to be clear: my understanding is that one of these people leaves for work late in the evening, and that this person seems to be in control of the situation, when she's there - but that, as soon as she leaves, the other people light up.

see, and this is as disrespectful to the person on the lease as it is to me. but, she may feel as though she has no responsibility. that's just a bad friend, whatever kind of friend it is...

it was nice in here. warm. dry. clean.

it's a shame they had to ruin it.

i've suspected for a while that there's two people living there, taking shifts.

it may be that the night shift seems to be worse than the day shift and that the night shift only works weekdays or something. i dunno. but, it seems like it's that one is worse than the other.

the property manager insists there's only one person living there, but this isn't true. is the bigger problem even on the lease? and, if so, why is this woman letting this other woman create all of these problems for her?

about 21:30, they're back at it.

so, what happened over the weekend, and why did it change all of a sudden?

i'm going to guess that there's a point where they get too stoned to care; like i say, i know the psychology fairly well. they may even regret it when they wake up, but they'll decide it doesn't matter any more. and, this is a cycle - if they get another scary warning, they'll stop for a few days, and then get really stoned and stop caring again.

again: somehow, these people are being prescribed marijuana as a cure for depression and apathy. it's not clicking that it's at the root cause of their problems, rather than a solution to them. and, any doctors that are enabling them ought to be liable for this.

for right now, i have no choice but to open the windows and hope it clears out.

i don't know what changed, exactly, but i'm happy about the air quality this weekend.

is there some possibility that this could still work? well, i don't really know what happened. i know that the second letter appears to have had some effect, but who knows for how long.

i guess i should wait until may 1st before i finish cleaning up and setting up the studio.

it's been almost a week since i was at this, but here i go, back at it. let's get through 2015 before i do anything else....

it's known that rachel drinks a lot.

i think that's the key variable.

what are the betting odds on a trudeau-notley "thing" ongoing or developing?

i'm operating solely on body language. but, i think it's incriminating.

not that i even really care, i'm just saying.

so, it seems as though the pipeline meeting was pointless.

here's the thing: trudeau can write some new legislation if he'd like. but, that legislation will then be subject to a constitutional challenge, and that itself will be very lengthy.

even if the pipeline is owned by the feds and it only goes through federal land, that federal land is still in provincial jurisdiction, and, perhaps more importantly, surrounded by land that is, as well.

the division of powers in the constitution is not specific enough to make a clear deduction, and lawyers suggesting it is are in for a rude surprise when they get to court. these lands are probably mostly subject to the changes that occurred in the transfer agreements of 1930, which should give the provinces jurisdiction over natural resources; at the time, a part of the reason this was done was to minimize aboriginal influence, as their treaties were with the crown, rather than the province. now that the province is onside with the aboriginals, the fed wants to take control back again, by citing the 1867 documents. that's not going to work.

this is going to take some time to work out, and everybody will need to deal with it.

that said, trudeau has some leverage, in terms of withholding funding. but, if he were to withhold funding to build a pipeline, it would turn him into a pariah, the country over. that would be suicidal.

and, of course, if abbey road meant it was bed time, then sgt peppers meant it was time to wake up.

i blew the day, yesterday. it happens sometimes. i need to do a bit more cleaning and get back to work tonight.

the air quality in here has improved dramatically over the last 48 hours; we'll have to see if my second letter worked or not, but it's going to be a while before i can make any conclusions. for right now, it's better, at least. if it stays like this, i won't have to move.

if.

it's unclear to me why a city the size of toronto would be unable to recycle items that are recyclable elsewhere, and i'm frankly tired of being told that citizens are at blame for this, as though the recycling industry is above us in some way, and that it's alright if they can't be bothered to separate out things.

the coffee bins are a good example. there's a big market for these things. so, it should fall on the city to find a way to recycle them, if they end up in the bin - even if that means shipping them somewhere else.

if something is recyclable, the city should not be throwing it away just because it isn't locally recyclable; it should be making that effort to deal with the issue. and, if that costs money then they should ask for it; recycling is a core, essential service and not something that should be done on the cheap.

we need a change in culture, alright. and, it seems like the first culture that needs to change is the culture at the recycling plant.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/04/13/bringing-purity-to-torontos-blue-bins.html

what we should do is create an organization and model it after the mormons, who are known for posthumously baptizing people. i think this is a strange thing, but i don't imagine that a dead person would care much if they were baptized; there's not really a mechanism for it.

but, we should create an organization that posthumously awards all of the people that have died from drug overdoses with darwin awards, and have that organization keep detailed records in a deep library, as though they are monks, and the monastery they administer has a sacred purpose to remember the lives of all of the people that willingly removed themselves from the gene pool.

the liberals were never the stupid party. we'll see in a few weeks if they've become it or not.

non-users need to stop proselytizing like religious fundamentalists and rather come to terms with the fact that they can't help them, they need to move on.

my view on drugs is towards total state non-involvement.

the laws should not be changed, but they should not be enforced, either - which, in canada, is really the status quo. they only really arrest dealers, here.

but, no new money should be spent on treatment, prevention or enforcement. that money should be spent on more valid health care priorities to help people that aren't individually responsible for their own fucking problems.

and, i actually think that if the government gets completely out of the way then the industry will kill itself off; it's state involvement that keeps it going. by stepping in and saving the lives of addicts, and regulating use through various schemes, we're actually propping the industry up...

if you just step back and completely wash your hands of it, they'll eventually all die, and the problem will cease to exist.

but, this is no doubt why the industry wants state regulation - to maintain a customer base. the longer the state keeps you alive, the more drugs you buy. it's how you would expect the cartels would want to design the system.

the drug conglomerates of the future will have treatment subsidiaries, along with distribution subsidiaries. because, they are of course going to want to make a profit from the entire cycle of drug abuse - from first use right to death.

how many times have i told you that i'm not a christian?

i think the status quo regarding drug use is fine.

stupid people buy drugs; stupid people die from drug use. the result is less stupid people. what's the down side?

and, i feel no prerogative to save the lives of these people.

at all.

let them die.

see, this is really just a bunch of utter nonsense.

the reality is that treatment doesn't work. so, this idea that we have some kind of successful option in front of us rather than a failed option is a false dilemma - neither of these approaches will save lives, and they are both absurdly expensive.

the real difference is around two questions:

1) should we be socially sanctioning drug use? it's almost impossible to not do that in a society where drug use is legal.
2) who profits from the drug trade? this includes the treatment industry.

underneath every article like this is a financial trail. somebody stands to profit from legalization, and they are the people writing these pieces.

drug addicts don't get better, and it's irresponsible to suggest there's a way to fix them by spending a lot of public money. that is money that could be put into other areas with better likelihoods of successful outcomes, like cancer research.

you just need to let them go and move on with your own life.

i oppose the resolution and hope it fails.

but, ironically, if it passes, it would make the ndp less unattractive - because they're both supporting the same thing, anyways.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/04/15/the-case-for-decriminalizing-drugs.html

the author of this piece misunderstands the point.

the bill doesn't intend to place indigenous spiritual belief on the same footing as science in an epistemological sense, it merely codifies an existing judicial precedent that orders industry to have some respect for the religious beliefs of the indigenous inhabitants before they start fucking around with things.

i don't have a lot of patience for these spiritual beliefs. but, i don't have to believe in the premise of a land being sacred in order to respect that these other people do believe that and that, as the land ought to belong to them and only does not due to a historic injustice, they ought to have sovereignty to make those decisions, whether i accept the premise or not.

i can consequently make fun of them for their goofy beliefs and uphold their right to make sovereign decisions around those goofy beliefs, all at the same time - and stand in solidarity with members of their own community that may have their rights, as individuals, inflicted upon by those same goofy beliefs, when it is the case.

i don't know who the author of the piece is, but i suspect they don't know much about canadian law. and, i'd suggest to the washington post that the candian jurisprudence really is complicated enough that you actually do really have to get a canadian expert to talk about it; sending american lawyers after canadian jurisprudence (and legislation modelled after it) is just going to create some confused yankees.

but, the logic is simple enough: this is an additional requirement, and it may be no less important than the science as a requirement, but that doesn't place it on an equal footing with science on an epistemological level...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/04/13/how-trudeau-is-sacrificing-science-in-the-name-of-aboriginal-peace/

nobody outside of alberta is going to vote in favour of a pipeline; this does not affect non-albertans at all in any way.

however, plenty of people outside of bc will vote against a pipeline, because it certainly does affect everybody, and rather considerably.

so, while i'm not going to comment on the results of online "polling", which i consider to be so useless as to be no better than a random guess, the numbers that they are measuring are of little value in the first place.

trudeau can only lose seats by supporting the pipeline.

but, if he's lucky, the number of sophisticated voters like me - that expected him to support the oil industry, and are more interested in structural approaches towards transition - will outnumber the number that kneejerk against it.

but, he has to do a lot more on the transition file; he has to demonstrate concrete results.