you know it's summer in the southern hemisphere right now, right?

i'm going to make a not-so-bold prediction that australia and new zealand will see a resurgence of the virus around may or so.

this is a boondoggle, and the media needs to nail them on it.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-the-only-g7-country-to-take-vaccines-from-fund-for-developing/

the internet went down around 7:00 am this morning and was out until around 16:00, so i got a late start on the writing i wanted to do and didn't get the shopping done until late.

what i wanted to do was get the third foia finished first, then go to the library to print it while i was out shopping, but the libraries are not allowing for emergency computer access at this time :\. so, i'd have to spend $100 on ink to print this and don't want to do that. i decided i'd try to email it, instead. i managed to fill in the form, but the internet went out right before i was able to send it....

i was hoping the internet would only be out for an hour or so and i'd be able to get a reply on the request before noon, so i took a nap to wait it out. but 11:00 came and went and it was still out, so i decided to get to a pay phone to see if i could get an answer. i at least learned that the outage is city wide, and not targeted. well, i'm clearly under attack - access goes out like that, and it makes you wonder.

i picked up the things i wanted at the store: nutritional yeast, ground mustard, paprika & cayenne pepper. + avocados, pasta & some other household type supplies....

these are the ingredients of my hot sauce:

cayenne pepper, vinegar, water, salt, garlic

my salt intake is actually unusually low, but that's one of the key contributors. i'm more interested in removing the vinegar. switching to cayenne powder instead of mass-manufactured hot sauce cuts the vinegar out, and we'll have to see how i react to that, taste wise. i could add a little celery salt, which i'm holding off on for now. the cayenne powder is very spicy....

these are the ingredients in the no-name mustard i buy:

vinegar, water, mustard seed, salt, turmeric, paprika

again - it's basically vinegar, with mustard seed as a thickener. we'll have to see how it tastes, but moving to ground mustard + paprika powder takes the vinegar out....

i'm also hopefully maximizing nutritional content this way by removing the problems associated with manufacturing. the three of these together are a nice boost of vitamins, which i'll add up after i've determined if i like it or not.

it's also much cheaper.

i was hoping the internet would be back up when i came in, but was disappointed to find the opposite to be true. so, i actually took a nap, hoping it would come back - and had to wait until 16:00.

when i was finally able to get on, i realized that the hospital had filed a reply to my extension request in the morning, and that the court had ruled on it relatively quickly. they're giving me until feb 22, which is a week past the date that the hospital gave itself to reply, but i'm hoping to get the bulk of the reply done tonight.  i asked for a much longer extension - until the privacy commissioner presents an opinion on the lack of video - which they decided should wait until later in the process. so, they granted the extension until i get the hospital records, but denied the extension until i get a response from the privacy commissioner. i think this is wrong, because i really need the video to file a coherent response; i may have not provided enough detail for them to come to the right conclusion. so, what i'm going to do is file a detailed request for reconsideration together with the form 3, and try to hit the feb 5 deadline; the logic will be that i'm asking for the extension until the commissioner responds, but here's my reply if you won't allow for that. i should get the medical records before then, which will help me complete the request to re-add the doctors as parties, amongst other things. so, if i can't get it in by friday afternoon, i'll get it in by monday morning.

i was then able to get the foia request sent just before 17:00 and hope for a response in the morning. if she accepts it, i'll need to mail the cheque, but i want to do it tomorrow if i can, because it looks like we're going to finally get a week of winter this year. i called for a warm winter due to the shifting solar cycle, but it's been milder than i expected, and here comes a laggard blast of vortex, before the sun bottles it up for a decade or so. i want to be entirely inside for that, until it passes.

i then went out for a last grocery run, and here i am back inside, typing up my day.

so, that's tonight, then - i need to type this stuff up as best i can, and put it aside until the records get here, when i can file a slew of things together. i need to get some eggs fried up, i need to get in the shower and i need to get a start on some laundry...

these are egregious rights violations that you expect in a fascist state, not in a democracy.

https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-man-in-forced-detention-in-a-canada-covid-camp

no working class movement would give something like that a byte of coverage.

this will be my only comment on this: the ridiculous amount of attention this is generating is definitive proof that the so-called american left, the pseudo-left, the fake left, is thoroughly upper class.

i obviously don't care about a bunch of clowns on reddit trying to upstage soros by fucking with short selling.

*yawn*.

people are looking at it in this weird way that contrasts the right to live against the right to die, as though these are opposing viewpoints. it might make sense to a religious mind, but i find it baffling.

there is one primary right here, and it is the right to agency in decision-making. both the right to die and the right to live come from this more fundamental right to agency. this is true of all of the other examples i cited, as well - every one of them reduces to the fundamental role of individual agency, and if you are to uphold individual agency, it means ensuring that the individual always has the ability to actually make these sorts of choices.

so, don't look at it in this weird way, where we're arguing over whether people should live or die.

we need to give people the ability to choose.