to suggest that all of these people - myself included - are stuck in neutral, or even reverse, because they're uneducated is simply wrong. it's the kind of thing harper would say, sure, but it's easily debunked by data.

it reflects the blind spot on both sides, though.

to the rural bumpkin, all them city folk are just a bunch of liberal elitists - and that's fine for conservative voters, who then vote for conservative elites (trump merely being the most absurd example) who think exactly that, as harper did - that if you don't succeed in life, you're just uneducated.

and, of course, this imaginary liberal elite, to the extent it exists, would say the same thing - that it knows better than the unwashed masses, who would easily climb their way up if they'd only go to school.

lost in all of this nonsense being peddled by both elitist factions is that we live in a system where people are intended to fail. this is a hierarchy - people must exist at the bottom of it. and, it's not the people born into the top. it follows that, for the vast majority of people, there's really no way out of poverty, and this is by design. grasping this is fundamental, but few get it - as proletariat, we even blame each other for "failing" in a system that is designed so that nobody wins.

the average "middle class" person nowadays is raised relatively well off, takes on massive amounts of debt to get an education and ends up working in the service sector, in the end. these are educated, urban and mostly white people that are going to feel resentment at what they correctly perceive is an unfair system of nepotism and preference, not an egalitarian system of merit. and, those that buy into it will often reject merit on it's face in favour of affirmative action, and code words like "diversity".

it puts us into a rough spot, because we want a system that's equal, but we realize that the pendulum has swung rather far, and left us out. and, we have nothing to do about it, and nobody to vote for - or not really, anyways. it's a constantly shitty calculation for a lesser evil. and, we always lose, in the end.

so, where in this dichotomy do you put the the overeducated starbucks employee, that has a phd and serves coffee, which is in truth the driver of the modern economy and the primary swing voter on the left?

these are the people that swing between the ndp and the liberals and the greens - and they're the people that determine the outcomes of elections.

it's less that what he's describing isn't real and more that it doesn't matter. that "liberal" (for they are, in truth, anything but) elite is never going to vote for the conservatives, and the rural base of the conservative party is never going to vote liberal - although they may vote ndp or green in a pinch.

this is useless data and a meaningless narrative that doesn't matter - and it's reflective of the fact that he's leading a dead movement.

the political movements of the future will be the ones that trap the energy of the overeducated and underemployed, as they are increasingly the majority.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/erin-otoole-culture-war-pandemic-statues-immigration-1.5826976

the other thing i'm curious about is if they can just paint something on there, if they can blow away the plaque first. like, even just white-out it. no, really.

right now, it seems like it's helping - and i might even say dramatically.

but, i'll keep a very close eye on it.

any bleeding, any lesions, any discolouring, etc and i'll stop immediately; right now, it seems to be eating away at plaque and actually reversing the gum erosion, at least between the teeth. that means that, if i had a weak form of gingivitis, it might have been all i needed to do.

might.

seems.

and, if they won't do a scaling, i can get a waterpik for $50 and do it myself, too.

ok.

*sigh*.

it's somewhat reassuring that dish soap appears to be frequently recommended as a denture or retainer cleaning solution, for the explicit reason that it is milder than any other option.

and, dish soap does have a reputation for being mild.

but, it doesn't help me understand whether it'd going to fry my gums or not, which is what i'm apprehensive about.

i'm trying to kill something inside me.

and, the available science on the matter isn't helpful because it's driven by an industry that profits off of failure.

again: i know this is a balancing act.

if it's gentle enough to be 100% safe, it won't work!

there are actually a number of anti-microbial agents in the dish soap:

Ammonium Laureth Sulfate

Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate

Lauramidopropylamine Oxide <-----nitrate

Isodeceth-6 <-----alcohol

Sodium Chloride <----salt

Magnesium Sulfate    <-----magnesium is good 

Alcohol Denat

Methylisothiazolinone <----in mouthwash. biocide, cytotoxin, antifungal. safe for gums?

Benzisothiazolinone <----""

Methylchloroisothiazolinone <-----"" 

https://www.palmolive.com/en-us/ingredients

i found the following article, and i would presume the concentrations are much lower than this, but i sent an email to palmolive to ask:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10915819209141993

see, this is what i want to see.

and, i can tell it's working.

i just worry about concentrations.

i need to halt at the earliest sign of inflammation.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31211651/

it's a constant truth with me.

i'm either brilliant or retarded.

we'll find out...

yeah, i should be able to get a tall container of the stuff for $10.

ok.

that was a typo, but i'm sticking with it.

sodium bicarbonate is baking soda.

calcium carbonate is tums.

but, they put sugar in tums, so don't use it as mouthwash. i need to find it raw...

sorry, i said calcium carbonate.

i meant sodium bicarbonate - baking soda.

but, on second thought, i'd prefer calcium carbonate, in powder form, if i can find it. 

...and, flossing doesn't work. 

that's why i'm not doing it.

of course, the best thing you can do for your gums is to clear them of bacteria.

so, it's very delicate, what i'm doing. and, i'm taking a risk that will either pay off dramatically or fail terribly...

it's a trade-off.

if i'm overly concerned about my gums, i'll pick a weaker surfactant, or not pick one at all. but, that may not have strong enough anti-bacterial properties.

conversely, if i want to pick the strongest antibacterial (probably hydrogen peroxide), it could severely damage my gums.

so, i need to pick something in between - and the ingredient in the dish soap (ammonium lauryl sulfate) is the ingredient in between.

unfortunately, i won't know if it's a mistake until it's too late.

my teeth feel better. they feel strong and clean. 

but, this is an experiment in a mouth that needs shock therapy, and i don't recommend you follow along just quite yet.

so, what are all the things i'm looking at?

every day:

breakfast

- start with dish soap, soft brush  [anti-bacterial]

- follow with medium toothbrush & novamin toothpaste [may replace with stannous fluoride] [remove plaque]

- wait a half hour

- drink a liter of water

- eat breakfast (fruit bowl)

- swoosh with calcium carbonate right away  [to increase ph of mouth]

- wait a half hour

- brush with soft toothbrush & novamin toothpaste [remove food]

- apply prevident with more novamin. spit into cup & dilute with water. wait an hour. [fluoride treatment]

- drink diluted spit. hey, it's my spit. also drink a liter of water.  [recover fluoride]

supper:

- start with dish soap, soft brush [anti-bacterial]

- follow with medium toothbrush & novamin toothpaste [may replace with stannous fluoride] [remove plaque]

- wait a half hour

- drink a liter of water

- eat supper (pasta)

- swoosh with calcium carbonate right away [to increase ph of mouth]

- wait a half hour

- brush with soft toothbrush & novamin toothpaste [remove food]

- apply nanohydroxyapatite gel. wait an hour. [remineralization treatment]

- drink a liter of water.

late-night:

- start with dish soap, soft brush [anti-bacterial]

- follow with medium toothbrush & novamin toothpaste [may replace with stannous fluoride] [remove plaque]

- wait a half hour

- drink a liter of water

- eat late-night eggs

- swoosh with calcium carbonate right away [to increase ph of mouth]

- wait a half hour

- brush with soft toothbrush & novamin toothpaste [remove food]

- extra treatment? wait an hour, anyways,

- drink a liter of water.

every three months:

- fluoride varnish

and, i still need to figure out how to eat enough of it, but i'll leave that for the sequence. i don't want to brush with the crest, so i'd might as well eat it. right now, i think i need topical attention more than anything else.

and, all of my stannous fluoride options seem to have disappeared overnight, except the crest. crest's toothpaste leaves a lot to be desired, as i demonstrated. but, they invented this.

i need to be clear: it's not that bad. it's a handful of what might be root lesions and might be root caries, they're very shallow, and i think it's mostly just plaque that can be easily scaled off. but, the whole mouth is also...i'm going to say it's fragile. like, it's not bad right now, but it could get very bad very fast if i don't find some way to strengthen it very quickly.

my teeth have probably lost most of their enamel, but they're healthy and strong everywhere except at the roots. i don't have any dead teeth. i don't need any root canals.

but, i need massive intervention to turn it around before it's too late, if it isn't already.

i knew....but it snuck up on me, too. same old story, right?

so, i'm flipping out because i never thought it'd come to this.

and, i'm launching a full-on assault.

the thing i'm worried about is the dish soap, though. i think it's a good idea. but, if it backfires, it might be a catastrophe.

so, what i've been reading up on this afternoon is the question of whether novamin could be improved by a more bioavailable formulation, and it seems as though there is consensus that it can be. as such, i should seek to include a nanohydroxyapatite option, most likely in the form of a gel.

i'm currently doing the fluoride bath after breakfast. i could potentially include a nanohydroxyapatite bath after lunch, as well.

this is getting complicated, and i should write it down to keep track of it.

http://www.medicinaoral.com/odo/volumenes/v11i10/jcedv11i10p906.pdf

i mean, think about how we approach this for a minute.

we know that our mouths are full of bacteria, and we know that bacteria eats sugar. so, we tell everybody to eat less sugar.

!?

why don't we declare a war on s. mutans and wipe it off the face of the earth, instead?

the acidity is one thing. i need to strengthen them to deal with that.

but, the sugar is only dangerous if you let the bacteria run wild, right? if you kill the bacteria....the sugar's harmless...

that's the mindset i want to adopt: strengthen & cleanse. and, i'll eat what i fucking want, when i fucking want to.

so, should i be concerned about sugar in my diet, not for weight gain, and not for diabetes, but for my teeth?

i've ignored it. but, in fact, there's not much.

sugar in fruit is considered mostly harmless. but, even so, these are low glycemic options - strawberries, avocados, guava peel, kiwi. the banana's a bit more, but it's pretty tame. with those particular fruits, i should be more concerned about acidity and erosion.

the cherry yogurt has sucralose in it and the all bran is actually worse than the vector, overall. the soy i'm using in the fruit bowl has 0 added sugar.

the ice cream is not the best, but i buy premium brand ice cream, and it's actually not the worst - the all bran is. it's not frozen candy canes, it's a high quality product with a lot of cream in it. and whole black cherries, too.

really - the highest sugar component in the breakfast bowl is all bran cereal, which is their healthy, no-sugar flagship product. you could add it up and get something like 15 grams of "added" sugar, mostly from the ice cream and the all bran.

the pasta bowl has carrots, red peppers, beets, pasta, block cheddar cheese, lime, nutritional yeast, sunflower seeds, hemp seeds, garlic, mustard, anchovies, yogurt, hot sauce....where's the sugar? there's some in the soy. it's about 9 g in the amount i'm using. that's it.

likewise, the egg meal doesn't have any added sugar, except in the bread, and that's manageable. there's a touch in the salami. and...

the juice. there's a lot in the juice. but, you'll pry that juice away from my toothless gums. give me dentures or give me death.

that said, i buy actual juice. not drink. juice. it's all no sugar added. i've recently been drinking mostly apple juice, and i've brought some grapefruit juice in for the inositol. i'm very judicious about this - i won't touch fake juice.

and, there's the coffee, which has chocolate soy, which has "organic cane sugar" in it. it's by far the worst thing in the diet, but i'm only taking a tad at a time.

i'll let you interpret this as you may. is my juice really that bad? should i ditch the ice cream and eat more sugar-free yogurt? i dunno. i know i'm not touching my diet, and am not blaming my diet, either, i'm blaming the absence of fluoride...

the doj is no doubt taking this step because they realize how soft the next administration will be on white collar, corporate crime.

i think they should send her to jail.

biden'll probably give her company special access.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-meng-wanzhou-in-talks-with-us-justice-department-to-allow-her-to/

the garlic breath is really just...

yikes...

why does it come out in the saliva, though? why don't i just piss it out? is that instructive?

so, i swallowed it the first time and then realized i didn't research the concentration levels (that much is safe.....if diluted in a large glass of water), got scared and drank a bunch of water, which defeated the point.

what i did the second time was spit it in a glass of water, and i'll drink the water later. i know that's safe - it's tap water, in civilized countries.

i seem to be able to buy varnish online if i want. 

you have to buy it in bulk, but it's less than $1/treatment. what will the dentist charge to apply it?

i'll wait until the appointment. but, that seems like a potential necessity.

for now, i'll try the prevident as a topical, daily.

i would be considered high risk because i don't have access to fluoridated water.

they're suggesting a varnish every three months.

if i put this stuff on there every day, it should be more fluoride than the varnish, in total. but, how potent can i get?

http://www.ada.org/~/media/ADA/Science%20and%20Research/Files/report_fluoride.ashx

i want to be clear - the issues that i'm dealing with are very thoroughly tied to a lack of water fluoridation. what happened to my teeth is a predictable consequence of removing fluoride from low-income communities, where access to dentistry is minimal, restricted or non-existent. this is what should have been expected.

so, fluoride is the right solution to salvage as much as i can.

i left it too long. we'll have to see if that mistake was catastrophic or not.

i misunderstood what this prevident is.

this is a varnish - it's just a very weak one. you're supposed to leave it on your teeth, after brushing, rather than brush with it. i think i'm ok with everything in it, including the xanthan gum.

if it's not covered, i may need to varnish them myself.

this is 5000 ppm fluoride, in the form of sodium fluoride. i could try a gel at potentially 9000 ppm. the varnish would be 22500 ppm. but, there's an offset - you don't varnish every day. i simply don't know if using the prevident every day for a week is as good as using the varnish once a week.

*shrug*.

let's give it a shot.

and, yes - i'm swallowing. not spitting...

these procedures used to be covered.

i remember going to a dentist when i was a kid and getting polishing and fluoride treatments, and the only coverage my mom had was through welfare.

mike harris, probably. asshole...

i wonder if this is a part of the problem, and nobody's explained it to me. i've just been told i get "basic coverage" - and would have assumed that meant cleaning.

the cyproterone acetate does list "dry mouth" as a side effect.

if this is the truth - that they're pushing for fillings because i can't get a scaling due to a lack of coverage - then i wish they'd be upfront about it rather than try to manipulate me in a dishonest way. i can probably get coverage, and that's a far better idea than drilling into a tooth that obviously doesn't actually need it.

i'll find out next week - i'm booked for a cleaning, let's see what they tell me.

garlic breath is intense.

need to tone it down.

i could see myself getting vaccinated against some future strain when i'm a little older and it actually poses me a serious threat.

for right now, i'll let you be my guinea pigs.

it's rational self-interest.

i had to nap again this morning....

:(.

i dunno. let's hope it's over with.

listen: i don't doubt the vaccine will work, or relatively well, anyways. i've yet to see any really good evidence that you can catch this disease repeatedly, so if we can create effective antibodies on contact with the virus then we should be able to stimulate them with a vaccine, as well - it's the same thing. but, that's just the point.

even the best vaccines - and we shouldn't expect that of this one - will kill some people, due to a variety of causes. vaccines are generally safe, but they're doing all of this testing for a reason - they're not completely safe.

my argument is simply that you need to look at it comparatively: there is some risk from the vaccine, and some risk from the virus. if you're old or vulnerable, you should get vaccinated, clearly. but, if you're young and healthy, what is more dangerous - the vaccine or the virus? and a sober, quantitative analysis will demonstrate that, for many people, it's safer to get sick and fight it off.

but, you shouldn't have exaggerated expectations of the vaccine, either. 

it won't exactly "wear off". but, given that the virus is here to stay, constant vaccination may actually produce a feedback loop: the more that people get vaccinated, the more the need to get vaccinated repeatedly, to adjust to a changing virus. thankfully, the virus seems stable, at least - so far. i wonder if distancing hasn't made it more contagious, but it hasn't changed to fight our attempts to stop it, yet. but, we haven't pushed it. a major vaccination campaign could change that and make it that much more deadly - in which case the vaccine stops working, and we're back to the drawing board.

so, what you should expect is something that is mostly safe and works moderately well. you shouldn't expect a magic potion that will set everything back to normal. even after being vaccinated, the vulnerable will remain vulnerable - and some will be so vulnerable that they can't even get vaccinated at all. the vaccine will certainly increase these peoples' chances if they catch the virus, but these people will need to continue to quarantine, as the virus continues to spread - and potentially strengthen - amongst young, healthy, vaccinated people.

some years, the flu vaccine is barely 70% effective.

it will help, but it's not a magic spell. be realistic...

so, i'm not saying it's not going to work. i remain convinced that masks don't work, and that i'd win a court battle over it. vaccines, though, should work. what i'm saying is i don't want a vaccine for a weak virus - it's not worth it. i want to catch it and fight it off.

see, the irony is that graeber has been bullshitting his way through this now for years.

i didn't get a response from anybody regarding the emails i sent out proving that this woman filed a false report and should be sent to jail for it. it's just reflective of the role that class plays in the justice system.

i'll need to get the report via a foia and go to the justice, myself.

and, you'll be sure i will.

i think i want to continue zapping these anchovies just to be safe, but they turn into mush, at even 20 seconds, and you have to scrape it off the plate. so, i want to dissolve them in a bit of water, i think, and zap the paste, instead.

the thing about garlic is that it becomes useless once it's cut (there's no point in storing half a clove for any length of time beyond a few hours), so i tried to chop it a little more finely, instead. that probably won't eliminate the garlic breath, but it might stop it from overpowering the bowl. right now, the results are mixed - it seems less extreme than yesterday, but still too much.

so, what's next? should i use half and throw the rest away? seems silly.

i wonder if i can just find smaller cloves.

no, you don't understand.

i haven't seen any film in roughly 15 years.

i try to keep up with music a little, but i haven't the slightest idea about film. i more or less decided that the medium was unworkable -  the idea of a film is inherently pointless, nothing of any value can ever come from it, it's just inherently a waste of time - and just completely ejected it.

i won't watch tv, either. i don't even know what tv is, anymore.

i've really watched nothing but news for the better part of my adult life. i just don't have time for film.

if you're curious, the actual truth is that i do not know who elliot/ellen page is (i have sincerely never heard of this person before. they're some kind of movie star or something, i take it? primarily popular amongst younger people than myself, from what i can tell?) and i have no comment on the matter besides a general statement of support for freedom of autonomous, individual choice in the matter of gender expression, if that had to be repeated at all.

what are my thoughts on the fact that i bummed a few smokes on sunday and one more on monday?

well, the term i would use is relapse. and, i'm not proud of it. so, if you want to interpret my behaviour, you need to begin from a starting point that is perhaps different than the one you are - i regret it; i wish it didn't happen. i'm ashamed of it, even. and, i'm now back to trying to avoid smoking as much as possible.

nicotine is a powerful physical addiction. while i've proven to myself that it is conquerable, as i always claimed it was, trying to downplay that or ignore it in analyzing the behaviour of people under it's influence is foolhardy.

i guess it started on saturday afternoon in amherstburg. i needed to null my aching muscles, so i bought the smallest amount of marijuana that i could. i smelled horribly when i got home, and was too tired to even shower when i got in. so, i contaminated everything - my clothes, my jacket, my bed. i woke up in a haze on sunday morning and knew i was going to have to go back out in the pollution to shop.

i decided when i was out shopping that it didn't matter at just that minute, that i smelled so bad anyways that i'd might as well. further, i was experimenting with edibles and nicking as a result of it. through the course of the day, i ended up bumming something like 5 cigarettes.

again: i wish i hadn't done that. that was a mistake.

but, it doesn't reflect on my broader desire to avoid smoking, it merely reflects on the difficulty of quitting. it's not hypocritical to struggle and fail - it's just failure, not hypocrisy. nothing's changed, except a mistake i made, that i regret.

it was the same thing over the summer. you can take a look back through my comments, and it's clear that i wish that that binge never happened. i've stated as much clearly. i nearly started smoking cigarettes again...i'm glad i caught myself before it was too late...

so, try to take this from the right perspective: i'm a recovering nicotine addict and a broadly straight-edge person. i have exceedingly negative views of smoking of any kind and, while i may make mistakes from time to time, i need to have it kept out of my living space if i'm to conquer it, permanently. so, i get very mad when people smoke near my living space, because i want to be rid of it, even if i have difficulty with it sometimes.

i want it away from me, and that is a sincere desire.

right now, it's stuffy in here, and all i can do is try to clean and wait for my sense of smell to get back to 100%.

needless to say, my mouth smells and tastes like garlic, which indicates i've metabolized it and it's coming out through the saliva...

i knew it was too much as i was eating it.

that was more sleep than i'd like, but less than before, so it's getting better. i'm going to do some laundry to try to clean up in here after the cleanliness disaster that kicked in on saturday - i feel sleep in my bed after biking five hours in the pollution. then, i let it sit because i was going grocery shopping on sunday, anyways. and again on monday. and, then i slept last night. 

i need to clean...

it severely damages the credibility of the national center for biotechnology information, as a source of reliable information.

how did this get published in a science journal? 

that's hilarious.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4389398/

garlic may do more good than harm for your teeth, it seems, although i wouldn't go so far as to use it as a replacement therapy for something more established. but, garbage like that has no place in the literature.

...and, i'm going to start brushing with the prevident (and then swallowing it), for now, until i get better bounds. the xanthan gum seems fine.

so, i'm going to put reading up on remineralization tactics off until i get the cleaning done and take a look at it. it seems clear to me that this isn't an available treatment, so i'll need to decide if i think i can wait for an unproven technology or if i should act now to save the tooth.

i still only see one clear cavity, although there are a few i'll need to clean to tell with. they're all root caries.

that means i should be back to what i was doing and hopefully get a post up tonight.

i'm going to hold them to that.

this is what i expected from the first three - and am kind of baffled i didn't get.

so, i have an appointment with dentist #4 next week.

they're advertising "entrance exam + cleaning" on their website. so, they'd better actually do it.

it's a fun fact, though - canada has never had a boomer prime minister. or, not a true one, anyways. the closest thing was harper, but he's in a grey zone.

diefenbaker - 1895 (dead)

pearson - 1897 (dead)

====================================

trudeau - 1919 (dead)

==========================

clark - 1939

turner - 1929 (dead)

mulroney - 1939

campbell - 1947 <-----unelected caretaker that took over when mulroney resigned. doesn't really count.

chretien - 1934

martin - 1938

=======================

harper - 1959   <------- is that a boomer? just barely. it's cusp-y. gen jones. harper was not boomer-y. he was post-reagan, post-mulroney. more alex keaton than steven keaton.

trudeau - 1971. trudeau has actually hilariously called himself a millennial in public and it wasn't seen as pathetic and immature. he's clearly gen x...

what about the opposition leaders?

erin o'toole - 1973

jagmeet singh - 1979

so, it seems like we dodged that catastrophe, thankfully.

there were several more stereotypical boomers that could have won - michael ignatieff, stockwell day, jack layton - but they were all thoroughly rejected. stephane dion, like harper, is a little young to be a boomer, and never really came off as one.

the dental office is refusing to merely clean my teeth. they gave me an ultimatum to get fillings or have nothing done at all. 

i guess a simple cleaning is not profitable enough to be worth their time.

so, i canceled the appointment and i'll need to find a different dentist to do a cleaning.

the first anti-boomer, though, was definitely zappa.

he's the alpha document, here.

he's where this all comes from.

and, he's going to win in the end, too.

why not post visuals....

the anti-boomer movement really started with punk rock.

here's a few exaggerated examples:

hating boomers is a gen x thing.

you wannabe kids are just a bunch of unoriginal poseurs.

i was posting anti-boomer screeds to fucking usenet in the 90s.

i was slamming the boomers before you were born, kid.

right.

so, the way you defeat this is with numbers - you do a maskless sit-down protest at the entry of the store, preventing further entry, until the manager acknowledges the situation, reverses the policy and apologizes for being an asshole.

you will need hundreds or thousands of maskless volunteers willing to block the entrance, otherwise it's pointless.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/arrest-mask-enforcement-woodstock-1.5823404

to state the obvious - no, not every covid death is preventable

in fact, the vast majority of people dying would have been killed by a strong flu in a normal year. these are overwhelmingly the kinds of people dying.

but, who prevents your death besides yourself? the state? that's absurd - only you can take actions to prevent your own unnecessary death.

and, don't let these idiots out there try to convince you otherwise - it's up to you, nobody else.

"i wasn't watching oprah.

i was watching jenny.

give me that bowl of doritos, i'm more depressed now than before."

you had months worth of warning, mostly spent staying at home, to get in shape.

but, you sat around and drank beer and watched oprah in your underwear, instead.

now, you're unhealthy and vulnerable and want to tell the world to change to save you.

awwww.

poor boomers. 

so sad.

listen, i'll stand up for what's worth standing up for.

fat, entitled boomers whining about the aggregate consequences of their lifestyle choices is about the last thing i'm going to stand up for.

maybe they could at least plant a tree before they keel over?

this is exactly the kind of entitled attitude that is at the root of the problem - people thinking that their risk factors don't matter, that everybody else needs to adjust their behaviour, for them, because they're more important.

the alberta government is right to publish data on comorbidities and tell people with high risk factors that they need to take responsibility for their behaviour - past and present. if they're going to live unhealthy lifestyles and then go prance around outside in a pandemic, they're going to die, and they only have themselves to blame for it.

this woman needs to take control of her own health back, not whine and complain that people aren't accommodating her for her own bad choices in life.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/road-ahead-alberta-covid-19-comorbidities-rebecca-haines-saah-1.5823847

so, i didn't even know what to do with these anchovies. should i wash them? microwave them to kill bacteria?

i ended up zapping them to be safe. they're for omega-3s, mostly, although i may get a tad of b12 and maybe some fluoride from them, too. i used 3 fillets - about 10 g - to start. you can taste it immediately, and i don't think i'd want to use much more.

however, it was overpowered by the garlic, which was only one clove's worth. that seems like too much, so i'll try a half a clove, next time. and, then i'm wondering if there's a point.

i'll say it tastes more like a caesar, though - if a very garlicky one, for now.

weird experience this morning, as i'm making the pasta i missed last night (i'll have four eggs tomorrow, instead). i'm going to hope it's positive. but who knows?

you can say what you want about my dental hygiene (and i do need a cleaning, at least), but one thing that is always true about me is that my breath is clear. there's no secret to it - i just brush a lot. i might pick up some coffee breath sometimes, and if i've smoked recently you can usually tell, but the stereotypical "stinky ass" breath is something you'll never catch me with.

so, you can imagine it's kind of weird that i'm noticing...let's say bad tasting breath...after i brushed with the dish soap, this morning. 

after i brushed with soap - not before.

can you smell your own breath? well, you've gotta do the cup-your-hand-over-your-face thing, right? you then blow directly into your nose. i guess you hope you don't have any anthrax or mad cow disease living in there. or that your teeth aren't randomly excreting cocaine.

the other thing you can do is wet the tip of your finger with your tongue and then press it up against your nose. i'm just imagining how somebody would react if they saw me do that in public right now, let alone generally.

see, that's the weird thing - it doesn't smell if i do either of these things. but, my mouth tastes the way that bad breath smells. how is that possible?

that smell is the smell of bacteria; if your breath doesn't usually smell, you've succeeded in killing the bacteria. or, at least, you've succeeded in killing the bacteria at the surface of your mouth, enough that you can't smell them.

i'm going to guess that what i did was kill a hefty batch of bacteria hiding in sneaky places, maybe even under the gumline, and the taste is that bacteria seeping out from the inside of my mouth. 

yummy?

well, you don't use antibacterial toothpaste, either, do you? guess what?

my experience is that i agree with this - the times i've felt most vulnerable are the times i've spent standing in line, because i can't distance beyond what the people behind me feel is appropriate. and, as mentioned, it puts me in close proximity with gross people - people i'd never go within 10 feet of. people with facial hair. yuck. gross...

it's not about prioritizing monetary exchange over public health, it's about trying to do what actually works. and, the only possible effective strategy right now, and for weeks previous, is to quarantine the weak and let everybody else exist normally.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/retailers-ask-ontario-open-stores-1.5824491

too much sleep, again :(

let's hope that's the end of it.

bingo.

see, this is going to drive me nuts - we know how to do this. this is revolutionary. i want it done. i'm not good at settling.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/154405910608500504

this is a better idea, and it doesn't strike me as that hard.

1. generate ameloblasts from stem cells in a lab.

2. crispr them to not die so fucking fast.

3. transplant them into diseased teeth.

you should then be able to generate enamel, like any other cell.

what's the hold up?

do i have to do it fucking for you? or what?

Four weeks after transplantation of EOE cells combined with dental pulp cells in scaffolds, several phenomena related to amelogenesis were distinguished in the implants [2]. In the most mature structures, enamel was readily found in the implants. Furthermore, amelogenin immunoreactivity was detected in tall columnar epithelial cells on the surface of the dentin or enamel, indicating that the tissue-engineered enamel contains well-developed ameloblasts. Together, these results indicate that the subcultured EOE cells have the potential to generate enamel.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4226000/

see, i don't know how close to reality this is.

because we still don't have fusion. no, really.

i want to wait. but, if i wait too long, i lose the tooth. it's near the back, at least. but, what's the right gamble?

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/8/eaaw9569

vaccines tend to have a low mortality rate.

but, so does covid.

and, i've been through this a few times - in my risk category, and especially in the risk category of young children, covid may be so harmless that getting a vaccine may end up being a more risky proposition than catching the virus.

well.

if the virus has a 1 in a million chance of killing you in your age and health category, and the vaccine has a 1 in 100,000 chance, the vaccine is more dangerous.

(ed: note that the unwanted editor tried to replace vaccine with virus. twice. idiots.)

relatively safe, perhaps - but still more dangerous.

and, i'm not one to take foolish risks. 

it would really be useful to me to know if i've already gotten this thing before they roll out the vaccines. because i'm not bothering anyways, but if i already have antibodies...

you'll tell me the antibodies will wear off, and i'll tell you that's not how it works. most weak viruses move to the "stored as memory" phase. it's really sort of mysterious how your body seems to know what the bad ones are, but it does.

and, if your body will forget the acquired antibodies, it will forget the vaccine, too, anyways. a vaccine won't be more effective than natural antibodies. so, that would suggest you'd need to be vaccinated every few months to maintain protection - and that may end up being true for some categories of people. but, what it means is that healthy, young people should just fight it off.

so, if the government could prioritize allowing antibody testing through ohip....

it would tell me if i've already had it or not, anyways. and, that's far more useful to me than anything else you could do for me - it's unlikely that i'll get vaccinated regardless, but i'm hardly going to volunteer to get vaccinated until i've had an antibody test, first.

i seem to have picked something up again, but i keep getting stuffy noses, and it never seems to be covid.

i might be the only person on the continent catching the flu, instead.

but, maybe it's because i've got antibodies....

but, if i raise the ph of my mouth, will my words be less acidic?

i wouldn't count on it.

not any more than using soap in my mouth is going to correct my language.

i'm going to need to experiment, but this is what i'm doing right now, and we'll see if i think i need to bring in stannous fluoride or not

before eating:

- brush with dish soap (ammonia lauryl sulfate) on a soft brush. this is a high ph solution and a surfactant that should be highly effective at killing bacteria and neutralizing acids, even if it doesn't have stuff like fluoride in it.

- use a medium toothbrush with a novamin & sodium fluoride solution on the face of the teeth. i can and should still brush hard away from the gums.

- drink a lot of water

this seems to create extremely clean feeling teeth, enough that i'm wondering if i shouldn't emulate it after eating.

after eating:

- should i use dish soap again?

- use a soft brush with a novamin & sodium fluoride solution. this is intended to brush food off, mostly.

- swoosh with baking soda to reduce the ph

- drink a lot of water

let's hope that at least kills anything living in there, first. then, i can figure out if i think i can undo any decay - and, like i say, there is one tooth that looks bad - or not.

no response from the dentist. i'll call tomorrow.

i should point out that i also got some baking soda. not baking soda toothpaste - just baking soda.

i'm going to get in the habit of swooshing with it. the idea is that, hopefully, it will raise the ph in my mouth a bit.

i'm sure i got it at the trumbullplex in detroit in early december, 2019.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/coronavirus-silently-infecting-americans-before-first-cases-emerged-in-wuhan-cdc-study

the dish soap is really cleaning up some stains, though - which is both clarifying how healthy most of my teeth actually are and verifying that i have at least one cavity. it might just be the one, though. it's not totally clear.

if he has to drill that one tooth, i think it's time to let him do it.

"but, it's not designed for teeth"

exactly.

the colgate uses xanthan gum as a thickener, and this is apparently amylase-resistant.

Xanthan products are amylase resistant, so unlike starch, the enzyme has no effect on the xanthan molecule,

https://dysphagiacafe.com/2018/07/22/xanthan-v-starch-advantages-clear/

the sensodyne uses carbomer, which doesn't seem to be made of sugar at all.

sensodyne > colgate >>> crest

so, i might have to order a sensodyne product to get some stannous fluoride.

the crest pro-health is going in the trash.

and, check this out:

κ-Carrageenan was degraded by hydrolysis using commercial α-amylase (4000 U/mg).....The carrageenan-derived oligosaccharide content of the product and the yield were 96.5% and 92.6% (w/w), respectively.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24750735/

yeah.

this is astounding.

throw this shit out.

Pure LA can be obtained by conversion of calcium lactate to zinc lactate using sulphate or zinc carbonate, and zinc lactate is recrystallized and dissolved in water. Subsequently, zinc is precipitated as zinc sulfide using a solution of hydrogen sulfide (Trindade 2002). LA solution is clarified with coal, filtered, and vacuum evaporated. Zinc salt is the most suitable for this operation because it crystallizes better than any other lactate (Pereira 1991).

https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/separation-and-purification-technologies-for-lactic-acid-a-brief-review/

so, the zinc separates from the lactic acid when dissolved in water - and is chosen because it dissolves the most easily. the industrial process then needs to remove the zinc to get pure lactic acid, but that's not important in the context of putting the stuff in your mouth.

crest is trying to ruin your teeth.

and, this is the product with the "dentists recommend" seal on it.

remarkable.

and, people wonder why there's so much skepticism about dentistry out there....

there's not an obvious way to file a police report of this nature online. so, what i did was send out some emails to the cops i've dealt with previously.

listen - this woman tried to send me to jail. i've caught her in a lie. i want her charged, if i can do it.

if i can get some kind of response from the police first, great. if i can't, i'll get the report through a foia and take it to the justice, myself.

Hello Jessica,

Thank you for your question about the fluoride concentration in our raw water, which is measured at 0.1 to 0.15 mg/L in Windsor. 

so, my .1 estimate was reasonable.

i'll average that out, though, to .125, when i do it.

if i drink enough water, then, i could get that up to 20-25%. that could be worse. 

what happened was that she responded on friday to the tribunal, but didn't include me in the recipient list. she indicated that ryan is a real person, and she's not representing him.

that's proof that she filed a false report.

so, i sent a form 10 to the tribunal to amend that information to the file. i also forwarded that information to the recipient list in the divisional court case and asked them for a response, and if that altered their approach to the case. she literally just admitted to lying to the cops, and that lie was the basis of the arrest. that should have a dramatic effect on how they respond further, if they're operating rationally.

i need to now figure out how to react to the information regarding the false report. i'll send an email, first.

i've got the email out to the cda, as well:

i recently picked up a tube of this stuff, on the realization that i could benefit from some stannous fluoride. this product comes with some hefty advertising, including your endorsement.

but, after looking through the ingredients list, there are two confusing ingredients, and i'm wondering if you could help clarify.

1) zinc lactate. this is a salt produced by attaching zinc to lactic acid. i understand that zinc has some proposed antibacterial benefits. but, if one separates zinc from zinc lactate to utilize those supposed antibacterial benefits (evidence for which is fairly weak), it leaves behind lactic acid. am i then correct in believing that this product will actually administer lactic acid to my teeth, and that zinc lactate is in truth a delivery mechanism for lactic acid?

2) carrageenan. this is a polysaccharide composed of a chain of galactose molecules. the amylase in your saliva should break this down into galactose. and, s. mutans eats galactose. am i then correct in deducing that the carrageenan in this product is a delivery mechanism for galactose?

do you think your endorsement is still justified?

j

wait.

there is a dude out there named ryan.

she filed a false report. straight up.

lol.

this crest stannous fluoride toothpaste - which has a canadian dental association sticker on it, and perhaps uniquely - contains:

- zinc lactate, which is zinc bonded to lactic acid. lactic acid is what the bacteria in your mouth produces that wears down your enamel.

- carrageenan, which is a polysaccharide - sugar.

neither of the other two toothpastes have these ingredients, although the colgate has xanthan gum, which is also a polysaccharide.

now, why would they put zinc lactate in toothpaste?

supposedly, it's primarily to fight bad breath. but, google isn't helping much.

take a look at this site here:

Our highly soluble, neutral-tasting lactates help reduce tartar and potentially even bad breath in oral health formulations: An ideal source of calcium.

http://www.corbion.com/biochemicals/personal-care/applications/oral-care

highly soluble lactates fight tartar? what?

it seems like the thing that may have some dental health benefit is the zinc, but it would need to be separated from the lactic acid, first. so, if the zinc is doing anything at all, you have to douse your teeth in lactic acid to get the benefits of it. great.

worse, free zinc reacts with water to steal the oxygen and produce free hydrogen - which is what produces acid, in all situations.

but, zinc lactate would appear to be poorly soluble in water:

https://www.cheric.org/PDF/KJChE/KC18/KC18-1-0133.pdf

...meaning it's probably not doing anything at all.

so, what's the conclusion, here? that if this did anything it would be terrible, but it's not actually doing anything, so i shouldn't worry about it? fuck.

and, what about these polysaccharides, the carrageenan and xanthan gum? they're what makes the toothpaste thick. but, it's sugar.

carageenan is a polysaccharide made up of repeating galactose molecules. your saliva will break the polysaccharide down into simple galactose molecules. s. mutans, the bacteria that causes cavities, eats galactose. what the fuck?

should i throw this shit out?

you know what i'm going to do? i'm going to send an email to the canadian dental association and see how they respond.

i've used it twice. i won't use it again until i get a clear response.

this is the crest pro-health advance.

people are freaking out about schools as vectors. and, yes - schools are vectors. you can flip the stats over all you want (you can argue that the total rate is low, for example - ignoring that it is relatively high), but the fact is that large amounts of the cases being found are being found at schools. in some areas, it seems to be the leading cause of spread.

but, so what?

see, the problem here isn't that they opened the schools, it's that they provided terrible expectations when doing so. the science underlying opening the schools was always that the virus has almost no effect on healthy children. nobody ever seriously argued that your kids weren't at high risk for exposure, they just consistently and carefully pointed out that it doesn't fucking matter if they are.

but, the government - in an attempt to calm people's nerves - sent out a lot of bad information, insisted it was "safe" and that people shouldn't worry about it. stay calm and keep shopping.

this has led to haphazard behaviour, such as people letting their kids interact with older people. but, the problem here is that people were led to believe that this is ok - not that the schools were kept open.

if people were told the truth - which is that schools are a high-spread environment and your kids are likely to get it within a few months, at least, if they go to school every day - then perhaps they would have taken proper precautions. 

so, yes - people are right to be concerned about schools, but only in the sense of ensuring that kids are kept away from the vulnerable, for a while. the social decision that was made is that it's more important to send healthy kids to school than it is to worry about the health of the very vulnerable. but, that was not communicated, and the problem here lies at the foot of the state for bad messaging around that, in telling people it was safe, instead.

we can still adjust.

keep your kids away from your parents. it's a few months. it's not that terrible.

this is a decent summary of the situation:

https://childcarecanada.org/documents/research-policy-practice/12/02/canada%E2%80%99s-history-never-was-national-child-care-program

Mr. Dryden had stipulated that the money must be put toward quality, regulated child care but Premier Bernard Lord had insisted on greater autonomy over how it was spent.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/dryden-achieves-10-child-care-agreements/article990610/

i don't expect this government to be nearly as discriminating, because they don't seem to be looking at it from the same perspective. for dryden - and generations of liberals before him - childcare was about the child. this government seems to see it more in terms of kitchen-table family-planning economics and what's best for corporate interests, and is interpreting it as a way to put more money in the pockets of families, while making corporate executives happy at the same time.

oh, and btw - your taxes will no doubt go up to pay for it.

...because it's a corporate subsidy, not a childcare system. and, taxpayers always pay for corporate subsidies, in the end.

the liberals used to be good at this, but they're just not anymore. it's terrible plan after terrible plan...

but, let's see what they come up with before i write it off completely.

my response to the budget is becoming boilerplate, as the liberals so often are themselves: the liberals tend to have a habit of announcing ideas rather than plans. it's quite frustrating.

canada was very close to enacting what looked like an excellent daycare system in the waning days of the paul martin administration, before it was torpedoed by a selfish, opportunistic, power-hungry jack layton, who saw an opening to put his own party into government by trying to shift the nature of the spectrum. he wanted an ndp-conservative matchup, with the liberals as third party, and he actually got it - for a while. but, the country didn't just have to endure ten years of catastrophic petro-dictatorship under stephen harper, but lost a wealth of excellent proposals in order to do it.

so, is freeland's proposal as good as ken dryden's?

it doesn't seem like it, but it's hard to say, because it's just a vague idea right now. how do you critique an idea? you can't. i haven't seen anything about ece, or the importance of preschool in a child's development. rather, it just seems like a plan to help women get rid of their kids, so they can more efficiently generate surplus value for shareholders. that's how this is being presented - not as a plan to help children maximize their potential, but as a plan to send women back to work.

but, i want to make the bounds clear - this plan should be judged against dryden's, and that is how i will judge it. if it does not meet those standards, i will reject it.

what am i expecting?

i'm expecting a subsidy program. i'm not expecting a childcare system.

so, i got my letter hand delivered to the owner of the store. i had to walk to the mall, get a 20 out, break it at the timmies, go to the library (which is around the corner from my house) to print it and then go back to the mall to give it to him. i was going to stop to eat first, but i decided i'd be better off just biking out to the metro to get soy milk, then biking around to get strawberries. 

strawberries are sometimes quite cheap here and are sometime too expensive to bother with. it depends on the time of year. this doesn't actually make sense, though, as essentially all strawberries sold here are from florida, california or mexico (with the vast majority from california), and the growing season there is mostly year-round. strawberries do grow locally, but the ones i see on the shelf are always very small - about the size of raspberries - and often white or even green. on top of that, they're often strangely expensive. rather, it seems like ontario exports most of it's quality strawberry production. again: i'd rather buy strawberries from local producers, but what can i do when the local farms ship them to the prairies and the local grocery stores buy them from california, except point out the stupidity of the situation?

it's probably just an excuse to drive the price up. if they ship them around, they can charge more and blame it on transportation costs. that's the kind of thing that needs to change.

for now, what i do when the price of strawberries goes up is buy them frozen instead because the price of frozen berries seems less subject to "market conditions". i looked everywhere and saw the same high price everywhere, except the place i looked first - which was only marginally overpriced. what i did was get enough of the mildly overpriced berries for a few days and a batch of the frozen ones for backup. i'm hoping that the price has come down a little by next week; if not, i'll get some more frozen ones.

i also got some canned anchovies, which took me a long time to find. i accidentally realized that i was looking in the wrong place - i thought they'd be with the tuna & sardines, on the shelf. it turns out that i actually had to go to the fish counter to get canned anchovies. weird. this is just to try it; i don't know if i'll like it or nor. i may want to get fresh ones in the end, if i decide this works. over the last few days, i also got some algal oil and some high fluoride toothpaste for the fruit bowl (i'm going to hold off on eating the toothpaste until i'm sure i can measure it properly) and some garlic, in addition to the anchovies, for the pasta bowl - which i'm going to need to put through an optimization process relatively soon.

so, the first thing i'm going to need to do, after i finish this crazy post i've been working on that splits the chart into four, is an update on the breakfast bowl. i should finish that thought first, though. i've been toying with doing a breakfast bowl update first, but i want to keep this a bit more linear. 

and, i collapsed again when i got in - this time for almost 8 hours of sleeping. that much sleep is unheard of for me, and something i'd prefer to avoid if i have any choice in the matter; i did not, last night.

i contacted the dentist this morning about cancelling the "fillings" and booking a cleaning instead, and his receptionist actually gave me a ton of pushback on it. they said they'd schedule the fillings and the cleaning on the same day, which is setting me up to pay for a cancelled appointment, which set off a ton of red flags. why don't they want me to get a cleaning and then look at my teeth and think about it, to the point that they're willing to try and manipulate me into paying for a service that isn't rendered?

i had to threaten to book at another office before i got the receptionist to agree to confer with the dentist. this is all very bad news in terms of transparency and consumer choice; this is my body, and i make the decisions, not the dentist. the receptionist shouldn't have to ask the doctor for permission to cancel an appointment; that's absurd. i need to be able to request services on demand based on what i want, not be told what to do by an "expert" based on "what's good for me". that's fascistic-type thinking. we live in a democracy....

so, are they trying to drill into stains, again? it looks like it...but what do i do, now? i've been to three crooked, authoritarian dentists, now, that all want to tell me what to do instead of listening to what i want. am i going to go to ten more and deal with the same despotic behaviour over and over?

i need my teeth cleaned, at least. if they won't do it, i'll call somebody else, and be more assertive and upfront about it, next time. 

so, i'm in, now, for a few days, at least. let's hope i can finally finish that post in a day or two.

the nobel prize is handed out in norway, and the people making policies live in beijing, brussels and washington - all relatively northern climates. without doing the math, or really understanding the science, it's easy enough to think that 4 degrees won't be that bad, if you live in northern europe. after all, if you take the average temperature in london and add four degrees, that's just better weather? right?

it's for this reason that it's important to avoid separating the politics from the science.

four degrees might be manageable - if you're sentencing half the world to death.

This letter is addressed to the owner of this store, Fadi Hammoud 

This is a legal document. 

I am a long-term frequent customer at your store that spends hundreds of dollars a month there, on average, and is quite upset about an unfortunate incident that took place outside of your store on the afternoon of Sunday November 29, 2020, at around 13:00 or so, enough that it is difficult to imagine that I’ll come back to your store to spend any more money until some remedy is produced to rectify the situation. While you may hear a specific narrative from your employee, I feel it is necessary to present the perspective of the customer in the matter, in order to get a proper understanding of what it is that actually happened and understand how best to move forward. 

So, I entered your store some time around 12:30 or so, did some shopping and ultimately went through the checkout at 12:54:41 according to the receipt: 

I then took my food, put it in the cart and went to an out of the way place past the checkout line to pack my school bag, as I was walking home with my purchase, as I always do.  

It wasn’t until I got past the esso on tecumseh and near the animal hospital (moving east) that I noticed that two menacing, angry men were yelling at me and following me home. What was this about? 

Well, something that my mother taught me when I was very young was that when angry men are yelling at you and following you, you should never stop to talk to them, regardless of the circumstance, and no matter who they are. Ever. Period. No exceptions. Civilized people just don’t yell at other people to stop as they’re walking down the street. It doesn’t happen. There's just no context. Only dangerous people do that. So, the thought running through my mind was that if these people are following me home and yelling at me then they must be up to no good and I should do everything I can to get as far away from them as possible – and that is what I did, I kept walking, but at a brisker pace, hoping they’d stop following me. 

I simply didn’t know who these idiots were, and I simply didn’t want to find out. It was clear after a few moments that they thought I stole something, but nothing else was. Were they some kind of a vigilante group? Some kind of a gang? A self-appointed religious police? Transphobes? Rapists? I had no idea – all I know is that there were some angry men yelling at me to stop, and I was hardly going to listen to them. 

So, what was going through my mind at that point was fear for my personal safety, because some thugs were chasing me down the street and I didn’t understand why or what they wanted. I yelled at them to fuck off and threatened to call the police if they continued to follow me home, and have them charged with harassment. This is the legal definition of harassment: 

No person shall, without lawful authority and knowing that another person is harassed or recklessly as to whether the other person is harassed, engage in conduct referred to in subsection (2) that causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them. 

(2) The conduct mentioned in subsection (1) consists of 

(a) repeatedly following from place to place the other person or anyone known to them; (b) repeatedly communicating with, either directly or indirectly, the other person or anyone known to them; (c) besetting or watching the dwelling-house, or place where the other person, or anyone known to them, resides, works, carries on business or happens to be; or (d) engaging in threatening conduct directed at the other person or any member of their family. 

I think it is rather obvious that that is what I was experiencing. 

Eventually, it became clear that one of these buffoons was that manager from the store I was in and wanted me to show him a receipt, but that knowledge didn’t help the situation much. If I was in the store, querying me for proof of purchase may be harassing and unnecessary, but I'd probably comply, as I grumbled. Chasing me down the street like that just opens up questions about his motives. Was he going to beat me up when he caught me? Steal my food and claim I didn’t pay for it? When you chase people down the street yelling at them, these are valid and reasonable concerns to have – these kinds of violent altercations are, in truth, commonplace. I simply didn’t know what he was going to do, but he seemed unstable, so I just kept walking... 

And, then *he* calls the cops. Bafflingly. Not only does he follow me home from the store in a menacing and disturbing way, and yell threatening things at me as I'm walking, but he calls the cops in to document the incident, creating evidence that the harassment occurred. Remarkable. A police report or occurrence is very strong evidence to utilize in a civil case in a court of law. So, I decided I would rather wait for the officer to arrive to discuss the issue, to ensure this erratic person didn’t try anything violent or dishonest. 

At this point, it is clear that this manager is discriminating against me in addition to harassing me, and the harassment is a consequence of the discrimination. I know I paid for this food. I know I have a receipt, too. So, what is he going to say when the cops arrive? That he saw me steal something I paid for and have a receipt for? That's obviously absurd – he didn’t see me steal anything, because I didn’t steal anything. Rather, he must have judged me by my appearance, decided I look like somebody that would steal something and then chased me down the street yelling at me, because he was convinced that he found one of “those people” that have been stealing from the store (and, I know nothing of the extent of your losses due to theft, I just hardly think you should take out your losses on your paying customers. That's not going to help.). 

When the officer arrived, I showed him my receipt. He cross-referenced the food in the bag with the food on the receipt, concluded it didn’t appear that a theft had taken place and allowed me to go. I then asked the manager for his name (yusuf), indicated that legal action would be taken and went home to put my groceries away. 

Yusuf just kept saying over and over again that he asked me for a receipt and didn’t understand why I wouldn’t stop, but I hope that the perspective presented here explains why that perception is preposterous. Yusuf seemed to think that, so long as he was sure I stole something from his store, it was perfectly alright to case me down the street like a maniac. In his mind, my refusal to stop was proof of guilt, rather than reasonable self-preservation in the face of a scary, strange man chasing me down the street and yelling at me. Even if I did steal something, the fact of the matter is that private citizens simply don’t chase people down the street like that in a society governed by the rule of law. What private citizens do in a civilized society is check the video, call the cops and identity the suspect – and my innocence in the matter is why you check the video first, rather than try to take the law into your own hands. The kind of vigilantism that yusuf engaged in on sunday is barbaric and has no place in a civilized society. The fact that he didn’t understand that – that he thought it was perfectly ok to chase me down the street because he thought I stole something – is absolutely mind-boggling, and frightening in it’s own right.  

As mentioned, I am a regular customer in your store. I spend hundreds of dollars there every month. Yet, I will no longer feel safe shopping there unless three conditions are met: 

1) I want an apology.
2) I want some disciplinary action and retraining for yusuf. He can’t be chasing people down the street and yelling at them, like that. That's preposterous.
3) Given that I was falsely accused of theft, I think a voucher at your store is appropriate. And, given that the harassment is rooted in discrimination, I think the voucher should be substantive. I am requesting a voucher of $10,000 to be spent exclusively at your store. 

I am giving you until December 20, 2020 to respond to my request. Should no response follow, civil action will be taken against your store that accuses you of discrimination and harassment, at a much larger sum than $10,000. Please retain all existing video of the event for legal purposes – and realize you will be accused of destroying evidence, to your own detriment, if you do not. 

Jessica Murray – 5199161358, death.to.koalas@gmail.com

they don't seem to have a fax.

that's fine, i'll hand deliver them a letter.

so, i wanted to get my grocery shopping done for the month yesterday because there's a snow storm coming in today. alas, there were a few problems.

i should point out that i tried some edibles as i was out. i decided it's the best way to experiment, because i can move a little - something i find absolutely necessary on psilocybin. i can't sit still and veg, i need to go climb a mountain (i do not recommend scaling mountains on hallucinogens). that, and i didn't want to walk into the solstice as a neophyte. i ended up doubling up on the 2s 4 times (meaning i ate the whole little thing of chocolate), and what i can report is that the feeling is neither great nor awful. it often felt more like a state of confusion - a weak mushroom trip - than being actually high on anything, although it did come in after a while. you don't get high the first time you smoke up, right? but, remember: marijuana is classed as a hallucinogen, too. that comparison is not that odd. it's enough to warrant further experimentation, but i think i'm needing either at least 4 at once, or more or less to double up on the 2s every hour like i did. i'll have to play with it.

i have two 5s left to try. i suspect a 5 will be something close to a trip, so i'm going to give myself until the solstice to detox. and, i'll learn the hard way if that's too much at once. i suspect it's either too much or just right.

on the way back from my second trip (to the grocery store), something very bizarre happened - i looked up and noticed there were some angry men yelling at me to stop. da fuck?

well, when angry men are yelling at you, you should never stop to talk to them, regardless of the circumstance, and no matter who they are. ever. period. no exceptions. 

civilized people don't yell at people to stop as they're walking down the street. there's just no context...

so, who were these idiots? it was clear that they thought i stole something, but nothing else was. were they some kind of vigilante group? some kind of gang? a religious police? transphobes? rapists? i had no idea - all i knew is that there were some angry men yelling at me to stop, and i was hardly going to listen to them.

so, i yelled at them to fuck off and told them i'd call the cops if they didn't. that had no effect at all, they just kept yelling at me.

eventually, it became clear that it was the manager from the store i was in and he wanted me to show him a receipt, but that knowledge didn't help the situation much. if i was in the store, querying me for a proof of purchase may be harassing and unnecessary,  but i'd probably comply. chasing me down the street like this just opens up questions about his motives. was he going to beat me up when he caught me? steal my food and claim i didn't pay for it? i just kept walking...

and, he calls the police, believe it or not.

so, now i'm thinking to myself "this guy can't be such an idiot". not only does he follow me home from the store in a menacing and disturbing way, and yell threatening things at me as i'm walking, but he calls the cops in to document it, creating evidence that the incident occurred. "great", i'm thinking. "the human rights tribunal will love this".

and, what other conclusion can i come to? i know i paid for this food. so, what is he going to say? that he saw me steal something i paid for and that i have a receipt for? that's obviously absurd - he obviously didn't see me steal anything, because i didn't steal anything. rather, he must have judged me by my appearance, decided i look like somebody that would steal something and then chased me down the street yelling at me.

*ka-ching*. 

"there has been a grocer's error in your favour. collect $5,000."

we're still walking down the street, and a cop pulls up. i showed him my receipt. we compared it to the items. i asked the manager for his name ('yusuf'. he works at the freshco at tecumseh & huron church.), informed him that a lawsuit was imminent and walked off.

i'm going to send them a fax, to start, explaining the scenario from a reasonable person's perspective. the manager's excuse was "i asked you nicely to show me your receipt", but that is an absolutely bizarre perspective, given that he thinks that justifies chasing me down the street, yelling at me. in his mind, my refusal to stop was proof of guilt, rather than reasonable self-preservation in the face of a scary strange man chasing me down the street and yelling at me. even if i did steal something, you don't chase people down the street like that in a society that is governed by the rule of law. what you do is check the video, call the cops and identify the suspect. that kind of vigilantism is barbaric and has no place in a civilized society. the fact that he didn't understand that - that he thought it was perfectly ok to chase me down the street - is absolutely mind-boggling.

i spend a lot of money at the store on a regular basis. i would suspect that, when i call yusuf's boss, his primary concern is going to be maintaining me as a customer, not standing up for his dipshit, racist, vigilante justice employee. as such, i suspect that a simple fax will be enough to get me my three demands:

1) i want an apology

2) i want some disciplinary action and retraining for 'yusuf'. he can't be chasing people down the street yelling at them, in this country. that's preposterous on it's face.

3) given that i was accused of theft, i think a generous voucher is a proper compensation. $5000, perhaps.

or, i'll get the police report and use it to file a human rights complaint. their choice.

in the end, i got everything except soy milk & strawberries. i thought that the metro was open 24/7, but the pandemic has modified the hours. so, i went out there to find it closed, then rode around a little longer to find another closed metro. ugh. i got a few things at a zehr's a few minutes before 22:00, found myself out of luck at a walmart open until 23:00 and now have a snowstorm to go find soy milk in.

i actually want to wait until it turns over into snow, first. i can bike reasonably well through mild snow. it's the cold rain that's death.

so, i'm going to type up a fax and get it to the freshco management. let's see if this is easy or hard...

i used to do this every day - summer, winter, fall, rain, snow.

at the time, the building was owned by a call center company that i've forgotten the name of. i was contracted out to work for microsoft, and did vista tech support.

everybody used to ask why i don't move to kanata, and the answer was that i didn't want to move to kanata. why don't they move the tech jobs downtown, instead? kanata's boring.

i got a job at the hp building on herzberg after that (the microsoft contract got sent to the philippines, and i took the severance payout, hoping to find something better downtown) and did basically the same thing for another year.

that was in the mid 00s.

i'm still alive, the dish soap didn't kill me. i've just been kiind of exhausted, and busy.

i went back out to amherstburg to get some more estrace on saturday afternoon and utterly collapsed when i got back; the wind was just punishing, and tired me right out.

this is a lengthy ride, and it was through sustained winds coming off the river that....i've done this recently, and it took me more than an hour longer this time than it did last time. the store closed at 14:00; i almost missed it, i was there no earlier than 13:55.

amherstburg's a nice a little small town (and, i've enjoyed the tourism involved in scavenging estrace recently) with a recently opened pot shop. i scouted out a nice spot on the way in, overlooking the detroit river:

the thing is that i was pummeled from the wind and i knew the ride back might actually be relatively difficult. i think it's clear that when i tell you i'm an experienced bicyclist, that's not hubris - i've been riding like this for twenty years. even when i was a kid, i used to bike across town to school, sometimes.

i didn't do that everyday, but i was like 15-18 when i did.

so, i know when i'm beat - and i knew i'd gotten myself into a mess, two hours from home in near freezing temperatures and a sweaty winter jacket, and with a hard slog back.

i'd hesitate to label marijuana as performance enhancing, but i know from experience that it can dramatically numb the pain in certain scenarios where hard work is unavoidable, and overexertion has already expired. it was my only serious option, really.

but, i just fell over when i got back, and then had to get up to do groceries on sunday.

see, and this is...

if i convince myself that this guy wanted to drill over a stain, i'm running away, again.

that's dentist number three, and they all did the same thing - try to talk me into drilling immediately.

brushing once with the dish soap actually seems to have made a difference very quickly, and it's sort of what i thought - some of the build-up came off (i'm not joking, it really did) and some of the rest of it got scrapy very quick. 

it's impossible for me to tell with my eye, as an untrained person, if it's a cavity or a stain. i need to be clear about that. i don't know.

but, much of it no longer looks like a cavity to me at all, once i softened up the plaque with the dish soap.

i'm not exactly recommending this. i don't actually know what the long term consequences are. but, ammonia is the historical toothpaste - it's what we used before we used toothpaste. and, it's easy to see why, actually trying it.

see, this is what i'll need to mad-scientist hack.

i hope they published it properly.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/aug/30/scientists-grow-tooth-enamel

before i start thinking about using toothpaste as a condiment, let's really figure this out more rigorously.

guava - 30*.34/10000 = 0.00102 mg = 1000*(0.00102) µg = 1.02 µg

banana - 2.6

strawberry - 4.4

avocado - 10.5

kiwi - trace, but no data

soy milk - 1000*(6*1.33/10000) = .798 µg

ice cream - trace, bot no data

yogurt  - fluoride would kill the bacterial culture

yeast - fluoride kills yeast, too

vector - 1000*(15*.19/10000) = .285 µg

all bran - 1000*(45*.29/10000) = 1.305 µg

flax - trace

algal oil -  potentially relatively substantive, but not clear from any data

water: 1000*.1*(1.774 + .7) = 247.4 µg <----two cups of water + coffee

that's .2684 mg, so far.

4*.3 = 1.2 mg

i still need a milligram, roughly.

an equivalent amount of black tea would have:

3*1000*(256*3/10000) = 230.4 µg, but that may be exaggerated by fluoridated water. it doesn't really help, and it's the most fluoridated thing in the database.

if i get the fancy 1.1% naf prevident, i'd need x*.011 = 1 <---> x = 1/.011 ~ 90 mg. that's only 1% of the tube. so, if it costs $10, it's only $0.1/day. and, that's hardly dangerous.

i may have to get a better scale.

so, i'm actually committing to that if i can find it.

do i think i can scrounge up that much fluoride in the other bowls without needing to resort to toothpaste? i don't know.....