odsp is working the way it's supposed to; don't get angry with me about that.

however, the market is completely psychotic and what we're dealing with is a deep market failure in front of us at the most fundamental economic level possible. the fact that odsp is the one thing that is working in the face of a complete and total market failure is a reflection of it being shielded from the market, which has become completely irrational.

for now, the 45% increase in my odsp income since 2022 combined with the 45% decrease in rent over that same period has actually opened up some startlingly appealing rental units at the top of my price range. i'm going to see an 800 square foot 2-bedroom condo tomorrow night that is actually bigger than the basement apartment i had when i first moved here, with the difference being that this place looks almost brand new and full of people that bought the condos and that other place was 100 years old and full of smokers on welfare.

on saturday morning, i'm going to see a basement that's almost as big, but doesn't have a stove and might not have a cable running into it for internet.

i'm also going to see dirty, rotting basements in the same price range as i was previously paying, which would allow me to put close to $800/month in a savings account on a monthly basis. the idea in signing that sort of lease would be to save up to buy as fast as i can, and the unintentional result would be that i might find myself accidentally getting close to the $40,000 odsp asset limit, at $10,000/yr in savings, plus what i'm able to win via tort law for negligence from recent landlords.

this is a reflection of the present absurdity of the housing market. you still couldn't afford the rotting basement on literal welfare or osap, but the convergence around odsp is working as intended, if you can get landlords to listen. it'd be nice to find a 600-700 square foot apartment in a normal apartment building for somewhere in between, but that doesn't exist.

if you can use the irrationality of capitalism to your benefit, you have to do it, and i set my life up so i could. on some level, i'm morally opposed to this, but i have to maximize my self-interest, regardless.

you can be exploited by the system, or you can exploit the system. there's no middle point. it's eat or be eaten, and you can get it or not get it; you can be enslaved by society via the market, or you can enslave the society in return. i'm not naive about this. i don't watch tv, so they can't brainwash me, nyah nyah.

i wouldn't imagine i'd want to move out of an 800 square foot two bedroom condo in a nice part of town any time soon, so i could realistically find myself with a substantive down payment in a few years that i could utilize for a functionally useful endpoint, after the court cases are done.

the place i moved into on may 10th, which has been a disaster, just provided me with a functional $4000-$4500 settlement, with a possibility for an extra $2000-2400 coming. i will need to sign a lease to get the extra $2400.

i have another $1200+ coming from the cdb. i'm asking for $10000+ on my hearing on nov 4th.

the price of small houses in windsor is viciously crashing to well under $200K, and they aren't selling. if i wait a few more months, property values could conceivably start collapsing to under $150K, as the canadian economy burns and disintegrates, as we rapidly devolve to a third world economy under mark carney's pro-market / market fundamentalist mismanagement. as chomsky said, free markets are great...for developing economies. it's a third world economic system that generates poverty and inequality, and we're embracing it head-on in canada, even as we escaped the carnage of it in the last decades, and even as the rest of the world is retreating from it. leave it to canada to evade the mistake the rest of the world made in the 80s and 90s, only to make that exact same mistake 30 years later, while everybody else is learning from it and trying to move on.

due to these settlements allowing me to generate some savings, and prices crashing, i'm seriously considering buying a small house in windsor.

i'm not going to bother with the platitudes about gun violence, because i don't really align with that spectrum. i'm in canada; i've never seen a gun before, and i never want to see one. but anybody could have run up and stabbed the guy.

i'm more concerned with the state trying to martyr this guy. don't let the fuckers do that. he was an asshole.

do you know who else cared about "arab sovereignty"?

osama bin laden.

we're sleepwalking right back into world war two, where the russians are tasked with saving the world from a nazi-arab alliance that the british were unable to contain.

it seemed as though america had learned that it had to be aggressive with islamicists in order to prevent them from launching attacks. by reducing resources on fighting islamic extremism in order to engage in a stupid war in europe, trump is severely exposing the united states to further attacks by islamic extremists, and you can be sure they're coming.

ok, i don't care about charlie kirk getting killed. from what i can tell, he was an asshole, anyways. stop clogging my newsfeed. 

america should be focused on fighting terrorism, not blathering about "qatari sovereignty".

israel tracked the fuckers down and gave them what they deserved. america should be standing with them and applauding them for it.

there was a time not too long ago when america had leadership that wasn't as soft on terrorism as donald trump is turning out to be.

when is trump going to send federal troops to salt lake city?

are canadians so reliant on the state that they have to ask permission to die?

to an extent, the right is making a point - these are frequently not cases where somebody needs a doctor to administer the suicide, but situations where the expression of free will should be done autonomously. self-ownership means you have the right to kill yourself, and the right to ask others to do it for you if you can't, but the focus should be on doing it yourself.

i might concede that assisted suicide be restricted to scenarios where the individual is unable to do it themselves. if you really wanted to die, and you could, you wouldn't call a doctor and wait for it, you'd just do it. in some cases, the hesitation might be instructive.

https://nationalpost.com/news/maid-report-obese-woman-grieving-widower

what?

i'm a godless liberal. i don't know anything about this shit.

there's only one captain kirk, and it's captain james t kirk.

if they ever did shoot william shatner, i'm sure he'd make the most of it.

i'm....

dying. i...

tell my wife....all of them....

i 

can't...

.

.

.

SPOCK

i spent all day thinking they assassinated william shatner. i assumed it was a delayed over reaction to his bad acting.

it turns out they killed somebody named charlie kirk, not captain kirk.

i have never heard of this person before, and have no comment, other than to say i'm happy cap'n kirk is still kicking after all.