he claims he's gone this week, and i do think he's been gone for a few days, which might be a part of the problem. although i also think there's somebody up there...

i'm going to have to write up the letter and leave it in the box, then.

and, in the mean time, i have little option but to run the water.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

yes - we can have a situation where the liberals and conservatives are tied in the popular vote, but the liberals win 135 more seats.

our electoral system isn't fair.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

no. stop.

i think the numbers right now suggest an outcome more like this:

liberals - 210
conservatives - 75
bloc - 40
ndp - 10
greens - 5

yes, the conservatives sweep the west. yes, the bloc is back. but, this is driven by substantive gains by the liberals in ontario, at the expense of both of the other parties - and not even because the liberals are up, but because the other parties are down.

it gets spooky if the ndp start polling higher in ontario. that's when the numbers start flopping around.

i know the models are suggesting something entirely different, but they have a very poor track record, and that is the case because they're not very well constructed. i've deconstructed this before, you can sort through it if you insist.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

there are seats in the 905 - like lisa raitt's - that you wouldn't immediately think might be in danger of swinging liberal.

but, if the ndp attract enough south asian voters away from the conservatives, the liberals could sneak in up the middle.

it might actually be the liberals that benefit from splitting. i'm just speculating...

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

the narrative is on the poor liberal numbers, and how that might help scheer into power with a minority.

but, it's obscuring a point - the conservatives are actually at historical lows, right now, too.

they haven't run this low in forty years.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i've been clear who i'm not voting for.

are the ndp splitting the vote, though?

i actually think the conservatives are running too low. at 30% nationally, and not much better in ontario, it's going to be hard for them to compete in most urban centres, even with the vote splitting. i actually think that's going to be a major outcome of this election - a lot of these ridings that the conservatives have been winning on the split since 2000 or so are going to just flat out swing liberal, and not because the liberals are up that much, but because the conservatives are down that much, with their vote...their vote is dying. that's why they're running at 25% in places they were running at 30% a few years ago - their voters are just dead, of old age, and aren't getting replaced, or at least not in those ridings. so, you might see everybody - including the greens and ppc - up a half a point or something. that's not what's happening. what's happening is the conservatives are dying off....

the conservatives need a way to connect with groups like south asians and muslims if they want to replenish their vote in these regions, and while harper and kenney were good at that, scheer doesn't seem like he can compete with trudeau on that point. i'm also still curious about what kind of south asian identity vote ends up backing singh. it could kill scheer in the 905, where the ndp are not usually competitive.

it's become a part of the discourse to vote liberal to prevent vote splitting, and it was a real problem back when the conservatives were running in the mid to high 30s, and competitive in toronto. when they're running in the low 30s (or maybe the high 20s, depending on turnout), and getting beaten badly in ontario, vote splitting is really a less pressing issue than it was.

of course, if the ndp comes out of nowhere in ontario at the last minute and pulls the liberals way down then this calculus implodes. but, at the moment, i wouldn't worry much about it - vote for who you want. i'm an advocate of that, anyways.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

maybe he's used to just running away from his problems instead of facing them. that's the impression i get - this guy just doesn't deal with shit.

i don't live like that.

i identify problems and i fix them.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

ok, so that was p-trap problem #3. i got out of the shower, took a nap and woke up to it smelling pretty rank.

so, we did the same routine, and it seems to have cleared up relatively quickly - i guess i got it early. i'm sure we're looking at a few days to clear out, at least. and, i was just finishing my last batch of laundry, too. ugh.

but, i've got enough data now to understand what's going on  i fixed this in mid-august, mid-september and then mid-october. so, roughly once a month, give or take. that's too frequently to be acceptable - we need to find a way to fix this.

i have now sent three emails to the landlord about this, and received no response.

so...

what happens if he doesn't fix it?

1) i need to run hot water to keep the drains wet, and otherwise clear the air out.
2) i need to shower more frequently.
3) i need to run the fans.
4) i need to do extra laundry.

this is all expensive and frustrating for him, and he's mentioned it. the rational thing to do is fix the sewer issue, so we can fix these other issues. but he doesn't appear to be a rational agent - he seems to neither recognize his responsibility to fix the issue, nor does he seem to think i have much of a right to complain about it. the messaging i'm getting is that he basically doesn't think it's his problem...

i can't prove he's smoking, so i can't do anything about it. and, it took forever for me to figure out the issue with the gas, too. but, now that i understand what's happening, i have enough information to force him to do something.

the easiest thing for him to do would be to transform into a rational agent and fix the sewer line, whatever that means. step one would clearly be to call a plumber. that would be ideal.

the hardest thing for him to do would be to ignore me. but, that's what i'm actually expecting, because that seems to be what he's like. he'll claim it's stressful, or he's too busy or something - clearly bullshit excuses, and maybe his ex-wife accepts them, but they're not excuses a court will accept.

so, what's next?

1) i'll wait three days for an email response
2) if i get no email response, i'll leave a letter in his box and give him until november 1st to respond. this letter will clearly lay out reality and he'll have the choice of how to deal with it.
3) if i still get no response, i'll get the landlord and tenant board to order him to pay for a plumber. that's how this works - you take him to the board, and the board makes him do it.

i'm not a plumber. i don't know what to do next, besides call one.

but, this is an uninhabitable scenario. again. and i have to react appropriately, if he won't respond.

there is some chance that the plumber may decide he can't fix it, and we'll have to go from there if he does.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

research has shown that jagmeet singh supporters are most likely to pick up the phone and answer questions on thanksgiving saturday night.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

as expected, the ndp flatlined....

hey, i'm baffled they got this far. i'm not being cocky about this.

so, what does this mean?

it means that there's not yet compelling evidence that there was any real movement. it doesn't mean there wasn't any real movement (yet). it doesn't mean he's "plateaued". what he did was hit the top of the margin and bounce back, which you can't deduce is anything more than random fluctuations until or unless it breaks through the barricades.

as an aside: these are three day averages. so, if he went from 19.7 to 19.2 in the average, that means he was polling at 18 point something (max) last night.

it's a long weekend in canada, and the sample on saturday night (when he may have peaked) would be particularly sketchy.

we actually saw this last election, too, when the ndp peaked on one of the holiday weekends. i can't remember which one. if there's something to pull out here, it's maybe a tendency for ndp voters to be more available for surveys on long weekends, which kind of makes sense. you could call it the "lonely dipper" effect.

https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.47/823.910.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-1445-CTV-Globe-ELXN-2019-10-13.pdf

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

you seem to want a world that operates on the principle of "i do something for you, you do something for me". and, then you don't care what those people think or believe, so long as there's a quid pro quo. that's capitalism.

that's not the world i want.

i want a world that operates on the principle "we agree with each other, so let's do something together". which means that i do care about what you think and believe and why you're doing it. and, it means i don't care if there's a quid pro quo or not - it won't affect my behaviour. that's socialism.

if the turks get out of hand, there will need to be a reaction. as it is, they are doing the right thing in driving the kurds - who were in the wrong - out. that's what's important, not who did what for who yesterday or the day before.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i don't think that alliances or solidarity should be transactional. this idea that "they fought for us, so we should stand with them" is backwards thinking.

we don't have a debt to the kurds; in fact, they cost us a lot of money.

war shouldn't be evaluated in these market-theoretic terms of exchange, or in these kind of bro-ish concepts of "having your back", or whatever weird idea it is that you're bringing in here. that's how they think. we're supposed to be more enlightened and sophisticated than that.

rather, we need to ask the question: do the kurds want peace in the region? and, you'd be disingenuous if you thought that they did. so, i don't want to support them for that reason - we don't have common cause. they want to fight until they get their own state, and i want to shut the war down and get out.

i guess that if you actually support the endless war, then you might see them as a preferable ally, and you might have common cause. but, then, that's the difference between you and i - you want to keep going with this, and i don't.

but, broadly speaking, i want to stand with people i agree with and have common cause with, and not just people that were loyal to me.

maybe it's cause i'm a woman - maybe that's how women think. and, maybe you're insistence on loyalty is a male thing. just a thought.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

to answer the obvious: would i support a kurdish homeland?

no.

they're iranians.

i may support expanding the territory of iran to include kurdish regions, if it's democratic and consensual all around. and, they can talk with tehran about what that means in terms of autonomy.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

see, this is good - this is what i wanted to see, the reason i supported threatening the kurds with turkish force, although i was hoping that the force of threat would have been enough, that it wouldn't be necessary to actually send the turks in to do it. it's the outcome that will best facilitate the return of syrian refugees to the country, the reconstruction of syria's territorial integrity and the establishment of a long-term peace in the region.

and, this could have been avoided if the kurds had just agreed to work with the regime in the first place. but, game theory only works when your actors are rational, and the kurds have been irrational in their insistence on holding on to lands that are not theirs.

this might not have been what trump had in mind, granted. and, i don't care what the republicrats in congress or their saudi controllers think. but, it's a positive step for the region - whether by accident or not.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/syrian-army-deploy-turkey-border-orders-pullback-191013191238367.html

the liberals are supposed to do better than this