let it be known on this 10th day of june, 2019, that the island of britain will immediately and permanently forfeit all claims to being sophisticated, posh or superior should they sink to the abject level of stupidity that would be installing boris johnson as prime minister.

they will also be expected to immediately forfeit their idiosyncratic accents in favour of midwestern american ones.

you have been warned, britain.

fwiw, i don't actually think that a plastic bag ought to fall in the definition of "single use plastic". you can actually recycle them at walmart. i only take small numbers of them for items that need to be protected from leakage in my school bag (like strawberries, which otherwise get messy), but what i do is hang on to them and use them as garbage bags, after i've used them repeatedly for other reasons, in some cases.

it would be useful if they were biodegradable in the end, so that they decompose in the landfill. but, it's not the same thing as straws or forks; these are not meant to be used once, and, for most people, are probably used repeatedly. there is a future for plastic bags, even when so much of this other stuff is converted or done away with.

a bigger problem than any of this is lids, and that goes for a large number of items. plastic lids are not usually recyclable. to be clear: they are in theory recyclable, but almost nobody recycles them. for years, i ignored this and sent them through the blue bin as a means of protest, hoping that if i overloaded the system then they would increase their ability. nowadays, i separate them out and hand them over to whole foods, instead. this is something that both my city and your city and all of the other cities should be dealing with, and that some agitation is required around - we should be pushing mass protests to increase our local capacities to deal with plastic, as a big part of the problem is that the recycling facilities are inadequate. they can't process things they should be able to process, so they throw it away, instead.

if only we could be more like rwanda.

one day.

if we put our minds to it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/28/world/africa/rwanda-plastic-bags-banned.html

and, what do you do with all of this contraband plastic when you confiscate it at the border, or elsewhere?

you throw it in the trash.

without using it.

so, single use becomes zero use. brilliant.

this seems like an answer, right here.

...although, as a canadian, i'd like to figure out something worthwhile to do with the rest of the marijuana plant. it's really quite a wasteful industry, if left to it's own.

you should be able to do basically exactly the same thing with marijuana or hemp stalks.

https://www.businessinsider.com/loliware-plastic-straws-seaweed-edible-2019-3

"contraband spork."

and, i don't use straws myself.

at all.

about the only time i could imagine using one is buying a fountain drink at a fast food restaurant, and i essentially never do that - not even on the rare occasions when i actually go to one. if i get anything to drink at all, it's usually either a coffee or a pop or juice in a bottle.

i really can't remember the last time i drank anything out of a straw.

a part of the historical liberal party strategy would be to fund r&d with government money, but with single use plastics it's actually not that complicated, we just need to change our mindset. and, i think you might get the wrong idea about this by reading the corporate press.

research into plastics is very focused on the question of longevity. i mean, that's the point - it's supposed to last forever, because it was engineered that way. so, when we talk about plastics, we have this assumption that the material should be stable at room temperature for more or less ever. chemists would broadly consider the idea of a plastic that is biodegradable at room temperature to be a kind of contradiction in terms; it's not plastic then, right?

well, maybe not.

but, that's just the point: plastic wasn't intended to be used the way we use it. it wasn't intended to get thrown out after one use, it was intended to sit in the cupboard forever; that was indeed the point, and we've lost it somewhere.

so, you'll hear people argue that plastic can't degrade at room temperature, and that's largely true, but that's not a fundamental rule of nature so much as it's a purposeful engineering choice; it doesn't decompose because we designed it not to, and companies that produce plastic are going to need an extra push to modify their thoughts about that.

so, at the end of the day, if we want sustainable single use items, you might need to learn to put your straws in the fridge, and they might have a best before date, and they might turn into mush on the counter. and, that's fine. because we should have never engineered immortal straws in the first place; that's what we should have had from the start...

for a big company like mcdonalds, it shouldn't be much of a shift. so, you ship your straws and forks frozen; they move enough units that there shouldn't be an issue with thawing them out in the morning. and, hey - would you like your utensils heated? is kind of a cool question, when you're ordering your poutine.

it's a lot easier than the oil industry wants you to think it is - the technology is here, if we choose to use it.

but i want to be clear about what i'm saying.

a ban on plastic will fail. horribly. it's a waste of time because it's a stupid approach that has no end point besides not managing to accomplish anything at all. if you ban straws and forks, people will just smuggle them back in; people aren't going to keep metal forks or metal straws in their cars, they'll just buy plastic shit in the states and bring it back.

and, what are you going to do when you catch people with plastic they smuggled in from the states? put them in jail? tie up the court systems?

do you think the cops will enforce this?

it's not enforceable; it's moronic, it won't work and we need better ideas than this.

btw, if you're near detroit and you need to recycle some things that the blue bin won't take - like styrofoam or polystyrene - then this is the place to take it.

it's been a while; i'm in need of a big run. i've got piles of number 5 plastic to drop off.

most big cities will have alternative recycling plants that can more comprehensively accept waste than the city will.

i'm honestly as good as i can be. really. i mean, if you have suggestions, i'd like to hear them, but i'm doing as well as i can. the only things i haven't been able to deal with are cheese wrappers, pasta wrappers and doritos bags. if legislation can force these into biodegradable packages, then i'm down to near zero waste.

http://www.recyclehere.net/

so, where are the liberal party apparatchiks? why is this party so devoid of policy, after having been the "party of policy" for most of the previous century? what the fuck happened?

it's tempting to compare trudeau to trump. truly.

but, the better comparison is - ironically - to what happened to the russians under stalin, although this process actually began with what we call the "martin purges" in canada. trudeau very much picked up where martin left off, in this regard.

the sad truth is that there's nobody around to write policy because they fired everybody and, like in stalinist russia, that mass purge of the party intelligentsia has led to a generation of decline and regression.

we are at least in a better state of affairs than communist russia, though - in canada, at least they're not dead. which means you could, potentially, bring them back.

trudeau had an opportunity to rebuild a dying party, and he started off the right way, but in the end just revealed himself as completely full of shit as he carried on the same mistakes that were made by his immediate predecessors. he blew it...

...and the party is on the brink of being back where it was in 2011.

to be clear: for single use replacement products, the focus should be on biodegradable plastic, rather than compostable plastic. you want people to be able to just throw it out with the trash, because that's what they're actually going to do.

i'm going to state this another way.

you would expect the ndp to support a single-use plastic ban. that's their realm, and it's what their voters would be yelling for.

but, people that are actually intelligent have historically voted for the liberals in the expectation that they'll come up with policies that are better than that.

and, we can do better than a plastic ban, we can write policies that will actually work, if we want to.

so, no - i don't support banning single-use plastic.

rather, i support policies that provide businesses with incentives to purchase plant-based plastics as often as possible.

and, yes, we have plant-based plastic, it's readily available, and it's not even that expensive.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/are-bioplastics-made-from-plants-better-for-environment-ocean-plastic/

it baffles my mind that it's 2019 and "progressives" are still talking about banning things, as though they think that is going to work.

i use very little plastic, and almost none of it purposefully or consciously. for example, i bought some eggs sunday morning and they gave me a plastic fork, but i didn't ask for it - and i actually brought it home and plan to reuse it. i have a number of them in my utensil drawer, actually. the reality is that we can't get through life without throwing away some plastic, but i'm about as good about it as a person can be, and the little pile with my name on it is comparable to people living in the third world.

that's really not relevant, though. if people were going to change their habits, they would have done so by now. all that banning things is going to do is create a black market; people will cross the border to buy plastic and bring it back. don't laugh, they will. prohibiting the sale and purchase of things is just not how you actually solve actual problems in the real world, you have to actually find a way to change how people think and behave and act. laws don't change anybody's behaviour - they never have, and they never will.

the root cause of the problem is really actually not in people's consumption habits. i'm not a luddite; i don't have a problem with the use of commodities. humans have always used things and then thrown them away, as evidenced by the mountains of up to ten thousand year old garbage we can unearth in archaeological digs. that is normal human behaviour, and attempting to modify it is a foolish waste of time, not to mention not particularly desirable. i mean, i don't see any broader philosophical value in trying to get people to be less wasteful, for the sake of it. there's nothing wrong with consumption, in itself.

the root cause of the problem is the material that we make plastic out of, namely oil, which is important because what the government is doing is trying to distract from it's failed carbon reduction policies with a litter policy; it's a bait and switch, and actually exactly what doug ford just did. there's no longer a lot of substantive differences between the conservatives and the liberals in canada, unfortunately - this is a recent change, but it's the new reality that we need to get used to. so, they're trying to change the topic, and switch the discussion to waste policy instead of carbon reduction. i guess they don't realize that plastic is made out of oil.

what we need are policies that convince companies to purchase more sustainable types of plastic. so, i ask the following question: if they pass a single-use plastic ban, would the restaurant be able to give me a fork made out of hemp plastic? or would they tell me i have the choice between dirtying a fork in their restaurant or waiting until i got home to eat?

and, what are the ways that you convince the market to move to plant-based plastic? well, you can provide subsidies to specific companies, you can create a targeted small-business tax break, you can create an attitude-changing marketing strategy, etc.

but, just banning things is stupid.

and, you're stupid if you support it.

again: we have a serious problem in search of serious policies, and you're not going to get them from this government.

i am broadly in support of this, and while i would not consider it to be a ballot issue, i would warn opposition groups against making yourself come off as being in favour of puritanism, temperance or islamism by trying to make it an issue. conservatives won't vote for you, but leftists are likely to react with cynicism and disdain. conservatives are supposed to be the ones making it harder to get alcohol, not leftists. if this issue realigns, so that liberals or new democrats are seen as supporting increased restrictions to access alcohol, it will result in drastic harm to the left in the long run.

the only serious problem i've ever had with access to alcohol in ontario was that things are closed on sundays, and the previous government mostly fixed that. it's a solution without a problem.

so, while it's not a ballot issue, a reaction against it might become one, in the sense that i could see myself voting green if the liberals and ndp decide to be "progressive" about it.

half of me expects the ndp to take the puritanical road of christian temperance. that is the ndp's history, after all.  if they do, this could potentially be a strong wedge issue for the liberals. but, they have to take the right position on it, first.

https://www.blogto.com/city/2019/06/ontario-beer-sales-convenience-stores-official/

this kind of interference is an abuse of power, and threatens to devolve our system of government into the kind of gridlock that exists in the disastrous american system.

if the province is going to do this kind of bullshit, we need to look at opening up the constitution to remove the province's oversight and give municipalities more independence.

the city of toronto rejected doug ford as mayor. he has no mandate for this.

https://www.blogto.com/city/2019/06/ontario-government-wants-change-hundreds-future-plans-toronto/

so, i made a choice around 9:00 this morning that it seemed like it was going to rain pretty hard - the wind was picking up, and the temperature dropped very suddenly - and i'd better get me and my bike home before it did.

that turned out to be a bad choice, as it cleared up early in the afternoon. what seemed like it was going to be a cold and wet day turned into a humid, overcast one - and i like humid, overcast days. it would have been a good afternoon for a beer outside, if there was indeed a good place to find one, which was less clear. that food truck was penciled in as a kind of a joke.

so, i didn't make it to the end of the day symphony, but i'm going to figure this out, eventually. in some sense, it's still early in the year. but, where's the place that is open not just until 6:00 but until 12:00? even accepting that it's a good idea to put an hour or two aside to eat, if i want to get to these sunday afternoon or evening shows i need something better to do on sunday morning.

hey, maybe i'll start going to church.

(laugh track)

i missed everything in the afternoon, but i got some nice biking in. the early show ran late, meaning i only caught around 10 minutes of the last show, which was also early. the early show was mildly entertaining, but i was more interested in the second show, and i should have left early, but i actually didn't realize it was that late (although, again, the second show was also early). i'm not really fans of either act, so it's not that catastrophic, really, but i would have ideally been able to have caught most of oozing wound. alas. the first dance club was empty a little before midnight and the music wasn't interesting enough to shrug it off, so i did leave early, and ended up at menjo's a little before midnight. the bartender at r&r seemed to think i was drunk, but the bartender at menjo's served me. i guess the best way to answer the question is that i was certainly under the influence of alcohol, but i don't think i was too drunk to serve; r&r was wrong, here, and menjo's was right. and, they waived me cover again (that's three times in the last month). i guess i had three drinks at menjo's before going back to r&r, and i did eventually convince them to serve me, just further demonstrating that the initial decision not to serve me was wrong - if i was too drunk to serve when i came in, how could i be less drunk three drinks later? the event listing said 7:00, but i didn't expect them to be open later than 5:00, and they had the place cleared by 5:30.

see, i wasn't sure what the right logic would be about the gay complex on pride weekend. i want to be clear here: there were a lot of disappointed people walking out of that place at 5:30, many of whom clearly thought they'd be there a lot later than that. there was a general consensus that the other place would be closed right at 6:00. a lot of bars will stay open all morning on movement, so why not stay open all day on pride? you can start serving again at 7:00! and, there were 300 people there that didn't want to leave. so, i was hoping, with little supporting evidence, that they'd be open very late - but i just ended up as one of a large number of people that was pushed out earlier than they wanted.

there's another complex opening up in the west end and i need to make a point that should be obvious: if you hire a dj to spin at 7:00 am until noon or three or four in the afternoon on the sunday of pride weekend, you will attract hundreds of people that want to be there. my search for a more general early sunday morning dance party may be a little obscure, but i was hooked into the gay zeitgeist this week, anyways.

i want to make a general statement about alcohol: i don't think there's anything wrong with being drunk. i don't drink when i'm at home, but when i'm out partying, i enjoy being drunk, and drink because i like it. i have no shame in these truths, and would behoove you to change your attitude, if you do. so, i have no response to people pushing temperance other than to tell them to proselytize to somebody else - i have no interest in your politics or your morals or your worldview in general, so fuck off.

regarding my alcohol intake, we all screw up once in a while, but i can actually generally handle my alcohol quite well. i mean, you're looking at a 95% success rate in terms of making it home without blacking out. so, you play the odds, and tell me what the right answer is. further, i am absolutely certain that i was drugged on at least two of those nights (one of them because he told me as much). the only times i've ever run into actual confirmed alcohol problems are when i'm taking shots or otherwise drinking strong drinks; so long as i'm drinking beer, i'm able to essentially drink all night, and i will if you let me.

the thing that tends to knock me on my ass is actually not alcohol but marijuana. alcohol is a cns depressant, but it is also a racing buzz - it makes you want to get up and dance. good pot will amplify the effects of alcohol, but if you take a pass on somebody's sativa, or eat a brownie somebody made in their kitchen, you could find yourself in need of a couch. please be clear on this point: if you find me sitting down somewhere, it's probably (like, 95 out of a 100 times) not because i'm drunk but because i'm stoned and i'll probably be fine once it wears off a little. and, so long as i smoked it rather than ate it, you're probably looking at ten minutes before i'm up and ready to go.

storefront marijuana stores in michigan are coming soon, and, when they are, i should be able to minimize this problem by ensuring that i'm only smoking high-thc indica. in the meantime, it's an environmental hazard i have to deal with: people are going to pass me shit that is going to make me need to sit down, and i'm going to need to do it, when they do.