ok, looking into this is...

no. this needs to be appealed. this isn't a judicial question, and the court is overstepping it's bounds; i would appeal it on grounds of parliamentary supremacy, and argue it's not specific enough in scope to react to it. i do agree that vavilov is irrelevant.

so there's an objective criteria that allows the united states to be seen as a "safe country". this is from a government of canada website as a summary:

the legislation requires that the review of a designated country be based on the following four factors:

(1) whether it is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1984 Convention Against Torture;
(2) its policies and practices with respect to claims under the 1951 Refugee Convention, and its obligations under the 1984 Convention Against Torture;
(3) its human rights record; and
(4) whether it is party to an agreement with the Government of Canada for the purpose of sharing responsibility with respect to claims for refugee protection.

In addition, the Governor in Council may issue directives to provide greater clarity on the review process. The current directives came into effect in June 2015. Under these directives:

For the United States:
The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will monitor, on a continual basis, the four factors described above and report to the Governor in Council should circumstances warrant.

For any other countries that may be designated as safe third countries in the future:
The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will review on a continual basis the four factors described above and will report to the Governor in Council regularly.

Reviews incorporate information obtained from a number of sources, including United Nations organizations, international human rights organizations, government agency reports, statistical records and policy announcements, relevant academic research, and media reports.

so, that's what actual domestic canadian law says about what it means to be a safe country.

i don't know how a court can walk in and undo that without even addressing it. if we put a country on the list and it hadn't signed that convention, the court could undo it. but, the court can't substitute itself for parliament and decide whether that is true or not, it can only interpret whether the laws are being followed or not.

that is, applying a correctness standard doesn't mean adjudicating whether the question is true or not, it means determining whether the law was applied correctly or not. giving deference to the proper branch, in context, is not about vavilov, it's about a separation of powers.

rather, the ruling did two things. first, it scratched out section e from the following law, which is what the above summarizes

101 (1) A claim is ineligible to be referred to the Refugee Protection Division if

(a) refugee protection has been conferred on the claimant under this Act;
(b) a claim for refugee protection by the claimant has been rejected by the Board;
(c) a prior claim by the claimant was determined to be ineligible to be referred to the Refugee Protection Division, or to have been withdrawn or abandoned;
(c.1) the claimant has, before making a claim for refugee protection in Canada, made a claim for refugee protection to a country other than Canada, and the fact of its having been made has been confirmed in accordance with an agreement or arrangement entered into by Canada and that country for the purpose of facilitating information sharing to assist in the administration and enforcement of their immigration and citizenship laws;
(d) the claimant has been recognized as a Convention refugee by a country other than Canada and can be sent or returned to that country;
(e) the claimant came directly or indirectly to Canada from a country designated by the regulations, other than a country of their nationality or their former habitual residence; or
(f) the claimant has been determined to be inadmissible on grounds of security, violating human or international rights, serious criminality or organized criminality, except for persons who are inadmissible solely on the grounds of paragraph 35(1)(c).

i posted the whole thing for context, because that's much more limited than i thought it would be. i thought they scratched the whole thing out....

the court is in it's jurisdiction here - it can cross that out. and, i don't really disagree. it's overly broad. but, by doing so, it's not taking the united states off the list - it's abolishing a specific clause in the criteria. further, my understanding is that these specific cases would have likely been denied under section c, anyways.

the other thing it scratched out is this:

Designation — United States

159.3 The United States is designated under paragraph 102(1)(a) of the Act as a country that complies with Article 33 of the Refugee Convention and Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture, and is a designated country for the purpose of the application of paragraph 101(1)(e) of the Act.

what has the court done here? it has carried out an executive task, and that is beyond it's jurisdiction. it's not up to the court to decide whether or not this is true. that's not about deference, it's about separation.

what the court can do is order a review of the question, and people can then even challenge that review. but the court can't make an executive choice like that that determines the outcome of the review for them; that's not the correct branch of government.

so, what should they do?

i initially suggested they rewrite the law to more specifically address the things they were initially concerned about (like draft dodging after the iraq war), but i thought i was dealing with the actual agreement as something that got struck down. that is, i thought they struck down the stca itself, and they did not - those clauses are from the irpa. that's bad reporting from global, that's why you have to read things yourself, and i apologize for posting over bad coverage without debunking the msm article, first.

now that i realize that that's not the case, there really isn't anything to rewrite.

had the court only scratched out the first part, i'd accept the ruling.

but, they can't accept the judge going in there and doing the job of government in scratching out the second part. they need to appeal the second part on the grounds that the court is overreaching it's jurisdiction, and it can't reasonably make a decision like that in a court room.

that said, it may be time to launch a review and present a report around the topic. is the united states abiding by the cited international law? if it is, let us see the evidence for it, and a paper supporting it; if it is not, the law should be adjusted accordingly.

the point is that the question is being addressed by the wrong branch of government, and the executive has to push back for that reason. they may, in the end, agree with the court. but, they have to actually do that review first - which is, of course, subject to review, and even on a correctness basis, although vavilov would appear to suggest deference to the minister in situations where the decision is explicitly legislated.

so, they should appeal.

but, they should get the point and launch a review, too.

the ruling is here:
https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/482757/index.do

"these guys don't tell me anything" - ronald reagan

as absurd as it is, he actually has plausible deniability.

and, don't be surprised if he uses it.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7203337/trudeau-we-charity-foundation-real-estate-holding-company/

it's an interesting ruling, and clear demonstration that you don't need to be a citizen in this country to have rights.

generally speaking, a candidate will be able to successfully claim refugee status here if they can convincingly argue that they are risk of inhumane treatment when returned to their home country. the basis of the agreement is that this isn't of serious concern when speaking of the united states, so that can be discarded a priori; instead, we will just return applicants when they appear.

opening up refugee status to americans like this presents a potential "floodgate of litigation" type scenario. we might grant people refugee status for a wide array of concerns, from escaping conscription to concerns about capital punishment to even avoiding prosecution for drug-related convictions. i believe that the actual purpose of the agreement had more to do with claims of this sort than with the types of claims that people may be imagining, right now.

but, that is because the types of thing people are imagining are legitimately novel. it saddens me to think that our court system is being forced to consider the ramifications of returning people to the united states because they may be tortured in prison. that's a very sad day for the united states of america.

but, insofar as that is true, we certainly should not be treating the united states differently; if people really are getting tortured in domestic prisons in the united states, we need to weigh sending people into their system the same way we view sending people to oppressive regimes, like iran.

if the government wants to keep the actual purpose of the legislation in place, it may help to rewrite it to be more specific. i'm actually on the side of people fleeing conscription, but i'm less excited about being a safe haven for drug traffickers. so, i would respond to the ruling by clarifying the legislation, rather than abolishing it, or appealing the ruling. and, i'm not entirely sure how i'd clarify it - i might have to think that through very carefully, and spend some time explicitly studying it, first.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7205230/federal-court-rules-canada-u-s-safe-third-country-agreement-unconstitutional/

the gyms are essentially renting the equipment, like blockbuster used to rent movies. but, technology changes and if the price of buying the equipment is less than the price of renting it in the medium term then there's no really future in renting it. the virus is just a catalyst, here.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7206604/canadians-cancelling-gym-memberships-coronavirus/

so, they don't have any actual leads and have made up what is really a ridiculous story.

a loving father just randomly crashed his car, left without his phone, and smuggled his perhaps injured kids into a cabin, where he killed them days later and then killed himself.

?

more likely, i think, is that somebody smashed up that car, and then took the three of them into that cabin where they were held hostage. that third party ultimately carried out the murders, and managed to succeed in making carpentier's death look like a suicide.

the cops have nothing, so they're just closing it up.

but, did anybody at least print the cabin?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/sq-update-martin-carpentier-daughters-1.5658615

no, he will never hear the end of that.

ever.

trudeau's new campaign song for his campaign for gg?

if you want an american comparison, ford is really more like that utter dipshit chris christie than a trump or anything like that.

and, i spoke too soon; the temperature in here just started falling.

it could have been the laundry that was effective, in the end.

hrmmn.

<cartman>

i'm not lazy! i'm efficient!

</cartman>

and, he'd probably tell you he's not lazy.

no.

he's "efficient".

he wishes he could say that about his metabolism too, right?

"i gotta pass it every month. fuck. whoever wrote these rules was such a hardass. i don't even walk around the block every month, you know?"

doug ford isn't scary, in that sense - he's a lazy, incompetent idiot. he's not some scary dictator.

i'm more afraid of chrystia freeland than i am of doug ford, even if i have a greater level of contempt for doug ford.

i said my bit about this.

i would rather that they continue to pass emergency legislation than do what they're doing, but i'm not interpreting this as a power grab. rather, this is the consequence of electing a fat, lazy piece of shit.

no, really - the reason this is happening is just simply because doug ford is too lazy to do it the right way. and, we should be grateful that he's so fucking lazy, too.

so, i would have voted against this as well, but i'm not particularly freaked out about it - so long as we all make sure to hold him to his sunset clause, when it comes up. that's key.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/belinda-karahalios-cambridge-progressive-conservative-1.5658084

this is just a reminder that i supported the mcguinty government for years, and was broadly supportive of the wynne government, although i don't think i actually voted for them directly.

when i was in ottawa, i voted for yasir naqvi (who i interpreted as an atheist) on several occasions. i didn't vote in 2014 because i had just moved here but i voted for the green party in 2018, due to concerns about some of the messaging around marijuana from the wynne campaign, which i interpreted as a desperate embrace of racist messaging.

so, i voted green to give the liberals a time-out.

...despite being very aware that the riding was not seriously in play.

the temperature in here seems to have flipped over around 6:00-7:00 or so, and i do suspect he turned something off.

so, thank you, pigs.

i'm sure this is surreal for everybody. i seem to have been placed in a temporary surveillance cell, then granted a nexus card while living in it, have threatened to sue over air quality (that is better, at least) and am apparently causing workplace violation hazards, as i complain that it's too cold, while the cops sweat. i mean, if he really is a cop (he is.), that temperature may be being regulated by provincial legislation.

it'd be a lot of easier if the city just paid me out now so i can move on, rather than make me go through ten years worth of legal fights.

...and liberals are the new conservatives.

muslims are the new evangelicals.

you want evidence?

doug ford.

rob ford.

john tory...

i'm not talking about rural ridings.

i'm talking about toronto.

i mean, could you imagine the fallout if chrystia freeland decides she's going to walk through the front door of a mosque?

as the prime minister of the country, you'd think she could walk through the front door, right?

but, the party actually forces it's female mps and staff to walk through the back door for these events.

and, if she does sink to the level of walking through the back door, how likely are they to take her seriously?

this is a key concept through this blog, this developing contradiction between the strategies these fake left political movements are taking to win voters, and what that implies for the kind of policies they end up legislating. eventually, when you find yourself reliant on the votes of specific groups, you're going to end up legislating in ways that appeal to them - and you're going to need to float candidates that appeal to them in order to win.

so, what next?

i don't know. what i know is that the demographics to elect a female liberal prime minister do not exist in this country at this time; in order for the liberals to swing the demographics they need to swing, they can't run women, and they can't run gays.

the thing about the liberals running female candidates is that they've run themselves into a contradiction around it because so much of their vote relies on winning over religious minorities via identity politics.

it's actually far worse here because the demographics swing that much more towards what the apparatchiks call "diversity". but, when your aphorism of "diversity" is actually 70% in key ridings, you're just blurring the facts by using that kind of language.

the liberals are trying to build a political base on a coalition between mostly white feminists and mostly brown religious groups. it's a total contradiction. and, while the white feminist groups may help strengthen wins in areas they would have already won (a triviality in the system.), the actual swing ridings are mostly focused around these mostly brown religious voters.

it's kind of similar to the kind of coalition that the republicans tried to build between moderates and evangelicals, and we see how that turned out.

the reality is that their electoral strategy means that they can't win with a female leader, and it's not clear that they understand that; if you want to build a coalition largely around religious groups, you're going to need to run a male leader to keep their interest.

so, what's left? leftists are going to hate chrystia freeland. the religious groups won't vote for a woman. so, you're left with this milquetoast suburban white female vote that is perhaps very excited about freeland, but should realize they live in a bubble around it.

freeland may end up as this generation's kim campbell, in the end - she may become pm for a few weeks or months on her way to massive defeat.

but, there's a reason that the uk has seen seen female conservative pms and has not seen female labour pms.

and, i suspect that the first serious female pm in canada will be a conservative.

speaking of which, i wanted to say something about what appears to be a developing movement to replace trudeau with freeland...

...which is likely to end in disaster. freeland is basically a fascist who ended up in the liberal party because it's the natural governing party, the canadian equivalent of an american neo-con that ended up in the republican party as a vehicle for power. she's very blatantly very far to the right of centre, and has a history of pretty vicious language against popular left-wing movements. any delusions that people continue to drag around about trudeau are going to evaporate on contact with freeland. freeland clearly doesn't respect trudeau very much. so, the major winner of a freeland coup is likely to be the ndp.

and, she lives on a different planet, so she's likely to argue the opposite - that canada is a culturally conservative country, and i'm out of the spectrum. we've seen this over and over - we saw it with ignatieff (who nearly allowed the ndp to actually win.), and we saw it with paul martin (who wasn't able to prevent an ndp surge from putting the conservatives in power). the ndp will shoot up ten points overnight...

but, what's going on? there used to be a kind of chretien faction on one side and a trudeau-freeland faction on the other. now, it seems like the entire machinery is aligning around freeland, and what's left of a chretien faction is fading fast.

these corruption scandals aren't helping, and i'm sure that the deep state upper management in the liberal party (the chretien/desmarais camp) is getting antsy about it.

but, what seems to have actually happened is that trudeau got stuck isolating, and found out people liked it better when he wasn't there.

i don't know if they try to do this to avoid losing the next election (which is stupid. trudeau will outpoll freeland on his worst day and her best.) or if they're planning on what to do when he inevitably does lose the next election.

but, unless some kind of movement develops to stop it, it seems like that's where we're heading.

and, hey.

if the liberals really need the governor-general to be black, they can always send trudeau out in costume.

if we have to have one (and we might. we have a constitution. i don't remember, but i think getting rid of the office is probably a difficult task. but do we have enough difficult tasks at this point to open the damn thing up?), do you know who would be a good fit for the next governor-general?

justin trudeau.

it's perhaps a better reflection of his talents and abilities, as well as his background. it's a role for an aristocrat...

he wouldn't even have to move.

science is so last decade.

the cool thing now is blackness.

it's hardly what anybody on the street wants. but, when you organize around race, this is what you get.

i'm surprised that the governor-general has staffers, and i'm curious as to what kind of "work" it is that was declared to be "shit". i didn't think the governor-general did any actual work at all...

this is a ceremonial post. she has to sign things sometimes, but she's not expected to actually think about it. it's just that somebody has to sign certain things as a formality, due to the nature of the state as a constitutional monarchy. and, that is what canada is - our head of state remains the queen of england. the queen is not supposed to think about what she signs either, and all the governor-general is supposed to do is sign things on her behalf.

i understand that she was chosen for this ceremonial role to demonstrate the role science will play in the sitting government, which it turns out has also been ceremonial (because this government has really been no less anti-science and no less willing to co-opt the science than the last). so, if she ends up shuffled out, it'll be interesting to see what kind of symbolic messaging gets attached to the process. i suspect the liberals may want to use this as some kind of hare-brained excuse to bring in a black governor-general, although we already went through that once.

but, beyond whatever symbolic messaging the government sends around this, the only time i like to talk about the governor-general is in the context of abolishing it, altogether. i would rather grasp upon the opportunity to minimize or otherwise discard the role, in the future.

whatever fleeting "work" it is that they're talking about, the job really shouldn't exist.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/julie-payette-governor-general-harassment-allegations-1.5657397

it helps that nobody wants to go to new brunswick, ever.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/covid-19-economic-recovery-new-brunswick-1.5658211

there's an interesting java applet on the page here. you can rewind it....

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/21/dr-ghaley-it-could-be-4-5-weeks-before-coronavirus-cases-decline/

california just passed new york in total cases, fwiw.

new york has half the population, so they're going to need to get to 820,000 before you're looking at a comparable infection rate. so, that's another 410,000 cases. at 10-15,000 cases/day, we're looking at at least another month.

don't be surprised if it's not much more than a month, though.

i think what it really demonstrates is that the virus must have been circulating in new york quite early on. that's the most probable cause of the time lag.

so, i started the migration to moving to the step for the night, and i decided to take a walk to get a grasp of the temperature. i came back in and realized that all of the things i'd been doing for the day to get the heat up in the unit had worked better than i thought, despite still getting that bone chilling reaction to the refrigerants. i've pointed out before that the "air conditioning effect" is very much like a windchill effect; it may say 25 on the thermostat, but it's going to feel more like 15 with the air conditioning. i ended up breaking out into another cold sweat within minutes. so, what next?

i took a shit, picked at my face a bit (at least all of the sweating is helping flush out my pores.) and noticed myself warming up a little. i suspect he turned the a/c off or down not long after i posted last, but i've also noticed something else: the fact that i was wearing shoes, meant my feet were off the cold floors. that appears to have made more of a difference than anything else i did, making me realize the extent of the problem being caused by the cold flooring.

the easy answer may be to put something over these tiles.

as the chills started coming down, i found myself mostly interested in what i've been trying to do, but can't due to the a.c: sleep. so, i napped for a few hours, and was up after midnight.

it was raining....i closed the window and knew i was in until the morning....

....and what i realized is that the other side of the apartment is much more pleasant, that this frustrating refrigeration is only happening on the side of the apartment i spend most of my time in; the air temperature on the side with the kitchen & bathroom was not being distorted by the refrigeration. it was actually almost comfortable in there.

so, i tried to force myself to finish the pasta and couldn't. i got some laundry done. and, i'm just waiting for it to warm up outside.

am i just sick? is that really what's happening?

i have no other symptoms, and a history of getting cold very easily. i'll admit that it feels a little like some kind of food poisoning, so maybe i ate something bad twice, but i don't feel i need to bring in the idea that i'm sick to explain this. i've been through violently adverse reactions to even minimal amounts of air conditioning far too many times for this. so, this seems more like the 76479th time i've been cold from air conditioning (it's admittedly extreme, but not by much) rather than the first time i caught this particular coronavirus.

it doesn't matter, really. i don't want to self-isolate, so i'm not getting tested. if i happened to pick it up at some store somewhere, i don't imagine that it'll take too long for me to clear it. but, i mean, is it possible that i picked up a virus, and that virus is exaggerating my natural aversion to indoor refrigeration? sure. but, it's just as likely that there was some bacteria in my bottle of caesar dressing, and it got me twice. or that i'm just an underweight transwoman with a bmi around 20 and i don't have the insulation required to adjust to large drops in temperature - especially not in the summer, when my diet cuts roughly in half, and especially not after long bike rides where i probably burned off upwards of 10 kg.

so, what now?

it doesn't seem like i'm going to get much done. i'm typing from my bedroom, but i can't sit in here, it's too cold. i might try to force myself to finish that pasta while watching physics lectures, until the heat comes up enough that i can get some sleep.

it's certainly not any better than last night (when i didn't get cold until around 3:00), so i need to get out of here for the night, at least.

unfortunately, there's some chance of rain tonight, but it looks fairly minor. the low is 21, which is ok with a sweater, but kind of a cool night, overall.

so, i'm just going to put a sweater on and go out sit on my step. i should be able to continue doing laundry, that way. and, i won't need to spend $10 on coffee.

it will get much better tomorrow. but, i learned today that the crux of the problem really is that the a/c is just simply set way too low. the high ended up being a slightly cool 27, which is still not much more than enough to turn the heat off, but the a/c was running like it was 45 degrees outside. it's just a fundamental disconnect with reality...

for right now, i just need to get to a warmer environment so i can do some work. we'll see what the long-term ramifications of what happened today really are, in time.

*sigh.*

unfortunately, it seems as though i'm going to have to sit in the shower all night to prevent myself from shivering.

i have a lot of work to catch up on, but i need to somehow adjust the environmental conditions to a way that allows me to actually work. it is simply too cold to function, right now.

i wonder if i could maybe go sit outside a timmy's somewhere, instead. it's not going to be hot tonight, but a sweater will probably work better at retaining heat outside.

let me take a hot shower first to warm up.

i can't handle sitting in here, shivering all night. but, if i end up having to evacuate due to the cold, i'm going to have to ask for a rent reduction.

i think everybody was surprised about how easily ottawa got off with this. i guess that, for whatever reason, it didn't really make it's way there earlier.

i'm sure it's been spreading in the local population for months (it's hit both montreal and toronto, so this is different than bc - it's actually maybe more like alberta), it just hasn't gotten into the hospital system, yet.

ottawa is famous for being a very big town rather than being a mid-sized city. the downtown core sucks; it's a boring, sleepy government town. so, the potential for spread is perhaps lower, because less things happen there - people that are interesting tend to leave ottawa in droves before they turn 30, because there's just nothing there.

but, if it's starting to pick up, it could very well go through a proper pandemic peak, which would put down reasonably bounds of about 1000 deaths or so.

the province didn't have the data required to make the decision, which is it's own fault. but, it should have known that ottawa was going to be a problem, once it finally hits.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/covid-19-43-new-cases-in-ottawa-drive-concerning-increase-in-ontarios-case-count

"fat shaming" is actually one of the best examples i know of that demonstrates just how badly this new fake left has lost it's way, in it's descent into what is actually progressive/conservative backwardsness.

any halfways decent leftist really ought to argue that fat shaming is a good thing, if it works, because it removes the need for more aggressive approaches to address the very serious problem of widespread obesity in contemporary society. and, if it doesn't work, what that means is that we need to find a better approach to cutting down obesity rates.

and, these fake left idiots all just called me a fag for (1) using big words and (2) arguing that obesity is a public health issue. i mean, that's where we are with these people.

stop stigmatizing stroke survivors! it's just natural variation. so what if people have strokes? have you never had a stroke? so, let's all accept having strokes and be more positive about it.

it's organized retardation. really. it shouldn't be political; rather, these fucking idiots ought to be condemned across the spectrum as being unable to string together a coherent thought. this is something that ought to be denounced by everybody, everywhere.

instead, it's slowly being embraced by both sides, as the number of obese people continues to skyrocket, year over year.

leftists should be arguing that we need stronger means of informal social control, not this weird, defeatist position that we should accept that it's ok to be unhealthy, and everybody has else has to adjust to the presence of large proportions of the population constantly being dangerously overweight.

an interesting, and perhaps understudied, development that's unfolding in front of us is a growing divide between those of us who are physically healthy and those of us who are overweight, or otherwise deeply unhealthy.

if you look at the stats, countries like the united states have enough obese people to form a strong voting bloc. it's maybe less true in canada, but it's heading in that direction.

it increasingly seems like the way things are unfolding is that the unhealthy are going to want the state to step in and protect them. this runs the gamut from locking down the society in a weak flu-like pandemic to protect them from getting sick (when everybody else can more or less shrug it off), to perspectives around what the new pseudo-left calls "fat shaming" (and what the literature more generally refers to as informal means of social control). a trend that may develop is that the healthy are going to end up increasingly resentful of the unhealthy, who are mostly that way due to poor lifestyle decisions, and increasingly disinterested in altering their lifestyles to accommodate for them.

i don't think it's fair to characterize this as a conflict between the strong and the weak, for the reason that the obese are going to lean towards the wealthier classes, and the more healthy classes will likely be the poorer ones. so, the model in place is not one of strong, wealthy people altering their lifestyles to protect those of the poor and vulnerable, but rather the healthy poor being forced to adjust to the unhealthy and excessive lifestyles of the upper middle class, the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. this strong/weak thing is too simple.

but, i've been dealing with this for years, and i'm increasingly frustrated. first, i had the obese retired idiot that insisted on setting the a/c below 20. then, i had the barely less obese "medicinal marijuana" user that was too lazy to smoke outside. i wouldn't be surprised to learn that they're both dead. and, now i have somebody that appears to need the a/c way too low to accommodate for a rather sedentary lifestyle. in each case, it's the same basic problem - i'm healthy and the other person isn't, and we can't tolerate the expectations required of each other to adjust to that difference.

which is to say that we may ultimately have a public health issue at the core of a developing political divide, and a developing problem with people that insist they have the right to be unhealthy, and that everybody else is obliged to accommodate them for it.

i mean, i wish i could just turn the heat up to about 27-28 or so and then let it sit there. that way, if we get a cooler dip, the heater could fill in to undo it.

we should return to more pleasant temperatures tomorrow and the next day.

for now, i'm going to just have to run the hot water and the stove to keep the heat up. i guess.

at least when you're hot, you can just wear less clothes.

when you're cold, there's no solution, generally.

see, this is outrageous, and i hope he gets a huge payout, in the end.

but, it's exactly why i won't get tested.

this is what the government does to you if you follow their advice and get tested, then assert you're an individual with rights, in this country.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-covid-man-jailed-brudenell-1.5657398

if you're going to turn the a/c on - if you have to. - you should have it to set to at least 30 degrees, so it doesn't kick in until it's actually hot, which is much warmer than 30, that's for sure.

i mean, your body temperature is 38. and, i'm sure i'd be happiest with the inside temperature close to that...

i'm going to eat because at least the stove is running in the other room...

i'm starting to shiver again. ugh.

it's only 24 degrees outside.

that's barely hot enough to turn the heat off, and he has the a/c on. fuck.

what does a person do, here? i can't open the window to let the heat in - it's not even hot out.

when somebody pays you over $700 worth of rent per month, they should have the right to never, ever be cold, as a result of it.

if that means turning the stove on for the next three months and sending the landlord the bill for it and then taking him to court for his negligence, so be it.

i'm not going to to turn myself into a drug addict to escape the air conditioning.

i'm going to get the heat in here up to reasonable, summer-like levels, which is the high 20s. somehow.

so, a few minutes after my last post, i started shivering again. as before, the temperature outside had recently plummeted from pleasant 30+ temperatures to generally unpleasant, but in context flat out cold, sub-20 degree temperatures, and i wasn't able to adjust to the sharp cool down without going into pre-hypothermia.

the a/c didn't help, but the root problem was the temperature change outside.

what do you do when you get cold in the summer? you can't turn the heat up. extra layers generally don't help. you can't go outside to warm up, because the problem is it cooled down outside.

i sat in the hot shower for almost four hours (and had to sit down), until the temperature warmed up in the unit enough that i stopped shivering, at least. that allowed me to finally get some sleep, at least.

now, it's cold in here because of the a/c, so i've got the stove running and the hot water running to counteract it.

i've made repeated complaints about the a/c and am just reacting to protect the sanctity of my health. these devices are horrible - i could have died of hypothermia this morning, and i would hope he'd be liable for third degree murder as a result of it.

and, i don't understand it. it was beautiful and hot out this week - not quite the nicest week of this year, but probably the nicest week of most years. why would you want it to be fucking cold?

for right now, i'm too distracted and agitated to do much of anything, so now i don't expect to do anything tonight.

maybe i should just go to sleep and wake up when the sun is up and i can re-open the windows to let the heat in (they're closed right now, because it's colder outside than it is in here).

yeah..

yeah, this is...

now i'm coming down off the nicotine, and i know i can do this, but this isn't good. it's distracting. ugh. i want to be more productive than this.

so, it's feeling more and more like i'm going to have to wait this out. i think that what i wanted to get out of my system is now out, and i could very well opt for a straight-edge approach to the rest of the summer, if i can just find a way to blunt the a/c in here. or, maybe i'll just start going for walks outside to warm up when i get cold.

i want to adjust to a concept of normalcy, but i don't want to waste the rest of the summer, so it may have to wait until christmas.

and, maybe the price will come down a little in the interim.

"i thought you wanted to be a rock star?"

all i've ever articulated is absolute contempt for rock stars and the lives they live. i don't even like rock music.

have you been to my bandcamp site? listen to some of it, the link is on the side.

i'm a composer. i make classical music. and, when i go to see a concert, it's almost certainly going to be some kind of experimental punk - not a rock band of any traditional construction.

the biggest venue i've been in in detroit is actually probably orchestra hall, to see some symphonies. the biggest concert i've been to since i've moved here was probably beethoven's fifth.

the only show i've seen at the ground floor majestic theatre was the melvins & melt banana gig (they opened for a british band that i think is terrible and always forget the name of), which was a few thousand people.

very, very few of the shows i go to have more than 100 people at them, and it's startlingly rare to get me at a concert with more than 1000 people.

i haven't been in any of the sports stadiums. i haven't been to the fox. i haven't been to the fillmore.

i suppose it's possible, but it's become less likely as older famous musicians die off. i don't want to assign a cut-off point or something, because it's getting across the wrong idea; while there have been very brief periods where mainstream music dips into the underground (1966-1970, 1989-1993), mainstream music has, in general, been unlistenable from the time that the concept of "mainstream" existed. but, i at least grew up with some of the older stuff. i don't have the slightest interest in contemporary pop.

so, i'd be more likely to go see somebody like peter gabriel than go to much of anything contemporary. as that generation dies, i'm going to be less and less likely to ever step foot into these venues. gen x just turned out to be a giant disappointment; they haven't demonstrated the same talent level as they've aged, or at least the ones that are alive haven't. we just don't have that space in pop culture for art anymore. the sports arenas are especially unlikely for me to ever go to, for that reason.

so, i'm actually not calling for the return of huge events; i don't actually care about big events. what i'm calling for is the return of intimate concerts in very small venues, which is all i've ever cared much for from the start.

yeah. option 4.

this was clearly a mob hit of some sort, and they're just playing with the incompetent cops in the region.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/martin-carpentier-body-found-1.5656886

so, as punishment for their crimes, what parliament should do is expropriate every dime of their property, throw the bourgeois residents on the street and convert the units into homeless shelters.

i don't want their charity.

they shouldn't exist at all.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/property-brothers-kielburgers-facing-scrutiny-over-we-organizations-50m-real-estate-empire/wcm/cf65d1ae-1432-4099-a8a8-f895283badc9/

so, just exempt yourself, then.

why march around in circles and chant? just do it.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/i-exempt-myself-protesters-march-against-mandatory-masks/wcm/ebd1834f-6dea-4f2b-868f-c15f66cf7d1e/

so, i got more ranting done today than cleaning, but i got myself cleaned (or at least a start on it. that sunburn back in june took weeks to heal, and because i had nowhere to go, i just let the dead skin sit to let it heal on it's own. the sense of wallowing in one's own filth that is associated with marijuana use (it's gross. it really is.) means that it really built up, and i now have a lot of dry skin to peel off.

i took a major pass at it on saturday, one today and i'll need to take another in another day or two. at the worst of it last week, it must have looked like i had eczema or something. it was just peeling off in strips, but i mostly just let it sit.

i'm also at least two shades of foundation darker than i was previously. it's probably closer to four. i didn't worry about it when i went on that ride to leamington, because i just never burn. in fact, i was out from noon until 22:00 biking over country roads in the direct sun, at just about high solstice. i never burn, but i got fried.

what usually happens is that i jump up a shade or so almost on contact with the sun (in april, or may) and that extra pigment entirely prevents any kind of burning for the rest of the year.

but, this year was weird. except to go out to smoke, i've been stuck inside since march, with no relief in sight. and, the sun didn't come out until june. so, when i finally got the chance, it wasn't until peak solstice, and i got roasted.

i've got laundry going...

...and i'm going to try to get some work done tonight, then make a choice tomorrow.

i don't expect to leave the house for a few days, at least. i just hope i don't get too cold, down here. even with the window wide open, and my thermometer showing a comfortable 28 degrees celsius, i can still feel the a/c sometimes and i don't like it at all.

listen.

we defeated tipper gore back in the 80s on censorship, and we'll beat these idiots out there pushing the same bullshit, now, too.

plexiglass.

seriously.

that's what they're saying.

https://www.blogto.com/sports_play/2020/07/concerts-events-ontario-stage-3-rules/

where are we?

what happened?

there's one, maybe two, venues in town that might have a show worth going to see once every few months.

and, if you put plexiglass in that venue, you'll ruin it; with social distancing in place, capacity in the space would be half of 50. the whole point is the intimacy of the venue. it makes no sense otherwise.

so, the plexiglass rule will need to be abolished before live music means anything, again, in windsor. that is, if it's followed at all. that's a crazy rule to put in place, and it's going to sink smaller venues if it stays in place too long.

i haven't been to a concert in a large venue in something like 20 years. i don't like the crowds. not to mention that i don't like pop music...

such stupid, pointless (and expensive.) rules will no doubt not be in place in detroit. but, how long do i have to fucking wait this out for?

when can bands start touring again?

this is what i care about, so stage 3 does not help me at all.

stage 3 is essentially useless to me, fwiw.

to put it another way, judging somebody based on their religious views isn't being prejudiced, because it's based on experience.

what does it mean to be prejudiced? it means you're pre-judging somebody, that is assuming that somebody is a specific way without evidence to uphold it.

so, saying that black men are good runners would be a prejudiced statement. while statistically true, there are lots of black men that can't run worth shit. if you were to judge how fast somebody could run based on their skin colour, you'd be operating in the realm of pseudo-science. even if statistical mechanics gives you a positive answer...

but, stating something about the views of a religious person, as they exist in front of you, is not prejudiced. rather, it is built on the experience of communicating with the person in front of you, as well as perhaps in doing some research into the topic. generally, this is actually going to be an informed statement about the person that comes from judging them from experience, rather than without it.

i'm opposed to prejudice, but i'm not a christian. i'll judge you all i fucking want, but i will do so based on experience, like i ought to. and, you can judge me, too - i'll just tell you to fuck off. the point is that, so long as the judgement is informed rather than uninformed, i see little problem with the actual judging.

i would like to see more judging done, in this matter.

what people believe does matter, and a lot of people should be called out for their oppressive religious beliefs, whether that means firing them or whatever else.

to be clear.

discriminating against somebody based on their appearance, ethnicity, country of origin, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation or any other triviality is very bad, always, and people that do it should be sued under appropriate tort law to pay for the damages they caused.

but, "discriminating" against somebody because of their beliefs is something that i think should happen more often, actually. i don't consider that to actually be discrimination, i consider that to be properly evaluating an individual and the appropriateness of their employment.

my interest is in holding up that mirror and emancipating workers from the deeply undemocratic political system of religious control, not in helping that system perpetuate itself or continue to hold people in ignorance.

this is why "religious freedom" is a contradiction in terms, like "work will set you free".

religion is a form of slavery, and nobody observing it is ever "free".

i mean, i know the argument is usually made the other way around - we talk about politics being a kind of religion, rather than religion being a kind of politics.

but, i'm an anarchist. i've read marx. i've read bakunin. i've read kropotkin. and, there is really a consistent thread through the left for really centuries that religion is a hierarchical tool of control, deployed by the aristocracy and/or bourgeoisie, to dominate the working class with. i'm not sure if any of these people really addressed the question directly, but i would be surprised to hear a marx or a bakunin disagree with me, if i presented the church as a basically political institution. stated or not, the concept saturates the historical left.

well.

what is the difference between a religion and a political party?

legally speaking, i don't see one - except that religions are tax-exempt, which i believe should not be the case. members of organized religions even pay dues to the party/church, generally.

i know we're supposed to separate these concepts, but i don't see where the separation actually is and must dissent. we should stop doing that.

i don't see anything particularly egregious about looking somebody in the eye and saying "i don't like you or want you to work for me because you're a christian" or "your islamic values are not consistent with those of my organization".

and, you can judge me if you want, i don't give a fuck.

"but, forcing religious people to change their clothes to fit the dress code is discrimination!"

actually, it's giving them a waiver from the dress code and "accommodating them" with special rules that is discrimination.

but, i don't acknowledge the validity of the concept of discrimination due to religion; religion is a belief system, and judging people by their beliefs (rather than their appearance) is the actual, correct way to judge people. sorry.

am i a hypocrite for supporting bans on religious icons, imagery and symbols in or near state-funded institutions?

it's a facile position.

first, it puts public health on the same priority level as "religious freedom", which i consider an oxymoron and would argue should be expunged from the constitution in favour of strict rules enforcing the separation of church and state. this is canada, we don't need to care about the first amendment, that's american. you might not be as extreme as i am about tipping the scales for the government on the side of secularism, but it is surely laughable to consider the "right" to chant incantations to your imaginary friend to be on the same level as a public health issue; one of these things is a serious issue, and the other one is about the most trivial thing imaginable. 

but, if i'm being principled about this and arguing that the state doesn't have the right to control a person's body, aren't i contradicting myself?

no, because enforcing a secularist separation of church and state in this case is really a dress code decision about employment, it's not a rule that people need to follow in their day to day life. nobody has ever suggested that you would ever have to take off your hijab to buy bananas, they've said that if these people want to go to work then they need to follow the dress code. further, we have existing legislation that has been tested at the supreme court that allows the state to put down restrictions on the spread of propaganda in state-run workplaces, as a conflict of interest - which is at the heart of the question, here. what quebeckers and various european nations have concluded is that bringing religious symbolism into the classroom or other government workplace is a conflict of interest, that it is spreading propaganda and that it needs to stop. yes, i agree with this - i don't think that children should be subject to any sort of religious exposure, whatsoever, in a scholastic context, and especially not at a young age where they can't process it and risk being brainwashed by it. i don't think that myself, as an adult, should be forced to interact with any sort of religious imagery when i seek government services, either.

the appropriate legislation to ban teachers and other government workers from bringing religious symbols and other religious propaganda into the classroom is covered by the hatch act in the united states - and i'll be clear, i would support banning even bringing religious symbolism into the classroom or other government workplace, at all. kirpans should be banned. kippahs should be banned. the crucifix should be banned. the ten commandments should be banned. any outward expression of any religious belief at all should be unwelcome in the classroom or other government workplace, in any way. and, that is a historically liberal position.

i miss the days when liberals fought against the ten commandments at school, rather than fought in favour of them.

there have been similar rulings in canada that specifically prevent political organizing in government workplaces, which is what i'm arguing that bringing religion into the classroom or other government workplace actually is. you may argue there is a difference between an organized religion and a political party, but i don't recognize the difference; legally speaking, a religion should be treated the same way as a political party, and all the same rules should apply when at work.

so, the reason it's not a contradiction is in the context. the right comparison to banning religion at work is to enforcing mask laws for employees, and while i might quit a job that required mask use, i would allow the employer the right to set a dress code because people can always get up and walk out. as a citizen, if you pass a law that says that i have to wear a mask to buy groceries (or am mandated to receive a needle), you're not giving me the opportunity to make a choice about employment, you're actually forcing me to do something i don't want to. everything else i said is fun, but that's the solution to the apparent contradiction - as a religious person, you would keep the right to quit your job if you don't like the dress code (or otherwise can't agree on a permanent ban of all religion at work). as a citizen, an indoor mask law does not give me the opportunity to make a choice to buy my groceries somewhere else where there is no rule, and a forced vaccination is just that much more egregious.

so, it's a false equivalence. and i'm actually entirely consistent.

i understand that my values may be different than yours, but i'm the one articulating a liberal vision that promotes bodily integrity, even while i support laws to ban any expression of religion in the classroom or other government workplaces, and you're the one that is promoting a right-wing, statist, tory position of control and dominance.

that is the principle i will stand up for and fight for and why i will resist mandatory vaccination, even if i don't fear it.

liberalism, as a concept, ought to mean that my body is my own, and only i have the right to decide what to put on it, and what i put in it.

and, that is what it will remain to mean to me, regardless of the newspeak and doublethink.

this new breed of morally aware liberal is, to me, just the most recent manifestation of exactly that kind of values-oriented conservatism that i simply can't tolerate.

remember: my primary political opponent, my dominant #1 enemy, the thing i fight against the hardest is always any sort of conservative value system.

i can even deal with capitalism.

and, i know these words are not as clear as they used to be.

but, i cannot tolerate conservatives, or people with conservative belief systems, and i will go out of my way to piss values-first conservatives off out of spite.

i know it's not their fault.

it's the state that forced you into compliance on this, not them.

still..

i could have a lingering resentment towards seniors for the rest of my life.

if antibody testing becomes available at some point, and covered by the provincial insurance monopoly, i'm sure i'll get tested for antibodies, just out of curiosity.

i haven't been sick at all this summer, so if i already got it then i got it earlier in the year (and, as mentioned, i got very sick last december), and probably in detroit. i certainly have no reason to think i may have caught it or spread it in windsor. but, honestly?

i don't really care if i've caught it, and i don't really care if i've spread it. i'm young and healthy. that's what matters. so, why would i get tested? it's unlikely to harm me much and, if i test positive, it's just an annoyance in my life that i don't want to deal with. so, i have no intent to get tested for the virus, itself, because, in terms of how it's going to affect my life, it just doesn't matter if i have it or not.

but, i get blood tests yearly to check my hormone levels, and i have tested for various stds in the past. i'm sure it'll eventually come up, and i'll make that request at that time. out of curiosity.

but, i have absolutely no interest in getting vaccinated, at all, whatsoever. and, if you don't like that, fuck off and stay away from me.

no, i need to be clear.

there is a 0% possibility that i will wear a mask in public, and a 0% possibility that i will a receive a vaccination for this virus.

it's not because i'm anti-vaccine. i'm sure it'll work, up to any potential seasonal mutations. and, i don't have any reason to think, at this point, that the vaccine will be unsafe.

rather, it's a matter of principle - if you're going to shut the world down over something that poses almost no threat to anybody under the age of 60, i will refuse to comply out of a position of principle.

i repeat: i'm not afraid of the vaccine, and i'm sure it'll work just fine. but, i'm still never getting vaccinated, because i just don't want to, and i'm going to insist on the right to refusal until this either blows over or they pin me down and force me to, in which case you can expect me to sue them.

i'm really, honestly just being purposefully difficult about this as a reaction to the statist response, which is simply not justified, in the context of the nature of the threat the issue poses.

they could have closed down the geriatric facilities. instead, they closed down the bars to stop it from getting into them, then failed. if that is society's priorities, whatever, but they're not mine, and i won't comply; if you're going to force me to live a lifestyle i don't consent to and don't want to live, expect push back for the sake of push back.

so, i'm going to be cleaning today, mostly.

and, i need to catch up tonight.

ok.

so, the last several weeks have not been productive, as i've been experimenting with how to adjust to maintaining pot in the house without smoking through it on binge mode. i essentially got overwhelmed by the wonderful weather, and needed to use it as an excuse to get outside to enjoy the heat, if nothing else.

i made that choice because that's what i wanted to do; now, however, it means i'm behind, and i need to catch up before i even consider getting back to the experiment, regardless of how nice out it is. so, i'm going to spend the next day or two (at least.) fully sober, cleaning and focused on catching up. after i've caught up, and when i do buy the next quarter, i'm going to be exceedingly strict about it for the first little while. i've got a better handle now on what the change actually means - i can get in the 35-42 range for most of the quarters i've bought, i can get about 100 joints per pouch of tobacco and i shouldn't be smoking cigarettes after joints. i just have to habitualize myself to the new normal.

the fifth quarter i purchased was a strain called "limelight", which is a higher thc content than the last few, pushing 25%. i was going to get another quarter of raider, but they were out and that was the sale item that week. i won't pay more than about $60/quarter, so i may just keep buying sale items for a while. the higher thc content probably offset the tolerance i was building, meaning i realized the higher potency, but i didn't often feel it. this is also a sativa strain that is ultimately a diesel hybrid, so it had that "sativa taste" that i'm actually not much of a fan of. it's kind of herby and weird; it doesn't taste like pot. but, i've been saying that for years, that's not a new observation.

i actually bought some flavoured rollies a few weeks ago, hoping that they would alter the smell of the burning joint to be a little more fruity. it turns out the sticky just tasted a little like strawberries. foiled. but, if you could cross a marijuana plant with a strawberry plant and get something that tastes and smells good, i'd be willing to jump to it. but, i don't exactly like the smell of burning diesel, and i'm not sure how we got to the point where people actually do.

don't misunderstand me: i know that diesel strains are popular, but i've always been disappointed when somebody hands me a j and i get what my brain says is that "sativa taste", which is in truth the diesel taste. so, i'll avoid this strain in the future, if there are better tasting and equally potent options available.

i would recommend the product, though, if you actually like the diesel taste. it came with a humidity regulator, good counts, minimal stems. if you could take the general product here and port it to a strong strain that tastes better, i'd keep coming back for it.

this is what i really want, though - a strain that smells and tastes like strawberries, and is 30-40% thc.

let's be clear that we understand what the cancer argument for recreational drugs actually is.

nobody is claiming that these mushrooms will cure cancer, although some marketing apparatus will eventually no doubt claim that they will, just as we saw with the marijuana industry, which was also never prescribed as a curative agent.

rather, the argument for allowing these patients legal access to these specific drugs is tied into the fact that they are terminal. as they are terminal, the argument goes, they ought to be allowed to die in the narcotic state of their choosing. after all, the doctors are just going to give them opioids anyways, right?

i can sympathize with this. in the end, i'd rather trip myself to the grave than spend it strung out on government heroin.

but, it's important to understand what the terms of debate are and what they are not. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/4-dying-canadians-wait-to-hear-if-they-ll-be-allowed-to-try-magic-mushrooms-for-their-anguish-1.5653083

i've previously argued against legalizing recreational mushrooms, for the reason that the market is mostly underage. i suppose that argument is malleable to shifts in demand, but the current cultural truth is that people grow out of mushrooms before any relevant legal age of purchase. my mushrooms phase was about 16-18, and that's potentially even a little older than normal; the psilocybin market is really more in the 14-17 range.

it would make the most amount of sense to legalize mdma, which is an adult drug of minimal harm that is generally sold in harmful impurities. most lingering adults in the psilocybin market would even be likely to switch to legal mdma, if it were available.

mushrooms are just kind of intense, as a commodity, which is why people stop doing them. ask around. virtually everybody that goes through their kiddy mushroom phase will tell you that they had to step back because it was messing with their concept of reality. mdma is really actually a better idea.

i don't want to shit on mushrooms too hard (they would defy me and grow, anyways). i had some good times. i can recommend them in the right scenario, after the right research has been done, at the right age. i may do them again one day. but, you learn to respect their powers and avoid them, except in special scenarios.

it just seems obvious to me that what happens with legal mushrooms is very low demand in the legal, adult market and the inevitable illegal dumping of the product to underage sellers, because the vendors can't sell it. nobody should strive for that. just let the market function underground, and maybe stop policing it instead.

again, that could change if a substantive end-of-life market develops. 

some google ad spam got me again on the faul mccartney story, and here's an interesting twist to that whole rumour.

if paul was really replaced by a lookalike, there's some chance that he faked his death, and might actually still be alive. if that were true, he'd have no doubt done it to escape the fame, and just disappear somewhere with some cash and exist. but, he would have no doubt eventually caught up with what happened to the beatles after his disappearance, and with john lennon and everything that john lennon became.

so, what if the real paul, the one that faked his death, and is still out there, is the actual person that orchestrated the assassination of john lennon?

well, it's possible.

he does start to look a little different around that time, though, doesn't he?

deaths in the united states due to coronavirus should increase dramatically this week.

actually, considering that we appear to be heading backwards in time after 2000, after nixon is indeed johnson.

i understand and agree that the nixon-trump comparisons are deeply flawed, but that's only true if you look at time as flowing in the forward direction. if nixon had been born today, and gone backwards in time to 1970, he'd have probably ended up a lot like trump, in the end.

following this model, that would suggest that biden will die in his second term and be replaced by a young vice-president that is perceived as "liberal" but is really a hawk.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/19/politics/joe-biden-donald-trump-suburban-voters-polling/index.html

well, i think dr jefferson needs to propose a mechanism before such an unravelling of virology can be taken seriously. is he proposing a global reservoir species? is it in the squirrels, and just jumps out due to climate change, or something?

no, really. for a man of his stature, this proposal is remarkably poorly worded, as though he's operating in some pre-socratic alter-reality where he's grappling with what the nature of a virus is. yet, we know very clearly that a virus is a piece of genetic material that requires a host to survive, and dismantles rather quickly in much of any kind of superzero temperatures. we also know how to sequence that genetic material from it's recent ancestors, which helps us understand the recent history of that genetic material, and it does not support dr jefferson's unusual and vague suggestions.

the question of pre-wuhan transmission is an intriguing one, though. while we can be sure that the virus originated recently in bats, evidence may force us to rethink where the jump occurred to humans, and how.

dr jefferson's suggestion, however, is interesting in the context of melting ice around the world, which is unthawing ancient viruses. we know that this idea of spontaneous virus generation is wrong for this virus, which came from bats. it might not be for the next one, which comes from a melting glacier...

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/the-coronavirus-may-not-have-originated-in-china-says-oxford-professor/

this is actually the same legal question i was up against a few years ago; the police think they can hold people on hybrid offences, and they can't. apparently, one of them is being held without any charge at all. you can expect that the justice released these people as soon as she was able to see the case.

see, and i think that the people on the street need a dose of reality as to the length of time required to process these individuals, to actually get the case in front of a justice. what i picked up from my own illegal arrest is that i was scheduled at the end of the day, because the first six hours of the day had already been booked by people coming in from the county jail. the precedent in canada is that habeas corpus is 24 hours, so there is no legal basis of complaint as long as they release you in 24 hours. that has led to a habit of scheduling randoms picked up on the street to the end of the day, after the day's scheduled appearances are done.

if there were more justices, or less inmates, then these things could be processed much faster. i guess that means that the protesters are really complaining about subpar social services, at the end of the day.

the cops need people to file cases in these situations and take them to court to get them to stop doing it. they do it because they get away with it, and it has to stop. that's why i'm suing, and i hope they sue as well.

so, what the cop should have done under canadian law was issue a summons to appear in court on charges of vandalism. while the police technically have the powers of arrest on charges involving hybrid offenses, they are supposed to only utilize it subject to a series of clauses that has been completely ejected from the process and was almost certainly not met, in this case.

that said, i do believe that a proper sentence once the issue works it's way into court would be to order these individuals to clean the statues. the placement of statues is a legitimate topic of democratic debate; their wanton destruction is most unfortunate, and quite barbaric. should it be democratically decided that these statues, which appear to have been of john a. macdonald (a drunk and a corrupt asshole no doubt), should no longer grace the steps of our parks and institutions, the correct step to take next would be to move them to museums, not douse them in paint.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2020/07/18/blm-toronto-continues-to-press-demands-to-defund-police-service/

first, she talks down lamar alexander, and then she slams betsy devos.

there is probably a dedicated anti-devos vote.

well, she could be an effective "attack dog", clearly.

no, listen.

biden is doing unusually well with white voters and, if that holds, he doesn't need to worry about eking out wisconsin by dominating the black vote in milwaukee. holding the upper midwest via cultural dominance is by far the superior strategy to eking out wins on the margins, like has been the norm in the party since obama. if they can just hold the upper midwest by winning back white voters, that is the dominant strategy. 

hrmmn.

did they search the area where the girls were for carpentier's body?

well, it was apparently a significant distance away. so, how did carpentier get from the car to the area to bury the girls?

there's really four possibilities:

(1) he buried the girls first, and then crashed trying to get away. that would appear to be what the cops assumed, but now they can't find him. this would also potentially be stretching time restraints. i've been following this for a while, and it didn't seem to make sense from the start.
(2) he set up an elaborate decoy, like something out of a mel gibson film (and there's lots of ideas to fake your death in films, something i wish cops would pay closer attention to) to trick the cops into thinking he was in a crash, while disappearing in a different direction. but, that really just makes the time issue that much worse, given that they were seen an hour earlier. he'd have had to kill the girls first, then set up the elaborate ruse, then get out.
(3) it rather seems like the more likely scenario is one where the car was forced off the road by another vehicle, and martin carpentier and his three daughters are ordered to get into it. the girls are then killed and buried, maybe as a result of something financial. this would suggest that carpentier ended up in the custody of some kind of third party at some sort. but, i would request that the area that the girls were found in be sorted through more carefully - the three of them may have been killed at once, and they may have missed his body. otherwise, he could be anywhere, dead or alive.
(4) if some entity wanted him and and/or his daughters killed, they could have created the decoy to make it look like a murder/suicide. they just can't find the body.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/manhunt-for-martin-carpentier-has-been-suspended-sq

oh, and hey republicans.

here's your easy trick to sink biden: he's yesterday's man. and, it's a perfect pivot from maga, too.

well?

if you present to me the hypothesis that structural sexism and structural racism both exist in the united states, with solutions to the racism lagging behind solutions to the sexism, then i would expect you to tell me afterwards that that structural oppression has led to less opportunities for people in that intersection.

if you were to tell me that all of this structural oppression exists, and then argue that there's a plethora of black female vp candidates to choose from, you'd be kind of contradicting yourself, wouldn't you?

the slim pickings in the field are just evidence that the hypothesis is right.

but, this isn't a vanity post. it's an important job, and it needs to go to somebody that has had those opportunities to build that experience.

if we want to make things more fair, the way to do it is to continue to ensure that opportunities are not restricted for those with specific identifiable characteristics, so they have the opportunity to build that experience for future opportunities.

the only halfways qualified candidate i've seen is susan rice, and she's terrible.

so, yes.

the fact that there are no qualified black female candidates is a consequence of the systemic racism and sexism that the country was founded on.

but, that doesn't mean it's not real.

there aren't any. let's move on.

i've stated previously that harris is toxic.

but, you'd might as well be voting for a scatter plot. you don't have the slightest idea where she stands on anything. it's just not an informed choice.

if there was an experienced black female legislator with a progressive streak to consider, i'd be happy to, but there kind of isn't anybody so he's looking at mayors and shit. the argument i made when this issue came up with supreme court judges in canada (they were looking for an indigenous candidate and couldn't find one) was that the best thing to do is look at promoting qualified people from the lower courts and wait it out, don't just promote an unqualified law prof to the highest court because of their ethnic background. the justice system is kind of important. i understand the identity politics, but you want to make sure that competency is the priority. in another generation, if more attention is paid to diversity in the lower courts, it should provide for better candidates, when the issue comes up at that time.

let's be real: it takes time for an emancipated population to develop. it was always hard to argue with a straight-face that obama was qualified for the job, even if he often sounded so very inspiring, and i'd bet biden knows better than most what the actual truth was when he first walked in there. whether picking obama over clinton ends up going down in history as a mistake or not (mccain was always a loose cannon...), it ought to have been a catastrophe, and i'm sure biden is fully cognizant of that, and everything that everybody did to hold things together with an unqualified president.

now, the situation is flipped over, and it's biden that is going to need the help. an effective vice-president is going to need to know how to pass legislation. she's going to have to have serious experience in the house, know who to call, etc. that's what biden could do, it's what cheney could do, it's what gore could do - and what pence can't do, because he doesn't have that experience.

so, i say give it another generation for some black women to work their way through congress and get that experience. as it is, today, right now, the women we have that are qualified are white - which reflects the changing reality of the last several decades, when white women were first in line for so long. that wasn't fair, but it's real, and so many years of being first in line back then means they are first in line, now.

so, let's focus on diversity for congress and all of the smaller offices, for now, and competency for the increasingly central role of vice-president.

well, i'd vote for patty murray over mike pence pretty fast, that's for sure.

i wouldn't even stop to think about that one.

that would actually be an excellent choice...

ok.

if this is what joe is thinking, he needs to pick a senator.

frankly, if this is what he wants, then the most obvious choice is hillary clinton. well, it is isn't it?

what he wants is a diane feinstein or a patty murray.

i don't like the names i've seen floating around, and would actually be more comfortable with an older senator that i understand well than one of these younger candidates that could turn out to be anything at all, in the end.

biden should not underestimate the importance of ensuring that the person he picks is able to take over without a tutor if he gets covid-19, or anything else happens to him. and, frankly, biden's not the luckiest man that's ever lived, either.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/joe-bidens-vice-president-powerful-history/614161/

in canada, this was pretty much the peak of action over the cold war.

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

and our natural opponent is, of course, not the americans.

rather, it's the russians.

who are actually more like us, overall.

how we approach baseball here really is a really big difference between canada and latin america, though.

in cuba, for example, they see baseball as a defining part of their culture, and try to use their baseball skills as some kind of proof that they're just as good as the americans are. in latin america, they like baseball because it's american.

canadians, on the other hand, tend to see baseball as something foreign that they don't actually want. we would rather grasp on to hockey as "our sport", cast out baseball as "their sport" and then define ourselves in opposition to america by pointing out that difference.

because, unlike latin americans, canadians very pointedly don't want to be americans. we really do see it as this defining difference, and really do largely reject the sport as alien. but, we're friendly people - and enough of us still find it exciting enough to watch it.

they're just buying into the concept too much and taking it too far and it's going to massively backfire.

if they're going to cancel baseball, then they should surely cancel tfws, too.

otherwise, they're just contradicting themselves.

well?

according the the canadian government, it's reasonable to allow desperately poor tfws that live in bunk beds over, but not reasonable to allow millionaires that will stay in hotels.

the only way to grapple with that kind of stupidity is that it's political; it makes no sense, otherwise.

canadians like hockey.

baseball, basketball, football? that's yankee bullshit...

and, it's true that this view is widely held in canada, but not to the extent that the government seems to be banking on it. we might mutter under our collective breaths about baseball being a foreign ideology, but nobody wants to ban it. people still like it.

and, baseball fans may not exactly be the party's base within toronto, itself.

but, doug ford just showed us that the toronto is willing to swing hard to the right when pushed to over trivialities.

this is going to piss a lot of people off enough to be a ballot issue. wait for it.

see, this isn't being driven by health policy. the amount of virus the team could bring in is insignificant, compared to what is already circulating; there's no logic in this.

rather, this is a part of a developing strategy by the federal government to stir up anti-americanism to distract from their own shitty pandemic response. that is, they think this is going to be popular.

i don't care about baseball, but i know a lot of people in toronto do, and i know that they're not likely to buy into some jingoist propaganda designed to try to get them to hate america to distract them from te government's incompetence.

this will backfire, terribly.

toronto is the party's base. it can't come close to winning without these seats,

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-to-reveal-blue-jays-decision-1.5654846

it's interesting to compare the outcomes in california v the outcomes in new york, now that a sufficient amount of time has passed to measure the different approaches. this is really setting itself up as the classic comparison to make in the united states.

first, note that the virus appeared in these places at about the same time.

new york was unprepared, dithered on shutting down the economy and suffered a swift and vicious attack by the virus, which rendered large amounts of it's population sick very quickly and threatened to overwhelm the system, although i'm not sure the data backs up that actually happening. today, some areas in new york are reporting upwards of 70% infection rates.

california, on the other hand, was quick to act decisively in locking down the economy and initially featured less of an outbreak, although the reality of persistent community spread was in fact apparent the whole time. while no doubt in reality an order of magnitude greater than discovered through testing, infection rates in california would appear to have been kept relatively low.

over the last few weeks, however, new york has opened with few significant problems, while california has seen the number of cases skyrocket, to the point that california is now only about 40,000 cases behind new york, in total number of discovered cases. but, this is an inexact comparison. so, california has had to extend and reinforce a lockdown that ultimately failed to prevent the outbreak that new york got nailed with, by being hit off guard; new york seems to be in the clear, as far as anybody can see.

while it initially seemed like the death rate in california was much lower, there seems to be little reason to think, at this point, that california will, in the end, avoid a loss of life on the same scale as that suffered in new york. so, all of this extended hardship is unlikely to come with any net benefit attached to it.

today, it seems like new york certainly took the less painful path.

so, i want to draw your attention to the model that i posted here many weeks ago that criticized the "flattening the curve" model:

new york end up being red, california ended up being blue.

this isn't a prediction, it's a model. please realize that.

but, the argument is supposed to be that the same number of people will get the virus anyways, so you'd might as well slow it down. one of the key points i'm trying to get across here is that if you slow the virus down then you reduce the speed of immunity, thereby increasing transmission - and you actually get twice as many cases because it takes twice as long to get to herd immunity. that sounds like it doesn't make sense, but there's a difference between developing antibodies and getting sick.

you can tweak this. maybe it takes 1.5x as long. it's a model, it's not a prediction.

the other thing i'm doing here is arguing that you can't really flatten the curve, exactly, but can rather shift it. and, maybe that shift is valuable if it buys time for a vaccine. but, it's going to come with a slow increase in cases over time until immunity is reached.

don't get lost in this in nitpicking the numbers - it's a model, it's a conceptual thing, it's an idea. and, it's a valid critique.

unfortunately, it seems like much of canada (with the exception of quebec) also followed the blue curve.

we all know the liberals are corrupt.

it's just that there's degrees of it, you know?

so, you denounce this, because you must. but, you don't expect them to change, or people's expectations to change.

what's going to be more concerning to the liberals is if people's calculus changes. right now, you shrug off the corruption because you don't want to put the conservatives back in, because you don't like what the conservatives want to do. ok. but, if that line between the conservatives and the liberals starts to blur, which in my mind it did ages ago, then the corruption has the potential to piss you off more, and you might be more likely to lean towards a protest party. that is really the game the liberals need to play - not whether they are seen as corrupt, because they perennially just are, both in perception and in truth, but whether that corruption is seen as trivial enough in a trade-off over the prioritization of other policy. they're not going to chase too many people off like this - nobody really expects better, anyways.

ok.

so, i admit the corruption in this we thing is blatant. they're actually restructuring, apparently offshore. like, it's beyond fucking obvious.

but, i insist that that's capitalism and you don't fix that by removing figureheads. so, given that we have so many more pressing issues to deal with...

it's actually rather similar to the impeachment in the united states, and these parallels keep coming up. no, you can't give your family a $100 million speaking contract, or whatever it would have amounted to. yes, you have to go through the motions of making sure the money is repaid and holding them all accountable. but, at the end of the day, voters will speak, and i'm not sure how important they're going to find this.

so, next time don't be so obvious? is that what i'm saying? well, the need to go through the motions, here, is proportional to the level of corruption. you could try to hide it in a slush fund, and not throw around such huge numbers - i mean, it's just absurd greed. some corruption is normal, but something like this has to be denounced.

but, it's just....it's empty, in the end. nobody's going to really care.

i pulled that 20% number out myself, and it does seem to be representative of a kind of inflection point, where community spread perhaps plateaus for a while and then starts to slow down - but understand that that number is increasing while the infections are slowing down, too. something the media always misses in these discussions is that these numbers coming out of studies are lagged. so, that 7% in stockholm was measured in april, leaving the swedish authorities to extrapolate then current infection rates based on independently measured growth curves. that's how they got 20% out of 7%...

but, i'm posting to suggest that you're more likely to find reasons that this number grows higher in some populations due to their living conditions rather than seek it out in genetic factors. one of the examples cited is prisons, where it seems obvious that cramped living conditions have accelerated immunity. i know that we've recently measured high immunity rates in new york city, as well, where the population density makes living conditions not that much different from those in prisons, in many cases.

that doesn't mean that people living in more normal living conditions won't get to the same rates of immunity we're seeing in prisons, it just means that they haven't gotten there yet, because the rate of spread is that much slower - and slowing, due to that 20% threshold being sufficient to minimize spread under normal social conditions.

so, check back in a few months, and those 20%s will be 30%s and 40%s. but, the places that happens will likely not see explosive new outbreaks, but rather a manageable stream of steady cases.

vancouver would appear to not be there yet, but i wonder if toronto is. see, this is why my faith in the numbers, being as low as it is, is frustrating. if we assume that cases are undercounted by a factor of 10, which i think is a low estimate in the specific context of ontario, then we're only at 3%, and vulnerable. but, i suspect that the factor in ontario is closer to 100 than to 10, which has us hovering in that sweet region.

we're going to find out which is true, in ontario; it's not currently clear.

but, let's not pull out the genetics when the issue is obviously environmental. that kind of pseudo-science doesn't help at all - and could lead to creepy deductions.

https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-could-it-be-burning-out-after-20-of-a-population-is-infected-141584

ok, i know these faces and the truth is that the researchers have got this all wrong.

0 is when a cat has yet to consider the premise that it may eat you. note the empty, blank stare.
1 is when a cat is thinking through the idea that it could potentially eat you. notice the more ponderous posture.
2 is when a cat has decided that it will, in fact, eat you, as soon as it gets the chance. notice the hunting eyes and ready jaw.

and, while a cat in stage 2 may spend years biding it's time, and developing schemes, it won't ever change it's mind. and, quite a few get the chance, eventually, too.

and, that's the thing about cats - they really do fully intend to eat you, eventually.

i was once a teenager, and if i was in that situation, i might have decided to move out for a few months, in order to avoid my lifestyle from interfering with his health conditions.

so, my argument the whole time has been that extra precautions need to be taken to protect those that are vulnerable, even as restrictions maintain lax in the general society. what that means is that the son, here, had a duty of care to his father, to ensure he did not introduce the virus into the house - and his parents had the obligation to ensure he understood it and acted through with it.

it actually sounds to me like the teenager was told that he would be safe if he wore a mask at that party, which is false. there is actually no sound reason to think that the individual would have avoided spread at that party with a mask on, unless he was using a medical grade mask, which he no doubt was not. the correct messaging to the kid should have been that the consequences of his overweight 42 year-old father's preventable medical conditions means he is strictly not allowed to leave the house - or to re-enter it if he disobeys.

and, does his father not bear some responsibility for his health conditions? this is not a 77 year old frail grandmother, who is weak due to age; this is a 42 year-old grown ass man that is overweight and diabetic. his condition is of his own making, and it is not at all fair that he impose a life of isolation on his family in order to protect him from his own self-destructive habits. while the family must make the choice to act to protect him, it is an infringement on their rights that they must, and some effort should be made to call him out on it.

so, while this is indeed the feared vector of transmission, from healthy and young people to those with underlying conditions, it is the household's own responsibility to ensure it's own safety and it's own health on an everyday basis, and the household that failed in this case. the father allowed himself to become fat and weak at a young age, and is dying from a virus that he should have easily beat. that said, to protect the irresponsible father, the teenager must have been ordered to stay in and kicked out if he refused to listen; instead, he appears to have been told to go out and have fun, just wear a mask.

don't blame the government for your own irresponsible behaviour. we will never evolve to a system of anarchism like that.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7188224/florida-dad-coronavirus-teen/

so, i guess i needed another day to veg.

i want to flip this over, today.

what do i think about the polls that have biden way ahead just right now?

this is actually surprising to me, but biden seems to be doing unusually well amongst this specific midwestern demographic, mostly white, that has been iffy about the democratic party for many years, now. key traditionally democratic demographics that were shaky on obama, and liked clinton less, seem to be far more comfortable with biden.

i don't exactly get it, and i doubt it has much depth, but it seems to be measurable, and has been since the primaries. but, all i think it really is is this: biden has managed to co-opt some kind of popularity out of the anti-trump cultural moment. i think certain types of popular media got to them...

the thing is that this is flaky because it's not built on anything. something we saw happen in the democratic primaries was biden lose huge amounts of interest to any other candidate who managed to show up over and over again, and the reason for this is clear enough - he came off as doddering and past his prime, when compared to....anybody. even bernie. sort of.

they had to clear the field. remember?

so, biden is probably his own biggest opponent. if he can take advantage of the virus and use it to remain away from public scrutiny, he may spurn my earlier predictions and ride public indignation as the figurehead of a movement to remove trump. if it doesn't ask too many questions, that is. but, the more that people see of joe biden, the less they like him, and a good shot of joe in action at the debate could very well sober a few "moderates" and "progressives" alike up as to what they're actually voting for.

stated simply, it's too early.

but, i'd rather be up by 10 than down by 10.

if they do these tests and they come back with low immunity levels, one wonders if it is a testament to the high level of isolation that people in these communities face.

my own hunch is twofold: (1) that addicts are sick all of the time anyways and may have had other reasons to avoid the er and (2) that the spike in opioid deaths over the last months might be evidence of some kind of interaction of the virus with the tolerance levels of opioid addicts. 

vancouver is indeed a very wealthy, educated city, but it does have this impoverished underbelly as well. my understanding when i was there is that the city is almost designed to prevent that educated part of the city from interacting with the impoverished underbelly - which may work out to the latter's benefit in a scenario where a pathogen is introduced into the region largely via outside travel, at least to start. education breeds it's own sort of herd immunity, in that way, because let's be real - this thing is stopped pretty easily with basic hygiene.

so, yeah, there's lots of poor people in vancouver, too, but the character of the city is very well-to-do, and that is an increasing phenomenon. i'm interested in the results, but i stand by my statement.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-covid-downtown-eastside-1.5652316