple of democrats would have voted to tear obamacare down with the aim of campaigning on single payer. but, there wasn't the slightest bit of support for that position.

we are now left to conclude that the democrats do not support single payer. they support obamacare. this is the position of the democratic party, and there is no discernible opposition to it.

so, the republicans now get to stand back and watch the party tear itself up over it - because voters that reject obamacare, and insist on single payer, can no longer deceive themselves into thinking that this position is held by the democrats, or that voting for the democrats is going to lead to universal health care coverage as an outcome. you vote democrat, you get obamacare.

this is what i dreaded.

trump just tossed the potato into the democratic primaries. and, leftist democrats should now be making it a priority to target representatives that refused to stand up for single payer.

home alive/

actually, i want to be clear on the point that i think it's actually very important for transwomen to respect some boundaries regarding cis-spaces.

i'm never going to take up space in a debate about abortion, for example. i have a perspective, and you might not be surprised to find out that it's idiosyncratic. because i'm an atheist, i'm not necessarily going to uphold the sanctity of life, and if that's the way the argument is being framed, you might not like my response. but, for me to make my own argument in my own space is one thing, and for me to take over a floor is another. i'm good at arguing, sure. but, i don't have a uterus; this is not my concern.

there are other scenarios regarding gendered violence, where i'm going to be quiet. and, i'm not going to push myself into a space like that if i'm not wanted in it. it's just not the right place to make a stand.

these are specific situations and not general ones; unlike other scenarios, the arguments in these scenarios are actually grounded, and i think they should be contemplated very carefully.

the thing is that i've never actually seen an actual human with one of these things on.

meh. probably not as hot of an idea.

this is coming up because i've been considering buying a bicycle and just leaving it in detroit. i'd have to find a safe space for it - and i know it's a matter of time before it gets stolen. i have no history on a skateboard, but i've bicycled very long distances very regularly and could easily handle 20-30 km. i could bicycle to ann arbor, even.

it would truly open up my options tremendously.

i'd just rather have an option i can take home with me...i really don't want to leave anything in detroit on a regular basis...

i've never been on a skateboard in my life.

but, seeming as i can't get across customs with a bicycle...

what i should do is try to find one in a pawn shop and just experiment with groceries. if i get used to it, and find it useful, i should at least be able to take it back and forth across customs.

of course, i could never get into the bar with one. what do you do with your board when you take it to a concert? you probably just don't take your board to the concert.

considering the number of punk shows i've been to, it's actually odd that i've never noticed what people do with their boards. and somebody or other must be transiting with these things...

given that i'm talking about moving upwards of twenty-thirty km on one of these things, an electric one seems like a smarter choice, but they're like $1000.

the thing about trying to block gorsuch is that there are three more open seats coming - probably all of them in the next four years. you can't block all of them. and, if you lose the court, it's gone.

this is a lost battle.

the democrats should focus on an outcome they can actually alter.

and, the country should brace itself for a hard right supermajority on the court. it's inevitable.

i think that if you look at the costing on these items, you can see where the government's head is really at, regarding emissions.

i will at least acknowledge that we need to spend lavishly on mitigation.

so, what i'm going to say about the infrastructure bank is that municipalities and provinces should avoid it.

i mean, it's there. whatever. don't use it. push for direct funding, instead.

ok. this is a little bit more of what i wanted to see: direct spending. just fucking doing it. not "creating incentives". not "providing conditions". just putting the money down and fucking do it.

grossly quantifying projects doesn't say a lot about them, but at least it demonstrates that there's money flowing.

here's a surreal thought to work through: most "entrepreneurs" have no idea how to run a business for the simple reason that they've never been in one.

but, i mean, again: what else would you expect from the dauphin? or his hand-picked advisers, which are either right out of school or maybe had a stint in a previous government, but were right out of school at the time?

when i use the term "bourgeois parliament", i'm not exaggerating. most of these people - including the prime minister - have never had a real job in their lives. so, why wouldn't you expect them to grasp on to these ideas, as absurd as they may actually be? it fits their own life experiences: you just walk out of school, and then you save the world. who needs experience?

if things aren't working out immediately, the workers must need to be retrained. after all, the idea was brilliant, right? you saw it: it was brilliant, right? right? yeah...

btw - fwiw - i actually don't know what the job market is like in windsor, because i haven't applied for one since i moved here.

if i were to apply for a job in windsor, i would be looking at a part-time job in the service sector. at minimum wage, i'd need to work about 28 hours a week to make up what my odsp is, but i could take a substantial pay cut and be comfortable. i'd be looking for around 20-25 hours.

maybe a grocery store, or something.

anything else would require a commitment i don't want to make.

oh, good.

maybe they can finally invent an electric car.

it might upset alberta, though. we can't do that. so, it's probably better just to pretend you're serious by assigning minimal funds to "research" in the budget.

maybe, they can put some research aside into developing a smart phone, too. and, wouldn't it be cool to fly across the world?

the research phase has been done for a decade. they should be funding deployment and transition. obviously, they don't actually want to. but, it's foolish to drag feet on something that the rest of the world is already using - you can't suppress progress, you can just fall behind.

it's funny.

i can't seem to find a number for 2015, let alone 2016.

surely, the data should be in. why isn't it being published?

this document is dated to mid 2016. why doesn't it have data for 2015?

https://www.ec.gc.ca/indicateurs-indicators/?lang=en&n=FBF8455E-1

from what i can see, you should not just expect the government to fail to meet the conservatives' emission goals, but you should expect emissions to actually increase under this government.

again: this is not what they campaigned on, and not what i voted for.

this is what the conservatives were pushing for their entire mandate.

this is what i voted against.

providing capital for private companies is not a climate change plan. i voted for direct government involvement. when will the government drop the market fundamentalism and take a direct, hands-on approach that will actually work, rather than continue this failed approach of trying to incentivize market capitalism?