it's easy to make this kind of argument when you're not actually poor, and you don't have any firsthand experience with what it's like to navigate through a system that is already overused, underfunded and understaffed.

the continent is not "full", but after decades of funding cuts and pro-market policies, we both lack the infrastructure at this time to accommodate an influx of refugees. we could rebuild this infrastructure, but it doesn't currently exist and the christian right/left needs to come to terms with that: no, in fact, we actually can't.

when trudeau flew all these people in from syria, they sat in military barracks for years because there was nowhere to put them. we just moved the refugee camp to petawawa. and, we've got the city of toronto musing about buying hotels because it doesn't have the shelter capacity and can't afford the rates. meanwhile, we have an affordability crisis in basic housing services. i'm sure all the same things are true in texas and california.

but, it is of course only half of the argument - it's not enough to argue against open borders, you also have to argue in favour of increasing access to services, which is what sets bernie apart from the demagogues on the right.

the truth is that bernie is right, and being firm on these kind of issues will resonate with the kinds of voters that will swing the election. it's exactly the kind of pushback on corporate driven globalism and unchecked neo-liberalism that we need a more clear articulation of on the left.

and, if you find that immoral or something, you need to push for more spending on infrastructure, first.

https://splinternews.com/heres-bernie-sanders-giving-an-unequivocally-bad-answer-1833882031

libel/defamation laws are a tort under the british legal tradition.

what that means is that we have a rule in our society that says that if you're going to lie about people in an attempt to harm them then you should be liable to compensate them for the damages it creates. this rule is very specific - you have to be acting with malicious intent, and you have to be purposefully dishonest about it. veracity is a valid defense in a defamation case; you can't be sued for saying things that are true, regardless of the effects it has.

while i support the abolition of the criminal justice system, i am a strong supporter of the english tort system, and a strong supporter of defamation laws. this is a more traditionally germanic system of government - when you do something wrong, you pay a fine for it. it's how the germans lived for centuries, before the romans introduced this idea of punishment. decolonization doesn't just mean dechristianization, it also means deromanization; getting closer to an indigenous form of european governance would mean putting tort at the central nexus of the legal system. it's also a more "anarchist" legal system, as it upholds a concept of remuneration while abolishing the more authoritarian concept of retribution.

trudeau is in kind of an annoying situation that i can empathize with because i'm going through something similar, myself. i was recently charged with an absurd offense, and the charges were dropped due to a deficit of meaningful evidence. the officer does not seem to have understood the law; the scenario should have never happened. however, i haven't been given the opportunity to actually defend myself in court. as such, i've had an injustice committed against me that i don't have a clear path to resolve. i will not be filing defamation charges (i can't demonstrate financial harm), but i will be filing a human rights complaint once the issue with the officer is dealt with, as well as a constitutional challenge when the time is appropriate. it's the closest thing i have to due process, in context.

it's easy to understand why trudeau may actually want some kind of a trial in order to clear his own name, even if the process is politically perilous. but, then, why not allow for an investigation through parliament? a defamation suit would amount to the same thing. if there's a contradiction here, it's in demanding one without the other, and/or not realizing that the political liability of one is the same as the other. see, the question of whether he has a case or not depends on how effectively he can demonstrate the point, but he also needs to show financial or reputational damage, which is the more difficult point.

so, i'm not following the tory media's line on this - i think the premise is entirely valid, and he might even have a good case. i'm just not sure it's been thought through very well in the pmo, or even if there's anybody left in there that has the ability to think it through, any more.

so, it took me a long time to even get my head around the depth of a survey of music in the gta this month. it's a big place, with lots of venues. and, i'm only just getting caught up to the upcoming week, just now.

i don't expect to go anywhere before the la dispute show, and i don't see any obvious trips in the second half of april, ether.

but, i'm going to pause at this point and listen to a few things more closely, because i'll otherwise be sitting here for the next year.

reviews at the dtk site...

while i'm listening, i should be able to get back to what i was doing. i need to set up the new blog, first. then, i need to go over july, 2013 that last time to finalize it.

maybe a nap first, though .

so, i don't like the girls, but the girls like me; and, i do like the guys, but the guys don't like me. so, what do you do? you keep to yourself. and, there's no serious way out.

to clarify the point: if you took me off the hormones, i'd be gay, but i'd be 120 pounds and scrawny, long haired and disinterested in guy stuff, and consequently not particularly interesting to gay men.

so, i might like the gay men, but the gay men wouldn't like me so much.

it's a circle that you can't really square, which is why i'm certain i will spend my life single. but, you need to take me at face value on it.

if you were to take me off the hormones, i'd be gay, and if it makes you feel better to interpret me that way, i can deal with that.

so, yes, i mostly hang out in rooms full of guys.

but, you need to invert your logic, if you find it confusing.

there are reasons why i avoid putting myself in spaces dominated by cis-females, and it's only partly that there's no desirable endpoint, from my perspective.

i don't like getting hit on by women. but, it happens. so, i avoid the spaces.

it's a weird condition, but at this point i'm too old for it to really be a meaningful discussion point, anyways.

i need to do my undecided analysis, as i always do.

is this actually in play?

i picked this one out, but the numbers across the board are closer than you might expect, if still just outside of the margin of error. at a 7% spread, perfect distribution and a 3% margin, a minority is still the best possible outcome.

is there any evidence, though, that the undecideds might lean ndp?

you'd need some kind of shy dipper effect, and the article i just posted may suggest one. albertans may not realize the speed that the province is transforming at, as they seem to think that they're more conservative than they actually are. that is the kind of social pressure that may lead somebody to tell a pollster that they're undecided, when they really expect to vote ndp.

i would certainly not expect a shy tory effect, anyways.

if the redistribution is slightly tipped towards the ndp, you start getting into a blurry error bar. if it's a bit bigger, they start running neck to neck. and, if it's overwhelming, you're looking at an upset.

we'll find out soon enough.

but i wouldn't expect it split evenly, anyways - they will beat the polling, even if it's not enough.

it's probably too little too late. they should have done this months ago and hammered it.

but, here's a thought that is as unprecedented as anything else: could we maybe see a minority government in alberta?

barring some catastrophic collapse, that's the best hope the ndp has right now, and even that is pretty distant. i think it would be good for the province, though.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-election-2019-jason-kenney-rachel-notley-1.5087164

your grandkids will cite the jones case as the dominant legal precedent about online expression.

it's always baffling to me how stupid right-libertarians are about an issue that they ought to be kind of experts about.

the status quo is that posting to facebook is uploading your writing to be displayed on private property (the facebook servers), so it is up to facebook to make an arbitrary decision as to whether your posts should be deleted or not. there is no appeal mechanism, here, merely the dictatorship of private capital - if facebook or google or twitter or whomever else doesn't like your posts, you're gone. and, people have been legitimately banned, without any kind of due process.

what zuckerberg is saying here is "wait a minute. i'm just a boy wonder that got lucky. i'm technically a college dropout. what the fuck am i doing adjudicating speech issues? this is a rights issue. government is on my ass about it, but shouldn't a court deal with this?".

reason would apparently prefer the dictatorship of private capital, however unqualified, and however incompetent.

if a government agency were to step in here, it would be subject to appeal, and i can assure you that no judiciary anywhere in the english-speaking world is going to uphold any kind of meaningful prohibition of political expression online.

alex jones might even be able to get his profile back. and that's what we all want, right?

https://reason.com/blog/2019/04/05/mark-zuckerberg-calls-for-government-reg

i don't often go into this deeper level of analysis, and don't be surprised if i don't pull it out again until close to the election, but you can broadly split american politics (and most politics in the satellite states, including canada) down this dividing line, between the rhodes clique (the aristocracy, who remain powerful at the un) and the birchers (the bourgeoisie, most importantly the koch brothers). the parties are both messy big tents, and don't really mean much. but, you see sides develop more readily when you look at the candidates' backgrounds, and it's easy to predict how they're going to legislate, regardless of what they actually say.

that's why this mayor pete is probably going to be in the same governing philosophy as clinton - an internationalist that wants to outsource foreign policy to the united nations (which i would support), is in favour of "free trade" (which i would not support), is in support of bringing in low wage workers from other countries (which i would not support) and says nice things about black people while legislating against them (which i would not support). if you're a black or latino democrat, you should rightfully be wary about a guy that was educated by a group designed to maintain the priority of the british aristocracy in the commonwealth, however bizarre those words might look to you on paper. you went through this with clinton. maybe you didn't really understand it then, but you have the opportunity to, now.

so, if you can split the spectrum this way, what about sanders?

as with everything else, he doesn't align; i see no evidence that either side has ever co-ordinated with him at all. if somebody shows me some, i'll change my mind. but, as it is, it's a part of the reason he's still exciting.

the biggest error that the conspiracy theorists make is in assigning uniformity of opinion to the power elite; this idea that everything is connected, that there's a single force dominating everything. the illumnati, the masons, the nwo, the catholics, the muslims, the satanists, the monarchists, the communists, the nazis - they're all the same thing, and no amount of education on the topic can get through to them. it's as though they're projecting this hobbesian sovereign into reality, and then setting themselves upon it's destruction. you can't reason with them. the leviathan, this grendel, must be slain...

but, if you approach the conspiratorial view of history from a marxist perspective rather than a hobbesian perspective, you begin with the assumption of conflict rather than of uniformity; rather than having this singular force dominating the course of world events, you have different classes in conflict with each other, all trying to advance their own interests. specifically, you have an aristocratic class (that meets in universities), you have a bourgeois class (that runs the economy) and you have a banking class that sits in between them. as per marxist analysis, the aristocracy and bourgeoisie are in a constant jockeying for power.

if you want to approach this rigorously, the first thing you need to do is figure out if these groups actually exist(ed) or not, and the truth is that they actually do and/or did. all souls exists. skull and bones exists. the illuminati existed, and the catholic church stamped it out. masonic lodges were fundamental in both the french and american revolutions. the john birch society existed, too. so, these are not imaginary constructs - they are actual existing bodies, and the people that meet in them and/or advanced through them have been shaped by their goals and aspirations. this is all empirical, and demonstrated easily enough.

the next thing that you need to do is tie the aims of the organizations to the individuals you suspect of working for them. and, with that we can get to the point that i want to make about what actual forces are extant today, and what exactly the conflict points are.

for all the talk amongst conspiracy theorists about the "nwo", it is actually the primary conflict point. on the left, for all it's historical ills, you have the cliveden set - the all souls group, the rhodes scholars. this group has had dominance in the liberal party of canada for decades, and recently exerted itself in the united states through the presidency of bill clinton. the left, in context, is the aristocracy; odd, but it's the alliance, as it is. when i spoke of a deep state fear of a hillary clinton presidency, a part of it was allowing the rhodes clique back into power, out of fear of a collapse in sovereignty. the rhodes clique does in fact believe in world government, with a central administration in the united nations.

on the flip side of this is the right, the bourgeoisie, as represented by the john birch society, and also by the skull and bones clique of american industrialist powers. this side of the power elite actually rejects world governance, in favour of an american-dominated world, centered in washington. since the defeat of al gore in 2000, this side of the power elite has had almost total control over american politics. both john kerry and barack obama are actually on this side of the power elite, and despite their fears, hillary clinton would prefer this side as well - a point she went to great lengths to demonstrate, but could not do so.

so, who is this mayor?

i don't know.

but, if you want to know what he'll be like, the truth is that clinton is probably the better comparison than obama.

i haven't posted anything exactly like this in this space, and the reason is that it hasn't been entirely relevant. but, it's a thing that shows up from time to time, both in the united states and in canada - is there actually a power elite, who are they and what do they want?

you can't dismiss the issue out of hand; it's an empirical question, and an answer must be arrived at through the proper methods. the important thing is that you do use the right methods and be extra careful about documentation, because you're going to get piled on from every direction if you walk down this path - which is both proof of the depth of the conspiracy and of the deficit of conspiratorial logic.

there is also a difficulty inherent in the bias that exists in the research, as so much of it comes from the loony fringes on the right. the standard conspiracy theory - at least from the msm's perspective - is that the world is run by shadowy communist groups trying to take away your free market. i've never been able to take this analysis past the smell test; it strikes me as absurd on it's face, as the left represents the exploited by definition. you have to have a fundamental starting point in ignorance to even begin to take this hypothesis seriously. as it is, the issue has actually been explored in some detail from the right by a hoover institute academic named antony sutton, who examined the evidence very carefully and rather came to the opposite conclusion - that what we called "communism" in the mid 20th century was actually created by western capital as a means to monopolize eastern markets.

so, it is actually true that big american companies like ford and exxon (standard oil) signed very large contracts with communist regimes - we can prove this very clearly, these contracts happened, the money changed hands and etc. the typical right-wing conspiracy theory takes these contracts (and general cooperation) as evidence of collusion and deduces that the american elite are secretly a bunch of sickle-flag waving communists. but, sutton's academic analysis corrected this hypothesis, in rather clearly showing that the interest of these american industrialists was merely to further their own interests. sutton, a right-libertarian, may have actually predicted the neo-keynesian consensus in pointing out that no corporation wants a free market, if they can have a monopoly. so, when these companies had the opportunity to ensure unchallenged access to a market as large as eastern europe, china or even nazi germany, of course they jumped all over it. a key aspect of sutton's research was demonstrating that capital doesn't really have an ideological preference in ensuring monopoly access, either - it's just as happy to work with the despotic monarchy in saudi arabia, or the fascist regimes in spain or germany, as it is with the so-called communists in russia or china.

sutton was widely read in his time, too. brzezinski famously called him a "jerk".

and, he was even able to take the thing a step forward in demonstrating that these capitalists didn't just seek to monopolize these markets by cutting deals with the despots there, but would actually help them create the infrastructure necessary to create the markets by underwriting them through affiliated bank loans. it would have been nearly impossible for stalin or mao to get access to that kind of capital without cutting that kind of deal. is that communism? or does it sound more like typical capitalism?

sutton concludes that these industrialists were something that he called vulgar marxists, which means people that used marxist theory as a tool to achieve their own self-interest in a capitalist economy. so, in his view, marxism becomes just another tactic to advance one's own interests on the market. i do not know if he ever saw himself in the mirror; i do not know if he ever realize that the vulgar marxist was actually him, as his analysis really could have been written by anybody on the left - zinn, chomsky, bakunin or even marx himself.

so, we can see that when an actual academic on the right tried to rigorously demonstrate the truth of his right-wing conspiracy theories, he just ended up paraphrasing marx. funny, that.

and, is marxist history itself a conspiracy theory? i think it's hard to make the argument otherwise, the question is whether there's any evidence to uphold it or not. marxism does in truth argue that there is a conspiracy of capital seeking to steal surplus value from the proletariat, and willing to stop at nothing in order to do it. when you get deep into these theories, it eventually becomes obvious that there's really a fine line here between marxist theory and conspiracy theory, and that you need to be very careful in being rigorous about it.

so, what is a rhodes scholarship, anyways?

stated in as clinical terms as possible, it is a scholarship program set up by the british imperialist cecil rhodes, who is known to history for being central to the establishment of the racist dictatorship in south africa. he was primarily in charge of mining diamonds, which meant sending slaves into the mines to get the product and then selling it to the english-speaking parts of the empire at ridiculous profits.

so, the most immediate thing that being a rhodes scholar means is that you went to school on apartheid money - that your schooling was paid for by an institution that existed solely to perpetuate a particularly brutal and racist form of slavery. i hope that takes the gloss off a little.

bill clinton was a rhodes scholar.

but, there are some more shady components to the program that have been explored in depth by writers like carroll quigley, and particularly in his text the anglo-american establishment. i'll remind you that dr. quigley was a very legitimate academic that happened to have some insider contacts with these people, and found it necessary to document it for the historical record; his writing is genuine on both the level that he was a respected academic and on the level that he was a primary source. this is not some kooky guy in his mom's basement, this is legit stuff.

according to quigley, and others before him, the rhodes scholarship program was actually the recruitment arm of a kind of secret society centered at all souls college in london that was intended to advance the interests of rhodesian imperialism. that is, rhodes left a large amount of money to this program for the specific intent of ensuring that his political project - not just imperialism, but specifically apartheid - would carry on past his death. while the rhodes scholarship program does have some means-testing, it is not a program that is intended to alleviate inequality. they're solely looking for new blood to advance their own agenda.

while it is fair game to tie recent participants to the legacy of apartheid, it would be disingenuous to suggest that being a rhodes scholar today means you support apartheid. a more legitimate observation is pointing out that a candidate running for office with a history in the program is a front for a very powerful organization that is actually not american-centric; this is an organization dedicated to the continuation of british imperialism, and that sees america as a part of the commonwealth.

so, who is mayor pete, anyways? i don't know, but i know that when somebody says "i'm a rhodes scholar", what that means is something like "i work directly for the illuminati.". legit.

now, is it impressive, anyways? i don't think that merely attending an elite institution is that exciting, especially given the importance of money in the process. the scholarship program picked him because they thought he had potential for their cause, rather than due to excitement over his pure intellect. if somebody comes to me and says "i'm faculty at an elite institution", that is a more qualifying claim, but this particular person seems to have gone right back to nowhere, indiana where he came from rather than stay at the institution and do any kind of meaningful academic work. his credentials are really not as impressive as his campaign is presenting them as; i might rather point to cory booker or elizabeth warren as being more impressive, in that way.

but, if you feel like there's something guiding this, you're right. there is. your intuition is correct.

the la dispute show is a special case because the local option is in pontiac, which is pretty much as far as i can go, locally; now that i have the tickets, i have to actually argue i'd rather bus to toronto, anyways. i'm going to be on the bus for around 8 hours; i would have been on the bus for around 3 hours, anyways. the cost is the same, roughly. and, i suspect i'll be happy to have a warm space with wifi. that logic might alter over time, but i might rather go to toronto than ann arbor, for example. it depends on the time of the year....

but, it seems insane to spend $70 on bus tickets and an eight hour ride if the alternative is in downtown detroit.

then, there's the question of shows that aren't happening in detroit at all, of which i've found two so far - an electronic jazz artist named anomie and the now infamous efrim menuck. i'll have to see what he's been up to; he's due for something profound. and, i may end up going to hamilton.

the anomie show is monday night, thoug, meaning i'm paying exorbitant bus prices.

what about this?

https://www.kijiji.ca/b-rideshare-carpool/ontario/windsor-to-toronto/k0c5l9004

well, it's still not cheap. but, if i can pare it down to $20-30, total, and plan it so i'm not waiting for hours, i can write that off as reasonable - so long as it's infrequent.

i don't expect to get to the show on sunday, but that might be the more reasonable approach, long tern, especially if i'm hitting last call at 4 am, which is legal in toronto, now. if i have to wait until 6, it's just enough time for breakfast...

i don't want to give off the wrong impression: this is clearly going to be infrequent. but, i actually probably should have thought of this earlier. alas.

you would expect fiscal conservatives to support "safe" injection sites, because they minimize the amount of resources wasted on drug addicts.

i think that this discussion about "saving lives" is disingenuous on both sides. insofar as these injection sites are "safe", it's only temporary - we are taking about an addiction that will certainly eventually kill you. what "safe" means is that the needles aren't full of aids or hepatitis, which are both expensive to treat - and a frustrating cost, given that the spread of the diseases is preventable and the projected life span of the person being treated is short. it's legitimately deflating to fork out thousands of dollars of public money on anti-hiv drugs, only to find the patient dead of an overdose on the drug that gave them the disease. so, if you give them clean needles, you at least don't have to treat them for infections.

treatment doesn't work, either; you have to find ways to stop people from being so fucking stupid as to get hooked. and, with heroin, there isn't another description, unless a doctor injected you when you were unconscious - you can't not know the risks at this point, you have to just be plain out stupid. there's no excuse for this, anymore. you deserve your darwin award.

so, don't tell me that the sites save lives - they don't, they merely postpone death, and minimize the costs involved with managing the problem.

but, don't tell me that removing the sites would save lives either - because you're just going to end up with people dying of infections, instead.

we talk about harm reduction as though the addict's life is the most important concern, even though they've already written themselves off; with opiates, specifically, we should rather be treating the issue as an unnecessary public expense, and speaking about cost reduction.

this should actually be an issue where socialists and conservatives agree with each other, due to a convergence of thought around public resources. but, while the liberals are consistently incoherent on this kind of thing nowadays, the conservatives are constantly blinded by their own hypocrisy.

we should all support the sites; they save public money.

so, i'm concluding that i need to do a survey.

i'm sorting through these lists and realizing it might be less that i'm disinterested in what's coming up and more that i don't know much of it. to be sure, the 40% that i recognize is mostly coming off as less than exciting, and that's disappointing, but a part of the problem might be that i don't know what the other 60% is.

music is cyclical, so a thing that is going to happen once in a while is that you're going to realize that everything you've been listening to is out of fashion or past it's creative cycle, and the trends and new artists have completely flipped over to something else. i think the last time i really remember coming face to face with this relatively starkly was in the late 00s. i just had to sit down and do the research.

i'm going to reject most of what gets thrown at me, so the difference between a good year and a bad year is 20%; i will reject 70% of what gets thrown at me in a good year, and 90% in a bad year. but, something else about the phase of the cycle we're in - and i guess i'm learning that this is the down point - is that we're in the "cool" phase, where everybody is preoccupied with image; this is the place in the cycle where a talented artist can't get booked because they don't look the right way, or perhaps weren't born in the right country. instead, everything gets homogenized down into a digestible package. there's no stage for the anti-cool, right now.

so, the punk shows are syrupy and catchy, rather than messy and noisy; the techno scenes are focused on extravagance and wealth rather than on composition or creativity; the folk and country scenes are inoffensive and squeaky clean, rather than political or thoughtful and progressive rock, in any form, does not exist (except for established artists, who will get bumped out of slots for kpop bands). pick a genre, and the focus is on careerism and advancement over creativity and expression - everybody is going through the motions and playing the part, trying to get big.

it's not like this is ever going to go away, but the pendulum will swing back in time. people will get bored with this and react, and that one bar owner that takes the chances will find themselves rewarded with being the center of a new scene. then, the vultures will swoop in, and we'll have to start all over again.

something may be a little different this time, in terms of instrumentation. i can't imagine yet another punk or new wave or hip-hop or techno or folk revival. it's all been done to death. gen x must be at the end of the line; renewal is going to have to be driven by a different concept of music, altogether, driven by younger people. we must be on the cusp of a revolution in sound design, but where is it?

for now, things are sleepy on the ground, both in toronto and detroit. it seems like hamilton may actually be a little better, oddly. but it just means i have to do the research and figure it out...

so, i've got a list of 200 young bands to sort through that are playing detroit or toronto in the next 6 weeks. 190+ of them are going to be terrible; let's hope i can find what i'm looking for.

i'm otherwise going to have to do a deep internet search, if the local venues are turning up nil.

the body language and tone of response i'm getting him from him is that he actually thinks it's an invasion of his privacy.

and, is it? well, that's kind of not my choice.

it's quickly becoming a distraction. he wants to deal with this asap.

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/05/bernie-sanders-tax-returns/

and, to clarify an absurd misconception...

canada's legal system is primarily british in origin, meaning it is a combination of germanic common law and roman civil law, with the germanic common law in the dominant component. quebec is a strange animal in this sense, as the british allowed them to maintain aspects of their french legal heritage upon the final conquest of 1763. while france was overrun by barbarians during the empire's collapse, it was not abandoned the same way that britain was, and did not develop a germanic system of common law; french law is directly romanic in origin.

the roman law was in fact very different than jewish law, as it was enacted by a legislative body. while the jewish texts are older (however you want to measure it), i will remind you that jesus himself lived under roman law. while the popes eventually took over for the emperors, no pope ever enacted the torah as law; roman law remained dominant throughout the feudal period in europe, in whatever extent it could be enforced under (with the exception being in the areas that rome withdrew from, or never conquered, with england being the unique melting pot).

it follows that the idea that any existing concept of western law is based on the ten commandments is in actuality completely retarded.

the issue around the religious symbols ban in quebec seems to be coalescing around teachers - and i'll remind you that polling suggests a clear supermajority of quebeckers would actually extend it to daycare workers, so the law is actually more lenient than voters actually want.

(even if it should be up to the court to interpret the law and not the mob to do so; if there is a criticism of this, and i have made it, it is not that it is fascist but that it is ochlocratic.)

i'll also remind you that i don't really support "religious freedom" as a fundamental right, and i've been pointing that out for years. so, i'm not making any kind of exception, here; i'm denying the existence of this right, altogether. it is actually a matter of consistency! and, can i do that? well, humans determine rights, not god; there isn't some ethereal source of rights out there, they're just things we decide on. nor is there a god. so, if we decide that "religious freedom" is bullshit then it is. i'm not granting myself a veto over the constitution, i'm just pointing out that i'd allow just about anything to overpower religion, if i were on the court. i could rephrase this in another way that is less controversial: we don't have the right to our own facts, so the only time "religious freedom" is of any argumentative value is when it is happening independent of reality. i will allow the right to pray by yourself in your bedroom, so long as you're not too loud, but not much more.

but, if it's about teachers primarily, so be it. and, i have a question for all those that support this so-called right of teachers to public displays of religious affiliation.

what are your views on displaying the ten commandments in public schools? do you think that's acceptable? why or why not?

and, this is about public schools.

and seniors, apparently.

increasingly.

TCH buildings are home to 110,000 people. Every existing unit is also badly needed. By the end of 2018, the number of active applications for households looking for social housing, which includes co-operative housing, TCH properties and private not-for-profit housing, hit 100,515, according to the City of Toronto website. Of that reported total, 35 per cent were identified as being seniors.

https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2019/04/05/ottawa-pledges-13-billion-for-toronto-community-housing-repairs.html

the reason the price is so high is of course because the system has been underfunded for so long. this creates this circular problem: nobody wants to invest because the costs are so high, which just further increases the costs.

the best way to make it sustainable is to keep on top of it.

again, though - the feds are providing cash, but in the form of loans. the federal government is the only institution in the country that can print money, and it insists on setting up a loan to the city of toronto for community housing, the inhabitants of which are mostly recent immigrants and disabled people. then, it underwrites subsidies to oil companies, or outright purchases pipelines. it's insane.

and, this is happening on the initiative of a proactive conservative mayor, trying to get the money out of a liberal prime minister. how did these roles reverse?

trudeau seems to have this complex where he doesn't want to associate with "losers", and that has to be the underlying driving force; he seems to see government as a tool for the successful to award the successful, rather than as a way to balance out inequalities in society. whatever you think of this, it's not what canadians associate with the term 'liberal' - or at least not east of the rockies. they no doubt had to drag him to this, and he's no doubt interpreting it as a vote-buying scam. but, he doesn't seem to get weird around the global poor and is even willing to send these huge checks out of the country; it's this construct of "winning" and "losing", and this affinity with "winners" and revulsion at "losers". it's like "you had your chance, and you lost. too bad." kind of thing - equality of opportunity on some level, i guess, but perhaps more a consequence of a fucked up childhood. it's the kind of thing you go to therapy to work out - it's an inferiority complex, compensated for with a lot of flair.

regardless, this is necessary. it's not progressive or forward-thinking; it's years past due, and absolutely required. and, i don't know who gets the money flowing, but there needs to be an eye on making sure that the system stays on top of itself, in order to ensure it's own solvency.
 
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/trudeau-tory-affordable-housing-toronto-crisis-1.5086114

i didn't have my morning nap, so i could barely keep my eyes open long enough to get the faxes sent. but they're sent.

i'll follow up on monday, but i have been led to believe - correctly or not - that this is the extent of my concerns regarding nexus, until i apply to have the card renewed in the summer. i should probably apply for renewal on the day that the file destruction processes.

i'm going to take a second pass through the toronto show listings, as i'm going to need to figure out when the next potential booking is.

could i hitch this? probably, but the bus is mostly a timing thing. they're not going to wait for me to get there....

so, now i know how to do this - i get a prepaid credit card. everybody seems to accept that.

show tickets purchased. greyhound tickets purchased. and, i'm going to la dispute in toronto, a city i've transited through many times but never really explored.

now, what if the show is over late and i can't get to the bus before it leaves?

i don't expect this to be an issue for this particular show, which will almost certainly be done before midnight due to bylaws. it might even be done at 11:00. further, there's a short city bus ride back to the station, so i don't really need to catch the bus until around 12:30. that would be an issue that is more likely to arise in a smaller bar, in a less central location. if i make the trip, though, it's likely to eventually happen, and i'll want to make sure i plan accordingly when it does. i would simply need to plan ahead to take the morning bus, and figure out something to do for a few hours.

if it's at all tight, i'll make sure not to take a chance next time. but, i don't expect the weather to be particularly good, and that's a big factor in planning on an all-nighter in a strange city two weeks in advance.

i'll be there early, so i'll be able to get to nexus if i have to. i won't be stopping in london on this trip, though - it's express in both directions. next time...

but, now i need to call nexus.

i also picked up a 64 gb usb 3.0 card for $15 cdn. well, who wants a 64 gb flash card when they have 256 gb cards on the market? as absurd as this is, that solves the storage issue on the chrome book; it's going to be a long time before i fill up a 64 gb card, given that it's a secondary storage device. and, with that, the machine is built to any reasonable standard, and just about ready to travel with. i just need to set that blog up, and enter it into the rebuild process.

it's going to be nice this weekend, but i don't see anything happening in town. so i should be able to get back to what i was doing.

i will admit that, having never been to toronto, i am not aware of where the house parties and small shows are happening.

that said, i think i did a fairly detailed survey of the medium sized venues in the city, and i'm left to conclude that it's not just that detroit is getting skipped - the music scene right now seems to be legitimately boring across the spectrum.

i did the math for you; it may actually be cheaper for me to spend 8 hours busing back and forth from toronto than it is to amuse myself overnight in detroit, while i wait for the shuttle bus to start running. but, it seems unreasonable to go to toronto to check something out on a whim, which i was doing frequently in detroit up until last spring. that said, i'm aware that i'm a little out of the loop and need to take some chances. so, i may end up psyching myself up to get to toronto to see some things.

well, the only thing i've got penciled in is the la dispute. i'm surely going to want to get out of the house more frequently than that.

speaking of which, i need to get a prepaid mastercard in order for this plan to be feasible. i both have to buy tickets at least a week in advance to keep the cost down, and need to make sure i can actually get into the show before i buy tickets. so, that's my task this morning.

let's compare the costs for these shows directly. as they are also playing pontiac, which is a good ways north of detroit. what are the costs of seeing them in pontiac?

1) i have to take the shuttle bus back and forth over the border. that's $10. cdn.
2) i'll need to take the city bus there and back, which is going to be about $6. usd. and, it's a good ways out, that's not expensive.
3) let's assume that the cost of the show is equivalent and i spend the same amount on beer at the show.
4 ) i will not be getting back from pontiac at that time of night, so i will need to hang out in the dance club next door, or the gay bar down the street. that's an extra $10 minimum. usd.
5) i will buy a few drinks after the show. let's say $10, minimum. usd.
6) i will then need to buy something to eat in order to sit in an open restaurant. $10, minimum. usd.
7) as i'm going to be spending hours drinking with strangers, i'm going to need to buy a pack of cigrattes, or otherwise throw bills at people to bum them. $7.00. usd.

$10 + (6 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 7)*4/3 = $67.33

the cost of the bus tickets is $61, and while i may buy a pre-roll before the show, i won't be drinking on the bus. rather, i'll be typing up the review on the way home.

$61 + $10 = $71.

i suppose i could sit by myself in pontiac until the morning without buying anything, drinking or smoking, but that would be pretty boring.

the pontiac trip is probably a better story, in the long run. but, my hands are tied for a few months, and the same thing is going to be true of any other show that comes up.

so, if i were to go to see some obscure math band on a whim in hamtramck in mid-may, it would end up costing me $100, anyways. why not go to toronto, then?

as an aside, i believe it's going to be until the middle of the year before i can legally buy pre-rolls in detroit, and it could be years before i can buy anything in windsor.

la dispute is a very vocal-driven act, so the value of the music is unlikely to reveal itself on immediate listen. these types of records consequently don't lend themselves to first impression reviews. these are the kinds of songs that you come back to at random places, that reveal themselves to you at the least expected....

you could hear the power of a line like "we are but hopeless lovers, we are the last of our kind, and if we let our hearts move outward we will never die." more or less immediately, but it took time - years - for the story to unfold itself, and the climax to actually present itself as such. the second record was certainly less ridiculous, all around; i wouldn't have guessed on first listen that it would be the clever language in harder harmonies that comes off as the high point on the record, i had to live it and digest it and experience it first. and, while i didn't spend very much time with the third record, i'm sure that somebody else has some similar stories about it. so, i'm not going to pretend i've digested this over a handful of listens - i haven't, and i don't know what's going to click over time, or if anything is going to click at all.

but, that third record. it seemed like a death blow; i didn't think there would be a fourth one. i saw them do a little acoustic set at the masonic temple in detroit, and they just came off like a third rate rem knockoff. i am a gigantic rem fan, and the singer, at least, has some obvious lyrical ability, so i wasn't opposed to the direction, but it just didn't execute. the record itself seemed flat and just kind of boring, and i want to take a minute to explore the point because the contrast here is what's most exciting about the new record...

i'm sure that a lot of their fans recoiled at the record by claiming it was "soft", or something. my tastes are too diverse for anything that gauche - i like "soft" music as much, if not more, than i like "heavy" music, whether it is hard or easy. these are qualitative terms, but they don't speak to the quality of the art. so, yeah. the record was kind of "soft". so what? a more poignant critique is that the band seemed like a fish out of water; they toned down too far too fast and in the process lost the plot, just kind of meandering on without much of a musical point. the record needed some kind of foil to itself, but the correct idea is not that it needed "heavier" outbursts, but some kind of tension and, when you use the right language, it's all of a sudden easy to understand why so many of their fans got kind of scared away by a la dispute record that had no tension in it - as the band is all about tension.

i can actually make the argument that i love la dispute for the same reason that i love rachmaninov. but, i'll spare you that.

but, what they needed here was not to bring back the heavy but to bring back the tension and they have actually done that. so, this is a return to form, in that sense.

however, the band is also clearly in the process of completely altering it's sound, and if you need the heavy rather than merely the tension then maybe you might want to check out something else.

is this going to work out in the long run, after all? well, michael stipe was a huge ian mackaye fan boy, you know. it just might.

https://ladispute.bandcamp.com/album/panorama

that was another sleepy afternoon.

i couldn't get through to the privacy commissioner, either. everybody wants to play phone tag, but i don't have the gear.

i hope to get a response on a hearing date tomorrow, and will need to call nexus about faxing documents.

i wasn't up until close to 21:00; ate, showered, and have been browsing since.

if i'm stuck in canada for the next six months, i may have to plan around transiting to toronto for shows. if i plan ahead, it's about $60 back and forth - expensive, but these nights out in detroit often end up being $100 when you factor in multiple covers, drinks, food and exchange rates. further, i'm often out all night. if the show is under $30, and i can get home before the sun comes up, it's actually comparable. and, indeed, there's a 1:00 am express bus back.

this is counter-intuitive, but let's say i get out of a show in detroit at 1:30. i'm usually going to want to find a party or after hours club (shhh), otherwise i'm sitting at the diner for hours. cover is going to be at least $10, probably closer to $20, and i'm going to buy a few drinks when i'm there. i'll get out of there in the morning, and have an hour or two to wait for the shuttle bus, meaning i'm going to want to at least get a coffee, but probably something to eat (and i've probably been drinking and smoking , and maybe dancing, since 19:00 last night). so, i'm looking at spending $30-50 because i can't get home. usd. if i can catch the express bus out of toronto at 1:00 am, instead, and get home for 5:00, i'm probably actually spending less money. plus, there's wifi access on the greyhound; i might find it flies right by. so, it's the time and cost of the bus ride there that is the added expense, not the cost or time of the bus ride back. i'm going to need to wait for the new bridge to open to get 24 hour access across the border without a car.

if i book ahead, that's $30. worse is that i'm going to need to get there for 1:30 pm. well, that was like the ann arbour show - i had to leave early. it's an adventure. in reality, the bus is always late. and, i'll need to buy tickets and things when i get there...

obviously, that is going to cut the number of shows down for the rest of the spring, but if the schedule is weak and the weather is bad, it may be less of a functional difference than you might think. i'm looking through the concert listings in detroit, and while i've demonstrated interest in a large number of shows, i don't think i'd actually intend to go to most of them. again: i haven't gone anywhere in almost a year, and i don't feel like i'm missing out on much because it doesn't seem like much is actually happening.

i actually have roughly $200/month budgeted for concerts, remember - and a bit of cash put away because i haven't gone anywhere in months. i can't do this daily, but i could make the trip once or twice a month, just to get to the stuff i'm most interested in, until the issue resolves itself. detroit is getting skipped all of the time, right now; toronto never gets skipped.

i would have certainly tried to get to the la dispute show in pontiac on the 15th. so, i'm going to spend the night listening to the new record to figure out if it's worth the voyage to toronto or not, as i scour the listings in the city for events that are within walking distance of the bus station.

https://ladispute.bandcamp.com/album/panorama

yeah, there's nothing there, but i'm going to call the privacy commissioner back before i send the contact an email asking if a hearing date is set that i can plan around.

sgt pinkerton?

are they making up fake cases to make it look like they're a real body, or what?

https://www.oiprd.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/PinkertonChristopher-Decision-10.17.2018.pdf

so, i talked to somebody at nexus in fort erie (there's no line to the centre in toronto) and they claimed i can fax it, but they want me to call them tomorrow. it sounded like a cell phone. i dunno.

it states pretty clearly in the documentation that i need to present myself.

but, i'll call them tomorrow.

if i'm going to london to file, i'd like to file everything at the same time, so it would be nice to know the result of the oiprd review board panel hearing thing first. i won't be surprised if the review is a little more critical than the police investigation, but i do expect to appeal it. i need to keep an open mind, of course, but i'm realistic about it.

the letter provided a deadline for submissions of evidence by april 9th, but didn't give a hearing date. it suggests searching the website for updates, so i guess i'll see if i can find a date. if i can put this off for another week or two, i can get it all done at the same time.

to be clear: i am going to need to get to at least london to file. that's necessary. it's just a question of not wanting to make multiple trips.

my fps number is indeed on file and will be until the file is expunged.

the destruction process should remove both the fps and the record of disposition from the cpic database. until such a time, i cannot travel.

so, i will need to get to toronto to present myself to nexus, and i will need to file the constitutional grievance with the court in london on the way back.

if i'm going to toronto, i might as well make a day out of it. so, i'm going to check concert listings.

first, i should call the nexus office in toronto and ask them how this is actually going to work. do i get to present a case?

the liberals shouldn't get complacent about it.

but, despite the media's best efforts, the signal isn't separating from the noise, here; the liberals are actually up this week, technically, but it's just fluctuations in the margin.

no movement at all, according to nik.

that said, there's still evidence of wandering, and the liberals still need to be concerned about voter apathy and anything contributing to it.

http://www.nanos.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Political-Package-2019-03-29.pdf

ok, regarding the beards, in isolation from the gender issue, which i think is spurious.

is a beard a religious symbol? sometimes, sure, but any attempt to write a law that states as much would be overly broad, as it frequently isn't. so, you'd end up banning a fashion choice, and that won't hold up. as mentioned, i think the opposite argument - that scarves aren't necessarily religious - is more likely to be successful. that is, the grey area is with scarves, rather than with beards.

that said, there is another reason to ban beards at work, and that is hygienic, or just basic presentation. if i was doing hiring, i would be pretty open about not hiring people with beards, because beards are gross. if i was in the private sector, i would make the argument that i don't want my company represented by bearded people.

again: a policy of clean-shaven men in a work context isn't exactly radical, is it? and, i don't have a problem enforcing it as a part of a basic dress code in a business environment, on purely hygienic grounds, even if a law banning beards on religious grounds is unlikely to stand up in court.

i hope that clarifies my views on this - i didn't mean to suggest that i think beards are less egregious than hijabs, only that you couldn't really enforce the law. frankly, if i had the choice to ban one or the other, it would be the beards that i would ban first.

i'm just going to create yet another blog, and then sync them up after.

i had no initial intention to do that, but the more i think about it the more it makes sense, anyways.

so, the new blog will be related to travels - anything typed from out of the house. and, i will rebuild it from 2013 like the rest of them. so, we'll start with hitchiking and include any show reviews and whatever else moving forwards.

so, i'm posting from the fake account on the netbook, and it's certainly more like an operating system, all of a sudden. the web cam does work, so i guess i can "skype" over it if necessary. there's word processors and stuff...

it's really more like an android phone, though, in the way it throws the apps out at you.

i've got a pin installed, and it seems to be functional, even if i can't really turn the thing off. i guess we'll see what performance is like in the long run.

the issue with the chrome store was indeed just the guest account, which i kind of guessed - the button magically appeared once i logged in. so, i got the basic toolkit of internet survival - ad blocker, javascript blocker, html5 blocker. these are pre-requisites for getting used to this...

the other extensions don't seem to want to work, though. i think it's the mail server that seems to be stripping the information out, as it previews correctly but doesn't show up in the sent items, or if i sent it to myself. so, i don't think it's that blogger isn't getting it, i think it's that it's not getting past gmail; it's less that it "doesn't work" and more that it's being removed. i've tried editing it through the inspection, as well - nope.

but, it takes whatever i insert in the gui.

i wonder if it's the browser. so, i'm going to try a few things from firefox on the other machine.

right now, i can at least type from here, and it may be enough. but, i'm imagining myself sitting in a coffee shop overnight after a show and not being able to embed files into the review; it's kind of not really good enough.

another idea may be to start another blog for travelling and to copy things over when i get home. i'm so remarkably ocd. yikes. but, it might be the best way out.

the integration into google could potentially be ideal from the blogging perspective, but i don't know if it's as good for the vlogging, or for youtube in general. even if the machine were a little more powerful - and this is really just a glorified phone, remember - i'm going to quickly get frustrated by the lack of hypervisors, the inability to edit media, etc. is there a flac player?

for right now, migration is a non-starter - this device needs to be quarantined once i get it out of the house again. but, in the long run, if i were to get some kind of mobile internet connection (one of those flash drives or something) with a more safe connection, could i switch over totally?

it's not clear.

we'll have to do the experiment....

at the least, it's finally set up, even if i end up with some kind of workaround for it.

i'm also realizing that the fingerprint destruction request doesn't mention a disposition purge, and should have. so, i've asked for clarification on that, too.

for now, back to the chromebook.

i tried to log in today and realized i had a 100 character password and no way to cut and paste it. i'm left with the option of changing the password to something i can remember - which is a bad idea, even in the context of a fake account - or setting up a pin, and just never rebooting. i guess i could login as a guest in a pinch, right...

regarding the extensions, it wasn't hard to find a way to download them, and i should be able to install them locally. if i keep them on the external media, it should be easy enough to set up for blogging. right now, we're looking at an extension for embedded video, an extension for general html editing (and i'll need to figure out what to do to get the location in) and, of course, the ad blocker.

so, let's see what i can get to work, then...

the legal argument i'm using is going to rely on the precedent that came out of the case that legalized abortion in canada, and it's a different argument than in the united states.

stated tersely, what the decision in morgantaler stated was that if the state isn't going to provide for timely access to abortion, then it needs to eliminate all regulation around it because the amount of time it was taking to process decisions was infringing on the right to "security of the person". the court basically told the government to speed the process up or abolish the law - and the government eventually abolished the law (after a standoff in the senate, which isn't supposed to happen). this precedent has created some issues around the legality of the monopoly on health insurance in the country.

i want to apply this to travel rights. my argument is that because i didn't do anything wrong - and the case was completely withdrawn - it follows that any delays on deleting the prints are completely unjustified and a consequent infringement of s. 6, which states that canadian citizens have the right to leave the country. the precedent would state that if the government cannot speed the process up, the law should be abolished, so long as the infringement is not justified. but, who could argue the infringement is justified?

that would give the government the choice between speeding this up or rewriting it's legislation around fingerprinting.

the technology exists to delete these prints within minutes. there is no reason it should take months, and i should be compensated for it if it does.

i still don't know if the prints are accessible or not. this argument won't work if they aren't, but if they are then i will refuse to travel until they are destroyed, and send the government the bill for it.

everything is always complicated...

i took a run down to the ambassador bridge this evening to see if they could check the system for me, and they wouldn't do it. that means i'm going to have to check via the windsor police. i've sent an email to see if they'll do it that way; i'll probably have to go in in person.

i'm simply not going to risk exposing my prints until i'm sure they've been destroyed, but i need to get to a nexus centre. i thought the closest one would be in buffalo (fort erie, ontario), but the way the bus system works makes it a 20 hr ride. toronto is further, but i can get there in under five hours. it's relatively cheap if i book it for next week, and if i have to wait it out then i'll be stuck on this side of the border for probably most of the year.

if i end up doing that, i'll plan to file the court papers in london on the way home, with a s. 6 breach and a seven or eight figure request as a result of it.

i keep pointing this out - the more complicated this is for me in the long run, the more expensive it's going to be for the city.

i called a lot of places and nobody has the right answer.

i've been able to determine that the usbp has "category I" access to the cpic database, and that nobody i can reach over the phone can answer the question. i've also been able to determine that the precise question i need answered is whether or not they can see an fps number.

if they can see an fps number, i am going to need to go to a nexus centre in canada and include a s. 6 grievance in my constitutional challenge. if they cannot, i can cross the border to detroit in the next few days to have this dealt with.

what i'm going to have to do is go in to the windsor police and ask them to run a cpic check from there.

my complete rejection of capital letters is not an accident, it's a very clear political position: i am entirely opposed to capitalism, and want my writing to reflect it.

all letters are equal; no letters shall tower over others in dominance or authority. there is no hierarchy in the alphabet, no control in the language.

this is not news, either. i've been making this argument since the 90s...

i am an anti-capitalist, an egalitarian and an anti-authoritarian, and my writing is carefully crafted to reflect it.

chrome also seems to want to take control of my writing style, by insisting on "auto-corrections" and "grammatical corrections".

yeah. right. big brother can fuck off; i'll be dead before i let a computer correct my syntax.

i've been clear on this point now for years - i am an alphabetical egalitarian and grammar anti-authoritarian. i completely reject your bourgeois grammatical conventions as a form of mind control. free thinking individuals cannot have their sentence structure dictated to them by some centralized grammatical authority; that is a step towards totalitarianism, and should be rejected. this is not some kind of joke, i am seriously in favour of the complete abolition of grammar.

spelling is a different thing, because you have to be able to convey an idea properly. if i misspell something, it's an accident, but i really don't give a fuck about grammar. at all.

so, i will create my own grammar as i go, and you can fuck off if you don't like it.

ok, this is frustrating.

it seems like the answer to everything with chrome is "install an extension". fine. and, i'm even able to find the extensions. great...

but, the chrome store has this fucking banner sitting over the "install" button that is probably supposed to lift, but won't - potentially because i don't have a tactile device (and absolutely do not want one). 

so, i have to find a way to get the banner out of the way before i can really make this usable. first, i need to get the fucking ads out of here - what a catastrophe that is. if i were introduced to the internet nowadays, i'd probably rather go play outside than deal with all of the ads. gross.

second, i need to find a way to edit the html in an email from inside gmail. i was trying to embed that nirvana video, and running on the assumption that it would do so automatically, because it seems to automatically embed inside gmail. no such luck. i think that the template is essentially converting the html into a blog post, so if i can edit the html...

there's an extension for it. alas.

i need to call the border cops first, and get to this after. the goal is trying to figure out if they can see my prints or not....

yeah; there's no way i'm getting used to chrome as a browser. yuck.

test post from netbook

what?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm6Iz-I5OmQ

yes - i can post here via email.

so, that's settled; i'll set up a fake account when i wake up, and post here remotely from it when i'm out and about with the chrome book.

so, i guess i blew the day; i wanted to make some calls in the morning, and spend the rest of the day working. i think it worked out, in the end.

i deny it, but i know i'm going to slowly migrate to that netbook. i spend so much time focused on google products; it makes sense, in the long run, even if i remain spooked about actually creating an account.

well, unless elizabeth warren breaks up google, i guess.

laundry's done, at least.

it's just that the device is intended to be used almost exclusively in public spaces with poor or no encryption - coffee shops, libraries. i don't even really want to check my email. i could always make a fake account, i guess. you can post to blogspot by sending email, right? this is premature, still.

you can pick up a 64 gb thumb drive nowadays for $10. nuts. unfortunately, i only have $6 left of that amazon credit. but, i'm going to want to get a dedicated storage for the netbook that is different than my general purpose key. i can probably get something at the grocery store....

i should have created two pdfs rather than one, with the other being for this blog, and i'm also going to need to find a way to mention the external media, without linking to it. so, i'm a little ahead of myself on that, after all.

but, i'm going to nap a little, so i can be up a little earlier and figure out what day is the best day to head over. if i can't get to a show, maybe i'll just focus on the recycling.

well, you can't say they weren't given a chance to redeem themselves, anyways.

this should have happened more or less immediately. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberals-wilson-raybould-philpott-caucus-1.5080880

...& that also means the end of flash on this machine.

flash & voice were probably the two sketchiest things on here, so i'm not sad to see them go.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/lenovo-thinkpad-x131e-chromebook-review-giveaway/

yeah. the mic is on the front of the device, and the chrome os integrates everything natively - no drivers required. i just need to log into gmail and it's ready to go...

it could not possibly be easier. and, the sound quality is actually a little bit better; i tested it by sending myself some voice mail.

so, that's my new phone, and i can make some calls in the morning.

it means i can put away this half broken piece of shit mic i've been using, and that i no longer need to run google's spyware on this machine - or hang on to a 32 bit browser, although i will, for a while. if i need to launch the profile, i'll use the virtual machine.

i still need to have a terse talk with mr. gates, though.

so, i seem to have misunderstood a few things about my chromebook.

first, it's a combo mic/phone jack. so, i don't actually need a usb headphone; i could potentially even just get a splitter, if one exists, although the mic i've been using for a while now kind of sucks and i'd be better off upgrading it, anyways. i'm sure i can find a $5 splitter in the morning...

but, the thing actually has a mic and a webcam built into it, no doubt with this purpose in mind. i don't see anything in the settings that acknowledge the existence of a webcam, but will the chrome os pick the mic up right away, out of gmail? let me give this a shot.

i've been apprehensive about "logging in" to the device; i've just been using it as a guest. maybe i should log in to check these extra features...

i got the thing because i can't stand typing on a phone; in the end, i may use it as one, after all. good choice, jess.

so, am i even going to check?

well, i'm going to check prices at staples and best buy for a usb headset that has chrome os drivers. that ought to be kind of a business standard, right? i actually would rather use the netbook, for the reasons stated, it just doesn't have a microphone...

if i can get out there first thing in the morning, i'll wait until the afternoon to make some calls.

otherwise, yeah - i'll have to try it with the product key checker turned on. and, if it turns out that this is the problem, i'm going to send bill gates a tersely worded email threatening to take my business elsewhere.

ok, so i spent the night trying to work this out and i came to a startling conclusion - i have a virus on my system called windows. unfortunately, the competitors are worse....

i don't spend a lot of time complaining about this, because i've largely fixed it. windows is in fact highly configurable, and you can solve most of the performance problems associated with it by simply turning everything off. i was working as a tech agent for microsoft during the vista launch, and in the process learned a lot about it - i know how to clean the os up. so, yes - i'm running windows 7 on a nearly 15 year old laptop, and it has limitations, but i mostly don't notice them because it's stripped down to the core os functions.

but, the install is a mess. it's been moved to different machines a few times, and more than a few things are broken. i should reinstall, but this broken laptop has a broken optical drive in it, and my product key is....

i got the product key from carleton. it's legit, but it might be expired because i'm not enrolled there any longer. and, i'm coming to the conclusion that it's the product key that is causing me problems.

i decided to rip everything out - firefox, the network and the audio - and put it back together again. but, i stopped to eat and noticed something - the 90s laptop (which is now my tv) has a microphone slot in it. well, i could try, right?

what i wanted to test was what the server was rejecting, as the behaviour i'd experienced - it works sometimes - seemed strongly indicative of a server error. i mean, if the software was broken, it would always be broken. it seemed like something wasn't sending from the other side. is it rejecting my ip (apparently not, as i got a new one)? my location? my email address? or maybe just my browser...

i run chrome on the 90s laptop because it just loads up to youtube. i'd rather run firefox even there, but youtube is insisting on chrome given the hardware - i don't really have the choice. it's just a question of html5 standards; i can find an old version of chrome that can load youtube, but can't find an old version of firefox. if they would still allow flash, i'd be running firefox. whatever - it's a way to test.

...except i couldn't even load gmail in the browser. this is a similar problem - why do i need so much ram to launch gmail?

the netbook seemed like the more obvious choice, but it doesn't have a microphone in, so it's useless for the purpose. nonetheless, i could at least check the audio and i did - i can connect via the same ip over chrome.

it must be firefox, then, right?

so, i got the drivers installed and went right to the 32-bit install, as basic as i could get it. clean profile. give it a try - and it works. try again, and it doesn't. the server's blocking me, clearly, i'm thinking.

but, at this point i'm fed up, i've decided i'm just going to get a usb headset and use the netbook for the phone. that keeps google's spyware off this machine, anyways - a better option. great. so, let me get the 64-bit install back on...

...and it's just not running. at all.

it's the weirdest thing - i install the program without an error and then launch it and it just halts with ram at 25 megs. no error. no crash. just sits there, apparently waiting for something. what, exactly?

so, i'm thinking there's something corrupted, here. i take every file off the machine, remove every entry from the registry - same bullshit. i'm beat; at a loss. i'm thinking it's time to reinstall, but wondering if i even can.

out of that thought, on a whim, i decide to try it with the software protection service turned on. remember - i have almost everything turned off. that's why it's snappy.

bizarrely, it works, all of a sudden.

so, get this straight - windows was actually preventing me from launching the web browser, because i wasn't running the fucking product key checker. is that why the audio stopped working, too?

if i was to move anywhere, it'd be to linux, but i actually don't want to do that. i still run word 2003, for example, and just don't like the competitors. there's audio issues with linux. &etc.

but, the fuckers are out of line on this one; that's a valid product key, and there's no reason to be on my ass about it.

no. i need to get over this week, one way or another.

hrmmn.

so, i need to figure this out.

my phone still isn't working, and i'm sure it's on the server end. i don't know what to do....

i'm not going to call long distance at a pay phone.

i was going to head over on thursday for nils frahm, but the weather is still terrible, so i'm looking at next week, minimum. i'm thinking i'll probably just wait it out, maybe do some research tonight.

the oiprd review panel has accepted the documents, but i don't expect much from it, either. the issue doesn't really get to a meaningful adjudicator until i file in superior court; this preliminary steps are largely meaningless, if required by law.

i still want to wait for the review to finish before i launch a human rights challenge, which i have until september to launch. in the end, i'll probably launch everything at the same time, but i still don't know exactly what to launch - i need to at least try and cross the border, first.

i would actually be in favour of banning home schooling altogether, and even go so far as to argue that it's an egregious enough form of child abuse to justify the intervention of child services; i would forcefully argue that if you won't send your kids to school, they should be removed from your custody and placed in the care of somebody that will.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-home-schooled-1.5073396

fwiw - and i've been over this before - is that my position on bds is that it isn't going to work. i would suggest employing more intelligent tactics.

further, it's impossible to criminalize a boycott, whatever anybody wants to say about it.

the empirical reality is that there is not currently a sovereign palestinian state and that, given existing settlement trends and increasing israeli occupation over the region, it is exceedingly unlikely that there will be one any time in the near future.

it is rather far more likely that israel will eventually annex the west bank, and be forced to make a choice as to whether it wants to extend full citizenship rights to palestinians or not. gaza's future is less clear, primarily because israel doesn't seem to want it, and egypt won't take it. but, gaza has little future as a city-state, either. in the end, i can't imagine any answer besides being annexed by egypt, even as they continue to resist it.

the two-state solution has been dead, now, for decades, and continuing to reference it is at best delusional, but usually actually just a means to deflect from the reality on the ground.

i would actually support a singular, secular state with equal rights for all citizens, and leave it up to the people that live there as to what they want to call it.

so, it's worse than a double standard; the jewish councilperson stated things that are empirically true and only offensive in a delusional context, whereas the muslim congresswoman stated things that are empirically false and clearly objectively racist.

we can see who has the power and who doesn't - and who is abusing it.

what this clear double standard demonstrates is the continued existence of systemic bias against jews in american society.

so, when a jew makes a questionable comment - and the question of palestine's existence is an empirical question which is increasingly leaning towards a negative response - he is immediately removed from committee.

meanwhile, the muslim who promoted openly racist statements still sits on committee.

and, we wonder if there is a problem with anti-semiitism in america?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/nyregion/kalman-yeger-israel-palestine.html

why are there "faith-based adoption agencies" in tennessee?

shouldn't that be something that is handled by secular institutions in the state?

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/8xyyjb/tennessee-bill-would-allow-adoption-agencies-to-reject-lgbtq-couples

there have been situations where they have good legal arguments (this is not one of them.), but they can't see them, because all they want to do is uncover the conspiracy.

since 2016, or maybe before that, the contemporary "left" has collapsed into crackpots and conspiracy theorists. you see it come up over and over, and they don't seem to realize what they're doing.

this is in fact very much like the "muslim travel ban", which the media yelled about for years, before the court tossed out on it's ear, because it was no such thing - and which i told you from the start would happen.

while it may be true that s. 28 would override s. 33., there is essentially no possibility that the court is going to accept that argument, as the law is clearly focused on removing religious people from positions of authority regardless of their gender, rather than targetting anybody by their gender. the more successful argument will work in the other direction: rather than make the argument that a beard is a religious symbol and the legislation is discriminatory (which is absurd on it's face), they should be arguing that there isn't anything inherently religious about wearing a scarf (while conceding that showing up to work in a niqab is obviously religious in intent and character). and, it isn't as though there aren't equivalent clothing requirements for men, or that these aren't equally prohibited.

while an argument of this nature may be politically successful - as we've seen recently in the united states - it is nothing more or less than a conspiracy theory, when applied in a legal context. the court isn't there to determine what the legislators are secretly thinking in their minds, but to determine what the law states, literally - and it is clearly not gendered in enactment, nor do i think it is intended to be.

but, again - this is the kind of vacuous speculation that you unleash when you don't allow the court to adjudicate.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-experts-say-there-are-ways-to-overturn-quebecs-secularism-bill/

that said, what can the government actually do?

it can fire people.

is that a purge?

it's an acceptable one.

but, i would make a call to specific administrators in quebec to weigh this carefully. this is indeed a right-wing government, and their broader agenda is not good. are you going to give them an excuse to get rid of you? is it worth it?

so, i am going to agree that some form of civil disobedience should be adopted in quebec - from the date the law passes, quebeckers should immediately refuse to acknowledge the authority of anybody displaying a religious symbol at work.

children should revolt against their teachers.

prisoners should revolt against their guards.

the police should cease to hold any authority.

for, religion now has no power of authority in quebec - by declaration of the assembly, the democratic will of the quebecois nation.

conflating "they won't hire me because i'm black" with "they won't hire me because i wear a symbol on my head that represents the enslavement of 70% of the population" is an act of intellectual cowardice that deserves a denunciation in the most stringent of terms.

but, again - we live in the era of orwell, where fake left activists fight to maintain systems of hierarchy and oppression, rather than to overthrow and destroy them.

 in backwards canada, activists fight you!

see, this is the kind of absurd response you get when you don't allow for judicial oversight - as though reacting against the separation of church and state has anything to do with fighting against discrimination. it's completely incoherent - and frankly idiotic - but reactionaries will be reactionaries and this is simply what you get when you short circuit the system.

the proper comparison to a civil rights action here would be refusing the authority of the religiously motivated teacher, not in standing up for a system of religious authority. but, this is what the courts do - they order confusion in the minds of the ignorant.

please allow for judicial review, quebec? i don't want to deal with this stupidity for the next decade, and i don't want it to distract from issues of actual imprtance.

again: there is a strong precedent both in canada and the united states - through the hatch act - to restrict the political activities of public employees, in order to ensure neutrality in the functioning of the state. they should win the case; they just need to write the essay.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/could-conscientious-objection-defeat-quebecs-secularism-law

so, i didn't get any work done today, but i did some cleaning in here, which was overdue.

i'm hoping to get back into my normal monthly cleaning routine, now. the air quality is a bit better recently, but it's still hard to tell what's going on. i'm wondering if it might even be something a little harder than pot; he's been looking pretty rough, recently. my main concern is my air supply; if it's clean enough to clean in here, i need to be more proactive about it.

for now, i need to nap, at least. tomorrow will be better...

i might rather suggest reducing the number of judges on the court. they're expensive, dammit. you don't often get more than three unique positions, up in canada; there are a few judges that i can't be sure have ever written an opinion of their own at all.

five is probably enough.

sanders' idea of cycling the judges up and down would probably create an anarchy in precedence. you don't want cases thrown back and forth between judges, like you throw bills back and forth between houses. as much as i dislike government, i'm an advocate of the court system; it's probably the only hierarchical system i'd leave in place.

but, what he's trying to prevent is cutting a career short due to term limits, while still allowing for renewal. it's a kind of compromise that prevents stagnation without sending people home early.

i don't like term limits either, and for the same reason (amongst others), but i think there should be a mandatory retirement. in canada, mandatory retirement from the supreme court kicks in at 75 - then it's time to go home.

bernie has been remarkably consistent in his views for a long time. but, one wonders if his views on this particular topic have evolved or not; it's easy to see why he doesn't pick the right option today, which is somewhat glaring in context - he almost always does.

i think i'm finally feeling better.

that argument about free will is classical. the modern understanding would be to cite stochastic models and chaos theory, as well as point to the question of collapsed waveforms.

what dawkins is saying - and it is perfectly rational, perfectly descartian - is that our thoughts and feelings and behaviours must be wholly determined by everything else that's ever happened in the universe, before hand. it's a literal statement of determinism.

but, if we acknowledge that we are all unique entities, that our brains are autonomous identities in the sense that we are standalone organisms, then the question of free will reduces to the question of whether the experiment is repeatable - and some doubt needs to be cast on the question.

in perfectly controlled conditions, will humans always react the same way? it's really not an empirical question. and, while a descartes or a locke would have said "clearly.", our understanding of determinism is a little different, post-heisenberg.

our brains are computers, but they are not turing machines. they must be quantum computers, because they follow the rules of quantum mechanics, but we don't even understand the functioning well enough to state as much in any meaningful sense.

if we can come up with some kind of demonstration that our brains do not respond identically to identical stimulus, and that whatever randomness that occurs is localized to us as standalone organisms, then free will may find itself brought back from the brink by the uncertainty of quantum physics.

leftists want peace and equality.

but, we realize that you have to dismantle the systems of power before you can have that - of which religion is the most egregious.

the caq's logic around the issue may be somewhat warped, but the policy is firmly on the left, and the opposition to it is purely conservative, in both intent and content.

for some reason, i tend to get through to people better when i include a dialogue.

conservative: yay! multiculturalism is great! everybody getting along in god's great kingdom, in perfect harmony - just so long as they all know their place. let's everybody sing in harmony! smile on your brother now...

leftist: i guess it looks nice at first glance, if you have no analysis. but, on the left, we don't believe in utopias, we see the world in terms of conflict.

conservative: well, we think so long as everybody knows their place, there's no conflict, just harmony. because god. qed.

leftist: ok. but, what happens when the religious people - the muslims and the christians - start actually enforcing their beliefs on everybody else?

conservative: well, they wouldn't. because harmony.

leftist: but, clearly they would, because the world is not about harmony and unity, it's about different classes of people in conflict,

conservative: there you go, it's all about class.

leftist: struggling for primacy over each other.

conservative: nope. harmony. god.

leftist: do you have an example of your kind of society actually working? because we focus on history quite a bit, and all we see are all of these different groups in conflict.

conservative: they just need to love each other. you need to have faith.

leftist: ok, so let me get this straight, then - you're essentially proposing just taking all kinds of people that are in perpetual conflict with each other, and asking them to live peacefully together on an article of faith, and with absolutely no contingency plan whatsoever in case it completely fails?

conservative: smile on your brother, everybody let's get together...

the reality is that canada is the elite institution that you need a 98% average to get into.

so, why do we promote ourselves as a community college?

regarding the optics, this image of the friendly rcmp officer is actually a misrepresentation of the country's actual immigration policies, which are some of the strictest in the world; there is a contradiction, here, in our global image as this safehaven escape and the actual reality that we reject 95% of applicants. this contradiction appears to be driving the problem. so, a little bit of a tougher image at the border may actually be exactly what we need.

but, i actually agree that we can't be eliminating or overturning due process, here, and that the court isn't likely to uphold any decision or process that prevents it. can you use the notwithstanding clause on a treaty? don't answer that, i don't want to know. the problem isn't that all of these people are flooding in, but that we don't have the infrastructure to deal with it; if we want canada to be a global leader in quality of life, we're going to attract a lot of people that we're not going to let in, and have to find a way to deal with it. the flow isn't going to stop.

after decades of neglecting the system, we are long overdue in the need to build more low income housing, and it's not entirely clear to me why this government is doing everything it possibly can to avoid that, besides being ideologically opposed to it.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-us-moves-to-open-talks-with-canada-on-asylum-seeker-treaty/

this is really not remotely what i signed up for.

i wanted industrial decay and social collapse as a pre-requisite for social progress, and have instead found myself in a time warp back to the dark ages.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/windsor-third-fastest-growing-city-in-latest-census

no.

this is itself reactionary and conservative, and will likely erode much of their support.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/with-new-position-on-secularism-quebec-solidaire-redefines-left-wing-politics-in-the-province-1.5079087

i mentioned that we did thomas more in grade 8, although i've since found some evidence that this may have been grade 13. that is indeed a large space in time, which goes to uphold my point that i am having difficulty ordering these events chronologically.

and, i did attend catholic middle and high schools in the meadowlands area of ottawa, which is historically an italian district, even if the schools were at that point overrun by irish kids from barrhaven.

is thomas more mentioned in shakespeare's henry VIII? that might be the source of the confusion. i'll figure this out...

if i read about more as a teenager, i should have sympathies with the religious minorities being forced to choose between their ideology and their career, right? quite the opposite... 

while i can't place this in time, i do remember my reaction, which is quite visceral: i thought that thomas more was a complete fucking idiot, and that his death was entirely his own stupid fault. all he had to do was cite a fucking pledge; he lost his head, instead. what a moron. we're not even talking about some deep theological point of debate, here, although if we were it would be equally damning to his intellect; anglicanism, and especially at that time, was theologically identical to catholicism, so there was no clash of ideas here. thomas more died solely for his allegiance to the pope, a murderous and tyrannical despot that was driven by conquest and plunder; he was a serf that could not free himself from his master, not even when threatened with death. that is not valour, it is stupidity, and he should be pitied rather than revered. even now, merely thinking of it, i remain enraged by his idiocy, and rather disappointed in the teaching decision, which lionized him as some kind of saintly martyr, who was marched to the lions for the sanctity of his beliefs. what nonsense. you might even make the argument that teaching such a thing mere kilometres from the border with quebec is politically irresponsible. vive le quebec stupide.

likewise, i have little sympathy for the person who is so stupid as to make the conscious choice that adherence to their silly religious beliefs is more valuable than their own self-interest in secular society; i may pity such a fool, but in the end i will only condemn their for their own absurdity. they have this choice in front of them between the past and the future, and if they choose the past then we must move on without them.

again: i support the thrust of the legislation, and think it is mostly defensible. we already have strong restrictions on free expression in the public service; this is not fundamentally different from what already exists.

however, i oppose the use of the notwithstanding clause to circumvent judicial oversight and eliminate due process.

we may have to get rid of that clause.

it is up to the courts to decide if the legislature is going too far or not, not the legislature itself.

these "lengthy court battles" are called due process.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-premier-defends-secularism-bill-to-the-public-in-short-video-1.5078782