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Saturday, February 6, 2021

(i stripped the formatting)

attached is

- the form 3 response

- the attachment referenced in the form 3 response

- form 23

- form 20

- attachment referenced in the form 20

- initial fippa dated to nov 10

- "documentary evidence" previously cited

- form 23

the package has not yet arrived, and i'm being told it might be until monday, now. so, i will need to wait until next week to react to the documents when they arrive.

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

this is the attachment, which is also attached in pdf:

forgive me for the format, but i'm on a chromebook, and it's easiest to type up a response in a gmail message and print it to pdf.

my general perception is that the respondent does not appear to understand the accusations made against it, so i will attempt to clarify where new or misleading information is presented. i will respond specifically to the numbered points that i have some response to make regarding.

as of the morning of feb 5, 2021, i do not currently have access to the security guard's report, nor do i have access to the police report. i was intending to base my response on the objective video footage rather than these two subjective reports, which i would have preferred to ignore altogether to be honest, but the existence of video footage has been denied by the respondent; i find that somewhat dubious and will seek the opinion of the privacy commissioner as to whether that is believable and/or acceptable or not, and will ultimately leave it to the court to interpret the ramifications of that fiasco. and, this is a fiasco - it suggests the hospital is trying to hide the truth of what happened, given that it was made aware of legal action on sept 1, 2020 (see request for reconsideration for evidence). further, i do not have access to my own medical records, yet. i hope they appear this afternoon, along with the guard's report.

i do, however, have access to a video log of my own perception of the situation, as it was occurring and have uploaded it to youtube:

(deleted)

the language in these vlogs is colourful and real, as they are intended as entertainment rather than legal evidence. they nonetheless must stand as the latter.

2-4.

while the application includes references to a number of outside actors, these are provided so that the court can understand the situation holistically. the court could not make an informed ruling, otherwise. so, while the windsor hospital would obviously not be liable for the behaviour of outside actors, and there is no suggestion that they ought to be, i thoroughly reject the idea that these references and explanations are not important in understanding the situation in full, including the accusations made against the respondent, and would urge the respondent to attempt to understand the situation in full, rather than narrowly focus on what it considers to be important only to it, in it's defense. the application, after all, belongs to the applicant, and not to the respondent. as i intend for the court to understand the situation in as much detail as is possible in order to produce as informed a ruling as is possible, i will continue to attempt to describe the situation in as full and holistic a manner as is possible, over the objections of the respondent to focus solely on modular details. if necessary, the court will need to moderate this discourse as there appears to be a fundamental disconnect in perceptions of the scope of the application. suggestions that these details are unimportant merely serve to demonstrate that the respondent does not fully understand the scope and breadth of the accusations against it.

10-13.

my initial application described the situation in greater detail, and i would ask the court to defer to that narrative, rather than the truncated narrative presented by the respondent, which is misleading in it's lack of detail. narratives can be manipulated to be misleading by deleting information, and that appears to be what was done here. as i have yet to see the security guard's report, i do not know at this time if the lawyers representing the hospital cherry-picked information from the security guard's report and discarded large amounts of substantive details or if the security guard's report is lacking in detail, itself. regardless, i am going to expand upon the situation even further in order to undo the misleading description. my opposition, here, then, is to the lack of detail presented in the response, and the misleading picture it draws, perhaps intentionally, in it's deficit of information. the holistic projection presented here is new, then, even if the specifics are not.

i need to reiterate that i was not merely uncomfortable but physically shivering while waiting inside of the waiting room - i was having an intense, visceral, physical reaction to the air conditioning in the hospital. and, i have a history of that; it may even be genetic, as my father had the same reaction to air conditioning, when he was alive. my initial reaction to the cold was not to sway back and forth on the chair as indicated in the response but actually to walk around and run back and forth through the waiting room; while this behaviour of running to stay warm in an isolated part of the waiting room was of no harm or substantive irritant to anybody, i was asked to stop doing that and agreed to go outside if i was cold. as indicated in the youtube upload (img077), i actually went outside several times to warm up; in the end, i found the second-hand smoke in the parking lot from all of the smokers outside (including the guard) to be impossible to deal with and retreated inside, instead. it was only after i was blocked from going outside by the smokers, and told i could not engage in other forms of physical activity to stay warm, that i entered into a degraded mental state (i was "triggered", so to say) and began to rock back and forth in the "fetal position", which is a well known sign of traumatic behaviour. i was not, however, sitting in a chair, but on a bench, so i would not have created the kind of sounds claimed in the response - this is a minor detail in context, but it's simply false. the feet stomping as an attempt to create body heat is correct. so, this is what is described in paragraphs 10-11, in a proper amount of detail - i was rocking back and forth in the fetal position on a bench in the waiting room, while in a state of anxiety and shock, after being told to stop trying to warm myself up, and unable to deal with the pollution outside, while experiencing a visceral, physical reaction to the air conditioning in the er.

this then constructs the proper context for what is described in paragraphs 12-13. i did refuse to stop swaying back and forth and stomping my feet, in a motion that was sort of like running or bicycling in place, because i was told i could not run back and forth and could not run in spot. this behaviour was consequently out of desperation, after i was told to stop doing a series of other actions to prevent myself from having a physical reaction to the temperature in the building, which i was simply not able to handle. so, my eventual agitated reaction was the cause of not just the stress i was experiencing and my inability to deal with the cold but repeated attempts by security to prevent me from doing harmless and only mildly irritating things - like running on the spot - to stay warm. i would consequently not assign fault to myself for what happened, but rather to an aggressive security guard that acted in a very strange and controlling manner. stated bluntly: a transperson knows from body language when somebody does not accept them and wants to get rid of them. the existence of footage here would be exceedingly useful in determining whether the guard was being reasonable or discriminatory in his behaviour, but i have claimed and will again claim the latter - i was neither harming nor substantively bothering anybody, i was merely trying to stop myself from shivering, and became episodic and non-respondent when i was aggressively prevented from doing so by an officer that seemed to be using it as an excuse to throw me out of there for being openly queer.

14-22

as i was now in an agitated state due not just to the situation that brought me into the hospital in a suicidal frame of mind but also to the security guard's aggressive attempts to remove me for no good reason, i actually dared him to try to drag me out with force. i egged him on. i mean, it was clear to me that he was throwing me out due to my gender expression, and not my behaviour, so i decided to engage in an act of protest and force him to actually do it, if he insisted on it - which he did, which would be comical if not for the dire reality of the situation, or perhaps because of it depending on your sense of humour. i was not about to leave the er for the reasons being cited, which were not good reasons at all! i mean, this is a public service, and i have a legislatively enacted right to care - security had better have a very good reason if they're going to throw a patient out of the waiting room, and annoying the other people in the room (none of whom complained, to my knowledge) is certainly nothing close to it. it is very difficult for me to understand how anybody could justify throwing a suicidal person out of a hospital because their fetal position swaying, that is their episodic behaviour, is somehow perceived as so disruptive as to deny them of their legislatively ensured right to access care - such logic could only be an excuse to hide a true motive of discrimination and bias, or it is rooted in no logic at all. the argument presented by the respondent simply doesn't add up.

and, it's simply not up to the security guard to make this choice at all.

indeed, the security guard deferred to the nurse to make the choice, but the nurse did not make the choice - the nurse did as directed by the guard. this is a backwards chain of command, but it was what occurred in front of me - the nurse did not provide direction as to whether i should be discharged, but was rather ordered to discharge me by the security guard. and, again - that is not a chain of command that i have any obligation to respect, as a patient, and one i saw no choice but to actively resist, as i saw it unfold in front of me. security doesn't make medical decisions, and any security officer that takes it upon itself to do so - by asking the nurse to discharge me, as is admitted in the response - should be fired. that fact alone - that security asked triage to discharge me - is cause for an investigation, as that is not the role of a security guard.

when the guards attempted to remove be my force for swaying back and forth to stay warm - which is an egregious affront on my right to be there - i did indeed drop to the floor. i fell into what left-wing activists refer to as 'nonviolent resistance', as i have been trained to by activist groups; this tactic is used by activists to prevent officers from removing them from spaces they are occupying, and involves lying on the floor and utilizing the effects of gravity to push all of one's weight towards the ground to make it difficult to move them. i had no intention of utilizing this tactic when i entered the er to get an emergency prescription in a suicidal state, but that was the situation i found myself in due to the actions of the guard.

further, i did indeed yell mean things at the guards and then the police in an attempt to have them recognize the absurdity and tyranny of their aggressive and discriminatory behaviour - another activist tactic called agitprop that i found myself unexpectedly forced to utilize. the intent of agitprop is to have the listener see themselves in the mirror (in this case, figuratively), via the utilization of challenging images and language. as i had no intent to physically resist, and could have hardly succeeded in doing so had i tried, that was the only tool i had available to me in order to stand my ground and assert my right to be there with. and, it actually worked - the officers realized that removing me from the er in such a scenario was obviously a ridiculous thing to do, and i was instead moved up the list to get quicker access to the doctor. the police realized that the guard was clearly in the wrong to attempt to remove me from the hospital given the state i was in and agreed with my argument that i belonged in a hospital at that time, not in a jail cell.

that said, i stated in my initial application that this part of the encounter is blurry due to me being episodic, and this is also true. i cannot reproduce exactly what i said, and don't think i should be expected to do so, given the metal state of shock and anxiety - multiple things layered on top of each other - that i was in. i mean, i was in the process of being thrown out of a hospital for no discernible reason, after bringing myself there because i was suicidal. you can only guess the stress and shock attached to showing up somewhere out of desperation, seeking help to avoid suicide, and being thrown out for no discernible reason before i could even see a doctor, my suspicions notwithstanding, as though my life was completely worthless and void. however, i would like to offer some resistance to the language cited in the response. "goon squad" is not something i would say - i probably called them thugs with guns, which is a term i frequently use to refer to officers that are behaving authoritatively (and is popular amongst left-anarchists). nor is it likely that i would have called myself "well trained in the law", as that it is somewhat bourgeois, although i do recall explaining to the officer that i didn't believe a word she said and would not sit up until she had left the premises. further, i would stand by those comments as reasonable - it is true that the police break the law all of the time, it's a part of their job description, in their legislated task of protecting the rich from the poor. they're almost as untrustworthy as lawyers. it is also true that i have completed the requirements of a three year sociology of law program, although my formal degree is a four year b. mathematics (honours), and that does give me some expertise in the topic of the trustworthiness and lawlessness of the police, due to many years spent reading through case law. it is routine for officers to be accused of breaking the law, even if the system rarely upholds those accusations due to the systemic power imbalances within it.

the reason i was able to stop trying to warm myself up was that the confrontation accomplished the task - whatever combination of physical conflict and increase in blood pressure that followed from the encounter warmed me up enough that i was able to briefly calm down, at least temporarily; i required roughly a dozen blankets when i got into the actual hospital, and i kept asking for more as their effects sequentially wore off. so, to suggest i was reasoned into stopping, as is done in paragraph 22, is incorrect; i just warmed up due to physical activity and stress, as i was attempting to do in the fist place.

23-26

please refer to the initial application for a detailed description of these events. i will need to wait for the medical records to appear to learn just how vicious the psychiatrist was in his accusations that i was lying and trying to manipulate the system, rather than suffering from a legitimate mental health episode.

it is stated in paragraph 25 that i "began fighting with others". this is a false statement, and i was not charged with resisting arrest. as before, i fell to the ground and resisted,, non-violently. i am a trained activist that has participated in multiple actions in multiple cities, i know how to react in these scenarios and i would never be so stupid as to fight with the police.

it is stated in paragraph 26 that i was seen by the doctor and assessed by the psychiatric nurse when i arrived a second time. this is also false. it is true that a doctor came out to yell at me and call me names and accuse me of wasting his time, but this happened in the waiting room; we engaged in a short debate about whether he was upholding his hippocratic oath or not, but i was not let back into the hospital and i did not see a doctor in any meaningful sense - i was instead escorted outside and arrested, after a lengthy debate with one of the officers about what my rights are in context, and lengthy pleading with me to give up and go home (which i refused).

there is a further narrative in the youtube video, and it is exceedingly relevant to get the full context to understand the full resolution.

27-28

i cannot fathom how anybody would uphold the premise that trying to stay warm in a hospital by swaying back and forth is grounds to be violently ejected by multiple security guards and can only deduce malice of the truly highest level in the behaviour of the guards. it simply does not make any sense to conclude that i was thrown out for the reasons they claim i was; this is not a fascist state. even the police rejected the guard's logic as backwards. that i was rejected for my appearance is really ockham's razor, in context. further, the psychiatrist told me point blank that he did not accept anything i was saying, and accused me of lying to him instead, and it is difficult to understand how a trained professional could come to such an absurd deduction, via anything except prejudice and bias.

the following grounds were consequently breached by both the security guard and the psychiatrist:

Services

1 Every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to services, goods and facilities, without discrimination because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status or disability. R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19, s. 1; 1999, c. 6, s. 28 (1); 2001, c. 32, s. 27 (1); 2005, c. 5, s. 32 (1); 2012, c. 7, s. 1.

...the security guard regarding gender identity & expression, and the psychiatrist regarding gender identity & expression, as well as disability and, specifically, the receipt of public funds for living on disability. i was essentially called a drug addict, welfare queen and thrown out for being a bum - unworthy and unwanted.

as stated previously, it is necessary for the court to absorb the full context of the situation to rule correctly, and i reject (and resent, frankly) the respondent's attempt to narrow the scope of the application.

i think it is up to the court to make these decisions once it has weighed all of the evidence, after that evidence has been presented to it, and not for the legal defense team to suggest it to the court, before the evidence has been observed or evaluated. paragraph 30 is quite an inappropriate statement to make, at this time, and should be rejected by the court.

while my request for surgery may be a novel ruling, if granted, it does not fall outside of the tribunal's jurisdiction to "make things whole" in a situation where discrimination is experienced. this is essentially a restorative or tort process. so, for example, landlords have been ordered to provide for rental spaces in cases where discrimination is suffered, in order to make things whole for the victim. if my damages lie in experiencing the effects of defeminization, undoing that through surgery is the best way to make things whole, for me, and undo the discrimination i suffered. while novel, it is the correct remedy.

i would repeat my request that the identified parties undergo sensitivity training, as my experiences belie the claim that they have undergone it - or succeeded in learning anything from it.

it's now saturday morning...

so, i spent much of thursday night rebuilding blogs over early 2020, sort of half waiting for the files to appear. i wanted to catch up to a certain point, stop to eat and then get to writing the response to the hospital case. instead, i hit this kind of "posting limit" that google seems to want to enforce sometime around sunrise, and decided to get a start on the response and then eat. but, i got lost in it - and finished it around 13:00.

the files showed up around 14:00, but i was asleep.

i woke myself up after a nap and dragged myself to the post office to mail what is hopefully the last foia request.

when i got in, i essentially had to eat, and then fell asleep. i've been cleaning since i woke up.

i'm going to be backposting for a few days, still, so i should build my schedule around it. i'll need to see what information i can get from what they sent me, and if i want to file any sort of addition to what i sent on friday or not. i'm hoping to get the name of the psychiatrist and the name of the security guard from the files. but, if google is going to stop me from posting every few hours, i can use that as downtime to do other things, and kind of multitask.

so, i'm back to backposting.

but, i'm going to post what i sent this morning, first.

the message it sends to the people that live there is that we won't protect them from extremist groups.

and, the message it send to the rest of the world is that the united states is back to it's old policy of supporting the most regressive forces it can find to advance it's geostrategic aims - like they did in afghanistan in the 80s, and syria & libya in the 00s.

if the biden administration is now denying that ansar allah is a terrorist group (!?), that is a very worrying signal to send to the people that live in the region.

while this group poses little to zero threat to the united states, and it consequently makes little to zero sense to expend imperial resources fighting it, it's certainly a threat to the people that live in the region. it's just about the most textbook example of a terrorist group that you could find.

so, the message the administration is sending is "we don't care what happens in the region", and that is neither helpful for those that stand in solidarity with secularists on the ground, nor is it enlightened policy, in the long run.

i would support a cessation of material support for the genocidal behaviour of the saudi state, both in yemen and in syria - as well as in libya. but, this group belongs on the terrorist list, and removing it from that list is just flat out daft.

Friday, February 5, 2021

i've had this kind of dull headache all day that's making it hard to focus or think.

it's the same annoying thing that happens every time i re-enter this space, and i'm quite certain is being caused by the cops drugging me. i wish they'd stop.

so, to be clear, the effects of this drug i'm on or am coming down from are frustration, feelings of being scattered-brain, a dull headache, insomnia and a difficulty focusing.

i don't like drugs, i don't need drugs to function and i don't want to be on drugs on a day-to-day basis. i'm ideologically aligned with straight-edge punk, even if i'm not fully straight-edge in life. i have not been diagnosed with a mental illness, but i reject the premise that mental illnesses can be solved with medication. and, i'm not a willing participant in these experiments. at all.

his point kind of collapses into a joke about gay mimes, but it's very astute.

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

regarding afghanistan.

there's reality, and then there's what the politicians tell you to try to get you to vote for them, and the reality is that there was never any intent to leave afghanistan.

the americans have been in japan and korea, now, for 74 years. and, there are still troops in germany, too, although they don't seem to mind as much.

they've been in the philippines since 1898, and have made a state out of hawaii. puerto rico may become a state one day too, if it doesn't sink into the ocean due to neglect, first.

there are countries in latin america and africa that have been occupied for most of the last 100 years. and, iraq itself has been occupied almost constantly since the collapse of the ottoman empire in world war one.

nor did the americans leave vietnam - they were driven out. they hung on until the embassy got stormed. you might hear things about a congressional authorization being withdrawn, but the actual reality is that they just lost the war. they didn't withdraw so much as they fled. if they could have held their ground, they'd still be there.

the reality is that the united states will not be leaving afghanistan unless they are pushed out by force.

when a politician tries to tell you otherwise, you should be skeptical of their other promises - it's a flag that they're slimy and dishonest. it's demagoguery in the literal sense - they know they're lying to you. they just think you're too stupid to figure it out...

9:31

Thursday, February 4, 2021

biden's statement regarding yemen today seems to be very narrowly focused, and unlikely to stop the actual war there, although it may lead to less civilian deaths.

there's two components to the war in yemen. the first is essentially an attempt at genocide against the yemeni people, which components in the saudi theocracy seem to want to wipe off the face of the earth. the second is a struggle against islamist militants, who are using the region as a base - although the second component, as tends to be the case with these things, is shrouded in confusing contradictions.

the correct interpretation is that they seem to think the idea of bombing civilians is a poor strategy, much as obama argued that iraq was a strategic mistake - and that the resources should have been deployed to afghanistan, instead. they'd rather use those resources on something more relevant - that's what they're saying.

where those resources end up redeployed is not entirely clear, but i'd expect this government to pick up where obama left off in shifting it's focus towards africa. they may also be shifted towards iran.

so, i mean, if you're concerned about what is really an open program of genocide by the saudi government in the region, this is a minor step in refocusing the conflict, at least. and, expect the usual voices to exaggerate it. but, don't get too excited - it's not what you think, it's a rebalancing of forces designed to reproject force towards regions where conflict is of greater direct benefit to the empire.

and, from that standpoint, from the logic and perspective of empire, it's hard to disagree with it; it is a stupid waste of resources.

good.

maybe some that came here will flee the cold and go back.

canada just doesn't have the infrastructure....the prime minister's a trust fund kid idiot....

https://globalnews.ca/news/7620094/biden-refugees-trump-clampdown/

here you go, sweetie - an exemption for paygo! wow!

(and, it was no doubt accepted with wide eyes, too)

it follows that winning a "waiver" for paygo is no less of a theatrical act, and no less meaningless in terms of actual legislative reality.

it seems to have been something that came from an attempt to placate the tea party movement, which was more successful in passing legislation under a democratic government than the occupy movement was - something that should make you stop and think about what the realities on the hill actually are. but, it's been avoided at every opportunity by everybody. as legislation, it's just empty rhetoric designed as political theatre - red meat for the conservative base.

i mean, whatever you think of it, the fact is that they don't use it and it's just pointless for it to exist.

there is some mandatory sequestration that kicks in as a result of the 2011 budget control act (which should be abolished), but anything that's worth funding is protected from it, with the apparent exception of medicare, which has been undergoing 2% cuts for years as a result of it. this only results from spending on specific, core government functions, which they seem to think should be restricted for some reason.

but, sequestration has never occurred due to paygo and has never occurred due to discretionary spending and there's no reason at all to think it ever will.

i support the filibuster.

but, they should abolish the bca - and should abolish this obscure paygo thing along with it.

there are no restrictions on spending by the united states congress.

don't let them try to trick you otherwise.

it's such an empty threat that i was watching a sam seder video where he mentioned it and didn't even know what he was talking about - that's how obscure and absolutely toothless the idea is.

i was just like "what?".

i mean, it seemed like he was talking about the 'grand bargain' in 2011, which i remember well enough as empty theatre. they created this silly drama around the debt ceiling, as though that was a real issue, rather than a routine and almost entirely meaningless process to increase it, in order to create pressure to bring in austerity measures that were mostly targeted at the military. i at least remember that.

but, he was actually talking about this obscure law passed in 2010 that's never been used, as some kind of scare mongering tactic to push through with the end of the filibuster, which was absolutely ridiculous as an argument.

i'd never even heard of this law - that's how obscure and meaningless it is. it's never been used and it never will be.

so, why is the fake left media trying to scare you like this? are they going to play ball with the austerity hawks? they're all a bunch of conservatives in leftists clothing, remember - all of them, from warren to uygur and everybody in between.

the norm and status quo in both the house and senate is to pass exceptions for everything - as though the law, which nobody seems to have wanted in the first place, doesn't actually exist.

i repeat: sequestration through paygo legislation has never happened. the house and senate have waived everything that they've ever been given; there is absolutely no reason to think they wouldn't have waived it immediately, regardless.

what exactly does it mean to win "paygo exemptions", when sequestration through paygo has never been enforced?

it's like giving a child a soother.

what, exactly, is the reasoning behind a posting limit at a blog, anyways?

ugh...

we don't have the best healthcare system in the world. not anymore.

it's not even close.

this is a reality check - canada needs to see itself in the mirror for what it actually is, right now.

nafta completely destroyed this country.

this is just a small window into how bad it really is.

yes - we should have moved to fund production last year, and that we didn't is a disaster that the sitting government needs to be nailed hard on.

but, the fact remains that our industry has evaporated due to the international agreements that we've signed, and this is the consequence of it - we have to sign up for programs meant for third world economies.

but, the fact is that we don't have the production capacity that other advanced economies have.

our production capacity is more comparable to that of a developing country.

"a monstrous swindle" - pierre trudeau, describing nafta, years after he set it in motion, to bring back the reciprocity of his hero, laurier

the years of talking about what free trade might do to this country are over. we're now living through the realities that the critics of free trade predicted, and they're vicious.

we are a poor country - we just happen to have a very wealthy petro-chemical industry that inflates our gdp.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-19-vaccine-deliveries-1.5900853

the same pattern yet again - i come in from time outside, and i'm agitated and frustrated and being triggered into a migraine. i will no doubt need to sleep it off and sweat it out.

why does this happen every time i exit and re-enter this space?

no.

i'm going to wait until i get the files in before i start writing the response. it should hopefully be today, but might be tomorrow.

ok.

so, maybe i can get some backposting done tonight, then.

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

you know it's summer in the southern hemisphere right now, right?

i'm going to make a not-so-bold prediction that australia and new zealand will see a resurgence of the virus around may or so.

this is a boondoggle, and the media needs to nail them on it.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-the-only-g7-country-to-take-vaccines-from-fund-for-developing/

the internet went down around 7:00 am this morning and was out until around 16:00, so i got a late start on the writing i wanted to do and didn't get the shopping done until late.

what i wanted to do was get the third foia finished first, then go to the library to print it while i was out shopping, but the libraries are not allowing for emergency computer access at this time :\. so, i'd have to spend $100 on ink to print this and don't want to do that. i decided i'd try to email it, instead. i managed to fill in the form, but the internet went out right before i was able to send it....

i was hoping the internet would only be out for an hour or so and i'd be able to get a reply on the request before noon, so i took a nap to wait it out. but 11:00 came and went and it was still out, so i decided to get to a pay phone to see if i could get an answer. i at least learned that the outage is city wide, and not targeted. well, i'm clearly under attack - access goes out like that, and it makes you wonder.

i picked up the things i wanted at the store: nutritional yeast, ground mustard, paprika & cayenne pepper. + avocados, pasta & some other household type supplies....

these are the ingredients of my hot sauce:

cayenne pepper, ~~vinegar,~~ water, ~~salt~~, garlic

my salt intake is actually unusually low, but that's one of the key contributors. i'm more interested in removing the vinegar. switching to cayenne powder instead of mass-manufactured hot sauce cuts the vinegar out, and we'll have to see how i react to that, taste wise. i could add a little celery salt, which i'm holding off on for now. the cayenne powder is very spicy....

these are the ingredients in the no-name mustard i buy:

~~vinegar~~, water, mustard seed, ~~salt~~, turmeric, paprika

again - it's basically vinegar, with mustard seed as a thickener. we'll have to see how it tastes, but moving to ground mustard + paprika powder takes the vinegar out....

i'm also hopefully maximizing nutritional content this way by removing the problems associated with manufacturing. the three of these together are a nice boost of vitamins, which i'll add up after i've determined if i like it or not.

it's also much cheaper.

i was hoping the internet would be back up when i came in, but was disappointed to find the opposite to be true. so, i actually took a nap, hoping it would come back - and had to wait until 16:00.

when i was finally able to get on, i realized that the hospital had filed a reply to my extension request in the morning, and that the court had ruled on it relatively quickly. they're giving me until feb 22, which is a week past the date that the hospital gave itself to reply, but i'm hoping to get the bulk of the reply done tonight. i asked for a much longer extension - until the privacy commissioner presents an opinion on the lack of video - which they decided should wait until later in the process. so, they granted the extension until i get the hospital records, but denied the extension until i get a response from the privacy commissioner. i think this is wrong, because i really need the video to file a coherent response; i may have not provided enough detail for them to come to the right conclusion. so, what i'm going to do is file a detailed request for reconsideration together with the form 3, and try to hit the feb 5 deadline; the logic will be that i'm asking for the extension until the commissioner responds, but here's my reply if you won't allow for that. i should get the medical records before then, which will help me complete the request to re-add the doctors as parties, amongst other things. so, if i can't get it in by friday afternoon, i'll get it in by monday morning.

i was then able to get the foia request sent just before 17:00 and hope for a response in the morning. if she accepts it, i'll need to mail the cheque, but i want to do it tomorrow if i can, because it looks like we're going to finally get a week of winter this year. i called for a warm winter due to the shifting solar cycle, but it's been milder than i expected, and here comes a laggard blast of vortex, before the sun bottles it up for a decade or so. i want to be entirely inside for that, until it passes.

i then went out for a last grocery run, and here i am back inside, typing up my day.

so, that's tonight, then - i need to type this stuff up as best i can, and put it aside until the records get here, when i can file a slew of things together. i need to get some eggs fried up, i need to get in the shower and i need to get a start on some laundry...

these are egregious rights violations that you expect in a fascist state, not in a democracy.

https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-man-in-forced-detention-in-a-canada-covid-camp

no working class movement would give something like that a byte of coverage.

this will be my only comment on this: the ridiculous amount of attention this is generating is definitive proof that the so-called american left, the pseudo-left, the fake left, is thoroughly upper class.

i obviously don't care about a bunch of clowns on reddit trying to upstage soros by fucking with short selling.

*yawn*.

people are looking at it in this weird way that contrasts the right to live against the right to die, as though these are opposing viewpoints. it might make sense to a religious mind, but i find it baffling.

there is one primary right here, and it is the right to agency in decision-making. both the right to die and the right to live come from this more fundamental right to agency. this is true of all of the other examples i cited, as well - every one of them reduces to the fundamental role of individual agency, and if you are to uphold individual agency, it means ensuring that the individual always has the ability to actually make these sorts of choices.

so, don't look at it in this weird way, where we're arguing over whether people should live or die.

we need to give people the ability to choose.

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

if, in the end, the care industry becomes more powerful than the suicide industry, you'll see the opposite outcome - people subtly coerced into continuing to live through their suffering, rather than left to freely choose to decide to die. religious groups may see that as preferable, but i don't; coercion is coercion, one way or the other.

so, the key thing is to minimize profit.

one thing you could do is mandate that the suicide industry remain a part of the care industry, so that there isn't a financial incentive to push one over the other. further, regulating the prices of care and suicide as services via an insurance monopoly (as exists in canada.) can help take away the profit motive. regulating suicide as less profitable than care could help ensure that these choices are being made by people and not by bureaucrats.

i believe this is the status quo, here - you can only get these services in care facilities that have the option to sell you things that will keep you alive, too. that should remain enforced.

i understand this argument - i've made similar ones in regards to prostitution.

so, is it possible that providing for suicide on demand may create a society where you have a suicide industry that overpowers access to services? is it possible that governments might cut services to the disabled and increase funding for the suicide industry, instead?

sure.

with prostitution, you can sort of decriminalize it and look the other way, while rejecting the commercialization of it. and, with drugs, you can bring in bylaws that restrict smoking in certain spaces. so, you can do things to mitigate the effects. we're not doing that for smoking pot, yet, but it's the right answer, and we should get there, eventually.

assisted suicide is a little different, as you can't look the other way and the externalities don't need to be mitigated because they don't exist.

my best response to this - and it's a legit critique and something that needs to be carefully monitored and adjusted for - is that the right to death is one of many rights, and the court needs to uphold all of the rights, including all of the other rights, while maintaining the right to access death. so, if the argument is that the right to death will undo these other rights, i can accept that the concern is valid, and will argue that it's important that we stand up for these other rights - to shelter, to care.

the canadian jurisprudence is supposed to do that - it's in the precedents.

but, do i think it's an argument against suicide-on-demand? i don't - and i couldn't imagine somebody erecting a convincing argument that people don't have the right to access death, relative to whatever choice they choose to make. it is an argument to remain vigilant, and ensure that the struggle for access to these other rights continues, and i see little reason to think it won't.

at the end of the day, there are some people that will embrace their disabilities and want to live with them and there are some people that won't. the system can't really change who wants to live and who doesn't, it can only provide equally for both options.

providing for only one choice cannot become the status quo - and we'll have to make sure it doesn't.

the other thing to ask is if i think this is a realistic concern, and i think my response here is more mixed. it could be. but, it's not an economic inevitability, the way that corporate prostitution is, it relies on a confluence of government and industry aligning in a specific, unfortunate manner. the care industry could become more powerful and profitable than the suicide industry, if the conditions allow for it; there's not any inherent power imbalance, or any inevitable social conditions that lead to the dominance of the suicide industry, over time. and, courts can and no doubt will rule on the rights of the disabled to live as well, whereas they'll never rule on the rights of prostitutes to self-organize.

so, i guess you could say that i think we can handle euthanasia better than we can handle prostitution, at this time.

but, yeah - some careful thought is required.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.5896324/as-bill-c-7-reaches-senate-un-watchdog-raises-concerns-about-maid-for-persons-with-disabilities-1.5897749

i tend to resist nailing politicians for corruption scandals, but this is different - this needs to take this government down, and the government that replaces them needs to come in with policies that brings back the country's economic sovereignty.

so, where did all of this money go, in the end?

who got paid for vaccines that never showed up? who orchestrated this?

we contributed nothing to the production of the vaccine, and expected to be first in line to take orders.

we resisted calls to participate in production, and insisted on buying imports, instead.

and, we're getting what we deserve for that kind of policy.

but, i've said this a few times - if this isn't the death knell of "free trade" in canada, the country has no future.

if we can't figure out that the alter-globalists on the street were right after this, and realize they predicted all of this, we never will, and we're doomed as a consequence of it.

justin trudeau is ideologically attached to the idea of canada as a consumer of products purchased elsewhere in the world, rather than as a producer of goods. in terms of canadian production, he's only ever indicated any interested in the automobile sector, which includes oil. that's canada, apparently, in the mind of trudeau - a country that builds cars and imports everything else.

so, it's less that he's this rank, globalist elitist - although that's true - and more that he's legitimately ideologically wed to this concept of canada as a link in a set of supply chains, in a global economy dominated by "free trade". i put free trade in quotes, because it's the kind of concept of free trade that you sell naive, dumb union workers in order to advance a mercantilist global order that places investors at the top of the hierarchy. worse, his deeply racist concept of the world inverts to reject anybody that challenges this mercantilist order as 'racist'. he comes from the highest aristocracy that this country has, but he's really a true believer, in ways that are supposed to be reserved for the ruled rather than the rulers. and, you can see this in his life decisions - this is a person born with millions in trust fund dollars, that thought it was necessary to get jobs working as a ski instructor, or a high school teacher. if you had millions in the bank, would you get a job as a ski instructor?

it says something about the way the guy thinks; he seems to believe the lies that were written for the masses to facilitate the ruling classes to rule with, from the fake free trade mythology to his apparent embrace of multiple world religions, rather than interact with and understand theory from the perspective of a dauphin. if machiavelli were grading our dauphin, he would fail him, indeed - he does not act like a prince ought to, but only has the capacity to understand things the way a slave does.

this is of course the kind of figurehead ruler that the elite wants. but, it doesn't help the rest of us to be dealing with this guy that consistently comes off as a brainwashed agent in an inspector gadget episode. "uh, ok boss."

so, when everybody from every corner of the country yelled at him that he has to ensure local production of the vaccine, if we can, his insistence (via his captured, elitist ministers - that he seems to think he's giving a helping hand to, because they're brown. it's better to give the coloured folks a hand up than a hand out.) to rely on supply chains was rooted in an ideology that was constructed inside of him by the ruling elite, and not on any evidence - and he believed in it, just like all these other low information idiots are tricked into believing it, with the same propaganda intended for the dumbest workers around us.

the collapse of these supply chains in the building of the virus - which he should have seen with the end of the sinovac deal months ago, at the least. - and the flip-flop in policy towards domestic production, only after we've bought millions of doses from companies that will not or cannot deliver, is consequently a legitimate governing mistake, and a reason to remove this government from office. obviously, you need to produce as much vaccine as you can, and the rest of the world is right to see canada as a laggard for deciding to just let everybody else do the work and buy it from them, in the end.

this is legitimate incompetence and there ought to be electoral consequences for it.

so, i had to sleep today.

and, now i need to wake up and pick up where i was.

i would argue that marxism, socialism and anarchism, as consistent ideologies, are all fundamentally incompatible with collectivism, to the point that they cannot co-exist.

but, you get the exact opposite - from both sides of the spectrum - when you survey people on the question, and, you hear academics speak in equally confused ways about it, too, because it's so culturally ingrained - almost as though it's a consequence of some kind of hegemonic power confusing the idea for it's benefits.

"Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority ... a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State." - mussolini

i know that you can't take these people seriously when they use words that have been translated from different languages. but, mussolini's use of the language was accurate, here.

fascism, as a term, develops from corporatism. and, corporatism itself develops out of the collectivism described in hobbes. this philosophy of the far right - fascism, collectivism, corporatism - is then contrasted against the ideals of the left, which are socialism, liberalism and democracy.

this is an insightful statement by benito mussolini, in truth.

so, how we got to this idea in america where collectivism is thought of as on the left is very strange, but no doubt has to do with the spectrum reversal that took place in the united states, where the democrats became the left, after representing the right since andrew jackson. you get this weird, confused confluence of terms.

but, it's a fundamental point of confusion, in truth.

americans legitimately and readily identify the left with collectivist ideas, rather than legitimately socialist ones. i mean, you hear it all of the time - socialism means big government. right? no - that's wrong, actually. but, it's what americans say when asked over and over and over...

it's important to realize that when marx attacked human rights as "nonsense on stilts", he was referring to ecclesiastical law, in the form of natural rights (something derived by a handful of christian theologians, and that re-emerged as a sort of liberal theology). i mean, i don't disagree with what he said, which was an attack on the idea that rights come from some magical place in the heavens, rather than from human beings.

that doesn't suggest he was opposed to rights, or thought that the rights of the individual were unimportant; to the contrary, he would have always self-identified as a liberal, and argued that the entire point of socialism is to maximize individual freedom by collectivizing production - that should create more freedom in the end, not less, and that was the idea that bakunin and proudhon and the rest ran with, even as marx attacked them as lacking the organization to get anywhere (and was right.) and they attacked him for being a pseudo-monarchist authoritarian (and were right, too). there's a real underlying connection between marx and the idea of "enlightened despotism", which is counter-revolutionary in scope. he often agreed more with the benthams than the paines.

it just means that he thought that rights were something humans create, and their value is subject to what we assign to them.

unfortunately, this has been misunderstood primarily for the reason that the american left tends to conflate socialism with collectivism or corporatism, without really grasping the contradictions in doing so. mussolini was a true collectivist in the corporatist sense; if we saw that kind of movement here, the first thing they'd do is wipe out any real left (just like the bolsheviks did, too). it's tied into the whole marginalization of economics on the american left in favour of the social sciences, because marx is seen primarily as a social scientist like weber rather than a political theorist like, say, james madison. it's the old cliche about what you like and don't like about marx, which seems to be less about class, exactly, and more about the enforcement of capitalist hegemony in the academy - even marx is stripped of his marxism, and those who study him are stripped of his praxis. it's a silly joke. but, it explains how the left has come to embrace these ideas that the left has always seen as on the far right, to the point it's taken up arms against them - the conflation of collectivism with the left.

if you really believe this stuff, you might want to read up on mussolini; you might find you want the trains to run on time, too.

but, you can't take rights out of the left and call it a left, it becomes incoherent and nonsensical. what's the point if you're not fighting for rights?

i may have to bring back tomatoes for lycopene, in the end. i need to do the research on it, but the sources are pretty obscure, beyond tomatoes...

the white guavas are nutritionally superior, as far as i can tell, but i am skeptical of the claims that they contain lycopene in any measurable amount.

but, i haven't looked into this at all and need to wait.

so, once i get mustard, cayenne & paprika, i'll have the spices i've picked out, except turmeric, which i'm going to hold off on. the basis of adding turmeric is twofold:

1) it's why mustard is yellow.

2) curcumin

but, you can't absorb curcumin, apparently. like, they suggest snorting it. i'm not snorting mustard - don't snort mustard, kids.

there's nothing else in there that seems useful...and i'm not convinced that turmeric adds to the taste, not until i try a bit, first. if the mustard seed tastes strange and unusual to me, maybe i'll add a little turmeric, for bourgeois reasons. but, to start, it seems pointless.

the mustard is there to mimic the caesar taste, but it should have some b vitamins, too. the cayenne & paprika are for cartenoids, with the intent to replace the hot sauce. i should hopefully get boosts of those other carotenoids as well, stuff like ~~lycopene~~ (lycopene was a bad randomly chosen example. there's a lot of lutein, though). ground capsicum is actually one of the healthiest things you can find, but manufactured hot sauce is full of salt & vinegar, which i'm getting too old to consume casually - i need to cut shit like that out.

i'm still holding off on the anchovies, for now.

and, i need to rebalance the wheat bran source, so i'm getting more wheat bran than all bran, i just want to have all of the data first so i only have to do it once. i think i'm getting enough selenium in the other bowls to balance, for now.

the other thing i need to do at the bulk barn today is get powdered mustard and powdered cayenne pepper. this will dramatically reduce the amount of vinegar i'm consuming, which is a problem for my teeth.

i picked up some limes this month, but probably won't next month. i'm looking at green beans instead, but i haven't done the research and need to finish the fruit component first.

so, the real reason i was out on sunday was to pick up a small amount of generic estrogen. yeah - generic. here we are...

i should have called on friday, but i knew i wouldn't be able to find anything and instead tried to distract myself from it. i called a few places on saturday, before resigning myself to the reality and asked the spot that had it to package a small amount of generics, so i could get through the weekend and try on monday...

i tend to avoid biking in the salt and snow, so i took a walk on sunday afternoon that worked out to 19.3 km - from here to the pharmacy, to the walmart, to the metro, to the superstore, to the freshco, home, to the food basics, and home again.

the price for the red peppers at the whole sale club wasn't that impressive this time, although it has been previously. i wanted to check the walmart for soy, and they didn't have it; they had cheese and yogurt on sale, though. the metro at devonshire didn't have my soy, so i won't go back, but i got some strawberries at a good price. i wanted limes or red peppers at the superstore and was disappointed; i got both at the freshco, instead. and, then i got some chicken for the eggs, as mentioned - plus the kiwis were on sale.

you're excited.

when i got in at around 20:00, i took a deserved nap, got up and made some eggs and posted a few things on the internet, intending to make some calls..

.....and then fell asleep before i could. grargh.

so, i wake up around 14:00 and start making calls and i've got to the end of the list, now - i have called every pharmacy in the lower peninsula (and bicycled to the outlying towns of leamington, tilbury and amherstburg - something i greatly enjoyed, as it let me see and understand this area, which i didn't grow up in, quite a bit better) and am simply out of usable estrogen. there's no more, and what's left is probably expired.

to recall, the brand name estrace is imported by a company in mississaugua called acerus that buys it from a distributor in britain. that's the only distribution where i live. but, that company in britain has lost it's british license, meaning the drug cannot be imported any longer. due to the sad realities around property rights and pharmaceuticals, this has created a mess that may make it almost impossible to find this drug here for a very long time. what remains is the generic.

"but, the generic should be the same thing, just cheaper, you idiot."

see, i wish that was true, but it isn't in this case.

the generic uses a different delivery mechanism, which means what? well, your stomach acids are a vicious thing, and i'm always baffled by people that don't get this. they think we just absorb whatever we eat. in fact, your stomach acids want to rip everything you give it apart into the smallest pieces possible, where those pieces can either be attached to enzymes and absorbed, or discarded and shit out. so, if you're going to take something like estrogen orally, you want to make sure you give it a protective coating to stop it from being destroyed in your stomach.

bafflingly, the generic lupin-estradiol simply doesn't do that, while the brand name estrace does. so, when you take the brand name, you absorb the estrogen attached to an ester, which splits apart in your liver - and is lost largely on first pass but at least gets there. when you take the generic, it just dissolves in your stomach. it's crazy that they're even allowed to sell it at all.

the way around it is to take it under your tongue (or inject it...), but the thing i liked about the oral delivery is that it's just like being on the pill - you don't get mood swings, you just get constant estrone cycling, until it gets excreted. if you take it under your tongue, it's going to hit a peak fairly quickly and then fall very fast, which is not just a problem for mood swings, but also an increased cancer risk.

so, i've gone well out of my way to find the brand name, but i seem to be out and that's it. one store told me they threw out a bottle recently because it was expired. so, anything i could potentially find in distant rural villas is no doubt already destroyed.

around 18:00, i finally gave up and had to transfer the rx back to the local pharmacy and just get the generic. it's cheaper, at least. but, now what?

i got some more groceries done as well, which required another 21.7 km of walking, including the last 6.5 km with 15 kg of soy milk on my back. so, that's 41 km (25.5 miles, in backwards culture units) of walking in the last 36 hours. as i'm not going to need to go out to get more estrace until mid-month at the earliest (and potentially next month), i want to get everything done now, excluding inevitable quick mid-month fruit top-ups. so, i've got just about everything i could find - but i'll need to make another trip to food basics & the bulk barn in the morning. when i got in, i took a shower and need to eat an overdue fruit bowl, but i had to send a fax to the doctor:

======

hi.

it's your old fax-sending friend jessica, again, back to write you another essay. muahahahaha. i actually didn't check if the phone works, as i need to get a letter to dr. --------, anyways. i still have a vm at 5199161358 and an email address at death.to.koalas@gmail.com.

so, i'm calling to ask for a boost in the estrace to 16 mg/day, and i'll explain why.

after bicycling to tecumseh a few times, to leamington, to tilbury (!) and then to amherstburg several times, i have finally run out of options for brand name estrace in the lower peninsula. if there's any brand estrace from here to chatham, it has done an exceptionally good job of hiding itself, as i have called every pharmacy that google can find me.

it's gone. all of it.

i called the distributor, acerus, as well, at one point, and they explained that the problem is that the british government removed the license for the company that manufacturers it. they had an exclusive license. so, until somebody else licenses it in canada (and i'm not sure they can, if acerus has it) this is impossible to get, due to the actions of the british government. acerus might (and, i think should) win their lawsuit in the end, but even winning the lawsuit won't get the item back in circulation.

and, of course, the border is currently closed.

so, the only option is generic. i'm finally at the end.

i have explained before that i am apprehensive about the delivery mechanism in the lupin-estradiol. estradiol is famously weak, anyways; most of it gets destroyed on first pass, with only small amounts converting to estrone, which then cycles repeatedly before it's excreted. so, the brand name attaches the estrogen to an ester that is intended to help it a least get to the liver, where it breaks in half. the lupin-estradiol does not have this ester, meaning that it doesn't even make it to first pass, it merely gets destroyed in stomach acid. it's as good as a placebo, in practice.

it's been a while now; everybody's in the same boat. have your other patients noticed degrading effects after switching?

the way around this is to either inject it (i'm the last gen xer; i've watched everybody die of drug overdoses, i don't want to inject anything into me, ever. no needles. no way.) or to otherwise avoid swallowing it by taking it sublingually. but, i don't want to eliminate the hepatic process altogether, because i want to maintain some little bit of estrone cycling.

so, this is my proposal, and it is a large dosage increase, but let's talk about it:

- sublingual application of 2 mg every 6 hours +

- orally swallowing 4 mg every 12 hours (hoping that the large dosage gets a bit of it into the portal vein, at least - but realizing that this is mostly useless)

that would be 4*2 + 4*2 = 16 mg/day - a doubling of dosage. but, i've just halved the effectiveness. it's not a practical increase, but an adjustment to the delivery mechanism. i'm hoping it just balances out...

obviously, this isn't ideal. when i spoke to dr. ---------, he indicated that i was absorbing the estrogen. but, if i have to go further than chatham to get brand name, i'll have to wait until the spring. and, i'm not convinced it's there at all.

one of the last stores i spoke to was in lasalle, and they indicated they recently had to throw some of it out because it expired. so, any lingering supply may be unsellable, and this is consequently all there is to do.

if you'd like to book an appointment to talk, i have no schedule, so just leave a message at my vm to do so. give me like 36 hours notice or something. i'm empirically driven, so i see the value of testing it and adjusting to it, but i'm exceedingly apprehensive about this, and would rather come on strong and turn it down than come in low and turn it up.

that said, i've learned my lesson and will wait for a response. just please recognize that i can't wait too long for a response.

thanks,

jessica

===========

so, that's what's next.

i need to eat, first. after that, i need to finish my shopping - and also to mail a few things regarding court cases and fippas. and, then i will need to file a few things, after that.

i should hopefully be able to get back to what i'm doing tomorrow or the next day.

but, that was the last few days - 40+ km of walking to get grocery shopping done. and, i've got a few more to finish it up...

you can look at me like an idiot, if you want, i guess. why don't i get a car? or at least order a cab?

see, and i'm going to flip the question around - if you drive your car to the grocery store, what do you do for exercise? well, do you even exercise at all? 'cause if you just drive your car everywhere and sit on your ass all day, don't call me an idiot - go have a heart attack, instead. but, if you do take reasonable care of yourself, how do you do it?

do you spend $100/month to go to the gym? really? and you're calling me stupid?

do you run around in circles like a retarded horse?

this is what you probably do - you get in your car and drive to the grocery store (which costs money and produces emissions) and then get home and run laps like a gerbil, or go to the gym and pay through your nose to look sexy running on the spot. right?

well, if you did what my dumbass self does, you'd save hundreds of dollars a year on gym and gas costs, and help the planet by keeping pollution down - and be in better shape than you are now, on top of it.

in my estimation, running around in circles is borderline retarded, and i can't do it. i need to attach physical activity to functionally useful behaviour, like grocery shopping.

that said, i'd have cut my transit time by 75% if i had a bike, and i hope the weather's cleared up enough to allow for it by this time next month.

i need to eat...

Monday, February 1, 2021

whether english is a pidgin or not is a technical debate that i'll leave to the linguists. but, people that aren't native in it continually complain that it doesn't make any sense, and they're right to do it - it's a primitive, guttural language. it's broken german loaded with loan words from french and currently in a rather pathetic state, truly.

you can correctly use affect in a sentence, then restructure it and have to use effect instead. it's too subtle, too arbitrary.

effect v affect is one of the hardest things in the english language, and while i reject grammar as a broader principle, i think it's important to maintain the proper meanings of words, too.

i'll get that one wrong, sometimes, because the logic is blurry. it's not always clear what the right choice is, and sometimes it doesn't make sense.

i need to call for a re-evaluation of the english language to root it in proper axiomatic principles, to allow it to be deduced fully from first principles, so you don't have to memorize stupid rules and can figure it out on the fly, instead.

so, i reject the conventions around it's v its and use my own conventions, instead. it's should be both possessive and a contraction; its should only be plural, which is almost incoherent. so, i almost always use it's and will tell you your rules need to be reformed when you challenge me on it. and, i may have to come up with something similar for effect v affect and stick with it.

"cigarettes are food" - frank zappa

i don't know if he was joking or not; he smoked a lot. but, it's obviously absurd.

i guess that if you're going to allow grocery stores to sell alcohol (which isn't really food), you need to pass regulations to ensure that they also have regulations to follow in terms of stocking actual food.

otherwise, it's inevitable - every grocery store becomes a liquor store fist and a grocery store second, because you can markup a bottle of wine by 1000% and have to sell broccoli more or less at cost.

so, you walk into a grocery store nowadays and they're clearly all trying to sell you alcohol - wine, beer, etc. it's expanded from a small part of the store to entire aisles and sections, to the point that it's starting to crowd out other items. are grocery stores going to keep stocking less food and other items, and more alcohol? is the profit ratio that large?

i mean, a freshco or a sobey's is ultimately going to stock the products with the largest returns on them. fresh meat is increasingly rare, which is not such a bad thing, but driven by the economics of it. so, how long before you can't find grapes, because all of the shelf space is occupied by wine? how long before the only way to buy potatoes is via vodka?

the other thing i'm thinking of is how something like this would affect somebody like my mother. i can walk by a giant wine display in a grocery store and not think twice about it. she can't. and, on a bad day, she might just open the bottle in the store and pass out on the floor.

i'm not opposed to the idea of liberalizing the sale of alcohol in principle, but, again, we're seeing what happens when you allow for too much economic freedom in a primitive market society - i just want to blame the problem on markets, and not on freedom. with pollution, you end up with people dying of disease that shouldn't exist, and living with poor qualities of life while they survive. with marijuana, you end up with unlivable and unhealthy living spaces as people act oblivious to the externalities of their behaviour. with prostitution, you'll inevitably end up with corporate pimps pushing the women into conditions of abject slavery. and, with alcohol you're ending up with beer taking over the space of healthy food on the shelves. and, it's all because of the corrupting effects of profit on the general health of a society.

there are going to be some lucky people in a market society that can find some kind of remuneration for some kind of task that doesn't make them want to throw themselves off a building in boredom and disgust, but that's going to be exceedingly rare. and, yeah - you'll find a lot of people that don't have the cognitive abilities to care much beyond the basic labour contract, and are perfectly happy to exchange their freedom for material goods. this is really what the system is designed around and for - people that don't care about how they spend their time, and are just happy to have a job to buy things with - including drugs, and bad corporate media.

but, it's exceedingly difficult to be a legitimately smart person in a market society, because you don't find yourself concerned with whether people think you've succeeded or not, so much as you find yourself up against the impossibility of existing in a way that doesn't make you want to kill yourself. you may have an unending list of satisfying, enjoyable things to do with yourself, but nobody wants to pay you to do them, so unless you have an independent source of wealth, you have no choice but to not have the time to do those things because you have to find some way to pay the rentier class, instead. and, how excited does anybody get about living a life like that?

it's for that reason that the most intelligent people in a market society end up on the fringes of it, while the dumbest end up running the institutions.

if that's efficiency, it's efficiency in the sense of being an efficient algorithm for idiocracy - which is what we have around us, more and more every day.

there isn't a job you could give me that i wouldn't hate, or a labor relationship you could present to me that wouldn't make me loathe my existence, and despise who i am. i admit it would be easier if there was - if somebody would pay me for doing the things that i love. but, i would rather live in abject poverty and exercise the freedom to do what i want than throw everything i love away for material possessions.

and, i insist that's a sign of intelligence - whereas choosing freely to exist in a role you care little for is a sign of a lack of it, regardless of the salary figures attached to it.

so, i always looked at getting a job as giving up on life, and refusing to get one as continuing to resist, continuing to live, continuing to exist.

it would help if i had an income source, granted. but, that can neither be an ends, nor a means to one; it can only be coincidental, adjunct, secondary...

to be free, we must exist to devise our own ends, not to accumulate profit - not for you, and not for anybody else. and, we must be free to be happy...

so, where's gi joe gonna bomb first?

let's hope that's not the answer.

sorry, this is some reference for the previous post:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/world/asia/myanmar-coup-aung-san-suu-kyi.html

myanmar is complicated, and it doesn't help to moralize it, despite the fact that that's what you're going to hear about for the next forever because it glosses over the complexities of the situation, but there's a very introductory crash course to the british partition of india with some fuller context, which you won't get anywhere in the news, here:

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020_09_06_archive.html

i am the source, here.

...which i'm going to repost so it's linear and readable:

sept 6, 2020

but, if involving ourselves slows the process down, it's self-serving and should be resisted.

i don't know what you do in this situation. the countries around them don't want them for various reasons, and (unlike canada, which is a colonial state) myanmar does have some self-determinancy in the matter; there's no valid reason why they ought to be forced to integrate a large group of foreign refugees that are not indigenous to the region and that they don't want, and there's valid accusations of continuing colonialism underlying demands by a country like canada that they should.

it's really the bangladeshis that deserve the higher levels of criticism here for kicking out their own, not myanmar that deserves the criticism for refusing them entry. some kind of proper solution really involves working with the bangladeshis to integrate the kind of population that the country was created to absorb, not pushing continuing muslim and indian colonization of what is a buddhist and ethnically different territory.

perhaps the pakistanis could offer them asylum.

but, if canada's ultimate angle here is that it sees them as a source of migration, then it should just start lifting them out and stop interfering in a legal process that it's just making worse by meddling in.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-myanmar-court-intervention-1.5714246