do you know what christa pike actually did?

look it up.

there is no question at all to her guilt.

tell me that's not an extreme counter-example. 

it's the most extreme counter-example i could think of.

canada does not have the death penalty. anywhere at all. i have mixed feelings about that, and a lot of canadians do. there are rare circumstances where it seems like the death penalty is the correct outcome, but there are reasons we don't do it that are logically sound, and it's generally inadvisable to suggest they are reconsidered for the sake of a few extreme counter-examples.

the united states does have the death penalty, although i realize that many states do not carry it out or have not carried it out in years or decades. i have at times called for the application of the death penalty in the united states, where it does happen, and is not banned, in the context of these rare cases. i would consider both the menendez brothers case and the christa pike case to be the kind of rare case where a sentence of death is justified.

i do not see a contradiction in resisting the application of capital punishment in canada, a jurisdiction where it is completely banned, and supporting it in the united states, where it is not banned. i very rarely make political or legal decisions based on moral considerations. i do not believe in god. should the united states move to ban the death penalty, i would support that, and also resist it's use in the united states, even in those rare cases where it's justified. i understand that this is complex reasoning, but it's logically consistent, because it's a legal question and not a moral question.

in no context would i ever support live streaming a firing squad. that is disturbing and sick. in situations where somebody should die as a combination of the need for excessive punishment, the absence of any doubt as to guilt (including a clear and reliable confession) and the need for public safety, it is something that should be done amongst reflection and sombre attention to the gravity of the decision to extract such an extreme level of legal retribution. it is not a normal punishment. it's certainly nothing to gawk about.

trump's support for this reminds us that he is a reflection of the religious extremists in other parts of the world, including in the middle east, which is why he wants to negotiate with these people instead of wipe them out. you expect something like this in palestine, iran or saudi arabia. you don't expect it in the united states.

i'm admittedly not fully educated about the subtleties of state rights in the american union, but if the congress has the power to ban live streaming of capital punishment, it should. further, streaming sites should take steps to block the state from utilizing their services for that purpose.

there was a time when i supported the icc, but it has in recent years become beset by politicization and corruption and has in the end collapsed into anti-semitism, and should be explicitly dissolved for that explicit reason. history should state that the icc was dissolved for being anti-semitic. the case against netanyahu is beyond specious, it's absurd and blatantly racist in character. no court that would advance a case on such a flimsy set of grounds should continue to exist.

i have presented ideas for how the un should be reformed into a global democratic body. such a global democratic body should have a reconstituted court system with jurisdiction within it's member states and should have a primary mandate to hold international capital to a legally binding international law.

i just want to give you an example of how bad the linq tunnel bus service is, in terms of hours.

i am not going to a show at el club tonight but i might have. i would have likely taken the new bridge if i did. but what is the schedule for the bus?

doors are at 19:00. the show probably starts at 21:00 or 22:00, but let's say i want to get there for doors. then i want to get to detroit for 18:30 in order to bike to el club.

in order to do that, i'd have to catch the 17:00 bus because the next one is not until 19:00. the old tunnel bus would have run either every 15 minutes, every half hour or every hour, depending on the time of day. the new one only runs every two hours. that means i'd get there around or before 18:00 and have an hour to blow before doors.

let's say the show is over around 1:00, which is on the later side of things. it might be over at 00:00 or even at 23:00.

the last bus on sunday nights leaves detroit at 19:40. the old tunnel busses ran until 22:00 on sundays, until 1:00 on fridays and saturdays and until 00:00 during the week. 

so, because it's a sunday, i might have missed the bus anyways. but i would have easily caught it home on a weekend if the show ended before 00:30 and on a weeknight if it ended before 23:30.

with the new private bus service, there is no chance i'm going to catch the bus home at night. the last bus on sundays is 19:40. on weekends it's 23:40. on weekdays it's 21:40. the show might not even start until after 21:40 and certainly won't start until after 19:40. it would be very hard to catch a 23:40 bus - the show would have to be over by a hair after 23:00, which is unlikely.

i'd have to catch the early bus on monday morning, then.

it used to be that this wasn't so bad if i could catch an all night party, which is why i ended up at raves or techno parties that ran from 00:00-7:00 am in detroit so often. if the rock show did go until 1:00 or later, as they often did, especially in smaller venues, then i was indeed stuck, and that would have been ok. i just get to the after party for 2:00 or 3:00, do a few drugs, have a few beers, dance a little, catch the bus in the morning. not bad at all. the early buses came as early as 5:00 depending on the day of the week. sunday mornings were the worst, but it was 8:30 and parties could run until 10:00 am on sunday morning. i sometimes didn't get home until the afternoon.

the new busses will pick you up at 7:40 am from monday through saturday or 9:40 on sunday and trust me, that two to three hour difference is brutal when you've been up all night partying and need to crash. you don't want to sit in a diner until 7:15 am. that's awful. sitting in the diner until 4:30 is bad enough, on nights where you can' find an overnight party.

i'd might as well walk or bike to the bridge, which opens at 8:00 am daily year round.

the price for these hours?

$17.50. one way. that's $35 round trip.

at least the bridge is free.

i can still cross before 19:00 until nov 1st, when i'm forced to cross before 15:00. no, it's probably not worth $18 to cross two hours later. so, going to a show in detroit in the winter means crossing at the bridge before 3 pm and coming home at 8 am the next morning; in the summer, it means crossing before 19:00 and coming home at 8 am.

these are ridiculous hours and the bus won't survive unless it runs later, earlier and more frequently, which is going to force it to price itself out. it's gambling that it can make a profit by running infrequently in a reduced schedule, but in the process it's cutting itself off from it's own utility. it's largest user base wants late night or early morning service, not service during midday.

the bus would be better off cancelling trips between 10 am and 6 pm and adding trips between 21 pm and 5 am; it would be more profitable if it only ran overnight. but it's not going to listen to that.

the result is that when the private operator fails the city won't have a tunnel bus at all and that won't be acceptable. only the government can run this at the loss it needs to be run at to be useful as a frequent all day shuttle across the border that services people over the hours that need to be serviced - evening, late night and early morning.

who crosses the border on a bus at noon? why?

that being said, there is a broader problem with regional public transit in this area that should be addressed by the province. do you realize that the greyhound service from detroit to windsor and back has a more useful schedule for many people, at a comparable price, than the privately run tunnel bus?

it's not likely that the private service will last. it's hours suck, and it costs too much.

reliable public transit from detroit to windsor and back could be done through expansion of detroit's rail network, and that has been talked about, but should also be a part of a broader network from windsor to london and from london to sarnia, kitchener, hamilton and niagara. london is the obvious central hub for the region. in 2026, kitchener and hamilton are in the gta and are serviced by toronto buses and niagara's not too far. but it's very hard to get around in southwest ontario, and the region is firmly not a part of toronto and can't be serviced by toronto. it could in theory be serviced by london but it's not. it's more likely that london gets swallowed by toronto than that it becomes the centre of a bigger city, but that would be a maximum extension of toronto for decades. toronto is never going to get to windsor.

it would probably make more sense for the province to step in and take over a tunnel bus as the exit terminus of a broader regional transit that better connects the region to itself and better connects detroit, toronto and buffalo together, as well as toronto to sudbury, ottawa, kingston and montreal. the 400 level highways are there. a similar bus service between niagara and buffalo should also exist.

this is a potential issue for the ndp or liberals to run on in the region in the next election and they should seriously consider it. the greyhound was never replaced fully.

the new sources of revenue generated by charging user fees to access city property for the purpose of subsidizing the tunnel bus should further be used to make the bus run 24/7. i want to be able to get out of the bar in detroit at 2:30 am after a late night acid rock show and not have to wait until the morning to get home. i would support charging christians $20 a pop to go to the lights festival to subsidize that bus service.

somebody might say:

"i don't want to pay a user fee for this. it's why i pay property taxes!"

but that's exactly what users of the tunnel bus are saying. 

it's a question of priorities and where they belong. i support subsidizing the tunnel bus because it's good for the economy downtown, particularly the bars and the night clubs. i don't support subsidizing athletic facilities or religious festivals, which bring no real benefit to the city, and are a net drain on city resources. i want to flip the logic. let people that use the athletic facilities pay for them directly, so that the whole city isn't forced to subsidize their use of the facilities. let the religious pay user fees to access public spaces, so that the irreligious aren't forced to subsidize them. and then take the money and use it to pay for public transit more generally - not just the tunnel bus.

i think more people here would agree with me if the argument were to be presented to them in those terms.

and i'd hope the city hall would consider my arguments, but they won't so long as dilbert is mayor. he's already vetoed this once.

i'm not exactly going to endorse fred francis for mayor of windsor. voters should realize that he appears to be a more right-wing candidate than mayor dilbert overall, so if your primary concern is that you're annoyed that dilbert is a right-wing dunce that is mismanaging the city in favour of conservative priorities, francis might not be much of a solution.

but i want to suggest that francis couldn't make things much worse than dilbert has and point out that he does want to bring the tunnel bus back. however, i might find his funding strategies to be frustrating.

i think that the emphasis on what is a drain on resources and what isn't has been misplaced during dilbert's tenure as mayor. dilbert cancelled the tunnel bus because it was expensive, but the cost was around a million dollars. then, he spends millions of dollars on a hockey rink at city hall and a stupid christmas lights festival, and doesn't charge money to access them and rather presents them as benefits to the economy. but neither the hockey rink nor the christmas lights are paying for themselves and they never will, they will always be a net drain on city finances. my perspective, as a resident of the city, is that the tunnel bus was good for the city's economy and should be brought back for that reason (because it brought people downtown to spend money on their way to and from events in detroit and made them get out of their car downtown, rather than just drive through it) and the hockey rink and christmas lights are net drains on the city's economy that should both be privatized or cancelled as wastes of city tax dollars.

i consequently want to flip the logic. 

i am not running for mayor or council but would like to see the opposite approach taken. 

1. the christmas lights festival should be privatized. it is not an appropriate use of public funds, at a loss, year after year. it brings little benefit to the city and only appeals to a small minority of religious people. a secular-first city hall should focus on defunding or privatizing all religious festivals. if the city thinks privatizing the festival is too far, it should consider charging an entrance fee of $20 per visit to offset the losses and generate revenue.

2. the hockey rink at city hall should not be free, while the city operates it at a massive loss. people should have to pay a fee to skate on the rink. an entrance fee of $20 per visit to use the rink is a reasonable proposal. if the rink is unable to turn a profit, it should be shut down altogether.

3. the tunnel bus should be brought back and funds raised by charging a fee to use the hockey rink and go to the lights festival (or funds raised by privatizing it) should be used to subsidize the tunnel bus so that users are able to use the bus at a reasonable cost. the $5 tunnel bus fee should be brought back, and subsidized with revenue generated by charging fees to enter religious festivals like the bright lights or sporting facilities like the hockey rink.

another source of funding for city hall to subsidize the tunnel bus may be charging a user fee for muslims to use the city grounds for their loud and disruptive religious festivals.

a user fee to enter the farmer's market downtown would be reasonable, as they take up a lot of space and, to my knowledge, don't pay for it.

a busker's fee might be reasonable, to use the downtown area, as they are generating income tax-free.

a user fee for little leagues and schools to use the city parks and other city owned athletic facilities would be reasonable.

etc.

all of these are possible revenue sources to subsidize the tunnel bus, which is a valuable service that windsorites should not have to pay exorbitant prices out of pocket to use, but that the city should mandate lower prices for by generating revenue streams elsewhere to offset it.

is a universal basic income communism?

no.

in fact, the idea was designed by milton friedman, the same hard-right goof that gave us the debunked but impossible to get rid of idea that printing money creates inflation. it's generally brought up by right-wingers when the alternative is actual communism.

i don't exactly support a ubi. i mean, i'll take it; a universal basic income dystopia is a better reality than continuing the endless march of empty, meaningless labour created by late capitalism. however, it's a way to prevent communism - which means overthrowing the capitalist class and taking direct control of the ai - and not a way to get to it.

you have to let the capitalists develop the technology first. that's how the theory works. the question as to whether we have to get through the capitalist stage or not, which has been the major issue on the left for the last 100 years, is becoming irrelevant. the capitalist stage is exiting relevancy.

it's nice to see the united states making an attempt to mend fences with the russians, who will be required as allies to nato in order to contain the enemy of the present, the chinese, but consumers should be trying to avoid buying products that use diesel in the manufacturing process for environmental reasons.

is quebec society ready for a ban on male facial hair in the public service?

i'd support that.

something that this ai debate is exposing is that there are a lot of capitalist slaves out there. this is not the same thing as being a reactionary. bernie sanders is exposing himself as a reactionary, whereas jon stewart is demonstrating that he's a slave to his capitalist masters, but i guess that was already clear enough. stewart is just one example. i could go on. but what i'm interesting is drawing that separation between the reactionary, who wants to fight against a process of emancipation, and the slave that wants to uphold the slave relation in capitalism. the reactionaries require the slaves.

definition

proletariat: the class of people in society that has no choice but to sell their labour.

the coercion is the basis of the critique. it's the reason socialists want to overthrow the capitalist state, because it takes away the individual freedom to live how one decides. that's the point of socialism, it's the basic argument - that capitalism eliminates freedom and takes away the ability of people to make meaningful life decisions, that the "free market" is a system of government defined collectivist coercion (we're seeing this develop in the grocery issue where the state is trying to step in and demand they compete, or else. you vill compete and you vill like it. but it makes no economic sense for that to happen and if the state keeps at it the only result is going to be laws written forcing competitive behaviour when it's not what the industry has determined is optimal. prices will go up and not down. some free market.) that forces people to carry out economic activity against their desires, and in the process destroys meaning and purpose in their lives.

there was a book written not that long ago by david graeber called bullshit jobs that i think is highly relevant in this context, on top of gen x trends like quiet quitting. the graeber text should be picked up by all and people should start quoting it. there is currently a general disillusionment in the quality of labour available to the proletariat that we haven't truly seen in the west since the dickensian period. people aren't getting killed by the machines, physically; they're getting killed by the machines, mentally, instead.

but what i'm going to tell the slaves that want to continue to hold to the capitalist relation in a future where they have the choice to abolish it is this:

if you want to be a slave, don't be surprised if you end up treated like one, in the end.