you would expect fiscal conservatives to support "safe" injection sites, because they minimize the amount of resources wasted on drug addicts.

i think that this discussion about "saving lives" is disingenuous on both sides. insofar as these injection sites are "safe", it's only temporary - we are taking about an addiction that will certainly eventually kill you. what "safe" means is that the needles aren't full of aids or hepatitis, which are both expensive to treat - and a frustrating cost, given that the spread of the diseases is preventable and the projected life span of the person being treated is short. it's legitimately deflating to fork out thousands of dollars of public money on anti-hiv drugs, only to find the patient dead of an overdose on the drug that gave them the disease. so, if you give them clean needles, you at least don't have to treat them for infections.

treatment doesn't work, either; you have to find ways to stop people from being so fucking stupid as to get hooked. and, with heroin, there isn't another description, unless a doctor injected you when you were unconscious - you can't not know the risks at this point, you have to just be plain out stupid. there's no excuse for this, anymore. you deserve your darwin award.

so, don't tell me that the sites save lives - they don't, they merely postpone death, and minimize the costs involved with managing the problem.

but, don't tell me that removing the sites would save lives either - because you're just going to end up with people dying of infections, instead.

we talk about harm reduction as though the addict's life is the most important concern, even though they've already written themselves off; with opiates, specifically, we should rather be treating the issue as an unnecessary public expense, and speaking about cost reduction.

this should actually be an issue where socialists and conservatives agree with each other, due to a convergence of thought around public resources. but, while the liberals are consistently incoherent on this kind of thing nowadays, the conservatives are constantly blinded by their own hypocrisy.

we should all support the sites; they save public money.

so, i'm concluding that i need to do a survey.

i'm sorting through these lists and realizing it might be less that i'm disinterested in what's coming up and more that i don't know much of it. to be sure, the 40% that i recognize is mostly coming off as less than exciting, and that's disappointing, but a part of the problem might be that i don't know what the other 60% is.

music is cyclical, so a thing that is going to happen once in a while is that you're going to realize that everything you've been listening to is out of fashion or past it's creative cycle, and the trends and new artists have completely flipped over to something else. i think the last time i really remember coming face to face with this relatively starkly was in the late 00s. i just had to sit down and do the research.

i'm going to reject most of what gets thrown at me, so the difference between a good year and a bad year is 20%; i will reject 70% of what gets thrown at me in a good year, and 90% in a bad year. but, something else about the phase of the cycle we're in - and i guess i'm learning that this is the down point - is that we're in the "cool" phase, where everybody is preoccupied with image; this is the place in the cycle where a talented artist can't get booked because they don't look the right way, or perhaps weren't born in the right country. instead, everything gets homogenized down into a digestible package. there's no stage for the anti-cool, right now.

so, the punk shows are syrupy and catchy, rather than messy and noisy; the techno scenes are focused on extravagance and wealth rather than on composition or creativity; the folk and country scenes are inoffensive and squeaky clean, rather than political or thoughtful and progressive rock, in any form, does not exist (except for established artists, who will get bumped out of slots for kpop bands). pick a genre, and the focus is on careerism and advancement over creativity and expression - everybody is going through the motions and playing the part, trying to get big.

it's not like this is ever going to go away, but the pendulum will swing back in time. people will get bored with this and react, and that one bar owner that takes the chances will find themselves rewarded with being the center of a new scene. then, the vultures will swoop in, and we'll have to start all over again.

something may be a little different this time, in terms of instrumentation. i can't imagine yet another punk or new wave or hip-hop or techno or folk revival. it's all been done to death. gen x must be at the end of the line; renewal is going to have to be driven by a different concept of music, altogether, driven by younger people. we must be on the cusp of a revolution in sound design, but where is it?

for now, things are sleepy on the ground, both in toronto and detroit. it seems like hamilton may actually be a little better, oddly. but it just means i have to do the research and figure it out...

so, i've got a list of 200 young bands to sort through that are playing detroit or toronto in the next 6 weeks. 190+ of them are going to be terrible; let's hope i can find what i'm looking for.

i'm otherwise going to have to do a deep internet search, if the local venues are turning up nil.

the body language and tone of response i'm getting him from him is that he actually thinks it's an invasion of his privacy.

and, is it? well, that's kind of not my choice.

it's quickly becoming a distraction. he wants to deal with this asap.

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/05/bernie-sanders-tax-returns/

and, to clarify an absurd misconception...

canada's legal system is primarily british in origin, meaning it is a combination of germanic common law and roman civil law, with the germanic common law in the dominant component. quebec is a strange animal in this sense, as the british allowed them to maintain aspects of their french legal heritage upon the final conquest of 1763. while france was overrun by barbarians during the empire's collapse, it was not abandoned the same way that britain was, and did not develop a germanic system of common law; french law is directly romanic in origin.

the roman law was in fact very different than jewish law, as it was enacted by a legislative body. while the jewish texts are older (however you want to measure it), i will remind you that jesus himself lived under roman law. while the popes eventually took over for the emperors, no pope ever enacted the torah as law; roman law remained dominant throughout the feudal period in europe, in whatever extent it could be enforced under (with the exception being in the areas that rome withdrew from, or never conquered, with england being the unique melting pot).

it follows that the idea that any existing concept of western law is based on the ten commandments is in actuality completely retarded.

the issue around the religious symbols ban in quebec seems to be coalescing around teachers - and i'll remind you that polling suggests a clear supermajority of quebeckers would actually extend it to daycare workers, so the law is actually more lenient than voters actually want.

(even if it should be up to the court to interpret the law and not the mob to do so; if there is a criticism of this, and i have made it, it is not that it is fascist but that it is ochlocratic.)

i'll also remind you that i don't really support "religious freedom" as a fundamental right, and i've been pointing that out for years. so, i'm not making any kind of exception, here; i'm denying the existence of this right, altogether. it is actually a matter of consistency! and, can i do that? well, humans determine rights, not god; there isn't some ethereal source of rights out there, they're just things we decide on. nor is there a god. so, if we decide that "religious freedom" is bullshit then it is. i'm not granting myself a veto over the constitution, i'm just pointing out that i'd allow just about anything to overpower religion, if i were on the court. i could rephrase this in another way that is less controversial: we don't have the right to our own facts, so the only time "religious freedom" is of any argumentative value is when it is happening independent of reality. i will allow the right to pray by yourself in your bedroom, so long as you're not too loud, but not much more.

but, if it's about teachers primarily, so be it. and, i have a question for all those that support this so-called right of teachers to public displays of religious affiliation.

what are your views on displaying the ten commandments in public schools? do you think that's acceptable? why or why not?

and, this is about public schools.

and seniors, apparently.

increasingly.

TCH buildings are home to 110,000 people. Every existing unit is also badly needed. By the end of 2018, the number of active applications for households looking for social housing, which includes co-operative housing, TCH properties and private not-for-profit housing, hit 100,515, according to the City of Toronto website. Of that reported total, 35 per cent were identified as being seniors.

https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2019/04/05/ottawa-pledges-13-billion-for-toronto-community-housing-repairs.html

the reason the price is so high is of course because the system has been underfunded for so long. this creates this circular problem: nobody wants to invest because the costs are so high, which just further increases the costs.

the best way to make it sustainable is to keep on top of it.

again, though - the feds are providing cash, but in the form of loans. the federal government is the only institution in the country that can print money, and it insists on setting up a loan to the city of toronto for community housing, the inhabitants of which are mostly recent immigrants and disabled people. then, it underwrites subsidies to oil companies, or outright purchases pipelines. it's insane.

and, this is happening on the initiative of a proactive conservative mayor, trying to get the money out of a liberal prime minister. how did these roles reverse?

trudeau seems to have this complex where he doesn't want to associate with "losers", and that has to be the underlying driving force; he seems to see government as a tool for the successful to award the successful, rather than as a way to balance out inequalities in society. whatever you think of this, it's not what canadians associate with the term 'liberal' - or at least not east of the rockies. they no doubt had to drag him to this, and he's no doubt interpreting it as a vote-buying scam. but, he doesn't seem to get weird around the global poor and is even willing to send these huge checks out of the country; it's this construct of "winning" and "losing", and this affinity with "winners" and revulsion at "losers". it's like "you had your chance, and you lost. too bad." kind of thing - equality of opportunity on some level, i guess, but perhaps more a consequence of a fucked up childhood. it's the kind of thing you go to therapy to work out - it's an inferiority complex, compensated for with a lot of flair.

regardless, this is necessary. it's not progressive or forward-thinking; it's years past due, and absolutely required. and, i don't know who gets the money flowing, but there needs to be an eye on making sure that the system stays on top of itself, in order to ensure it's own solvency.
 
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/trudeau-tory-affordable-housing-toronto-crisis-1.5086114

i didn't have my morning nap, so i could barely keep my eyes open long enough to get the faxes sent. but they're sent.

i'll follow up on monday, but i have been led to believe - correctly or not - that this is the extent of my concerns regarding nexus, until i apply to have the card renewed in the summer. i should probably apply for renewal on the day that the file destruction processes.

i'm going to take a second pass through the toronto show listings, as i'm going to need to figure out when the next potential booking is.

could i hitch this? probably, but the bus is mostly a timing thing. they're not going to wait for me to get there....