see, it's not just an issue in quebec, either. i'm not on the fence this election - i've already decided that i will not be voting for the liberals. but, if i was, a commitment by trudeau to fight the issue in court, or even a refusal to commit to not doing it, would lead me towards refraining from voting for him.

there's two reasons for this.

the first is that i support quebec's sovereignty rights, in this case. people forget that national unity isn't just an issue in quebec, it's one that resonates throughout the country. i'm not a quebcois identity voter or something, but, whether it was because of the way i was raised by a french canadian father or just because they're by far the most left-leaning place in north america, i tend to be on quebec's side more often than not. there's a lot of ontarians (and manitobans. and easterners.) like me that will essentially stand in solidarity with quebeckers from a distance. on the other hand, in alberta, you can win an election by attacking quebec.

one of the reasons i refrained from voting ndp in 2015 was their stance on quebec sovereignty. the liberals are usually the better national unity option here. but, as has generally been the case with trudeau, he's flipping that issue on it's head, and taking the side of the party's historical opponents.

the second is that i'm one of the 40+% of ontarians that would actually vote in favour of such a ban in this province should it be put up for a referendum. i'm just actually in support of the law.

so, don't think it's just quebeckers that trudeau needs to worry about in coming out shooting against this law. it could cost him the election.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2019/09/16/bill-21-pushed-to-forefront-of-federal-election-talk-in-quebec.html

i'm compressing the last pile in the batch of 75 records that makes up periods 1 and 2. they'll come up tonight.

so, it's finally time to refocus. do i have time? well, i have no real deadlines. so, let's get at it.

i had an unexpected crash this morning, and now i am getting distracted.

i've spent the last few days uploading everything to youtube as 128 kbps mp3s. why am i doing this? well, why did i do it in the first place?

i took everything down because i wasn't getting any traffic to the bandcamp site, but i was operating under a different mindset. i know that people think they're going to make money via ad revenue, but there's two problems with this: (1) i'm never going to do that because i'm an independent artist going for a niche market (i.e. i don't write pop music, and don't want to) and (2) even if i could potentially generate that kind of traffic, i wouldn't want to ruin the art with ads.

i mean, think through what we're talking about. i'm putting up music on the internet, and expecting to get paid by letting people sprinkle ads into the recording. that's disgusting as a business model in general, and impossible when you consider that i write lengthy, conceptual records. i routinely write 30-50 minute tracks, or track suites. i don't want any fucking ads in there!

so, the intent was to subvert the thing - they've got this all backwards. i don't want to make money by letting people ruin my art with their ads. fuck them. rather, i want to use youtube as an advertising platform, in itself. there were two ways i did this, initially: (1) via trying to commandeer the comments section and (2) via posting samples to the youtube site, with the intent to direct traffic to bandcamp.

then, they shadow-banned me, so nobody could see my comments. and, traffic from the samples demonstrated itself as a waste of time. so, i shut the site down.

since then, i've been struggling to organize all of this data (while fighting legal battles and trying to find smoke-free housing), but i've finally got a handle on it, so it's time to switch over.

there's still almost 300 subscribers at the deathtokoalas/koala central command site. that's down from around 340 at it's maximum point. but, those 340 people were useless to me because they weren't buying records. part of the time out was to let them drift off. yet, there's still 300 of them there....

i've been planning on this for a while; it was the completion of inri000 in the journal that triggered me to do it, and they're coming up in the order they were finished (over 2013-20118).

am i going to go back to posting? maybe. not in the same way, i don't think - it drew attention to myself, but it didn't work in building a fan base. i think i want to be a little more sincere, moving forwards. regardless, it's time to rebuild that advertising archive at youtube.

but, let's be clear: the videos are ads. they're not a product. the product is at bandcamp. so, they're up at 128 kbps, as teasers, and you can stream them all you want - but they don't sound great, and they can't. buy the record...

and, yes, i'd like to give this stuff away for free. i mean, i do work for free - let's not pretend that i don't. but, i don't want to get a job. i don't want this to be a hobby. this is labour, this is work, this is full-time employment. i need a paywall...

we're getting closer to the weekend, and that warm pacific air is still being forecast to dominate, hurricane or not.

looks like it'll be nice. better enjoy it....

i'm agreeing with this forecast, except that i'm still expecting the jet stream to defeat the ocean, in the end. so, i think we're going to get cold very fast, again, like last year. and, i'm holding out hope for an early spring. if not this year, then next year. soon...

i just want to clarify the point again: we've got two things, here. the warm ocean is mostly the result of climate change - not always, but usually. the blob would be an example of an ocean anomaly that may be solar in origin. on the other hand, the wobbly jet stream is mostly the sun. so, where i am, you get these things fighting with each other, and the weathers end up moving in extremes.

but, the sun is coming back, soon - which means they won't be fighting with each other any more, and it'll just be flat hot. the jet stream will retreat to the north, and we'll be dominated by pacific air for years, like we were in the mid 00s. and, they'll blame it on el nino, and be partly right, if it is.

so, the solar cycle is currently masking the warming effects at the latitude i'm at.

i have to keep pointing this out because people get confused.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/2019-canada-fall-forecast-winter-outlook-temperature-precipitation

i know it's seems like i've been distracted, but i've actually been kind of sick.

i need to do some cleaning in here and take a shower, and then i'll get to what i was doing overnight. i don't think it will take long...

i need to reiterate the point: what states do you expect warren to win?

she's not doing well in the south. biden's set to sweep, and sanders is doing much better with black voters.

i haven't actually seen any polls in the west, which is a bit of a problem - california isn't the last state any more. where's the polling?

she's doing better in the midwest and northeast, but the only polls i've seen have her tied for second, at best - and usually in the third.

it was a while ago, but the only polling i'd seen in massachusetts had her in third.

"well, biden's going to drop", you say. well, i don't agree - maybe he should drop but that doesn't mean he will. and, i agree that this is necessary for her, but it hardly seems sufficient.

if biden drops, sanders should pick up most of his support in the south, so that doesn't help her. it opens up a space in the west, but you've still got to deal with harris, even if sanders can't get traction, and if her base is educated woman, she's a potential block. there's at the least no clear path, and no evidence she'd do well. and, given that this viagra vote seems to be a real thing, biden dropping could very well help sanders more than warren, in the midwest and northeast. i think a fair assumption at this point is that it's a split, and then she's still not actually winning.

so, where's her base?

what states can she actually win?

and, if she can't win any, what's her plan? to limp into the convention with 35% of the votes, and hope they pick her without winning any actual states?

(and, bizarrely, there's a decent chance that they might.)

so, what happens if bernie drops out, then? well, there's your wild card - but what are the chances? regardless, is that her plan?

because, if it's not her plan, it doesn't seem that she actually has one.

logic tells me that she's going to look at the data and realize that she needs to drop out before iowa. but, i have this sneaking suspicion that the whole point of what she's doing is to try and muddy the field up - that she's running for vice president, and essentially just blocking sanders.

if this three way race lingers on, the only person that can win is biden, and it's going to be a messy process, as he does it.

meanwhile, all the ndp seems to care about is saving union jobs in the automotive sector.

https://blackburnnews.com/windsor/windsor-news/2019/09/16/ndp-announces-auto-strategy/

the next section, on "good governance", is mostly about ethics and stuff, and seems intended mostly to appeal to conservatives. good luck, guys: they don't swing. but, i don't really care one way or the other about most of this stuff....

i would support forcing cops to get warrants before they can eavesdrop, or get data from isps. i'm otherwise largely apathetic about privacy laws, and tend to preach individual responsibility when it comes to online behaviour. people need to stop giving the data out.

they don't mention proportional representation in the section on electoral reform. interesting. are they open to discussion about preferential ballots?

on criminal justice reform, i would support the elimination of mandatory minimums, which have largely been struck down by the courts. i would oppose solitary confinement, although i'd also support the opposite - i don't think prisoners should be forced out of their cells and into the general population if they don't want to be, either. i'm in favour of rehabilitation, where it's mentally possible. i appreciate the recognition that the gun problem mostly exists at the border.

so, i actually don't agree with any of that, either.

---------

that is a strong platform, in my opinion. there are some omissions, but the only point of real disagreement that i would have with them would be on immigration policy, which i don't consider to be a ballot issue.

it's a very fact-based document, and that's refreshing in a spectrum that is often driven by bad data, demagoguery and emotional manipulation.

they get almost everything right.

so, who's my local candidate, anyways?

the next section is called "advancing the just society", and...

the "just society" was a historical policy by the elder trudeau, which was sort of ripped from lbj's "great society". so, it's kind of a part of the canadian lexicon, and it's not odd to see it pop up here and there. this platform is going to town with it, though, in a rather clear attempt to undermine both the liberal party and it's current leader. the messaging is clear - the green party and elizabeth may, not the liberal party and justin trudeau, are the true protectors of the legacy of pierre trudeau - for better or for worse, i suppose.

it's ballsy. pierre was ballsy. is it true? they'd have to govern; we'd have to watch them do it. but, there's a good case for it, at least.

i enthusiastically support all of these kinds of things, i always do.

but, the thing i want to point out is that the section on sex work gets it right, and maybe it's because it was written by a woman - they want to liberalize the sex work laws, but they point to the gai (as well as the free tuition.) as a way out, indicating that they get the point that sex work may be a choice for some people, but should never be the only choice available for anybody.

it's otherwise a statement of solidarity and support for women, queer people and minority language rights, the latter being a quintessentially canadian thing. no criticisms, here.

the next section is called 'renewing the social contract' and is a series of commitments to the social safety net in a social democracy. canada's system is largely functioning, so these commitments are largely just upholding the status quo, if suggesting ways to improve it, and ultimately promising to maintain it.

while we need more investments in housing, the big novel proposal is the gai, and the details are scant. it's mentioned that the intention is to be livable, and that's what you want to see, but some more details would be nice. and, if the answer is "we'll work out the details in committee", you should interpret it for what it is - aspirational.

these are otherwise the nuts and bolts of governing in canada, kind of thing, and i have nothing but support across the board for all this stuff.

there's a section on "invoking ecological wisdom", whatever that means.

i don't think a ban on single-use plastics is a smart approach, as it won't actually solve the problem. this is maybe an example of what is now an aging party adopting a fashionable position that isn't well thought through.

but, i recognize that there aren't good solutions with bio-plastics right now, either.

this isn't the same kind of pressing concern that emissions reduction is - we're not in a race against time, and we could potentially find ways to clean the oceans up. we've found plastic eating microbes; if there is magic in nature, it's called evolution. we know we can't ban energy, we need to transition from dirty to clean. and, likewise, we're going to have to shift from oil-based plastics to biologically derived ones, and we're going to have to be smart in pushing it through.

beside that, the section was about things like species conservation, and i don't have much criticism to drop regarding it.

- i don't have any direct criticism on the transitioning workers section, but i'll point out that this isn't really my concern. i mean, it's a problem that kind of solves itself, if you actually do this right. i am in support of retraining programs.

- i don't really care about the tax code, one way or the other. you're neither going to attract me with a good tax policy nor repel me with a bad one. it's just irrelevant to me.

- with the retreat of the ndp from the left and towards the neo-liberal consensus, the greens have recently become the last alter-globalization party. if you're still opposed to nafta, regardless of the changes to it, the greens are the only party that still opposes it, and other deals like it. they are the only party opposed to the isds provisions. since 2015, this has become another reason to actively support them.

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

immigration is something where i may have less agreement with them, although they don't seem to be terrible on this, either. they're not explicitly arguing for increases in immigration. they want more money for integration, including for english and french instruction, which is good. they want to ban the "temporary foreign workers program", which is good. they want to focus on professional accreditation, which is good. i would also support policies designed to strengthen civil rights at the border, and ensure that the rule of law is being upheld for non-citizens.

i don't know if being a climate refugee ought to be grounds for opening the doors, though. my positions on this are subtle:  i don't support deportation in much of any context, even for criminals (i don't think that foreign countries appreciate us deporting criminals. put them in jail, and try to rehabilitate them.), but i think you have to have a good reason to get in, because we don't have infinite resources. i mean, there's a contradiction here: the greens know we don't have infinite economic growth, so they should conclude that we can't have infinite refugee inflows. i think the primary policy ought to be to help potential climate refugees adapt by working with their local governments - and that this should be seen as a primary foreign aid goal.

i don't think that we should abolish the safe third country agreement with the united states, either. that's a knee-jerk reaction to a president you don't like, it's not a carefully thought-through long term policy. we will come to regret that.

i do not think that family reunification should be given priority status in evaluating immigration or refugee claims.

and, i would oppose giving "cultural institutions" charitable status, as well. rather, if there's a tax policy i'd be likely to actively support, it would be in taxing churches, mosques and other religious groups.

but, these are minor concerns to me, overall, and my disagreement with this part of the platform is unlikely to prevent me from voting for the party. immigration is not a ballot issue for me. i would rather work to shift the party's positions on this through internal debate than attack it from the outside, as this is not where my core political allegiances exist, one way or the other. but, i'm not going to silence or censor myself, either - i'm going to insist on the debate, and insist it's up for debate.

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

- while i would support converting the relevant vehicles to electric cars, i'm not a particularly strong advocate for postal workers. we should keep a state-run system of easily accessible post offices, but i don't mind picking up my own mail. again: that's not a ballot issue.

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

the section on sustainable farming is refreshing to see in the sense that it avoids most of the nonsense you see floating around on the internet today (although, i wonder how some people would react to that, if they're legitimately concerned and don't know better.).i just have a few minor points.

while i agree with the need to cut down on pesticide use as well as the need to cut down on transportation costs, i am far more concerned about the safety of urban farming than i am concerned about, say, gmos. i'd be more likely to eat a gmo tomato grown in a field than i would be to eat an organic tomato grown in a rooftop in toronto, and the reason is that the air and soil quality is likely to be terrible, in the latter. in a lot of ways, this is a question of regulation. but, due to toxicity concerns, i'd argue for labeling of urban products, so people know what they're getting. i like the controlled conditions for urban greenhouses (perhaps in conjunction with things like hydroponics) better than rooftops or backyards....

i would also like to see some kind of explicit federal support for the idea of insect farming, as it's a more healthy, sustainable and humane way than veganism to generate protein for human consumption.

lastly, while it's mostly a provincial issue, doing something with compost would help with that 2.5% from landfills.

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

the fisheries thing is complicated, and while i support management, i'll leave that one to the experts, other than to point something out - being where we are in canada, so long as we're not overfishing, there's almost no way we can lose on this. swordfishing in nova scotia? we have salmon in bc, how about tuna in newfoundland? quotas are key...and relevant quotas that understand changing migration patterns are paramount.

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

- as a low income artist, the best way to support me is via a livable gai and through actualizing real, affordable housing. i'm never going to sell my product; it will be left to fiuture generations to evaluate it.

- what are the serious opportunities for industrial cannabis waste to aid in the shift to bio-plastics? but, that's an r&d question, something that needs funding.

"but, you'd be replacing the climate debt with a financial debt."

no. that's why you use the bank of canada. and, i actually agree that you need to have limits on printing money, but this is an emergency - we don't have any more time to waste on market theory, we need to do it now. that's what interest-free printing is for.

but, like....we can always cancel the debt, anyways. people forget that. if it was up to me, i'd just wipe out the national debt by legislation.

the section on identifying what the crisis is and how to solve it is central to any support i may give to the green party - and, remember, i haven't decided to actually vote for them yet, i've just ruled out the other options and reduced the decision to green or spoil.

in canada, the liberals have historically supported infrastructure spending by printing interest-free money through the bank of canada, although it was only ever a minor part of the funding, and it was mostly phased out by the elder trudeau (this was a part of canada's reaction to the nixon shock). but, from roughly 1940-1970, we printed a lot of money, and we used that money to built much of the infrastructure that is today causing much of the problems - bridges and roads but also power plants, which were at the time mostly publicly owned. it is frustrating that the liberals argued that we didn't have to pay the bankers when we were causing the problem, but are now insisting that the bankers get their cut when it's time to solve it. like most decent people, i really hate the vampires in the insurance industry. and, yet, despite all my rage...

let's avoid that.

so, it was easy to believe the liberals when they said they were going to do this, and deflating to see what they've actually done.

the plank in the green party platform specifies no P3s, and that's a good thing, it's what i want to hear. this is the way we solve this - not through tax incentives or faith in the markets but by printing the money and fucking doing it.

so, i would float this document to the various democratic leadership campaigns as a funding policy and general strategy that i can actually support.

so, that's the good stuff.

i could nitpick the language in the indigenous section, which is a good chunk of the document, but i'm not going to. what's more important to me is that the government eventually adopts the general idea that the colonial state needs to take a step away from overseeing indigenous communities as protectorates, and finds ways to allow them to define what sovereignty actually means. it's easy enough to come into this with a collection of preconceived notions, and the undrip is just another set of them, but if you look into this what you'll see is that what these people actually want is a complicated, messy thing with a lot of tribe-by-tribe specifics and very few universalized approaches. you could never write a policy paper on this, not in 2000 pages, let alone 20.

so, what we need is a commitment to the democratic process, which sounds almost trivial, but is deeply lacking in our present and in our history. unfortunately, this is going to be exceedingly difficult because what we are is a colonial state. asking canada to stop being a colonial state is like asking a lion not to hunt. it's a fundamental transformation that is going to require not just a deep reanalysis of the indian act - and a commitment to democracy means understanding the subtlety around the abolition v replacement debate within indigenous communities - but probably a reanalysis of confederation, and an overhaul of the constitution. we took a first attempt at this under the elder trudeau, but he really just laid the groundwork for future reforms, something that was deeply understood but that we couldn't get through (see meech lake), as the discussion turned to globalization in the late 80s.

so, they get the general idea right. and, that's all you can ask for in a document like this.

but, i also want to make a foundational point: the future of the green party and the indigenous sovereignty movement are almost certainly intrinsically interwoven. it is long overdue for the greens to make a serious outreach attempt for indigenous voters, and i hope their efforts work out. this should be their base.

so, i flipped through this, and it's pretty much the same document they've been kicking around since the 90s. it's never been perfect, and i've always had some serious disagreements, which is a part of the reason i've largely avoided voting for them, but i know where they stand; they're a lot like bernie sanders, in that respect - they've been saying the same thing for as long as they've existed.

https://www.greenparty.ca/sites/default/files/platform_2019_en_web_update_09-16.pdf

there's questions around timeframes closing, including around elizabeth may's lifespan. and, while they deny being utopian, a lot of this stuff can't be done fast enough to make the difference it needs to make anymore. if there's a broader criticism of this document, it's that it represents an optimism to actually substantively reverse the damage that probably can't be accomplished any more. so, it needs a greater focus on mitigation and adaptation, and i would suspect that will be the theme for the party in the next few cycles.

but, i'd rather start by telling you what i want.

i'm a low-income, highly urban artist nearing the age of 40 that doesn't even have a driver's license and will probably never get one. i prefer to bicycle; when i can't bike anymore, i'll have to resort to walking or relying on public transit. this isn't some kind of exercise in zen buddhism or stoicism or something, or an unwanted consequence of poverty, but a conscious lifestyle decision that reflects the kind of world i want to actually live in. it's leadership by example, even if you might not want to follow - although i hope you do.

so, i want to live in an urban green space that is largely self-sustainable, which includes being free of both car exhaust and tobacco and marijuana smoke, and i want to live amongst educated people that have sophisticated self-interests that are not necessarily market-driven. i think that the best way to get to this endpoint is to socialize the means of production, but i recognize that my existence is finite, and i've long accepted the idea of a minimum income as a way to allow people like me to live the lifestyles they actually want to live.

but, i think that proportional representation is a bad idea - i would rather see a preferential ballot. further, there is almost no room for religion in my environmental-technological utopia, except as a veneration of the earth. i can almost tolerate a type of mystical gaia theory, so long as it is empirical, in the end. i have essentially no patience for the abrahamic faiths, and see no place for them in the future.

so, what are some specific points of contention, then? let me put these in separate posts.

mr. trump,

as you know, the saudis were voluntarily keeping production low on request of the united states. this has artificially kept the price high. while iran may have their own interests in the region, as is their right, it makes little sense for them to attack an oil field in saudi arabia, so long as production is being voluntarily curtailed.

the obvious conclusion, sir, is that you're being played. the question is who, and there are only two reasonable answers: israel and russia.

my immediate hypothesis is that this is the walrus' attempt to manipulate you into doing what you wouldn't. and, rather than bomb iran, what you need to do is get tough on netanyahu - he just tried to play you like a fool.

some advice, that's all, from
the infamous koala hating canadian

this is the debate i'm talking about:

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/federal-election-debate-from-a-catholic-perspective-tickets-64374772678

i'm merely going to boycott it, but feel free to get some rowdy protesters out there to shut it down, too, if you want.

so, i'm going to call for a general boycott of the religious debate in canada. i'm frankly baffled that this exists.

i'm not watching it - i'm not supporting it through ad revenue, and i'm not commenting on it.

i would encourage you to boycott it, as well.

i'll tell you this, though: they were run over by a train, and were tied to the tracks when it happened.

so, it didn't appear to be accidental.

so, that's my father's mother's parents that were killed in a mob hit when she was very small. her given last name is....zito. yeah. i just know stories, i've never done the research.

my father's father's parents were a white woman from quebec and a dark-skinned man of unknown ancestry that nobody has pictures of and nobody remembers - but appears to have been indigenous, african and jewish.

welcome to canada.

what i've stated repeatedly is that my father would have identified as french or italian. but, he knew he had a more complex background. he's told me stories about kids asking him what tribe he was from when he was playing shinny and, clueless, he would say "italian".

i was just told i was french on his side, and i never really thought about it until i got out of high school - although other people certainly felt the need to think about it for me, and i did get a fair amount of stares and comments that it took me a long time to really figure out.

i know that my paternal grandmother was adopted, and the story is that her parents were killed in a mob hit. there may have been a mixed jewish-italian romance at the heart of it. these are just stories. but, the kind of unstated, understood fact about my grandfather's father is that he wasn't around, and nobody really knows.

and, listen - i'm not a damn jew.

or, at least, i'm not a member of the jewish faith. and, i know. i wrote the damn post.

i don't know my father's ethnicity with certainty, and i have reasons to suspect some near eastern heritage, but he wasn't a damn jew, either.

and, his father wasn't, either. nor was his mother. catholics, the lot of them.

i don't know, when you go back further than that, and i suspect that my paternal great-grandfather may have been the identity politics unicorn of a hebrew-african-indigenous mix. further, if he did have some african in him, it was probably from, like madagascar, because he has a rare, austronesian blood type. the only other way to make sense of the blood type is through some kind of inuit background.

i should probably take the damn test.

but, the fact is that i've never been in a synagogue in my life, and i doubt that my father ever had been, and i doubt that his father ever had been, either.

in ontario, it's 42%. in favour.

that's more than governing parties usually get.

yeah.

they did a poll, and 45% of british columbians support the religious symbols ban in quebec. that's the highest for any province outside of quebec.

the more you know, huh?

do i think that similar legislation could ever pass in other provinces?

i'm not aware of any movement for it.

i'm going to guess that the calculation at the federal level amongst all of the parties is that, while it may gain passive support with passive voters, it's not worth whipping up the opposition. it's one of those things where you might get 51% of passive voters to passively support it, but that 15% that is going to strongly oppose it is going to cause a havoc, when they do. it's a loud, vocal opposition - and it's not worth the headache, especially given that i don't think that any of the sitting leaders have any particular conviction for it. trudeau is an empty vessel, and to an extent it doesn't really matter what he thinks, as a person.

quebec has a weird spectrum that is at the root of this as a political issue. in provinces like ontario and manitoba that maintain the traditional 3 + 1 or 3 + 2 canadian spectrum (that is liberal, conservative, ndp and a usual fourth, sometimes fifth, party), the same calculation as exists at the federal level is probably dominant, but in the provinces that have less stable spectrums, one could see it coming up as a potential issue.

the province with the highest incidence of non-belief in canada is not ontario or quebec but british columbia. could the bc liberals support something like this? alberta is perhaps too conservative to talk about something like this, but saskatchewan is a more interesting test case. these are places where a secular left could use it as a wedge issue against a pseudo-left party that is embracing tory multiculturalism as a core identity. how many atheist asians in bc would support this?

i think you'd have to see it in a second or third province before the liberals in ontario took it seriously - and i would expect both the ndp and the conservatives to strenuously oppose it, here. it would have to be the liberals, if it were to happen at all.

i couldn't really imagine it gaining traction anywhere in the united states, but america is a much more religious country. canada is more european, in that sense.

i'm not making predictions, i'm just thinking out loud. but, i do have a feeling that it's a policy that we're going to see more of, not less of.

let's hope we don't have to talk about this again, now.

i mean, i say this over and over again: i'm in total solidarity with the apostates.

i'm not just saying that.

i really mean it.

i'll march with them.

like, when i bump into an arab at a gay beer having a beer, i don't generally have to worry too much about them trying to crucify me.

in general.

they're cool.

thanks.

but, i want to talk about something important this election, please.

and, i always have to say this, because people get easily confused: it is very important for the secular left to realize (if perhaps not necessary to actually state.) that, as we are shifting our primary opponents from christianity to islam as a result of existing and projected shifts in demographic, that we do not make the mistake of assuming that people from specific backgrounds hold specific beliefs.

not all arabs are sunnis. there are plenty of arab atheists, and they should be embraced as any other atheist would be.

not all persians are shias. there are plenty of godless iranians, and they should be embraced as any other heathen would be.

and, further it's important to be proportionate, too. crescent earrings are not niqabs, and not everybody that you meet that calls themselves a muslim wants to round up the apostates and burn them. you have to be sure to properly interpolate what you see in front of you.

but, as atheists, we need to get used to the fact that we're going to be struggling less and less against christians and more and more against muslims, as the proportion and power of them wanes and shifts - until, in the end, they just merge.

i mean, that is the future of canada - an overwhelmingly secular society, where muslims are the most populous religious minority and christianity has been largely discarded.

that means that, as atheists, we need to start changing the goal posts. we need to re-evaluate who our opponents are.

but, it doesn't mean that we're under imminent threat of sharia law - or, at least, it doesn't, if we remain vigilant against it.

the facts are pretty clear that we're on the path towards a majority atheist electorate, now, within a couple of cycles.

there is admittedly a threat to this that comes from overwhelmingly high levels of right-leaning recent immigrants, and it's something that atheists need to take seriously, but so long as we're vigilant about it and conscious enough about pushing for real integration - which the bill in quebec is an example of - it's something we should be able to handily overcome and convincingly defeat.

i try very hard to avoid being alarmist about immigration, while sticking to the facts the best i can. the facts are that high levels of low-income immigration into the urban cores where i live hurts low income people by straining the social system, and you can choose to blame that on underfunding or on immigration, but the basic fact of the matter holds itself steady - it creates a higher level of competition amongst people that are already having a hard time competing, and you'd only deny that if you're ignorant or stupid. people in the suburbs or in rural areas are more likely to be wealthy and consequently less likely to be affected by the increasing competition, even if they're more like likely to be christians. in the long run, we should expect christians and muslims to form an alliance with each other, because they're basically the same.

but, the facts are also that the power of atheism in the very near future should absolutely dwarf that of muslims. we might live in a country with 20% muslims within a generation or two - and that's a big change. but, such a society would also have 60% atheists.

so, i know who my biggest threats are, and i know what i need to be wary of. the sitting government is certainly moving in the wrong direction, on this, without question. but, i'm far more excited about the coming atheist supermajority than i am worried about the eclipse of christianity by islam.

we're going to win, it's going to be ok.

i mean, it's a trick right out of orwell to suggest that rejecting a regression to medievalism is "conservatism" because it's pushing back against change, while supporting a societal regression is liberal because it's promoting "change".

and, i don't think that orwell invented the term reactionaryism.

we could just use a little bit of help, rather than hindrance, in our goal of heathenizing the immigrants by governments that claim to be liberal, that's all.

it may take a change of titular power, but, in the end, the liberal party will support this bill, and the conservative party will oppose it.

no, it isn't, and tory media talking heads like john ibbitson can fuck right off for trying to make it one.

the party leaders need to be clear that this is a local issue that is intrinsically tied to quebecois self-determination, and the federal government has no role to play in interfering, before or after the election.

but, as a non-quebecker, the blunt, basic truth is that the election is too important to waste on a triviality that only exists inside of quebec. i don't fucking care, one way or the other.

the rest of the country has more important things to concern itself with.

worse, i'm flat out sick of muslims being at the centre of the political discourse. they're a small, privileged minority in this country and should not receive such a disproportionately high amount of space in the discussion. they're over-represented just about everywhere. we're a secular society that upholds liberal concepts of law, and we're going to get more secular and more liberal, if we can find a way to grapple with the demographic bulge and convert them all to heathenism. the discourse should better reflect it.

atheists intend to win this fight, you know.

again: i think they should have let the court clean it up. but, i don't think the basic purpose of the law is unconstitutional, and the reality is that you have to take an exceedingly conservative view of the constitution to think that it is, a view that may be popular in the institutions but has minimal support in actual case law.

i'd rather talk about the recent ruling on assisted suicide.

and, i insist this election be about anything else.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-quebecs-religious-symbols-ban-a-major-issue-in-federal-election/

so, there's an election in canada, and this is an issue: what's the correct take on the new nafta? is this better or worse?

it's not obvious...

i followed the discussions relatively closely up to a point, and then i more or less tuned out entirely, and there's a series of reasons for it. one of the more embarrassing things to have to deal with during the process was realizing that canada was taking an explicitly pro-investor position on the deal, while trump was legitimately pushing for workers' rights. trudeau is several degrees to the right of trump on this issue; trudeau isn't even a corporatist democrat like obama, he's more of a market conservative like elizabeth warren or paul ryan. like, you couldn't even get one of those trademark platitudes out of trudeau on the issue - he was strictly, 100% concerned about the rights of canadian investors. that's the actual reason he tried to build a common front with mexico - his dominant interest was insuring that the investor class didn't take a hit.

on the issue of environmental and labour standards, trump did come through on this, even if he had to cut trudeau out of the discussion and make the deal directly with mexico. enforcement is always another question, but at least the text of the deal is better for workers, on it's face.

i would have liked to completely abolish chapter 19, as it has done nothing but harm for workers on both sides of the border. unfortunately, our government - interested solely in the rights of investors - refused to sign on unless it was included. that this position was insisted upon by a liberal government is to our great shame and national embarrassment.

so, i'm standing over here on the far left and that's twice that i agree with trump on free trade and disagree with trudeau.

yes, it's going to give the pharmaceuticals more patent rights for a specific class of new drugs, but if we can bring in pharmacare then we can socialize the cost of it. so, it's a different discussion up here. i may oppose it in principle, but i'm more in support of pharmacare than i am in opposition to intellectual property rights, so it's the former i'd rather focus on (and the best way to do that is to reduce the liberals to a minority and then let them take credit for it as a vote-buying scheme, not to elect an ndp government that is going to see it die in committee). might a spike in costs actually help piss people off?

there's some opening up of the dairy market that was probably unnecessary, but that's not sustainable in the long run. quebec will start a civil war before it gives up supply management. and, what consultation was there with quebec, who has not signed our constitution? they may even just ignore the agreement.

trade experts claim it'll probably be a wash, in terms of gdp, with the united states benefiting slightly at the expense of canada and mexico. i can't blame them for that. i have to blame my own government for that.

so, i almost want to suggest separating apathy over the deal from opposition to my own government around it. i neither see a reason to oppose the deal any more strenuously than i already opposed it, nor a reason to ease up on my existing strenuous opposition. so, i'm still of the opinion that we need to renegotiate nafta, and i'm still likely to vote for people arguing for a renegotiation of nafta. in that sense, the whole thing was really just a stupid waste of time. but, the process badly exposed both the deep incompetence of justin trudeau and the deep incompetence of his team, particularly the incompetence of chrystia freeland, who i would really like to see lose her seat in this election.

so, given that abolition is not an option and the choice is between the old nafta and the new nafta, do you support this or not?

i don't think there's a clear answer. you need to look at it closely and figure out what your self-interests are.

back at the end of july or the beginning of august, i suggested that we might have the last serious weekend of the summer as early as the first or second weekend of august. that's a crazy suggestion, right? was i right?

well, let's first understand that i'm talking about overnights. in mid-summer, i'm often going to leave the house at 20:00 or 21:00 and come back at 9:00 or 10:00 the next morning. to me, that's a good summer night. so, i want warm temperatures overnight! i know some people may even hate me for it, but the mid-afternoon heat is kind of irrelevant to me, if i'm sleeping through it.

further, warm temperatures overnight should mean that the low is not much lower than 20 degrees - so, like, 17, minimum. when it came to weekends, we didn't get many more after the 4th. one, in fact - the 16th-18th, due to the hurricane. next weekend may be a nice surprise, but we'll see what happens...

so, there may have been some hot days this august, and that's not surprising. it's august. where were the hot nights? again: some of you may even be happy about it. but, i like the heat...

blue checks are the days i was outside partying in some way or another.  highlighted dates are the warm overnights. underlined reds are the cold-ish ones. black xes are the weekends i stayed in.
 

...but, here in the north, we're also about to embark on our yearly retreat from the sun.

i wasn't planning on going anywhere this week anyways, but they've cut the temperature down a little. it's not cold this weekend, exactly, but the overnights are dipping to below 15 degrees celsius, and it's not going to be fun to be out in at 5:00 or 6:00.

the forecast for next weekend looks a tad better, but i somehow doubt that's going to actually happen. we'll see, i guess.

and what causes those high pressure systems? atmospheric cooling.

there may be potential for something like this to push the jetstream in the east, where i am, down even further. the way that would work would be that the warm temperatures in the north pacific would keep the jetstream high up over alaska, thereby plunging it south through the middle of the continent. this would result in a warmer than usual fall in the west, and deep freezes in the east - along with serious late fall tornado activity in the plain states. so, it could be the kind of year here you get frost days in florida.

it would go away when the high pressure system lifts, and the imminent return of the sun would have to help.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/the-2019-blob-pacific-ocean-weather-patterns-autumn-fall

this is a simple, easy-to-understand summary of what i was saying that cites a recently released report for relevance:

https://theconversation.com/ipccs-land-report-shows-the-problem-with-farming-based-around-oil-not-soil-121643

there are some python films that i saw over and over again through my teenage years, and there are some that i saw once or twice in elementary school, and there are some that i haven't seen at all.

i do know that i saw the life of bryan when i was very very small, but i don't remember seeing it twice, and i remember thinking it was kind of slow-moving and not very funny. granted, i may have missed some context, given that i was about ten years old or something. but, it hasn't really come up much, since.

i don't really feel that missing a reference, however disingenuously cited, is particularly damaging to my credibility, and i apologize if you disagree and feel that it's absolutely pertinent, but i have to think you've somehow lost the plot if that's your takeaway from the process.

my father would have no doubt been quickly on it, but it's because he actually lived through it. my own knowledge of the troupe is mostly second-hand, given that i was born in 1981, which was after their most well known work had already been completed.

so, i'm ignorant of monty python, apparently.

that's the most substantive criticism i've received, yet; it's the best they can do, apparently.

it's almost as bad as the time i didn't catch a dr. seuss reference.

every legal scholar in the country knew this was going to happen, immediately after the bill was paassed.

and, i've actually cited it as evidence of wilson-raybould's less than stellar performance as justice minister. the drunk driving law is going to get struck down, too.

so, what does trudeau do?

well, first off, i guess it's now an election issue, isn't it? so, i would, first of all, recommend upholding the ruling.

then, if the liberals win, he needs to admit that his first ag was a dud, and let the one he's got now work it out. and, he may even be advised to recall some of her other bills prematurely, to prevent the court from wasting it's time with it.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2019/09/13/trudeau-facing-tough-choices-as-quebec-judge-strikes-down-federal-limits-on-assisted-dying.html

so, i did watch the debate, and i essentially think i wasted time doing it.

- biden looked older, yet again. but, the base is old....
- i already know that warren is a neo-liberal pretending to be something she isn't
- harris was a clown
- sanders was disappointing
- booker seemed too smart for his audience.
- everybody else wasted some time

meh.

and, booker.

same analysis as previous: cory booker is actually smart. he's not just pretending to be that way, not just projecting it, not just playing a smart guy on tv.

and, it's interesting to hear him talk. i'd like to drag him out to a few more of these things, because he's making positive contributions to the discussion.

but, his policies are questionable.

and, his appeal is perhaps marginal.

in the end, he may do better with white voters than black voters.

overall, beto seems to be essentially the same thing as warren, just a bit younger and with better hair.

and, i'm going to push back for the same reasons.

and, yes - i drink a lot of soy.

in canada, soy production is mandated by law to be local.

beto's answer there to the sunrise/cowspiracy question was sneaky.

the idea that the tariffs are behind this is pretty specious. this is a decades old debate in brazil that broke open with the recent election of the far right, which was perhaps helped along by us interests, but was largely an internal process.

he's at least right to tie it to soy beans, though.

listen: there's no question that deforestation in brazil is a problem, and that it's tied to unsustainable land use decisions. but, what are the actual facts, here?

1) Five percent of all beef — chilled, frozen and cooked — imported to the USA is from Brazil, according to Cassandra Fish, a cattle and beef market expert.

2) This year’s import contribution is projected to fall below 9% - just slightly under the overall average of 9.3% dating back to 2000.

let's be generous - let's say a full 10% of beef is imported.

5% of 10% is 0.5%.

3) The top exports of Brazil are Soybeans ($25.9B), Iron Ore ($20.1B), Crude Petroleum ($17.4B), Raw Sugar ($11.4B) and Cars ($6.78B).

we're on to beto, now.

 ....and, that's two questions from this "sunrise movement" about the cows.

where are they get their funding from, anyways?

and, again: livestock consumption is not a significant driver of climate change in the united states. it is only about 3-5% of total emissions, and only about 33% of agricultural emissions. that means that two thirds of emissions from agriculture come from plants.

buttigieg was right on this point: that's a republican talking point. more importantly, it's an industry talking point.

it's a distraction.

and, it lets us know who is paying for the event.

so, i've noticed this with buttigieg before, and i'm not going to go into details because i can't be bothered.

...but he states a lot of things that aren't true. he often does so with great confidence, as he attempts to project himself as an educated elite, and maybe that works in nowheresville, indiana, but the pretentious presentation of his mistruths don't actually make them more true.

now, i'm not exactly calling him a liar. i actually think the truth is that he's badly misinformed, and probably because he gets his information from poor sources.

there are two types of stupid people on this planet: those that know they're stupid, and those that don't. it's the ones that don't know it that scare me.

i've seen enough of him, and hope he stops wasting his time, soon.

but, for right now, i'm actually feeling a little bit sick, so i'm going to get some fruit and catch up on the debates - meaning the rest of the climate town hall, and the us debate from last night.

i'll get to the legal stuff this afternoon...

so, i'm not feeling like going out anywhere tonight, which means i've cleared my schedule out until next friday. that gives me a full seven days to get these lawsuits in order, and i'm setting a goal for myself to have the crux of it worked out by monday, when i'm going to need to start making a number of calls.

so, that's this week...

there's something afoot in canada right now.

we're collectively fed up. this is a "throw the bums out" election, but we just can't find a better bum.

these scenarios are unpredictable. but, what's going to happen is predictably unpredictable, and that means you can take some rough guesses.

when the smoke clears, expect a lot of dead bodies, and a few unexpected winners.

when i am agreeing with jonathan kay's defense of elizabeth may, we've already descended into the rabbit hole.

it's a legal issue, it's not a political one. abortion rights are under no threat in this country. and, sane people should be pushing back against the demagoguery around the idea that they are.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jonathan-kay-why-progressives-desperately-stifle-any-dissent-on-abortion-even-from-elizabeth-may

listen, i want to be clear on the point: i have, in the past, loudly argued for the ouster of elizabeth may, and the reasoning behind it was largely to do with her religious beliefs (i don't think that ordained ministers should even be allowed to run for city council, let alone prime minister, however nominally). the evidence is in this mass of posts.

so, do not mistake me for an elizabeth may fan, and do not mistake my endorsement as genuine. if i thought she had any chance at governing, i would be endorsing a spoiled ballot, at this point.

but, she is the least worst option, by far, in a group of absolutely terrible options.

i could grade them like this:

scheer - F
trudeau - F
singh - F
may - C-

maybe the point is a little clearer, when i put it like that.

my support for the greens is as a protest vote. i'm not voting with my heart, i'm voting with my colon. if it leads to a broken parliament, that's the desire - it's intended to fuck things up, to cause chaos, to generate instability.

the ultimate aim needs to be the resignation of justin trudeau. reducing him to a minority is a step on that path. the greens are in the right place at the right time to use for that purpose.

and, it won't be very far into the future until i'm back to arguing that may needs to resign for the greens to get to the next level.

i have to say this, though.

it's really tiring - annoying, actually - to hear singh consistently relate every question to a baseless anecdote. it's all this "i met with..." or "i talked to...", as though that means anything.

i don't care who you met with, or who you talked to.

i met with the abominable snowman, and he told me about the existential threats to his habitat that come with climate change. he told me about the sorrow he felt, after losing the last yeti. when will it end?

stop this bullshit. give me policies. give me facts. give me data. this is supposed to be an adult conversation. keep your stories for your children.....

i've watched a bunch of the canadian debate tonight, which is linked to below, and i'm convinced that trudeau made a dramatic error in skipping it.

a few things.

1) singh comes off as an empty suit. tepid. flat. uninspiring.
2) scheer is running on an issue - balanced budgets - that canadians don't care about. to an extent, he's speaking solely to his base, as they have almost no room for growth, but, in doing so, he's misunderstanding it. if this is his campaign, it's going to have turnout issues.
3) may exists. therefore, she wins.

canada is a deeply polarized country, politically, but the polarization is not symmetrical. the perpetual truth is that the motive of the vast majority of canadians is to vote against the conservative party, in some way. the empty podium on stage could just as well belong to stephen harper. by ceding the attack against scheer to his opponents, trudeau is diminishing his own relevance.

but, i keep saying this: they're stupid.

may killed it. over and over. she was the only serious candidate on stage. and, we'll see if it moves the numbers or not.

what i saw tonight is just more evidence for the tipping point.

this picture made me laugh in fits for twenty minutes.

he's been prime minister for, what, five minutes? first thing he does is lie to the queen.

i'm just imagining 65 million shocked brits.

did you lie to the queen, boris?

(boris can now be seen lowering his gaze, and fidgeting his foot)

boris. how could you?

warren had the right answer for the cowspiracy people, anyways. that could very well turn out to be the most substantive part of this long, surreal charade.

she seems to think that the answer to the problem is to legislate emissions targets and let the market figure it out, a mentality that i would argue is actually a part of the problem. we're not going to solve the problems that markets have created in our society by insisting on the implementation of more markets, that's the definition of insanity. solving the climate crisis means turning market theory on it's head, which has been the entire crux of the movement on the left, from the start. what warren is saying sounds more in line with a greenwashing campaign, or the imposition of "green capitalism".

she seems wary of carbon taxes, and i share that lack of enthusiasm, but if you think a carbon tax will have minimal effect, why would you expect a regulatory process to have an effect? doesn't recognizing that people are willing to pay more for gas (at the expense of consumption spending in other sectors) imply realizing that businesses are willing to pay the fines as a cost of business and consumers are willing to eat cost increases as just another type of inflation? and, where do you think that banning behaviours or products is going to get you, if the reason you're resorting to it is that you can't find an incentive system that actually works?

i would not be likely to support these kinds of proposals. as more and more details of them emerge, you can expect me to be increasingly critical of them. and, i will debunk them using their own language, that is the language of market theory.

this should be seen as a defining difference between warren and sanders. the world needs america to pony up and spend on transition, not some more twentieth-century platitudes about incentivizing actors in free markets; that's been the status quo for thirty years.

does elizabeth warren always take speed before she does town halls?

so, it just decided not to bother warming up today - the temperature has been roughly steady since 2:00 this morning. i'm feeling like the better choice is to stay in for the night.

i took a gamble on the rain last night, deducing that the jet stream's retreat to just north of here would keep the humidity high and the storm path just far enough away to not bother me. i got that part right, but convection storms from the heat were stronger than i thought they would be and lingered into the early morning. it did clear up, but not before it rained pretty hard, and not until the bars were closed, and i didn't get my park party out of it. i had fun anyways, and have a few stories.

i left around 18:30 to try and catch a break in the rain - i knew it was going to rain again, but expected it to clear out around midnight. so, i expected the ride to hamtramck to need to be done in stints, kind of thing. it had been spitting off and on all day downtown (there were more serious storms elsewhere), but the convection finally broke moments after i got to the bus shelter. i checked today to see how much rain actually fell (it was a lot) and was reminded of the locality of it - i guess it wasn't raining at the airport, because the official record says it wasn't raining at all. but, a news report suggested there was 40 mm of rain in some parts of the city yesterday, which is a daily rainfall record.

those numbers can't be for downtown, where it was mostly dry before the skies opened, and the downpour only lasted twenty minutes. but, for those twenty minutes, it rained about as hard as it can rain. i wasn't in it; i actually found myself enjoying the after-rain air. detroit continues to have some serious air quality issues due to industrialization, so a good rainstorm is that much more refreshing when it hits. it's actually one of the better times to enjoy playing outside.

the ride to hamtramck was through thick humidity and sweaty as fuck, but the rain restrained itself until i got there - when it promptly started back up again. it mostly cleared out before the show was over, but the ride to the second bar was a little drizzly.

the first band, not ok, was actually pretty much ok. ok? ok. they did a style of generic emo-core. i'm going to leave it at that.

the savage seven seemed to downplay their silliness a little in the live setting, partly because the singer was a little less confident than i expected him to be. there's a swagger on the recording that is central to the presentation and was perhaps missing in the show. i'd encourage him to try and capture that better when he's performing. they're a kind of novelty act style rock band with a bit of a very early detroit rock feel, and they pulled it off at points in the set.

wizard rifle, a two piece guitar & drum duo, were on point, even if i was hoping for a longer set in a bar that cleared out before midnight. the mix was dominated by their powerful drummer, who, name-dropped influences aside, actually sounded most like dave grohl going to town. the guitar work is mostly riff-based, but it has an angularity to it that gives it a dose of manic energy, and he makes liberal use of an effects chain to scuzz up the sound. they wear their influences prominently, often jumping into sections that sound like they were taken directly from king crimson or lightning bolt tracks, but that's alright, because they mix it up and rip it apart. they appear to be from portland, and have relocated to detroit; this was the first night of a us tour, so they had some sound issues with the mix. basically, they need to turn the guitars and vocals up in order to compete with the muscular drumming.

as mentioned, the ride to the next bar was a little bit drizzly, but not too bad. i missed the actual event, some kind of industry mixer, while lost in a bit of my own drama: somewhere, somehow i lost a $20, which was also my last $20 for the night.

i strictly carry cash when i'm in detroit, because the banking system is a messy situation. i took money out of a machine in detroit for the first time a few weeks ago, but my debit card won't work. nor do i carry a credit card. so, if i run out of cash, i'll at least need to find a machine, and that machine will need to be on the right network. i'm also looking at around $10 in service charges because it's an international transaction. so, i'm generally fairly paranoid about this, because i know that if i run out of cash in detroit that i'm more or less shit out of luck until i get home.

it was around 1:00 or so when i went to the washroom and checked my pockets to see how much i had left; i had a vague idea that it was around $20, but i don't usually do my accounting until later. so, what's in my pocket?

- keys? check.
- lighter? check.
- three cards: nexus card (border), debit card, health card (ohip.)? check.
- ziploc bags (to protect things in the rain)? check.
- bus fare in cdn dollars? check.
- american money? nope.

wait.

- american money? nope.

that can't be right. let's try this again...

- american money? nope.

fuck.

now, i admit i was a little bit drunk - i was fully conscious and coherent and capable of walking in straight lines and stuff, but even a simple amount of accounting would have benefited from some kind of ledger, and wasn't likely to happen strictly mentally at that point, or at least not correctly. i was also a little flustered. if i had sat down and centered myself and worked out each transaction that had occurred over the night, it would have been immediately clear that i dropped it somewhere. all that i was able to process entirely right there was that i knew i came to detroit with three 20s, and i knew i'd only broken two of them. so, i knew i was missing a $20.

well, it didn't evaporate. it didn't develop locomotion and run away. i guess it might have been pick-pocketed, but what are the chances, really? so, when you lose something you retrace your steps, right?

i had made two transactions at the bar, to that point. i thought i had given the door a $5 bill for cover, and i thought i had given the bartender three one dollar bills for a beer. i'm usually a pretty good bean counter; if i'm going to screw up, it's because i'm going to drop something out of my pocket when i'm rummaging through, but everybody fucks up sometimes. so, maybe i gave one of them a twenty by accident. i can ask, right?

the bartender was pretty certain - he'd have remembered it, because he'd have been surprised by it. and, i had to make the point - i'm not being confrontational, i'm not making accusations, i've just lost some cash and am trying to figure out if i can find it.

the door person was a little less certain - she claimed she couldn't remember, but insisted that if she did then she'd have given me change. her honesty opened a window for me, because if she'd just had said "no. you gave me a $5.", i would have shrugged and walked off. the fact that she was like "i dunno. maybe you did give me a $20.", left me prodding her to remember, to be certain, to be sure; but, as that was happening, i remembered that i gave her a $5, so i had to apologize and walk off.

well, what's next? i might have dropped it near my bike...

nope.

by that point, i'd gotten over the initial shock and sobered up a little due to necessity (it's funny how that happens), so i was able to think it through a little better. i had $61. i spent $9 at the 7/11, $12 + $12 = $24 at the rock show, $5 on cover and $3 dollars on one beer at marble. so i should have.....$20. i should have had a $20, a $5 and three $1s on my way into the bar. if i had accidentally given the door person a $20, i'd still have the $5. if i had accidentally given the bartender a $20, i'd still have the $1. so, i lost the $20; this is my fault.

i made sure that the relevant people were aware of this fact, that i was taking responsibility for losing the cash and not blaming or accusing anybody, when i got back into the bar, went out for a smoke and started cruising for pot, instead.

but, then, something kind of cool happened: somebody tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the $20. it was found by bar staff on the ground.

(and, no, gay people are not recruited. but, i think you'd be being daft in taking that skit too seriously)

by that time, the bar was nearly closed, and the music had shut down, so i only got one more in before it was time to go - no dancing, not much talking, even.

nobody at the park...

i stopped at the gas station at trumbull & warren to get smokes, and lit one up before i got back on my bike. a car full of dudes screeches to a halt an inch from me, and a couple of them get out.

"how much?"

what?

"i said, how much?"

*pause*

no.

"but you're standing right there."

in front of my bike?

"i'm a go into the store, you stay right there."

i was gone before he came back out, and finished my smoke up at the benches on cass, just south of warren.

i had had 10 drinks and been gifted some pot at that point, so i was inebriated, but i was in control and the night was crystal clear until i got to the diner; i just got a coffee, but i seem to have dozed off, and it gets a little blurry for a bit around 4:00. i vaguely recall getting yelled at by a homeless person, but i don't recall the context.

i dozed off a second time at the bus stop, and had to be honked at by the driver to wake me up. but, i'm ok, clearly.

i got me some pasta.

i took me a shower.

and i slept most of the day.

if i'm going to a show, i'm going to a show. where the show is doesn't matter - i'm going to the show.

but, if i'm going for drinks, i want to avoid spaces where....what i'm concerned about is being mistaken for cis.

it depends, really. i feel safer in a mixed setting, usually, and i'm not too keen about getting hit on by gay guys, either. so, if i'm going to go dancing, i'd rather go dancing in a place that is mostly straight, so long as it isn't oppressively so - i'd rather be the weirdo, sort of thing. unfortunately, the bars on the strip in windsor are horrible places that are going to exert exaggerated concepts of hetero-normativity, and that i'm not going to want to go into, for that reason. i've never been into most of these places, but i've walked by there frequently, and it's enough to scare me off. i know i'm going to get stuck with some straight guy all over me when all i actually want to do is dance...

so, i'd feel safer in a queer bar.

but, there doesn't appear to actually be the option. it's a show at phog, or bust.

i did a quick google search and it doesn't appear that there are any gay bars in windsor, although a few have recently closed. and, i found some articles documenting something similar happening in hamilton.

i'm not going to research this, so this is a deduction and, like all deductions, should be contradicted via evidence, should any arise.

but, it's easy enough to figure this out: gay men, especially, are largely looking for sex, and they're going to get what they're looking for quicker and faster in an online personal site than in a bar. so, you'd expect a decline in explicitly queer hangout spaces to follow as a corollary to the rise of internet personals, given that everybody knows that the actual purpose of them was always explicitly sexual.

i can always check out phog mid-week.

but, the cursive show is looking more likely.

and, i don't even know where the gay bars even are in windsor.

the early forecast is that it's going to be beautiful next week, but with the uncertainty of the track...

...and there's nothing happening, as far as i can see.

i'm not just going to go out for beers, if there's no bands. that's boring. so, this whole exercise might collapse in on itself, in the end.

i haven't really started on the legal stuff, yet. i've been sleepy. that's ok, i have time.

it's looking to me like the storm is going to track about 100 km north of here, but, as it's been all year, it's almost impossible to be certain about it.

i'm itchy. i want to get out of here tonight if i can. so, i'm going to get ready for it, and if i have to reverse that choice around 18:00 or so, so be it..

trump wasn't exactly an anti-war candidate.

but, if obama was the alter-war candidate, and clinton was the ultra-war candidate, trump was the less-war candidate.

i know that certain media outlets wanted to push a narrative of trump being unhinged, and even being in cahoots with russia. this was all very silly, and is all very easily deconstructed, but the concern was always that he'd kind of lose interest in foreign policy and let the party take control. that's how bolton got there in the first place.

what trump actually ran on, what was a central part of his populist rhetoric, was an invocation of the "glorious isolation" pushed by conservatives in the early part of the last century.

i think there's a role to play for international institutions; i'm not opposed to global governance. but, i'll take isolationism over the perverted trostkyism of the neo-conservative clique, which is just a demented front for the war lobby.

john bolton was probably the single most dangerous person in washington. i'm not naive enough to expect his removal to be enough to spin trump back towards his campaign promises on a quasi-isolationist foreign policy, but it's just about the most positive thing you could possibly hope for from this administration. this is good news.

the press is predictably lionizing bolton for preventing trump from making "mistakes" in north korea, syria and iran....

i've been clear on this point: i think he had an electoral mandate to withdraw, and he's broken it. bolton has essentially operated as a representative for the deep state, trying to keep the president in line. while it's not clear that his replacement will be better, i can't imagine it being much worse.

john bolton is not an american hero, and doesn't deserve your respect or admiration. john bolton is a war criminal, and he deserves to spend the rest of his life in a jail cell.

who's next, though?

koo koo ka fucking chew.

and, good riddance.

he was never as openly irreligious as my mother often was.

but, neither of them had any meaningful beliefs, and neither of them made any attempt to steer me towards anything, either way. they were hands off, in that respect.

in fact, for the last years of his life, about 2007-2011, not including his battle with cancer, my father spent sunday mornings with me on a breakfast date. i would often end up cancelling due to hangovers, or something else. but, the general ritual was that he'd pick me up at 9:00 or 10:00, and we'd go get eggs at one of a handful of diners up on wellington. and, we'd catch up on what happened that week...

it was quite important to him.

what i didn't realize until a while into it was that he dropped my stepmother off at church on the way to picking me up, and picked her up on the way home. so, it was partly a "get out of church" card.

as always, they asked bernie a lot of stupid questions, and he just had to spend the time doing damage control.

he was fully bilingual, but he didn't read much, in either language.

even late into life, this was probably his favourite piece of literature:

in fact, the effects of maurice richard on quebecois identity are quite substantial.

he was a quasi-religious figure that was seen by many as a messiah that would save them from anglo hegemony.

much has been written on this topic.

so, that wasn't merely a glib comment; there was some truth to the idea that the rocket was bigger than jesus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Riot

i did not participate in the seconds or third sacraments at my catholic elementary school.

and, again: my mother's parents were anglican, but she never went to church out of her own will. she may have identified vaguely as a deist, but i would actually categorize her as more of a laveyan satanist.

my father appears to have had a complex ethnic background that included jewish, italian, french canadian, native american and potentially african-american ancestry, but he was baptized as an infant and raised a roman catholic. his father looked pretty jewish, but had a pure laine quebecois mother, and identified as a francophone roman catholic, as well. i never saw him go to church of his own free will, either; he was vaguely deist, but i think the truth is that he just didn't think about it much. what did religion have to do with the habs winning the cup, anyways? he believed more in maurice richard than he did in jesus; his real religion was hockey.

i was not baptized as an infant. i actually remember my baptism, at the age of four. at the time, the public school system started at grade one, and the catholic school system had two years of kindergarten. so, i was baptized into the catholic church by my satanist mother as a cynical ploy to get me to go to school. and, don't be too kind about her motives: she was a brutal alcoholic and was trying to find something to do with me.

by the time i was about nine or ten, i'd decided that religion was ridiculous, and i never wavered on the point.

so, i'm not religiously or culturally jewish - my dad would have identified as italian or french. and, i'm not roman catholic in any meaningful sense, either.

send the right-libertarians and anarcho-capitalists back to the nihilist right; i won't organize with them.

a holistic, coherent, environmentalist politics needs to understand the dangers posed by second-hand smoke exposure, and stand up for the people trying to minimize their exposure to it, by fighting for bans on residential smoking.

stop.

you stand with the natives when they fight for clean water, but you won't stand with your own people when they fight for smoke-free housing?

you're a hypocrite.

and, to be clear: under canadian law, she did not have an absolute right to smoke in the house.

she just didn't.

that's how it is...

maybe i should explain the law, here.

when a tenant makes a smoke complaint, the landlord has the obligation to make a good faith effort to resolve it. the landlord can't just tell the tenant "if you don't like it, leave". that would be against the landlord tenant act, and open up the landlord to serious litigation by the tenant. in very, very rare cases, it could even lead to charges of criminal negligence.

second-hand smoke kills people. it's not trivial. it's a serious complaint, and it's a big deal when a tenant makes it.

but, that's exactly what the landlord did. she verbatim told me "if you don't like the smoke, leave.". so, i sued her for a few thousand dollars - mostly to get the funds i needed to move, because i live on disability, and can't just up and move on a whim. and, i think it's pretty fucking obvious that if she wasn't going to make any attempt to address the second-hand smoke, then she had a moral and legal obligation to pay for my way out of the unit.

in order for me to win that case, i had to find a way to prove in court that she was actually smoking in the house. it should be obvious that i don't care if she smokes away from the house. she can even swallow a fucking tailpipe for all i care - my interest in her as a living entity was purely, absolutely nihil. and, i'm not a christian, so i don't care about being nice to my neighbours, especially when they won't respect my basic rights. to hell with her. she didn't give a fuck about my rights, so i showed her the same absolute level of disrespect that she showed me, and she deserved any fallout that she got from it for being a self-centered piece of shit. am i sounding more and more like a cop, here?

so, how could i prove that she was smoking inside? i could film her, which would be pretty invasive. i could get an air quality test, which would be expensive. i could subpoena her, which might not even work. the easiest, most fail-proof way to demonstrate my claim in court was to get a police report. so, that's what i did. and, fuck her.

you can accuse me of being anti-social if you want, and i won't disagree with you so much as i'll justify my actions as being proportionate and reasonable, in context. but, suggesting i acted like a cop is just specious.

and, i'll say it again: it's the cops that call other people cops. real people don't act like that.

and, i'll say this: if you're concerned about me retaliating, you're right to be. i'm easy-going, but i'm not a pacifist. i don't look for trouble - that's easy to see. but, if you fuck with me, i'll fuck with you, and i won't apologize for it.

so, don't fuck with me and we'll get along....

and, i need to be very clear and explicit about this point: claims that i'm a police officer are ridiculous, and easily debunked by anybody who's spent more than a few minutes with me.

but, that's not the point i'm making, here. the point i'm making is that you should in general be very suspicious about people that go around calling other people cops.

because those are the actual cops.

trust me: i've been around. i've been in activist circles. i've been in party scenes. the cops are the ones that call other people cops.

and, don't get meta, because i'm not pointing specific fingers, i'm laying down a general rule.

the call that i made was with the sole intent of generating documents for then upcoming litigation. i needed documents for the case i filed against the landlord, as i needed a way to prove in court that the neighbour was, in fact, smoking drugs in the house. in canada, you can't actually get arrested for smoking drugs, anwyays - and i never intended for them to drag her away, or something. the call was a domestic disturbance complaint around an individual that was refusing to respect my rights, as a tenant, to live in smoke-free housing. and, i won the case that i generated the documents around - i don't regret it, and i'd do it again. to attempt to draw some kind of connection between making a domestic disturbance complaint against a neighbour that was being legitimately disrespectful in the face of ridiculous negligence by the landlord and being some kind of a narc is entirely specious. well, unless you think that i don't have any rights, in which case you'd be legally and morally completely fucking wrong, as demonstrated by the fact that i won the case.

again: you might not think it from seeing me out and about, but i can peg a cop, because i've been around. and, i'll tell you flat out: if there's somebody on my case about this, that person is a cop, and you should get away from them. this is how they operate, through divide and conquer.

i'm a threat. they want to alienate me.

if you're reading this, you realize that.

to be clear: what's happening is that all of that nice humidity is coming up (partly from the hurricane, and partly just because it's at it's maximum extent; i get that), but...

at some point, at any time of the year, no matter what, the humidity is going to smash into the jet stream. both of these things are there all of the time. in the hottest days of the summer, you hope that happens somewhere up near hudson bay, because the jet stream has retreated. by november, that starts happening considerably south of here, over the ohio river, or further south.

i mean, i'm complaining about the possibility of rain. but, at least i'm almost getting the heat. if i was in sudbury or thunder bay, i'd be experiencing autumn.

for this week, detroit is right where the cold from the jet stream and the warmth from the oceans are smashing into each other, and that's actually pretty normal for....a little later, but around this time of year. it's often the event that transitions from summer to fall.

so, the forecast appears to have been a little eager about the warmth, and rather than get that last bit of humidity, we might wake up after the system passes in a few days in full blown autumn.

i'm not a clairvoyant, it's not about whether i predicted the weather weeks in advance, it's just a question of understanding what's going on. forecasting the weather always comes with a lot of uncertainty. but, what's happening isn't surprising, anyways - this aggressive jet stream has been dominating the weather here for months.

so, i've got this worked out pretty authoritatively, but it seems like the weather is going to keep me locked up. it's going to at least try to be warm, but i keep telling you that i'm right on that nasty jet stream, which is acting up, and the worst case scenario is that it rains non-stop for the next week, as what's left of the summer gets plowed over by the polar vortex.

so, i will probably only make it to one or two of these, unfortunately. 

11th: wizard rifle @ sanctuary--->marble--->park
12th: hot snakes @ small's ---->marble---> park

13th:
19:00-22:00 - strange beautiful music @ dia.
22:30-???? - hide @ small's
secret late night party #1

i will not be doing a full weekend, this week. in fact, saturday is shaping up to be a little cold, and i'll probably want to just stay in.

14th:
17:00 23:00 - strange beautiful music @ dso
secret late night party #2

15th:
no show

16th: cursive @ blind pig----> long bike ride home.

17th, 18th, 19th:
no show.

20th-22nd - potential three day party that would include human eye, severed heads, man man, luke vibert and tunic and that i'll work the details out for closer to the date.

realistically, i'm hoping to get out for the 11th and 12th and, if i do, i could very well stay in for the weekend. but, if i get rained out both days, and it seems nice, i could feel like i need to get out of the house, sort of thing. about the only way i go to the cursive show is if i get completely rained out.

i have not left the house since the 2nd, after all. i might get itchy, if i get stuck.

and, now, i need to get to work on the legal stuff. after a nap...

the cause of the housing collapse was that wages have not kept up with inflation.

it's inequality....

while i'm not going to support the privatization of "freddie mac" and "fannie mae", i think that this is a sector where the government has a valid role in, i don't really think that what happened in 2008 had much to do with them, or that predictions of collapse from spinning them off are particularly grounded.

which isn't to say that i don't think the economy is teetering on the brink. i actually do.

but, just to say that when it tips over, you should probably avoid blaming it on this policy.

yeah. there's nothing today.

and, i'm hoping i don't get rained out tomorrow, now, too.

*shrug*.

the other thing to point out is that it's foolish to compare the 2018 midterms to the 2020 presidential election because the electoral system is entirely incomparable.

if you follow the 2018 playbook, you should probably expect the 2016 results.

the most recent example of it actually working was the 2015 federal election in canada.

and, while it turned out that justin trudeau was a filthy, rotten liar, that's not the question at hand.

i want to interject a more important point: this is not a historical norm. turnout has been at historical lows for around 20 years or so. so, if you're looking deep into the past for examples of a recent phenomenon, you shouldn't be surprised not to find much.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/10/democrats-turnout-2020-election-228040

i'm starting to think i'm going to end up defending biden more often than i'd like to, because, in group discussion scenarios, he tends to be detail-oriented. this isn't idealism v pragmatism. it's not left v right; i don't really agree with him. but, he's wonkish where others aren't, and i appreciate that.

he came off better than all of the candidates that came before him. he's taking the issue seriously, at least.

but, he's visibly aging. he looks older every time i see him. and, at some point...

but, there's no evidence, yet. and, if he's not much older than the average primary voter, it might not at all.

oh - and inri000 should finally get a first draft of liner notes added to it, too.

so, i'm tentatively done with 10/2013, except the travel blog which i'll do last.

politics: 417 pages
music journal: 98 pages
deathtokoalas: 79 pages

as mentioned, the politics page had mirrors of old essays and web documents. that's done, but i did a lot of writing for the next few months, so the documents will remain heavy.

i will not be finalizing or publishing these documents until i get the legal documents done. so, this is to be put aside for a little while.

i'm going to stop to eat, convince myself that i'm staying in tonight and will then get to the legal writing by mid-afternoon.

i'm not jello biafra.

and, i'm sure we could get into a couple of nice arguments about a lot of things.

but, when a person's main artistic message is "think for yourself", he should expect the people he influences to form disagreements with him.

isn't this refreshing, though?

i've got a few more days left for the 10/13 rebuild, but i'm done with the html archiving...

it's a part of the site. i'll just have to get through it.

and, it's just a few more months before the music becomes the dominant focus in early 2014.

this is what i was looking for.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/06/j-reacts-to-political-spectrum-and.html

the secular left is badly disenfranchised, right now. the closest thing to a candidate that we have is sanders, but he's a weak representative, himself.

the politician of the future that is going to break through to us is going to sound like a kucinich or a nader, and we're not going to care what s/he looks like.

i can't find the post where i ran myself against the most recent democrats over the political compass. we weren't even in the same quadrant.

the fact is that i would agree with barely half of what clinton said and proposed.

the correct perspective is actually that atheists - a growing, powerful demographic - are completely disenfranchised.

we used to have the liberal party up in canada, but they're in the process of imploding and it's not clear if we can salvage it after we turf trudeau. in the united states, if we're going to organize, we'll probably need to do it in a third party.

if you want more atheists to vote for you, stop talking about god all the fucking time.

the tone of this article is horrific, and the author deserves a talking to about it.

but, the simple reality is that the spectrum sucks. i've pointed this out before. when there are acceptable candidates, we'll vote for them.

but don't run hillary clinton or al gore (or barack obama...or elizabeth warren....or michael ignatieff) for president and then get bitchy at atheists for refusing to vote for them. they're simply not representative of where we stand in the spectrum, and we're simply not going to vote for something that we don't believe in.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/08/prodding-irreligious-left-vote