so, let's say you're a relatively well built young man of some renown and you're at a music festival on your leisure time.

and, let's say that there's a reporter there. you think she's working for a community paper.

you're trying to have a good time, but she keeps sticking a microphone in your face and asking you questions. so, you literally pick her up by her waist, throw her over your shoulder and transport her away from you, where she can't bother you.

it turns out she's a national reporter, and writes a scathing column, accusing you of "groping" and "inappropriately handling" her. so, you apologize, without really meaning it. and everybody moves on.

is that a terrible thing? why not just be clear about it?

i'm not saying that's exactly what happened. i'm saying that that's what i'm imagining happened - and that i'm not sure what else "inappropriately handled" could mean, if not "physically redirected away from bothering him".

i guess we'll all have to use our imaginations until some facts are released.

the important part of the equation is not whether a young dauphin made an advance at a music festival. most canadians will allow for this behaviour.

the important part of the equation is whether the dauphin stopped when it was made clear that the advance was unwanted. most canadians agree that no means no.

i don't think most people want to live in a society where we need to draw up a contract before you try and hold somebody's hand, or give somebody a kiss - and that means people are going to get it wrong sometimes. i don't think that most people believe that people should lose their lives over getting it wrong, when they do.

and, it should be liberals making these arguments.

see, this is why i think he needs to come out and give a full account of the events - because it doesn't necessarily have to be binary, and it is in fact possible that he simultaneously "groped" her and doesn't feel it was inappropriate.

like everybody else, i have no information, and am left to fill in the blanks. it's that process of filling in the blanks that is so potentially deadly, as everybody is going to imagine it their own way. and, trust me: most women won't imagine something benign.

he really needs to take control of a narrative...

the way i've imagined it from the scant information i've seen suggests that he grabbed a reporter and pushed her out of the way. and, there are certainly contexts - a day at a festival being one of them - where i would think that kind of behaviour is permissible, while others would think of it as outrageous. the reason is that i'm not a puritan: i don't forbid all not-explicitly-consented-to contact between the sexes a priori, or even ban all sexual advances offhand. there's a tremendous grey area here that we need to re-establish if we want to continue living in a secular, liberal society. i want to hear liberals stand up for that grey area...

which isn't to say that i think this is what happened. as mentioned, it seems to me that what happened was that trudeau didn't want to be interviewed right then and there. but, i'm not going to stand up and denounce all not-explicitly-consented-to-in-advance activities, either, because i don't want to live in that kind of a society.

and, i frankly think that most people don't, either - that trudeau has a lot of potential for forgiveness and sympathy, if he'd just be fucking honest about it, and not make it seem like he's trying to hide something.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/andrew-coyne-did-he-or-didnt-he-trudeau-needs-to-start-making-sense

fwiw, she is of course still smoking inside.

my lease is cut. i will determine whether i am going to file a human rights complaint or not depending on the ruling i get. documentation, moving forward, is not particularly worthwhile.

what i'll say is this: the situation is not different than it was previously, and there is no reason to think it will change, moving forwards, unless the property managers react to the settlement by attempting to evict her. so, the assumption should be that i'll be dealing with this pretty much constantly until i leave, unless i state otherwise.

there's this idea of connecting birth to water, but it's probably fairly recent.

if you really want to be a hippie, you should probably give birth in a tree.

is it not the case that most quad-peds are able to stand up almost immediately at birth?

maybe the truth is that our ancestors retreated to the canopy upon pregnancy, and spent much of the gestation process, including birth,up there. perhaps that is the reason that our babies crawl for the first months of their lives...

i'm left to wonder if allowing young children the opportunity to climb, rather than crawl, may have some psychological benefits.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/study-shows-ancient-ancestors-climbed-trees-also-walked-on-two-legs-1.4001441

i didn't really sleep this week, as i had a lot of video editing and journal compiling to do. i tried to get up around midnight, but i really actually mostly just slept for the last 12+ hours - a needed and very much wanted sleep. i'm up now and ready to start a new day...

the temperature fell sharply over night and it's actually quite nice, right now. i like the heat & humidity, but i was developing a mild rash from exposure to it and did need a bit of a break from it. it's actually going to be a bit cold this weekend, and balance out to "seasonal" again for next week.

today, i need to look at listings. tonight, i'm going to clean a little. i'm going to have more flexibility this month, at least until the ruling comes in the mail, but the basic situation hasn't changed - i still need to save money to plan for the move.

the lease is done on sept 30th, so i need to be out by october 1st at the latest. i'm confident that i can do this, and that it should prevent me from needing to compromise too badly - i think this should be enough time to get what i want.

i think my arguments went over well, but it's not clear what kind of damages i'm going to get. i think i probably got moving costs, or some abstraction of it. i'm not going to get cleaning costs, but i might get an abstraction of it in pro-ration. i don't expect costs for furniture or dry-cleaning - and knew that would be almost impossible to get. that was meant almost solely as leverage for mediation; i didn't actually intend to go to trial.

the big wildcard is that pro-ration. if i'm here for ten months, that's $7000 paid in rent. i asked the court to determine a percentage, because i claimed i couldn't quantify that kind of hardship - but what i was really worried about was lowballing myself. i would have asked for something in the 10%-25% range. but, i know this judge is very sympathetic to non-smokers. if i asked for 60% and that was too much, she could have kibboshed it; if i asked for 25%, i could have been missing out on an opportunity for 40%. so, i instead left it at the court's discretion to determine a percentage - under the expectation that such a percentage is going to be higher than any guess i could have made. it's a sneaky algorithm to optimize my return. 30% is over $2000; 10% is a month's worth of rent. but, it relies on the judge not seeing through my ruse - or at least being sympathetic to it. i mean, i volunteer that it's manipulative, sure, but it's not so terrible, is it? is the judge not best qualified to figure this out? am i not putting myself at a threat of lowballing myself by presenting a percentage, or harming myself by appearing too greedy?

we'll know in a few weeks.

for now, i'm glad that there's some certainty about things...and eager to get things back in order.

the time spent preparing was not wasted: i've now sorted through vlog data from most of the last six months, which i needed to do anyways. i should be back to rebuilding from 2014 on within 24 hours.