i'll write the letter for him.

mr assad,

as you know, the french have been occupying syria intermittently since 1099, with varying levels of competency and barbarity. you will recall that syria was a part of the roman empire, having passed into it as a part of the conquests and cessions of the former hellenic kingdoms. while we are well aware that we are not actually romans, we do speak a perverted form of latin, and we have long felt that is close enough to claim the legacy of the roman occupation. we thus feel entitled to this land.

yet, as it is no longer 1099, and international law has changed quite a bit since then, we do understand the necessity to request your permission to continue to occupy your country. we hope that you acknowledge our supremacy immediately.

thank you,
emmanuel macron

i mean, i don't know who let the french back into syria in the first place, but they're going to have to ask permission if they want to stay. the russians threw them out once, and they can throw them out again.

also, maybe macron can ride into syria on a white horse, right?

what a doofus.

we don't need to spend the next hundred years debating whether there was a kurdish genocide, do we?

this is, in truth, a good opportunity for erdogan to prove to the west that the turks are something more than illegitimate barbarians, that they are not merely an accident of history, sitting on a conquered european metropolis.

i know erdogan is saying a lot of mean things about the kurds, and it's not like he doesn't mean it.

but, i expect that he has some concept of his responsibilities, here.

some kind of order must be restored. but, he cannot give up on european integration entirely; if there is a slaughter in the region, he will pay for it. dearly.

i would expect all kinds of quasi-fascist headlines about turkish power stamping out the terrorists, and he may even get a bump in the polls from it. but, he will stop short of a massacre. as he must.

sorghum pasta, at least, seems to be available at bulk barn, and there's one around the corner from here.

there is some economy around sorghum breads, as a consequence of the gluten-free trend; sorghum appears to be the default grain used to avoid gluten. i have no reason to think i have an intolerance to gluten, but if these are the products i need to look into in order to dry and take advantage of the anti-oxidant properties of sorghum then so be it.

they appear to mostly be selling sorghum as a flat bread, though - and, ironically, i may have some difficulty digesting it, as a westerner. let's see what i can even find...

something else that isn't talked about is plums.

it makes sense - it's the dark colour.

the problem with blueberries is that they're expensive; adding a plum to the daily smoothie may be more economically feasible than anything else.

i should also see if i can switch to sorghum bagels and pasta.

so, yeah - if you're 45 years old and have already had three heart attacks, you should consider switching to nuts.

but, if you're 45 and in great health then you want to treat them as a rarity.

you have to understand that the literature around diet in the united states is largely about harm reduction; it assumes that you're hopelessly overweight and dangerously inactive, then tries to give you tips on how to adjust to it.

and, regarding the nuts.

yeah, it's true that eating a plate of nuts is better than eating a plate of cow. so, if the choice is between eating cow and eating nuts, you should pick nuts. it may follow that if you're starting from a point of terrible health, switching from cow to nuts might improve your health - and thereby lower your bad cholesterol. but, you don't want to extrapolate that into a claim that nuts are good for you, or lower cholesterol, in general - they're still high in fat, and somebody that is in good health to start with still wants to be careful with their consumption.

so, what i do right now is that i chop up tomatoes & peppers on the plate first, then put the pasta on top (followed by microwaved salami, caesar salad dressing, cheese, hot sauce, salt + pepper).

pepper itself is fairly powerful, apparently.

but, what i could be doing is putting some spices down with the tomatoes - basil, oregano & potentially parsley.

the nuts are another thing that looks good, but you'd be....nuts....to eat that much cholesterol. i've got my cholesterol very well under control; i don't want to be introducing something like that into my diet.

so, there's some tweaks for the next grocery run.

- blueberry juice instead of orange juice (if feasible). you can never get too much of it, but i think i get a lot of C from other sources - kiwis, strawberries, tomatoes.
- oregano, basil & parsley for pasta.

seems too easy...

still - it demonstrates that casual use of oregano is as worthwhile as a small glass of blueberry juice.

so, i should probably look into that.

see, how much oregano can you put on a plate of spaghetti?

does oregano actually weigh the same amount as marijuana? no, really - does it? because i know how much a gram of pot is. i don't know how much 100 grams of pot is...

could you put a half a gram of pot on your spaghetti? probably more like a quarter, right?

so, if the orac count of 100 g is 200,000, that's about 2000/g - which is an orac count of 500 in a meaningful serving.

on the other hand, a glass of blueberry juice is going to be about 400 g - which scales up to 1200 as an orac number.

so, that number seems impressive, but the actual reality is that you'd need to get used to using a lot of oregano to even compete with a glass of blueberry juice.

as an aside, one wonders what kind of orac count marijuana might have - so long as you're eating it, not smoking it.

it's kind of frustrating that so little of this is really edible, though.

i could potentially make some room for oregano on my pasta, as i grew up eating a lot of it.

pure blueberry juice is in the list. i don't see any other juice in it.

https://modernsurvivalblog.com/health/high-orac-value-antioxidant-foods-top-100/

just a pro-tip, though - if you're a spy, you shouldn't smoke.

it's kind of a dead giveaway.

the thing is that, as far as i can tell, it's not coming in through the windows.

so, who is up there? a cop?

as mentioned, i'm more interested in suing the cops for harassment and false arrest - and if it turns out they're spying on me, too, that's just another reason to sue them. unfortunately, as i can't secure the air quality in the unit, i don't expect to be here, long term - which is a shame, because i otherwise like the place. but, i learned that there's not really a solution in going after the owner, because the city doesn't offer much of a way out.

if it was as easy as suing the owner and then moving, i wouldn't have ended up here.

it's way better than before, but it's still not good enough.

i have a lot of work to do on this, and will have to get back to it on thursday.

and, how is the air quality in here?

the family that lives upstairs is apparently gone, but i'm convinced that there's somebody smoking upstairs, which is kind of giving me pause.

i dunno who's up there. but, it would be nice if they'd smoke somewhere else.

like hell, for example.

i also need to clarify something.

you shouldn't drink your smoothie down in a single gulp, you should slowly nurture it, like a glass of wine. the blender doesn't really destroy or modify much, but it does concentrate it, which can put some strain on your organs in terms of overloading.

so, people will tell you that you're better off eating an apple than slurping apple sauce, but that's only actually the case if you're eating the apple sauce too fast. if you eat the apple sauce at the same rate, it's not any worse.

one way to slow yourself down if you tend to eat too quickly is to make the smoothie a little thicker, so you can't really drink it. i use ice cream. yogurt might be effective - but don't trick yourself into thinking yogurt is better than ice cream.

it usually takes me 20-30 minutes to finish the smoothie, which is about the same amount of time that it would take to eat each component separately. that is what you want.

wait. didn't i write this article a few hours ago?

fuckers.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-unexpected-pagan-origins-of-popular-christmas-traditions/

actually, i think that this might be a smart tactic.

they should drop thousands off at city hall, and see how the public reacts...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-unexpectedly-drops-off-hundreds-of-migrants-at-el-paso-bus-station-beto-orourke-veronica-escobar/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab4i

so, i've had some trouble finding two staples in my diet recently - fresh strawberries for my daily smoothies and orange juice, which i drink one tall glass of on most days - and it's led me to a little bit of tweaking.

there are several videos on my diet at my vlog site, which i suppose are now mostly here, too. and, i'll remind you that i look half of my age and have dangerously low cholesterol; i'm doing something right.

with the orange juice, it's actually a packaging thing. i'm used to buying tetrapacks, which are easy to transport in a school bag and fit compactly inside of a smallish fridge (and my fridges have been getting smaller since i moved from the first basement). there's been some kind of mass decision to switch to these awkward plastic bottles that don't stack well in a bag and don't fit well in a fridge. my initial workaround was to switch to apple juice, and if the intent of the oj is mostly to get a ton of C (and, i'm not anti-sugar. sugar is good for you.) it's not awful, but i was missing out on some fortified vitamins. as it happened to be, i couldn't find any apple juice, either, so i had to shop around, and ended up overpaying for some tropicana tetrapacks on sale. in the long run, i'm not going to be interested in paying for expensive tropicana orange juice, so i'm kind of in need of a shift if the manufacturers hold steady on their shift to these awkward containers. i don't know what they're thinking.

with the berries, they're just out of season, so i ended up getting some frozen strawberries instead, but i supplemented with some fresh blueberries, just because i wanted something fresh. so, my smoothies this month are going to be made of fresh bananas, fresh kiwis, frozen strawberries, fresh blueberries, cherry ice cream and vanilla soy. it was kind of a snap decision, based on some uneasiness around the frozen strawberries. my thinking was that the frozen strawberries are probably only half as good as the fresh ones, so i should get some fresh blueberries to compensate. was that clear thinking?

it seems to depend, and, in my case, probably not. my instincts were correct - fresh fruit is always preferable. but, given that i live in canada, and so much of the fruit gets shipped in from mexico or california, i'm not actually buying fresh fruit. the ideal would be to buy fruit made in local greenhouses, which is already rare, and i'm going to guess that the few greenhouses that do exist around here are mostly going to end up wasted on marijuana :(. you'd have to test to find out, but because i'm dealing with so much travel, there's some chance that the frozen fruit may actually be less bad.

that's less of a praise for frozen fruit and more of an indictment of our economy. what i'm actually thinking is that i'd rather move to a warmer climate in order to get fresher fruit.

but, i ended up doing some cursory research on blueberries and decided i should really make a place for them. it's not like i didn't know about blueberries - i knew. trust me; i knew. it's just that they're not the easiest thing to work in to a diet. i've avoided both blueberries and raspberries in smoothies because they kind of don't blend well - the blueberries are too fibrous, and the raspberries get those little seeds stuck in the blend. i decided some time ago that sticking with strawberries (and tomatoes. i eat a lot of tomatoes.) was good enough, and i think the results speak for themselves. but, i'm revisiting that - i want a place for the blueberry in my life. i want daily intake.

what i'm thinking is that i might want to look at some blueberry juice as a replacement for some orange juice, if i can find it in a pure blend - not concentrate, not flavoured, but 100% actual juice. that could be the way around the packaging problem.

as mentioned, i'm not anti-sugar, but i do kind of wish that orange juice was more than just C, too. so, this kind of solves two problems.

and, will there still be a place for orange juice? oj is something i've been keen on since i was a kid. but, i dunno. if blueberry juice is superior - and it is - why would i stick with the inferior choice? shouldn't i always choose blueberry over orange?

i don't know if this is available or economical, but i'm going to look.

for now, the blueberries are just adding a little tart to the smoothie. i wouldn't say it's enough of a taste difference to make a decision around, although it's hard to downplay the health benefits.

just one more thing.

christmas actually isn't about jesus. i've been beating around the manger, but haven't come out and said it.

the puritans completely rejected christmas as a pagan holiday, and the earliest christians didn't celebrate it at all. it's really not a christian holiday, it's an appropriated solar feast.

so, it's less that the "christmas is about jesus" types are annoying, although they are, and more that they're actually wrong.

but, christians are usually wrong, aren't they?

we're also in an extreme solar minimum, remember.

i understand that this is a lot of 'splainin' for one volcano. i'm not trying to explain this specific volcano, so much as i'm trying to present it as representative of a broader pattern.

so, maybe it's evil republicans killing heathens at christmas. or, maybe it's the sun. i dunno.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2003ESASP.535..393S

i can't shake this grogginess, but i'm not suffering through it, i'm going back to sleep.

the calendar was a little off, granted.

but, yes - we've made it through another revolution.

that's as worth celebrating as anything else. so, enjoy your mead.

just don't waste my time with bullshit.

so, i mean...

it makes some good amount of sense to worship the sun, in an abstract manner, even as you realize that you're better off trying to understand it using science than influence it using chants. the sun created us, and will ultimately destroy us. it is the source of all life on the planet. if there's something in our experience that is like a god, it is not an ethereal force or something we've projected as a reflection of our own existence, but the star right in front of us.

the ancients were primitive, but not irrational.

rather, it is the child-like anti-intellectualism that we've inherited from dark age religions like christianity and islam that doesn't make any sense.

there's these people that will tell you that the perfection of the universe is a strong argument for creation, and the general approach has usually been to concede the point and argue for incremental change as an equally valid - but superior - naturalistic explanation.

i'm not on board with that. i'm willing to challenge the premise. most people have terrible eyesight, we've got spiders eating their mates before they can reproduce, and we've got an earth wobbling around that demonstrates no understanding of aerodynamics at all. it's a circular argument, rooted in classical assumptions, producing a kind of conformation bias on observation. a closer examination demonstrates that there are contradictions everywhere in nature.