individual human rights are not determined by plebiscite.

obviously, his opinion is of no concern to anybody, and the number of signatures he gets is of no consequence, whatsoever.

i'm going to start a petition telling derek sloan to fuck off.

this inbred retard should mind his own business.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/tory-mp-sloan-sponsors-e-petition-calling-for-moratorium-on-gender-affirming-surgery-for-transgender-minors-1.5098294

shutting down nightclubs at this stage of the pandemic is just stupid.

i've met people like bonnie henry.

they're incapable of failing. they don't know how.

they can't be given positions like this; they don't have the psychological ability to withstand it.

she should resign, if the premier is too cowardly to fire her.

i'm not in bc, but this is potentially next here as well...

i'm not blaming people for existing.

i'm blaming the government for trying to eradicate the flu - it's not possible, and the premise is retarded.

the virus is going to spread. if you're at high risk, stay home until a vaccine is released.

everything they're doing is stupid...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/reaction-to-closure-order-nightclubs-banquet-halls-bc-1.5716742

we have the grid in canada, but we're not using it - and our politicians have been making it harder to use it, not easier to use it.

so, for example, mike harris privatized the grid in ontario, which sent prices through the roof and pushed a move away from clean electric heat to dirty natural gas heating. it was absolutely insane, and subsequent governments have only marginally been able to get a handle on it.

if we simply encouraged people to use electric heating by bringing the price down, we'd solve a giant component of the problem, in this country.

our natural resources make the problem much easier to solve, here: we just need to maximize our hydro capacity, and get everybody to actually use it. but, we're doing the exact opposite: we're pushing people off the grid, we're mining dirty energy and now we're trying to export lng, a project that will drastically increase our emissions even more.

more so than most places in the world, the fundamental problem in this country is simply greed. and, we need to grapple with that fact in undoing the profit motive.

we were better positioned to deal with this in the 80s and 90s; with the notable exception of our move away from coal, we've been moving in the wrong direction since then, and getting worse, not better.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/canadians-energy-use-is-among-the-highest-in-the-world

"we just need to keep pounding at the deplorables, until they get it."

"He just needs to keep pounding on the message," said Ohio Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat. "He’s right on point and just needs to get the message to the low-information voter that Joe Biden understands the economic challenges that you’re facing and Donald Trump just keeps talking about the stock market."

is that who you represent, tim?

low information voters?

what an asshole...

"i honestly don't know the answer to that." is the most intelligent phrase in the english language.

being smart doesn't mean you know all the answers.

being smart means admitting when you don't know the answers, and having the humility to learn them.

i will frequently attack people as ignorant, and be right.

but i won't call them uneducated.

and, there's a big difference - because we're all horribly ignorant, in our own ways. some less than others, perhaps, but our ignorance is a fundamental component of our nature, as primates.

trying to frame the election as the educated v the uneducated is kind of elitist, and smug. and, it's bullshit - the data doesn't back it up.

it's a part of the reason the democrats have problems with certain key voting groups; they just interpret their critics as being too uneducated to agree with them, rather than bother listening to what they have to say. and, of course, there's great irony underlying the truth of it.

i don't know how old this is. i remember watching free trade protesters just rip apart nafta supporters, who were convinced that they were too stupid to understand the deal, back in the 90s. and, i'm reminded of the famous quip by adlai stevenson: don't send them to jail; send them to school.

i don't want to call these people liberals; they're not. it's the people they attack as uneducated that are generally the actual liberals, in most debates. but, the party needs to get a handle on this mentality and aggressively move to wipe it out.

this almost seems like it was written in reaction to me.

i don't have any particular gripe. i don't think people vote based on their education level, and it's only useful in any analysis as a proxy for ideology. so, i ignore it because i think it's causally irrelevant. remember, kids: correlation does not imply causality. but, i appreciate the deconstruction.

and, i also think there's been a measurable movement of both blacks and latinos out of the democratic party over the last 20 years, and trying to balance it out by pointing to averages is just going to obscure it. i'm generally critical of approaching polling with averages; in the end, you get a snapshot on election day that may or may not reflect trends and averages.

i just want to point out that we saw a weird phenomenon in 2016 where all of the polls suggested white women would support clinton, and then they didn't. that would be a bizarre bradley effect, huh? i may have presented the answer in the above paragraph; they may have polled "educated whites" in california and tried to project the results into georgia, which would be daft; i don't remember figuring that out, four years ago. but, the consensus is that some kind of weird patriarchal effect set in; that, in the end, it was wives, especially, that voted with their husbands.

there was a measurable disconnect in 2016, at least, between polling and exit polls. so, careful.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-big-chunk-of-white-americans-with-degrees-and-people-of-color-are-behind-trump/

and, yes, he was a habs fan.

he was vaguely deist, but not really....the truth is that he didn't really think about religion long enough to really form a serious belief system. i call myself an atheist out of some serious conviction; it wouldn't be fair to call him an atheist, or even an agnostic, given that he didn't even have that basic level of conviction to uphold it.

if you were to ask him about god, he'd just change the topic. he cared more about hockey than religion.

and, he probably avoided going to church simply because he thought it was boring; going for brunch with me was as much of an escape tactic as anything else. and, it was maybe the only way out that presented him with an acceptable excuse, as well.

she was not religious when they met, but became a pretty staunch evangelical after her own father died. he'd bring up the old cliche from time to time, but very carefully: you have to remember, j, that only bad people need to go to church. and, to an extent, he was maybe on to something.

but, it was really no doubt as simple as preferring the experience of eating breakfast with his child over sitting in a pew, and i don't fault him for that.

the ritual was that he'd go for brunch with me when my stepmother was at church, then go home and watch the game...

i'd say that was reality for 98% of the sunday mornings between 2006 and 2011.

it was weird to dream, today, about having brunch with my dad, though, something i used to do fairly often when he was alive. more or less weekly, actually. i maybe took it for granted sometimes, but he was persistent about it...he maybe seemed to realize the time frames around existence better than i did, and i'll give him credit for that, even if i'll withhold it in so many other areas....

it may be because i recently saw this seinfeld reboot:

your brain works like that; i've read freud, but the truth is that he was pretty much completely wrong about dreams. i like his ideas, but they're just not correct. rather, your brain tends to take random images of things and scramble them up in ways that have more to do with bad error-correcting than with any deep delve into your psyche.

my brain saw "george and jerry at the diner" and it seems to have triggered "dad and i at the diner". it just pulled out the wrong file; random error, nothing deep about it. so, i dreamt about one thing because i saw another, and my brain made a mistake in processing it....

the dead only exist in our dreams, and they exist the way we want them to. so, anything that was said was what i decided would be said; i'm clear on that much at least - this was a conversation with myself, not a conversation with a spirit of a lost relative. he only appeared to me in the form of a projection of my own mind; as real as dreams can be, sometimes, we write our own scripts. ok, maybe there's some room in there for freud after all, even if the dreams themselves are merely randomized error...

i actually don't dream about him very much at all. 

i'm awake, now, and in the realm of the living. for now. i'd like to try to enjoy that as best i can, rather than dwell on the past.

don't overcheer, though - it's annoying.

i wanted to do a million things today, but i passed out early this morning, instead.

the air in here is way, way, way better. finally.

i'm sorry to be horrible, but it's the only thing that works.

if i'm awake, and the air stays clean, maybe i can do something today.

they need to get the fucking bill out already before (more) people start dying on the fucking streets.

it seems beyond disingenuous to create a crisis by obstructing legislation, then blame the situation on the republicans, then offer a solution.

that is dishonest.

so, why should anybody believe your promises, when they're based on lies?

now, that doesn't mean that the bill is going to be perfect, or that the democrats shouldn't criticize it or campaign against it.

but, there are people in very dire straits right now due to inaction, and it's not the republicans blocking the legislation, it's the democrats.

so, if the government can't get anything passed, it's the opposition that needs to take responsibility for obstructing it.

no.

stop.

the republicans have the presidency and the senate.

they get to write the legislation, right now - the democrats can pass the bill, or obstruct it, but they can't write it.

they have to win an election, first, if they want to govern.

sorry.

ok.

but, it was the democrats that refused to pass the bill. now, they're playing political games about it.

your anger should be directed at nancy pelosi.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/09/biden-focus-rebuild-after-trump-covid-economic-disaster-column/5744882002/

people are just so fucking ignorant...

https://no-smoke.org/indoor-air-pollution-from-marijuana-emissions-as-bad-as-the-worst-wildfires/

so, i wasn't able to escape that particularly vicious round of air pollution from upstairs, and it knocked me right the fuck out.

the good side of that is that my low tolerance is back, which is how i like it.

but, the bad side is that i'm back to being very badly affected by the habits of my neighbours - and i am certain that the problem is my landlord, or whomever else is living upstairs, and not the neighbours on either side.

i'm exhausted, i'm grouchy, i'm dehydrated, i can't think straight and i have a brutal headache.

so, i'm going to eat, drink a lot of coffee and take another shower and hopefully i feel a bit better when i get out.

actually, this is another potential major source of clean electricity that ought to be fully explored.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power

it's this error that people have been making for centuries - they look for this concept of progress in history.

hegel was the worst, and the guy that gets most of the shit for it. but, marx did it too; even as he railed against teleology, he produced his own form of it.

history moves in feedback cycles, not in any linear direction. being savvy about it and taking advantage of it is about figuring out where you are in the cycle and reacting to it, not about falling for the trap of linear progress.

the more you buy into it, the more thoroughly you'll be wiped away when the tide comes in - and it always will, because the moon is always there.

generally, periods of....i'm going to use the word repression rather than regression....but, there's always a backlash, eventually.

give it time.

and, the harder that the neo-victorian reactionaries push down, the more powerful the liberation will be.

i mean, there was quite a bit of talk about this being the new gilded age, right?

the snowflakes are just the new victorians, in that sense.

and, this, too, shall pass.

remember, though: we got rid of the victorians.

we can get rid of the snowflakes, too.

so, let's listen to genesis p'orridge paraphrase some oscar wilde over what sounds like a download outtake.

full treatment in the picture of dorian grey.

and, he's right.

listen, cia spooks...

if my pen is my sword, i may slay a few beasts.

i won't apologize.

it wouldn't be honest.

yes, i tend to stand up for that woman.

she's been viciously abused her whole life, and it just.....doesn't.....stop.

when was the last time she released a new single? i don't even know.

but, you still see these vicious articles....all the time....

i will always stand with the marginalized. and, the media should really back off.

i guess the corporate fascists would rather she buy a slave to make her a new outfit every day.

the stupidity is really astounding.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8711867/Britney-Spears-defends-wearing-17-times-repetitive-posts-Project-Rose.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-518499/Buddhist-monk-cut-pieces-run-lawnmower-Milton-Keynes-temple.html

the bassline instantly started in my mind, microseconds after reading the headline.

sorry.

really.

see, i'm like a russian doll - i just gave you a physics joke, in disguise.

"uhm....no. not yet."

oddly, it's the buddhists that seem to present more resistance, isn't it?

all very strange...

i know that trump is mostly full of shit, it's just a question of trying to figure whether there's enough truth in the mixture to take him seriously enough...

the democrats are scaring the hell out of me, basically.

and, at least on war and the military, trump is saying all the right things that i want to hear.

ugh.

you know how sometimes you hear those buddhist lawnmowers?

ohhhhhhhhm. ohhhhhhhhhhhm.

they seem to largely be in competition with the russian ones, which go

nyetnyetnyetnyetnyetnyetnyetnyet.

?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/09/08/trump-attack-military-leadership-wesley-clark-intv-nr-sciutto-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/

awful, awful thing they did...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/government-broke-law-on-ei-financing-in-3-years-top-court-1.750084

eliminating the payroll tax is something i strongly disagree with trump about. thankfully, he couldn't really do it - not without congress, anyways.

it's not a question of how you pay for it, in the end, it's a question of who owns the money. even if the next ten administrations pay for it from general revenue, it's still shifting ownership of the fund from workers to government, and that must be resisted in principle.

we had a court case up in canada years ago, when the liberals (under paul martin) actually dipped into the fund to pay down the debt, which was horrific in principle - they literally took money from workers' pensions and destroyed it, by cashing it in at the bank. horrific. the ensuing court case ensured they can never do that again.

i would expect a similar battle in the end, but it opens up a valid question: should this system be reformed to ensure that politicians cannot touch it? maybe spun off or something?