actually, this is better: somebody do me a favour and immediately launch a charter challenge on a law that forbids all outside smoking. people can deal with rules in trafficked areas, and that's fine - they'll do it. but, to suggest that you may only smoke inside is clearly overly broad and, in fact, rather cruel and unusual.

the case law would be far more useful, in the long run. let's just get it going, please. pronto.

who am i kidding - where am i going to find that won't have the same problem?

a law that says you have to smoke inside is, in fact, sentencing every poor kid in the province to inhalation problems.

if dad smokes, the way to make sure the kids watch it is to send him inside - where they have to inhale it, too.

it is genuinely, truly, legitimately a consequence of utter stupidity. and, the person that proposed it should resign in disgrace.

for fuck's sake, send them outside.

it's probably government pot: smells horrible & doesn't get you high, just gives you a headache and knocks you out.

...and, listen: i'm not the anti-drug zealot. i'm even a moderate user: socially, when i'm with people. but, even i can't handle living in a space with a daily smoker. it's just putrid.

send them outside, for fuck's sake. and, they'll go willingly, so long as you don't threaten them with a fine - because they know.

i've been fighting with these people for months and have essentially refused to budge.

but, i don't want to live in a vape lounge. and, if the stench (and contact buzz, which is actually just giving me a headache) doesn't relent, they've finally found a way to get me out of here.

one of my upstairs neighbours appears to have decided that he's not allowed to smoke pot outside anymore, and has moved inside. the law is, indeed, coming.

he was no doubt smoking outside, previously, out of courtesy to the other tenants.

i don't know what the fuck he's smoking, but it is absolutely rank. the entire building now smells like somebody lit a skunk on fire.

up until yesterday, this was easily manageable: he simply went outside to smoke.

this is a law that is going to plummet property values if it isn't reversed, and it's what happens when you put hopeless geeks in charge of public policy - and this is coming from a nerd of epic proportions. wynne has converted the party into a collection of people that have never been to a party before in their lives. they're hopelessly out of touch; the simple reality is that the liberal party of ontario has absolutely no experience with marijuana whatsoever, and no clue at all how to legislate on the topic as a consequence of it.

and, it's hard to understand how a liberal party got like this. these are the most socially hopeless people you could fathom.

the law should be pushing people outside, where it doesn't bother anybody. the status quo is that you smoke in the park, or perhaps in your car. the best place to smoke in an apartment building would be the roof. what we're going to end up with, now, are buildings where pot is and isn't allowed (after lengthy court battles). and, the buildings where pot is allowed are going to end up falling apart.

this is a socially acceptable drug and has been for decades. your kids are going to have to navigate this. and, dragging the stigma along is just going to create a lot of problems.

i repeat: forcing people to smoke inside is going to be a nightmare for property values. it is a legitimately stupid law, because it is legitimately clueless, and it is going to have to be reversed.

i guess only racists support social systems. racial equality means we can all compete equally on the market, right?

(psst: that's called neo-liberalism)

do you know where this guy came from? he built his career on opposing the sex-ed curriculum, on the backs of votes from insular religious communities that don't want their kids to know that queer people exist.

this is becoming standard, nowadays: these parties that used to represent the left have become the voice of disenfranchised brown conservatives, because they were the only parties that would sign them up.

my understanding is that jagmeet singh remains third or fourth in polls in the race, and that despite the establishment talking points, he is still a longshot candidate. but, take note of what the party is doing, here - because it will do it again, and it might work next time.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/07/26/ndp-leadership-rebel-jagmeet-singh-takes-aim-at-old-age-security-walkom.html

this is the narrative that the party wants to run on.

the reality is that singh is actually quite a bit like obama - he's a social conservative to the core, who is  constantly forced to explain his way out of it, often unconvincingly. and, he's clearly the establishment candidate in the party - as obama clearly was, too.

a lot of people will fall for this. but, they will be greatly disappointed in the outcome.

the ndp is not becoming liberal lite; it is becoming the party of right-wing immigrants, who would only join the conservative party, if it weren't for the racial animus within it. in the end, we will have two conservative parties, and be left without an option on the left.

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/get-real-jagmeet-singh-has-been-dealing-with-racist-hecklers-for-months/

i'm reading all of these opinion pieces on trump "cancelling" daca (and if you present it in those terms, you're wrong to start off with), and they're all getting it wrong on an empirical, factual level. this isn't an error in analysis. it's an error in fact.

and, some of it is feigned, no doubt - it's easier to go with the flow than it is to rock the boats. if everybody is misinformed, why would it be the media's role to correct them? it's far more profitable to just capitalize off of their ignorance.

but, some of it seems sincere, and it's all rooted in a set of mental gymnastics that lead to the following conclusion: a very large number of americans seem to actually want to live in an empire. they just want trump to pass immigration reform by decree, and they don't seem to understand why there was a problem when obama did it. i suppose there's a level of pragmatism underlying a desire for results, but i'm pulling out something a little deeper, here - and, in act, especially on the pseudo-left, that has been criticized so strongly for it's authoritarianism.

i've lived most of my life concerned about creeping corporate fascism on the right, and with good reason. but, you don't see these arguments on the right - this kind of flat out contempt for congress as some kind of obsolete instrument.

the contemporary left seems to truly be more into enlightened despotism than it is into democracy. and, marx' biases in favour of the form aside, that's something that intellectuals on the left ought to be addressing more seriously.

i just want to be clear on a point....

the new ontario pot law says you're only to smoke inside your house.

but, i have never smoked pot inside my house before, and i have absolutely no intention to ever do so in the future.

i will continue to take a walk, or maybe take a bike ride. i'll smoke in the park, or at the bar. and, i don't care if there are kids around - because i don't think it's something kids should be sheltered from.

i don't expect anybody to even try to enforce this law, either.

i'm in full support of legalization. but, the last thing in the world that i want is for my apartment to smell like marijuana.