industries will also find ways to adjust to the tariffs. 

have you noticed that the price of coffee has doubled in the last few years? there are apparently climate issues with the production of coffee, but the increase in cost is due to the tariff taxes on the cost of aluminum. the tariffs increased the cost of producing the tins, and the costs got passed on.

in response, walmart has started selling it's coffee in cardboard containers instead, and they are selling their house brand at 50% the cost of the cheaper coffee (maxwell house) and a third to a quarter the price of the premium brand. they are going to completely undercut and rive maxwell house out of business unless they adjust, and i'd expect they will. these cardboard containers are made from recycled cardboard and are more sustainable as well.

coffee is an essential good for many people, including myself. coffee is food. i'd like to start growing it here indoors in a a circular, sustainable manner. removing the large amount of aluminum in the manufacturing process is actually a good thing, long term. 

i fully support the carbon rebate, will be dramatically harmed if it is taken away and am extremely disappointed that the liberals are promising to take the rebate away.

the right move for canada to make next is to slap large export taxes - 100%-200% - on items that the united states gets from us and can't find another source for, such as oil, uranium, potash, aluminum, nickel, gold, canola and electricity.

it is stupid to threaten to cut off the electricity like ford is doing.

he should jack up the price, instead.

then, you take that money generated by the export taxes and use it to help the workers harmed by the tariffs.

i'm still watching the liberal debate.

now is not the time to balance the budget, but three out of four candidates are insisting on doing it. let's remember back to 2015. the ndp were the opposition, and mulcair was running way ahead of trudeau, but then he promised to balance the budget, and trudeau promised to run deficits. trudeau ending up leapfrogging mulcair and winning a majority.

it's not the 90s anymore, but it's not as though chretien ran on balancing the budget. in fact, he faced major pushback for it. balancing the budget was what a very large number of people voted against in 1993. he ran on cutting the gst.

i'm consequently not entirely sure what these people are thinking.

canada is going to need to run large deficits to mitigate the effects of these tariffs. i don't want to hear about balancing the budget, i want to hear about the government absorbing the costs.

none of the candidates are impressing me but three of them are right of centre, and it leaves the remaining candidate - karina gould - as the only option, by default, although she seems to be rather flawed, as well. i'd rather put carney in a technical or finance role than make him prime minister; he doesn't strike me as a good candidate for that role.

the canadian liberals do this every few years, they swing to the fiscal right and run these technocratic candidates, and they can never generate popular support because it's not what people want. the banker is going to become leader, but he won't last long.

the idea that canada can mitigate it's problem with the americans by retreating back to the british empire is delusional. the british need to maintain lapdog status with the americans and will not stand up for us. further, the americans are militarizing the pacific to try to contain china, and will need to aggressively position forces in australia. 

the only way that we're going to escape washington is to conquer it, and if you follow the narrative, that's actually what the americans are worried about. they're afraid of us. that's the point.

we need to find some way to work with the americans, and politicians suggesting otherwise should be seen as insane. it's geography. it's unavoidable.

everybody needs to calm down. trump is a lame duck president, and an anomaly on canada. he's not overseeing a shift in policy, he's a loose cannon. we should avoid reacting rashly, as this won't last, and we don't want to create more damage than is necessary, when we seek to undo this with the next president. 

so, hamas should release the hostages if it wants to receive aid. why is anybody sending these thugs anything in the first place? cutting off aid until they release the people they're holding hostage is entirely reasonable.

zelensky says he's not playing cards, but he doesn't understand.

trump has stopped playing monopoly and has started playing risk. he has the cards. zelensky doesn't.

but trump will make him a deal for some better cards.

 

based on the results of the ontario election, it would appear unlikely that chrystia freeland is going to win her own riding, let alone win an election for prime minister.

that would be the correct outcome. she should not be rewarded for the stunt she pulled.

what happened in the white house today with zelensky and trump looks brutal. granted. but, history will demonstrate trump is right.

what i have realized, and what the media won't cover, is that biden was hopefully the last cold warrior. he started from day one in his withdrawal of afghanistan (which, whatever he said, was about redeploying resources to europe) and had an obsession with creating the knockout blow to finally defeat the russians. he never campaigned on this, and few people saw it coming. nobody seemed to want to believe it.

in the end, nato was launching an offensive incursion in russia by sending trillions of dollars into ukraine which is not an ally or a democracy. ukraine is the most corrupt country in the world. it's a kleptocracy that has experienced multiple coups since the collapse of the soviet union, and spent the first 25 years under a literal dictatorship. it's recent history is more similar to a country experiencing oriental despotism, like kazakhstan, than any country in europe. it has generally leaned towards russia, not the west; that was why there needed to be a coup in 2014.

the catastrophic mess that biden created by his aggressive policy to destroy russia (he seems to have thought the russians were so weak they'd be defeated by ukraine, which is absurd) has to be cleaned up using similarly aggressive tactics. zelensky is not a politician; he's a creation of biden, and he says the things he says because it's what biden groomed him as. he's a puppet that's lost his puppeteer. he should resign, and should be replaced.

i am still watching the liberal leadership debate, and they keep arguing with each other over who is going to increase military spending the fastest, under the flawed perception that a "strong military" will "keep us safe".

i would have expected liberal leadership candidates to actually want to talk about diplomacy and what canada is going to do to stop wars from starting.

that said, i would support some kind of missile shield in the arctic, similar to iron dome but on a larger scale. that would be very expensive.

the liberals and ndp in ontario really need to stop competing with each other.

every response by every candidate is about trump.

trump is a lame duck president in poor health that might die in office and appears to be a puppet of elon musk.

i want to hear about what ideas they have to address the problems canadians face in canada, like too much  immigration and not enough housing.

what do i think is really going on with this doge thing?

i think it's a cover. smoke and mirrors.

donald trump does not care about fiscal solvency and is not a fiscal conservative. he proved that in his first term. he slashed taxes irresponsibly and generated huge deficits, then shrugged it off, which is the norm for republicans since reagan. republicans always create huge deficits, often largely via war spending, but also via overwhelming corruption. it is true that they cut services for the poor, but this isn't about saving money, it's a type of class warfare. it's also a means of scapegoating that helps them get the working poor and lower middle class to vote for them, against their class interests.

i would expect millions or billions of dollars to disappear in the next four years, or to be spent on weird consultants, and for the money to ultimately be funneled to trump and/or musk. that's the actual point. they're not just making stuff up, they're distracting you from what they're doing by telling it to your face and hoping you can't figure it out.

i acknowledge that it's somewhat of a gloss on the facts, but in russia the narrative is that ukraine is preventing the east from succeeding, after it voted to leave, and this is fundamentally actually true, even if it ignores the attacks on kyiv and the rest of the country, who have not vote to secede and probably won't.

it's not dissimilar from the american civil war in a lot of ways, with zelensky playing the role of lincoln and the russians acting like the british empire, except, in this telling of history, the south secedes and rejoins the empire.

when you drop all the bullshit and look at the basic conflict, zelensky is fighting a war to prevent the east from seceding, which is fundamentally an attack on democracy. there's good reason to question his democratic legitimacy, and to question the democratic legitimacy of his position in the war. 

does trudeau actually believe the nonsense he's spouting about ukraine or is he just reading something somebody gave him? is he ignorant or stupid?

not only should a condition of ending the war not be ukraine in nato, it should be the withdrawal of nato troops from poland back to germany, and the americans should be realizing right now how important it is that they occupy germany, which is a vanquished enemy, not an ally or friend. the importance of occupying germany has never been more apparent than it is right now.

should the russians give back the territory they've (re)claimed from ukraine since 2014? well, that should be up to the people that live there, who are russian speaking and who voted to join russia. maybe there should be another vote, but if what you're going on about is saving democracy, you have to realize it would be undemocratic to send these people back to ukraine, when they want to be a part of russia.

this war was inevitable, after the coup in moscow 35 years ago. it took too long to happen, really. you should stand with the people - the actual people - and not with either military, one of which is a totalitarian system and the other of which is a protection racket. that means listening to them when they vote and self-organize, even if you don't like the outcome.

this isn't our war, and throwing rocks at the russians - who we share a very large border with - like this is abjectly moronic. trudeau is a complete, utter buffoon.

i would be vociferously, vehemently opposed to this, and i will explicitly vote against the liberals on this policy if they bring it in before the next election.

i would have never expected to see the liberals arguing for the occupation of a foreign country, but here we are.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/trudeau-in-kyiv-pledges-army-vehicles-seized-russian-cash-on-anniversary-of-invasion/

ruby dhalla may have broken some rules, but they all have. it is more likely that she got disqualified because the party executive doesn't like her politics, and that's fundamentally undemocratic. in a democracy, you don't prevent people from speaking because you don't like their views, you engage with them and try to convince them that they're wrong. it demonstrates a continued weakening of free speech rights in the liberal party that's been ongoing for some time, which everybody should be extremely concerned about.

if the party really doesn't like her views, it should be confident that she'll lose. right? that they can't be confident they can beat her indicates that they don't have confidence in their own grassroots, and perhaps they ought not to, but it would be extremely helpful for everybody to learn just how many votes ruby dhalla can get running on an anti-drug, anti-immigration platform in the liberal party of canada in 2025, and the party might want to learn something from that rather than ban her from speaking. perhaps the truth is that some of their policies on these topics should be modified, because their positions on drug use and immigration are actually borderline insane. members of the grassroots should be given the opportunity to argue that, and the party should listen, if they speak loud enough.

i mean, if even the party grassroots is arguing this point, which is notoriously left wing, the party needs to pull the dildos out of it's ears and start listening.

the liberal party i used to support just wouldn't act like this; it would strenuously argue that when you don't like somebody's views, you engage them in debate and defeat them and aggressively criticize people suggesting otherwise, because you ultimately have to do that in order to change them. banning ruby from running doesn't make her go away, it just means you're ignoring her and choosing not to see her standing in front of you; it's ostrich logic. you have to engage. that's why the liberals opened dialogs with these unliberal groups like muslims in the first place, because they realized you have to engage with them to convince them to change, and that this is necessary moving forward. these unliberal groups in our society like muslims must change.

shutting ruby down on a trivial technicality like this more or less just proves she's right and that, to an extent, we've already lost the fight against the authoritarians, like the fundamentalist muslims that are increasingly taking over the liberal party, because they made the mistake of letting them in.

i wouldn't have voted for ruby, and i haven't identified as a liberal in a very long time, but i'd have ripped up my membership over a party's refusal to uphold basic principles of free speech and free discourse. i wouldn't align with a political movement like that, wouldn't support it, wouldn't donate to it and wouldn't vote for it, and what the liberal party needs to realize and understand is that what's happened is that it's been co-opted by the right-wing foreign religious and immigrant groups that it initially engaged with to try to assimilate. it reached out to these groups to try to change them, and got taken over and overwhelmed by them because it didn't set rules for itself.

i might suggest to more powerful people than i in greater positions of power than i that the liberal party of canada is too important an institution to allow to be overrun by barbarians at the gates, and that they need to take the party back using the methods they have in front of them to do it.

the reality is that the pretty indian woman in makeup got banned from running by the muslim-dominated liberal party executive because she looks like a slut, and this isn't the first time we've seen the liberal party engage in attacks on indians, sikhs or hindus that seem motivated by a fundamentalist muslim perspective. this needs to be understood, exposed, attacked and dismantled.

there's no need to rename greenland.

it's all about it. right?

these guys are dipshits.

in fact, the german business class will be extremely appreciative of trump for ending this, if he does. this war is not popular in germany at all - not amongst workers and not amongst business. it's just this class of fake left politicians that have egg all over their face, and they're only embarrassed because they look like idiots for having to flip-flop.

a lot of the people that knee jerk are going to be just trying to avoid contradicting themselves in public.

https://www.politico.eu/article/transatlantic-relations-over-donald-trump-sides-vladimir-putin-top-german-mp-michael-roth/

see, this is what i was talking about in suggesting a handful of democrats should try to grab the balance of power.

trump will hold a core of republicans, but a substantive amount of his policy positions are so unconservative that he'd be looking to the far left of the democratic party for support.

people like myself, for example. i absolutely agree that zelensky is a brutal fascist dictator, and that he's a front for the most dangerous right-wing coalition we've seen since the nazis. i think trump is getting the puppet strings reversed, but his analysis is spot on.

so, how does somebody like bernie sanders walk into this and try to take advantage of it? sanders is unfortunately a bad example, because his foreign policy actually sucks across the board. however, there is a clear opportunity for somebody on the real left to step in here and try to influence policy, because the lindsay grahams of the world are gonna hate this, and they can fuck off on the horse they rode in on.

as republicans melt down and revolt, i'm having the opposite reaction. i have spent the last four years railing against biden's foreign policy, and pointedly refused to endorse him in 2024 or 2020 for the specific reason that i thought he would be a foreign policy disaster, and i was clearly right, he was the worst foreign policy disaster in decades. i have repeatedly blamed biden for starting this war in this space (he is not solely to blame, but he set it up, and he let it happen). i think trump is a godsend for showing up and trying to put an end to this mess.

in fact, my position is a bit more meta than this; i realize that it is absolutely imperative that the united states have russian support if it wants to win a war against china, and i realize that the russians want to be on our side, we just have refused to let them be on our side. the chinese have got us fighting each other, when we should be working together. ukraine is irrelevant and fighting the russians is retarded; it is the russians, and only the russians, that will help us beat the chinese, and we have no chance against the chinese without russian help.

when i look at american and british state and corporate media, and i see it take this anti-russian position like this, i realize it's a subtly pro-chinese position, and it makes me wonder.

i'm reminded of the debate between obama and romney, where obama nails romney for thinking russia was america's adversary. clinton first and then biden reversed that and aligned with romney, in calling china a competitor, and russia an adversary. trump's position is closer to obama's again, which is the correct one - china wants to be america's enemy and is america's greatest and probably only serious threat, while russia actually wants to be america's friend, and is constantly being rejected in it's advances. america has for decades very stupidly tried to build alliances with it's enemies and tried to start wars with it's friends.

america doesn't stand a fucking chance unless it figures this out, and future historians could point to this shift in policy as a game-changing decision that saves american hegemony from the brink of collapse.

it would seem that carney has emerged as the runaway favourite, with chrystia freeland running at a distant second and karina gould as an also-run. there's some business guy running, too, apparently.

there's one more candidate.

is ruby dhalla a dark horse in the liberal leadership, given that they use preferential voting, she's a legitimate outsider, she's the only immigrant on the ballot and she knows how to leverage her appealing appearance?

she might be.

it does look like carney will win the most votes on the first ballot, and the expectation should be that he will win by the third round at the latest, but i wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being dhalla that gives him a run, rather than freeland.

the reality is that appearances are very important in politics. it's better to learn that at the start of your career than at the end of it. that's just real life.

in ontario, the liberals have tended to lean pretty far to the left, as well, and the differences in policy are often difficult to articulate. often times, on issues such as gun control, the ndp actually come out to the right of the liberals. it's counter-intuitive. 

i don't support merging the parties.

but they need to stop competing. it's stupid.

it's a classic prisoner's dilemma.

if the liberals and ndp were smart about this and co-operated rather than competed, they could probably at least hold ford to a minority, and could possibly form a coalition government.

instead, they're going to be stupid and compete and both lose, and ford will win another majority.

if the liberals and ndp want to throw this fatass dumbfuck loser doug ford out of office this cycle, and probably next cycle, they're going to have to strike an accord. it's not that doug ford is particularly popular, although his demographic numbers are admittedly somewhat frightening if you break them down and analyze them. these are numbers that should really throw liberals in this country for a loop. the problem is that the anti-ford vote is almost evenly split almost everywhere, and they don't make any attempt to work together in any way, they just show up to compete against each other, they run directly against each other, they split the vote and they throw the election away. it's utterly foolish, tactically.

there is no possible outcome besides a ford landslide, and a situation where he gets 40% of the vote and has 100% of the legislative power. i don't want doug ford to be premier any more, and his approval rating is worse than joe biden's, but there's no realistic path to get rid of him.

the liberals and ndp need to take a different approach and should perhaps look at the recent elections in france for ideas as to what to do.

the truth is that america is really more like mexico than canada.

maybe it could consider joining mexico, or brazil, instead.

i'm going to flip this issue over.

the united states is not good enough to be a part of canada, like turkey or ukraine is not good enough to be a part of europe. there are a few things that the united states needs to change about itself before canada would consider admitting it to be a part of the dominion.

1) it needs to adopt the metric system.

2) it needs universal healthcare. today. this is non-negotiable. this cannot wait any longer.

3) it needs a bill of rights with bodily self-ownership in it, so that abortion is a constitutional right.

4) it must do away with property rights immediately. yuck. gross.

5) it has to accept better protections for trans rights, and allow for state-funded transgender surgery.

6) it needs a multi-party democratic system. the two party system is not democracy.

7) abolish the second amendment, outright. yuck. gross. i don't want that kind of bullshit in my constitution.

8) ban the death penalty.

9) abolish all slavery, including prison labour.

this is not a complete list, it's a set of basic starting points.

once the americans have implemented these policies, they can get back to us about becoming a part of canada.

odsp is currently about 55% of minimum wage (net, not gross, which is more appropriate because we don't pay taxes), which is too low, but i'd settle for a doubling in the housing amount, which is the actual problem and an issue everybody is dealing with. 

odsp, however, needs something more than money thrown at it. it is suffering from a design flaw brought in during the harris years to shift to something market-based. this was rooted in the silly conservative idea that people are more free when they have more financial choices (because that's what i want in my life, the freedom to make financial decisions. right. in fact, that's about the last thing i give a fuck about.) and less free when they have less financial choices. ergo, disabled people would be more free if better allowed to participate in the market. essentially zero disabled people agree with that logic; disabled people generally want freedom from markets and look to odsp as an escape mechanism from the tyranny of the market, which they can't compete in. 

it's the same issue with religion. conservatives want freedom of religion. secularists want from from religion.

today, they give us 55% of the minimum wage and tell us to compete with minimum wage earners for market housing. a one bedroom apartment in the cheapest city in ontario is roughly the same amount as my entire odsp check, $1300-$1400/month. how can i compete on the market when i'm not given the resources to? but, it's the premise - that disabled people can compete on the market - that is actually the problem, because it's backwards and orwellian and stupid. the definition of being disabled is that you can't compete on the market.

the inevitable outcome of telling disabled people to look for market housing and then giving them 55% of the minimum wage is that disabled people are going to end up homeless. the math is pretty oppressive. it doesn't work out any other way. worse, the disabled are the people in society least able to pull themselves out of poverty, or generate money from nothing. then the conservatives moan and complain and whine that they're throwing away all this money on the disabled, when this is actually not what we want and not what we need.

odsp needs to be redesigned to fix this design flaw brought in during the harris years by stop telling disabled people to pay market rent and then handicapping them by preventing them from being able to compete on the market by giving them too low a fraction of the minimum wage, so that they cannot compete with minimum wage earners for housing. the two ways to do this are to get odsp recipients out of market housing by increasing subsidized housing (which is the better idea) or, if you want to hold to the delusions of market theory, by setting the amount that odsp recipients receive to an amount that allows them to compete on the market. they would need to at least double the shelter amount from $600 to $1200, keeping in mind that, as a disabled person, i actually don't need income for things like gas money, because i can't afford (and in my case don't want) a car.

i'm such a dour realist that when i dreamt of gentle, rolling fields and pastures this evening (as i truly did, i woke up a little after 1:00), it was in an algorithmic pattern, so i could deconstruct it into computer code.

my brain subconsciously deconstructed the landscape into patterns and turned it into a cgi background.

some napkin math for the liberals.

29026*.85/12 = 2056.

1368x = 2056 <----> x = 2056/1368 = 1.50

a 50% increase, and legislation that it increase at the same rate as the minimum wage so that the distance between the two is maintained (canada is a metric space. i'm sorry.), would be sustainable and fair.

bonnie crombie repeated in the debate that she wants to double odsp, which is something that i've heard politicians say before, and sounds encouraging, but should actually be taken as a red flag - it's not a serious promise, and it will be broken. as an odsp recipient that is having difficulty finding housing, an increase in benefits is exactly what i need right now; it would be a godsend. however, i want to see and hear a serious plan for odsp that is sustainable and realistic, not a crazy promise to win my vote.

what would doubling odsp actually mean?

As of February 2025, Ontario's minimum wage is projected to increase to $17.82 per hour on October 1, 2025. This would result in a gross monthly income of approximately $35,149.92 for a full-time employee working 26 pay periods per year. However, after taxes, the net income would be approximately $29,026. 

ok.

how much would my yearly income be if you doubled my odsp check?

it's currently $1368 and set to increase by around 3% on aug 1 due to inflation, as it is pegged to inflation. $1368*12 = 16416. 16416*2 = 32832. they don't tax this.

so, if you doubled odsp, my income would be higher than minimum wage. unless you also boosted minimum wage - and maybe you should, to $20 - that would not be fair. as an odsp recipient, i know that's not fair.

however, we've increased minimum wage faster than odsp and that's created a problem that was foreseeable. that was a bad policy choice.

something fair and sustainable would be to set odsp as a fraction of the minimum wage, say 85%, and ensure they increase together, so increasing one doesn't harm the other. i don't want to play into protestant work ethic narratives about lazy disabled people, but some subset of alcoholics and drug users (particularly) should have that incentive in place. this does not describe most odsp recipients, who have legitimate disabilities, but it is a nontrivial subset and if you tell them they're better off doing drugs on odsp, they will make that choice.

when she tells me she wants to double my income, i'm supposed to run to the voting booth. i'm not that stupid and i don't appreciate having my intelligence insulted.

i'd call on the liberals to release a serious, sustainable plan for odsp. the province needs it. i need it. it's overdue and required.

if you could go back in time to 2025 and kill elon musk before he started world war three, would you do it?

hitler's biggest early backer was henry ford.

ukraine is neither in the eu nor in nato, will probably never be in either and is arguably in asia rather than europe.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/15/europe/zelensky-trump-putin-ukraine-russia-peace-talks-intl/index.html

it turns out doug ford sent me a check after all. i didn't pay taxes last year, but i did file my taxes because  i get tax rebates.

it's not a good public policy, but i need the cash and i'll take it.

the donation button is on the side and i'm on the brink of putting everything in storage and hitting a hotel c. mar 15th, right now. i kind of have to because i can't even go outside. the only way out of here is via an intermediate source.

there are specific goods that the united states used to make - used to dominate the production of - and no longer makes at all any more. the reason is indeed due to free trade, but trump is misunderstanding the problem.

the chinese have more than a comparative advantage, which is fair trade in principle, but an absolute advantage in the cost of labour. it's not just china, it's most of the far east, india, africa and parts of south america, including mexico. the united states cannot produce goods at the same cost because it has to pay up to 10x as much in labour costs. therefore, it cannot compete.

one solution would be to make labour unions illegal, but what is great about that? who wants that? donald, do you want that? really? you don't, you're desperate.

the minimal reshoring that's occurred recently has been about moving production into prison facilities, and that is actually happening, look it up. that is the only type of labour in america that can compete with overseas labour costs.

rather, the solution is to support labour movements in the developing world. if the chinese had some organized labour, their comparative advantage would collapse, and everybody - except the investor class - would be better off.

this is the solution that workers should be supporting, but it's hard to get the uneducated idiots to listen. they should be standing in global solidarity with each other and fighting capitalism. instead, they elect donald trump, who installs tariffs by imperial decree, which just makes everything worse.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4epl1994o

some number of years ago, hillary clinton started comparing putin to hitler and the liberal press has run with it ever since. it's a toxic, stupid, offensive comparison that should be ridiculed and avoided.

i probably won't be happy with the outcome of this, but i'm not happy with the process. it's not exactly joe biden's fault personally, except in the sense that he escalated in a ham-fisted manner that was far too transparent. he made it far too obvious that nato was planning an attack on russia (which has in fact happened, now) and left putin without an option but to strike first. a different president might have been less obvious, less clumsy, and generated a different response. however, the responsibility for this war lies with western military leaders going back to clinton and hw bush, including with trump who ordered a massive troop movement from germany into poland. this is not the fault of any particular person in america, it is the responsibility of the war obsession in american culture and american society, and the obsession of the elderly in defeating the soviets in the cold war. comparisons to yalta (when stalin helped us defeat hitler. a lot.) are so bizarre as to be downright offensive. america has more than a small level of moral responsibility to clean this mess up.

right now - today. this minute. - the focus needs to be on averting further escalation and preventing a nuclear war. we can write and rewrite the history books tomorrow and the day after. trump is correct to identify the imminent danger and threat and seek to swiftly put an end to this, before we all burn.

the important thing right now is not the terms of the peace, it is the return of peace itself.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/13/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-ukraine-us-europe

i'm almost done 88 with the genesis plow through, and i'll do 89, but i'm going to flip to "90s" for 90-99, 00s for 00-09, 10s for 10-19 and "20s" for 20-25 and then rewind, but i might be gone by then.

the phil collins hits are instantly recognizable by people of all ages, and most people know the gabriel megahits, and know that gabriel and collins are connected. the bassist also had a couple of big singles, including "all i need is a miracle" and "living years" and that connection is less known. the two guitarists both released widely, but did not make massive singles like that; hackett sold a lot of albums, but not many singles. the keyboard player did not have a successful solo career. the three of them that did focus on single releases (collins, gabriel, rutherford) were ubiquitous in the 80s in a way that only the beatles were previously.

in fact,

According to available information, the only three musicians who have sold over 100 million records both as a solo artist and as part of a band are Paul McCartney (The Beatles), Michael Jackson (Jackson 5), and Phil Collins (Genesis). 

i'm trying to get a point across about the cultural importance, here. i will do this for other important 20th century artists like zappa, puppy, crimson, bowie, nirvana and floyd, but none of them will be as impressive as this in terms of breadth, depth, longevity, scope and raw sales. as a music historian, i have to understand that.

i have a music web project that's currently on hold until i can get my exercise space set back up. right now, somebody is drugging me when i'm sleeping and hacking my raspberry pi remotely, so i have the pi off and the exercise cut until i can control my surroundings again. just a few more months, i expect, before i can get back to doing cardio on the bicycle.

cardio on a bicycle is a type of exercise that decreases body mass and leads to weight loss. i bicycle to stay thin and keep my cholesterol down. getting out of this mess is taking longer than i wanted. the last thing in the world that i would want would be to gain muscle mass or gain weight, so i've avoided any exercise at all while i think i'm being drugged with steroids by these disgusting freaks and will continue to until i'm sure i have the testosterone completely flushed out of my system and i'm able to assert control of things as being back to normal.

i am trying to avoid this issue of trans kids playing sports and i can't. i frankly don't care much about competition, and i would not consider this to be a pressing concern to most transgendered women. what percentage of transwomen care about sports? at all? 10%? nor is the issue of much importance to voters, but it's seen saturation level advertising, and the political establishment is reacting by following through so it can say "look, we won".

so, i've been forced to reflect on something i don't care much about and in the process have developed a different perspective.

i think the broader concern should be america's unhealthy obsession with competition and success in children's games, and that this is in truth merely one manifestation of the broader sickness in american culture around competition and sports. this issue with trans kids playing sports is really the same kind of abuse we see young men routinely incur at the hands of their fathers and increasingly see young women incur at the hands of one or both parents. for too many young people in america today, their worth as human beings is tied directly to their ability to excel at some children's game that is a triviality in the larger scope of existence.

the question that keeps jumping out at me is why the political and academic systems aren't encouraging more healthy attitudes about children's competitions, more generally - ideas about sportsmanship, inclusion and the importance of having fun when you play the game. is a factor in america's obesity rate the attitude it instills about exercise as a competitive process in so many young children? does the way that america approaches exercise as a form of competition exclude and alienate so many people, not just trans people, that they become so mentally damaged and experience so much trauma that they end up dangerously overweight?

i want to see the system promote more co-ed exercise activities that are about co-operating in teams and including and accepting people in the team despite their differences, and not about hypercompetition and the exaggeration of difference as factors to analyze in the course of competition. 

kids should be having fun when they exercise, not be so obsessed about winning that they attack their colleagues over coveted spaces on the team.

when i was a kid, they told me that it didn't matter who won, what mattered was that you enjoyed the activity. there's lost wisdom in that. i would rather refocus on cooperation and de-emphasize competition than kneejerk with a militant trans rights response.

that's what i have to say after thinking about it a little and needing to adjust to this barrage of media. this isn't my fight on it's face, but perhaps it is in abstraction, and i want to side with co-operation in opposition to competition.

again, i don't like that i have to do this, but some people are incredibly hard-headed, in addition to being ignorant and stupid. in fact, i've posted this before.

this is a picture of my franco-italian father and i at my grade 8 graduation, outside of frank ryan middle school in ottawa, ontario in the late spring of 1995, when i was 14:

my dad had a little scottish, a little mikmaq and apparently quite a bit of russian (from an unclear source) in him, but his father's side was overwhelmingly franco-ontarian (with some wonky indigenous ancestry that i was able to sort of prove with a clovis test) and his mother's side was italian. he was, however, an austrian celt in his y-dna, indicating that before he was french he was celtic, and his dna mutated in the alps, likely within the halstatt or la tene culture:

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

in fact, his y-dna (and therefore mine) is an old mutation, making him somewhat of an archaic european cave man, genetically. my dad is in truth what central europeans actually looked like thousands of years ago. i actually have NO neanderthal dna, which is very unusual. it's like <0.1%.

i could not trace his russian ancestry, but it is there. i was able to determine that there was likely an illegitimate child in his grandfather's family. in my opinion, he looks more russian than italian.

his mother was north italian, and the dna test pulled up an affinity to the gotti clan, which is both a large crime family and a marker of germanic ancestry. gotti means "goth", which is an italian slur for "dirty, barbaric german". it indicates some distant swedish ancestry, which is what the dna test pulled up: 10% north italian, <1% sicilian. my grandmother did not have gracile features, but she seems to have been very italian in the roman sense of the word.

he did not have middle eastern ancestry of any sort.

my mother's side is overwhelmingly viking, and i really look more like a swedish/finnish kid here, as i generally did. my mother also appears to have some jewish ancestry on her father's side, but it's distant, like the indigenous mikmaq on my father's side. there's also some suggestion of viking/mikmaq marriages on my mother's father's side at the point of very early contact in the 16th century, in the form of mothers in the genealogy that have non-western names and appear out of nowhere. my mother's father's ancestors were scottish shipbuilders that migrated to nova scotia very early in the colonial period, and (before that) appear to have been vikings that settled in the very north of scotland (moray) and became shipbuilders instead of pirates as they settled. so, you can trace them from sweden to scotland to nova scotia as vikings, pirates and shipbuilders. my mother would appear to be directly descended from aristocratic scottish-viking pirates in the very northern tip of scotland. my mother's mother is finnish/irish.

i used a screenshot of my head for my inri youtube site because it's the earliest picture of me available:

i've also used it for my second class citizens site, as the picture was taken in late 1995 and that is the most appropriate project to connect to late 1995:

https://inrirecords.bandcamp.com/album/second-class-citizens

for some reason, this headshot was misperceived as belonging to an acquaintance of mine from high school named sean, who later sang some demos for me (which i rejected as not what i wanted), by people that apparently knew me from the period and they will not let this go: they are insistent that this is a picture of sean.

this is not a picture of sean, it is a picture of me, as is clearly demonstrated by the above picture. i don't mean to be an ass, but sean did not have a father. it could not have been him, at the least; even if you don't believe it's me, it can't be him. however, it's me, clearly.

all of the pictures on my site are of me, unless noted otherwise, and that is very infrequent. virtually all of the thousands of pictures posted are of me.

i have no motive to post pictures of somebody else. i was in fact a cute kid. i know that.

the reality is that carney understands trump's language better than anybody else on the stage. he really is honestly the best choice, as much as it bothers me to admit it. it happens. fuck the bankers, but this one is best positioned.

if you want to send people, you need to send personalities, not politicians. to donald trump, people like smith and ford are just another ron desantis or chris christie. that's exactly the wrong tactic.

you need to send a tv star or a musician or a sports hero. i've floated don cherry. he likes wayne gretzky. i don't want to float names, but you get the point.

bob rae would be a better choice than doug ford.

is there some value to the idea that ford would be better to deal with trump?

no.

ford is a fat idiot, and trump is going to make fun of his appearance and call him stupid, as he should. besides, trump would be unlikely to talk to the governor of ontario. if ford wants to run for prime minister, he should; i wouldn't vote for him. as it is, he should sit down and shut up.

there's a classic canadian vote split developing in ontario, with the conservatives set to get around 40% of the vote and the liberals and ndp hovering around 25% each. this generally happens when neither the ndp nor the liberals offer a compelling vision.

i don't support any of the candidates in the election and don't intend to vote.

it's just a reminder that legislation about plastic straws is never about plastic, it's always about politics.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/trump-plastic-straws-1.7455862

i'm not very interested in nationalism, partly because what is defined as "the national interest" actually means "the interests of the bourgeoisie, middle class and banking establishment". these are not my class interests, and it is class that i am concerned about, not nationality. i would always put party before country, as my self-interest lies in advancing the interests of my class and the "national interest" of the bourgeoisie is entirely opposed to my self-interest. 

the "national interest" of foreign banking establishments and of the collective foreign bourgeoisie is not in my class interest, either.

i will be focused on my own interests, and i would expect that i will frequently show apathy or downright hostility towards any concept of national identity or struggle. you will almost never see me align on much of anything with any of the major political groupings in this country, for the reason that none of them legitimately represent the lower class of artists with little or nothing to sell.

genesis salvage discs (1976-1987):

disc 1 (immediate post-gabriel replacement disc):

- down and out,

- dance on a volcano, entangled, mad mad moon,

- eleventh earl of mar, one for the vine, all in a mouse's night, blood on the rooftops, unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth, afterglow,

- wot gorilla?, los endos

disc 2 (immediate post-gabriel outtakes disc):

- squonk, robbery assault and battery, ripples, trick of the tail,

- it's yourself

- inside and out

- burning rope, deep in the motherlode, scenes from a night's dream, say it' alright joe, the lady lies

disc 3 (80-83 salvage disc):

- duke's suite (behind the lines, duchess, guide vocal, duke's travels, duke's end),

- misunderstanding

- no reply at all, me and sarah jane, dodo/lurker

- naminanu, submarine

- mama, that's all, home by the sea, second home by the sea

disc 4 (83-87 salvage disc):

- it's gonna get better, just a job to do, silver rainbow

- tonight tonight, land of confusion, domino, the brazilian

- do the neurotic

i'm continuing to work through the genesis mega discography and have created two post-gabriel collins period genesis salvage discs that i'm going to pause with for a bit and i want to draw attention to the end of this track, which is a very slick and professionally written pop song.

it's barely noticeable, but do you hear when phil does the call and response with the horns in the fade out? this is 1980/81, before autotune, but phil doesn't need it, because he has absolutely perfect pitch. and, he completely nails it, beyond the slightest microtune. it's inhuman.

it's a triviality. sure. almost anybody could do this, in truth, but the ease and perfection in which he does it is a clear demonstration of why musicians of successive generations just won't let phil go. he was a truly singular talent, whether the douchebag losers of the era, who were mostly talentless wretches, realized it or not.

donald trump has no remote interest in white or black south africans.

what is going on?

what dirt does elon musk have on donald trump?

this is becoming a serious national security concern. russiagate was nonsense; elongate is real, and elon poses a much greater threat than putin ever has or ever will.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-south-africa-afrikaners-0120efec17122b47e3371e0e39fe1db8

it would seem as though the reason elon musk is shutting down us aid actually has to do with a right-wing nwo conspiracy theory about population control. 

i was actually going to suggest that a major part of the blowback would be unchecked population growth, which would severely threaten american hegemony, and to argue that, at the least, a skeleton family planning section should be kept running.

this is quickly turning into a worst case scenario that only those with trump derangement syndrome saw coming and everybody else thought was crazy. who'd have thought that qanon would take control of the white house via elon musk, who appears to have captured the president in the worst sense, perhaps via some kind of blackmail?

you don't normally see the very wealthy behave like this because they generally aren't retarded. make room in the dei space, as musk may be the first retarded billionaire. i don't know if that's true and actually suspect it isn't.

but this can't continue. shutting down us aid for these reasons is incomprehensible and the question on everybody's mind should be "what next?". the correct answer should be no. this is over; either some kind of barriers need to be erected to keep musk out, or he needs to be taken out, and the latter is increasingly looking like it might be the right answer.

the americans may find they get a lot of blowback if they shut down usaid.

when talking about policy, you should reserve the word "stupid" for rare policies that show a particular lack of insight, and this would be it.

there's some articles with steve bannon floating around canadian mainstream news, where he tries to explain that trump has developed canada derangement syndrome not from south park or john candy, and not due to an insistence on using tariffs as a source of taxation, but to protect north america from russia and china. accompanied with these articles is a picture of north america in one solid colour, like a risk board.

this picture already exists. it's called nato.

in fact, trump has been vocal about wanting to redesign nato, although he hasn't really clarified what he intends, or if he has a plan at all.

my question to the trump administration is this: in terms of arctic defence, what can you achieve by annexing canada and greenland that you couldn't better achieve through nato and norad, which has been the status quo since 1940?

i think this is a valid question:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2022/09/should-greenland-and-denmark-become-part-of-norad.html

it's not that trump is wrong, it's really that these regions are already in the american umbrella system, and that he doesn't seem to really grasp it. the american empire is a confederation of states, it has been since 1776. it's a foundational part of american culture, identity and history to reject colonialism, and while there's plenty of examples of americans meddling around in the affairs of other countries, americans really haven't gone out and conquered other countries like this without justification, however flimsy. it bought lousiana. it claimed a justification to invade mexico. canada was supposed to be annexed as a part of the revolution, but it never happened; instead, we were folded into the new world order that developed after pearl harbour. the idea of just picking a fight with a country like canada has no precedent in american history and is in a real sense exceedingly unamerican.

as he frequently does, trump is trying to create something that already exists or to fix something that isn't broken, and in the end will probably break it rather than fix it. he's a bull in a china shop. as this develops, a lot of canadians may find themselves not really disagreeing with trump, so much as looking at him and saying "well, that's the status quo. what are we changing, exactly? and why?". in fact, we have an answer to that question, and it's to create an unfair advantage for american capital, and that's not something anybody should sign up for.

canada and the united states have a joint defense using norad, nato and the coast guard that vritually all camadians support and the question of sovereignty over canada is of little relevance in ensuring that this system is effective and functions correctly. it is entirely unclear  what trump might hope to accomplish by annexing canada, other than absorbing 30+ million people that would never vote for him or his political party.

i think the depopulation of the gaza strip is actually at least 10 years overdue, but i don't support this:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/06/trump-sanction-icc

israel should make it a point to ensure it wins the case, not try to shut the court down. these charges are frivolous.

i mean, trump is clearly wrong in his position, but it's really not something i care about very much. it's of no relevance to me.

the courts will get this right in the end, and the kids will be better off for it.

i actually really don't care about sports at all. i don't play sports. i didn't play sports in high school.

the courts should deal with this. i'm not interested.

i'm more than a little bit disgusted and appalled by the idea that i'm supposed to feel bad for rich rock stars and movie stars in los angeles that lost their homes, and donate them money.

doesn't california have any social assistance? but, these people are rich, they wouldn't qualify for anything like that.

i'd tell them to go sleep in a shelter until they can pull themselves up by their own boot straps.

i would actually probably support a plan to temporarily depopulate gaza, rebuild it and then move people back in with extremely strict filtering rules (nobody with any remote connection to hamas or islamic jihad, at all), although i think the details right now are rather scant.

i have long called for the gaza strip to be annexed by egypt, but they won't do it.

the country in the region that can best absorb that kind of population transfer is saudi arabia, and they should.

people arguing that this is some kind of infringement on palestinian rights need to understand that there has to be real, long term, substantive consequences for what they did. they have to be collectively punished. they need to be made an example of. there's no other possible outcome.

i have to do this, apparently. it's very stupid, given that there has been no rabit is wolf material in over 20 years and never will be any more rabit is wolf material.

but, sean hansel is officially now kicked out of rabit is wolf for being a phony piece of shit asshole, meaning the band now only has one remaining member, jessica murray.

*shrug*.

my best guess is that trump wanted to wait until after the super bowl to increase the price of avocados.

again: they've told us why they're doing this. they want to tax non-americans and use that to replace domestic tax revenue. the tariffs are a revenue source. it's really not about jobs. 

of course, american consumers end up paying the tariffs, but that doesn't seem to compute with them.

now the statement is 

"representing some 57 per cent of Canadian food imports."

the previous statement was:

“We import about 60 per cent of our food from the U.S"

these are very different statements. i believe that 60% of the food we import is from the united states, and that it's mostly junk food. i don't believe that we import 60% of our food from the united states.

we import about 30% of our food and grow or raise about 70% of it domestically. .6*.3 = 0.18. so, we import about 18% of our food from the united states.

seems like there was a fail at the editing stage, there.

trump is probably vaguely right in pointing out that we don't import american agriculture - specifically - but it's because they do things like inject their beef with crazy hormones, and that's gross. we should clarify why we have restrictions on american agriculture products, and it's because they're unhealthy.

i don't want unhealthy american meat and dairy products in my food supply and i would support continuing to block them from importing their food here until they make their food less unhealthy, even if they tariff us over it. 

i can't make sense of this better than anybody else.

it would seem as though trump has different expectations from mexico and canada, and that this is neither about immigrants nor about drugs in either case. mexico has done what trump wanted and canada hasn't.

or maybe trump just hates trudeau and doesn't hate sheinbaum. that might be closer to the truth.

what this is about is offshoring taxation. they've been clear. canada is more wealthy, per capita, than mexico. canada is consequently a better country to tax than mexico. it might be difficult to actually do the math on that and have it make sense, but trump doesn't seem to be doing much math, or seem to be very good at math. this is likely something approximating the actual thought process.

tariffs on mexico would really drive up the cost of food in the united states. a lot. that would not be true about tariffs on canada.

trump is a bully looking for somebody's lunch to steal, and we're the easier target, with less consequences.

https://globalnews.ca/news/10995622/mexico-tariffs-donald-trump-president-claudia-sheinbaum/

the price to rent a room in windsor is down about 40% since last year, but it has yet to translate to apartments.

things are moving in the right direction. the tariffs will actually help me.

i have a hearing for damages on april 3rd but i don't know if i can hold out here long enough or if the landlords will pay it if i win.

as per usual, it does not look like hamas is going to abide by the agreement it just agreed to and is going to try to extract unrealistic concessions before releasing the remaining hostages.

you can't argue, debate, reason, rationalize, negotiate or do business with these people. they're not rational actors.

these changes are oppressive and stupid and intended to appeal to a political base, but do they actually make any substantive difference to anybody?

i have a nexus card that has my legal gender on it, which is female. it was just renewed in the period between trump being elected and taking office and got here a few days ago. it doesn't say x or t, it says f. i'm not going to be crossing the border immediately, but i'm curious as to how the border will interpret that.

i was told i had to update my documents to reflect my legal name change in ontario, and i did. if the americans have now flip-flopped and insist i revert, i will then have different legal genders in canada and the united states, and i don't expect that there's going to be a logical way to deal with that. 

https://time.com/7210389/donald-trump-executive-order-sex-gender-id/

“We import about 60 per cent of our food from the U.S"

that doesn't make sense to me and, if it is true at all, it must refer almost entirely to prepackaged junk food. the only items in my diet that are clearly american in origin are oranges and doritos, and i an get the oranges from mexico, i'm sure.

i would actually support increasing taxes on pre-packaged junk food as a public health policy.

the key idea i want to get across is that the tactic should be to put steep export taxes on the "giffen goods" that are perfectly or nearly perfectly inelastic in the american market (uranium, some other minerals, electricity and oil) and use the revenue to socialize the losses. that would actually be a productive retaliation, in that it would transfer the cost to american capital. tariffs on american goods in canada might help some local producers, but it doesn't generate the revenue streams the government needs to socialize the losses.

if the americans want us to act like an ally and maintain the tariffs on china, they should lift the tariffs on us.

if the anericans want us to buy military gear, they should lift their tariffs on us. there should be a complete moratorium on all us defense industry purchases until the tariffs are lifted.

something that's going to happen is americans from the northern states are going to start buying mexican produce in canada to evade the tariffs. will the border cops crack down on that?

further, does canada want to maintain it's tariffs on china, now? if chinese goods become cheaper to buy in canada, that could also generate a market.

an 30% export tax on oil would generally a lot of money, but some accounting should be done to determine if it's necessary or not, as we don't want to get bombed, either.

there is talk of "restricting exports of minerals". that's not the right approach.

as i mentioned previously, an export tax on uranium or hydro-electricity would be the superior approach, even superior to retaliatory tariffs. the idea would be take the money generated by the export taxes and use it to pay for social programs from unemployed canadian workers, and generally socialize the costs.

restricting the export of minerals just harms our own industry, which is what trump wants. that would be senseless.

my diet is mostly fresh produce and i buy for price, with few counterexamples.

in my fridge currently, i have:

from canada:

- beets

- carrots

- kale

- tomato

- red pepper

from mexico:

- mangos

- limes

- avocados

- i often buy guava from mexico, but not currently

- i believe that the cara cara oranges i often buy are also from mexico (none currently)

- blackberries

from peru:

- strawberries

- blueberries

from chile:

- raspberries

- cherries

from costa rica:

- bananas

from italy:

- kiwis

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/kiwi-production-by-country

from china:

- garlic

"made in canada from imported ingredients":

- walmart brand not from concentrate orange juice. i would guess it says this because walmart sources it's oranges from all over the world, not just from florida. it may generally be mostly mexican oranges. walmart canada will import the cheapest oranges.

- walmart pineapple. is it from hawaii? probably not, actually. walmart canada likely sources the cheapest pineapple on an open market.

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

probably imported from the united states, although it doesn't actually say:

- tropicana grapefruit juice

product of the usa:

- oranges

- broccoli (but i often buy canadian broccoli)

the reality is that mexico is a major producer of citrus fruit and should be able to replace american oranges in the canadian market very easily.

that leaves the tropicana grapefruit juice, which markets itself as from florida but has also recently undergone some shrinkflation. i bought this on sale, but i had recently moved to the pc brand, which doesn't say where it sources it's grapefruits from but probably is "made in canada from imported ingredients".

https://www.atlasbig.com/en-ca/countries-by-grapefruit-production

we certainly import most of our fruits and vegetables, especially in the winter. however, we may be over-estimating our reliance on american imports, specifically. i eat mostly produce, and i don't think i need american fruits or vegetables at all. "buy canadian" really isn't the best tactic, if you're mostly buying produce from mexico or south america in the first place.

"buy canadian" is not a good idea and is not helpful. i don't want to go to war with the american people or american workers, i want to shift costs back to american capital. my solidarity is with the international working class, not with bourgeois nationalist politics.

a better idea is "buy the cheapest options", and that is no doubt what people are going to actually do.

just pick the cheapest things you can buy and let ricardan equivalence work itself out. it doesn't matter where it's from and don't be worked up into thinking it does.

i don't exactly want to support the oil industry.

but, is hudson's bay or james bay not a reasonable place to build refineries, nowadays?

do you know who predicted this outcome of nafta?

pierre trudeau.

Pierre Trudeau called the FTA “a monstrous swindle, under which the Canadian government has ceded to the United States of America a large slice of the country’s sovereignty over its economy and natural resources.” John Turner called the FTA “the Sale of Canada Act.”

https://therealnews.com/ten-reasons-why-canada-should-get-out-of-nafta

chretien and martin flip-flopped on this, and the younger trudeau has been an aggressive advocate and supporter of what we call free trade (which is really an investor's rights agreement, not a free trade agreement. most tariffs were already removed by 1985.). we have spent the last 40 years allowing nafta to destroy our sovereignty and dismantle our economy.

now, the americans are changing their mind, and we're utterly helpless. the president is even suggesting annexation. pierre trudeau was right.

we should have listened to the smarter incarnation of the liberal party, and not the dumber incarnation of it, but here we are, with the younger trudeau about to be thrown out of his party's leadership and the need to re-engage with the since abandoned policies of the elder and smarter one. 

if we had spent the last 40 years preparing for this inevitability, we might not be in such an awful position.

as it is, this is going to be brutal. expect 30% unemployment in some cities by summer. expect double digit inflation. the only thing we can do is socialize the losses and wait it out, and i don't think we're going to do it. the elite is going to throw the weak overboard and watch them drown.

every leftist has the right to say "i told you so", but only for ten minutes. let's not dwell on this, let's focus on adjusting.

i'd like to reiterate that an ugly, stupid loser that i went to high school with is apparently trying to steal my internet sites.

my name is jessica parent. my birth name was jason parent. all of the pictures on this site, all of the blogs, all of the video content, all of the music, etc is mine.

sean hansel is somebody that i went to high school with. he has had absolutely nothing to do with any of the vlogs or blogs and i haven't even spoken to him at all in a very long time. he did some guest vocals for me on songs i wrote that never got past the demo stage, and were not used in any final product. bluntly, i decided his lyrics were stupid and got rid of them. i did use some noise generation (harmonica, ring modulator) in the final product of two songs and various remixes of them.

there are no pictures of sean on any of these sites, with the exception of one picture on the cover art for the imaginary tour demo.

i don't know why he is doing this, but he's basically a retard and i'm struggling to find some way to get him to fuck off.

we're already living in the dystopic islamist nightmare that writers like hitchens warned us about. it's not some distance fantasy anymore, it's the present, and we need to wake up and react.

i'm utterly exasperated by the retarded religionists upstairs that refuse to leave me alone and by the police force in this city, which won't address the situation at all.

as a transgender female, i have absolutely no interest in joining the military in any country and would like to extend a warmfelt "thank you" to donald trump for ensuring i never have to worry about being conscripted by them if the americans decide to invade us and make us a state.

but, you'd think trump would want us to sign up to use us as cannon fodder. i'm not sure he's thought that through, as usual.

trudeau still has time to actualize his true higher calling in life.

given that neither the liberals nor the ndp appear to support carbon taxes any more, i have no choice but to fully endorse the green party in the upcoming federal election.

i'm no free market advocate, but that's exactly it. ricardo was a socialist. tariffs are neither foundationally good or bad, what they are is hard, and what the americans are threatening to do is dumb. let them do it and let the ricardan models work themselves out. they will lose market share in the end.

the theory of free trade does not tell us to retaliate, it tells us to avoid retaliating. it's really economics 101. canada shouldn't get feisty and act like rocky, it should be smart and listen to the academics and avoid a fight.

...except in a small, very targeted manner, that is designed to make american businesses absorb the losses rather than canadian consumers.

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/to-respond-to-u-s-tariffs-canada-should-hit-trump-where-it-hurts/

ultimately, in the sense that there has to be some response, putting sanctions on american financial interests is a better way to respond than putting tariffs on canadian consumers.

so, he understands how tariffs work. good.

the next step is realizing that responding with socialism by using subsidies to save canadian jobs is a better approach than generating a recession by responding with competition by using retaliatory tariffs is. with a caveat.

there has to be some reaction. but if they're going to punch us in the face, we shouldn't just punch them back. we could, for example, try to blow up their house, instead.

if we react by collectivizing the losses via a covid-like subsidy system and then sue them through the wto for unfair trade practices, they could even end up paying for it in the end. we could then even flip the script by trying to undercut their steel and lumber businesses through increased government subsidies, which could drive american businesses to lose market share in the united states itself. we could increase subsidies to dairy farmers. we could bring back the wheat board.

who pays for the tariffs? americans pay for the tariffs! that should be the goal of canadian government policy - to make sure americans get the bill for this, in the end, and not us. the best way to do that is to use socialism to collectivize the losses by shifting it to debt, and to avoid being competitive in trying to find a way to spread it out. we can't compete. the sprott guy is right; that's a dumb idea.

retaliatory tariffs should be restricted to things that hurt american policy objectives, like defence and medical spending. sanctions on uranium exports, for example, would be the kind of thing that we should do, while we really shouldn't tax ourselves to import ketchup or orange juice. parts of canada have a major scurvy problem. import taxes on orange juice is in truth an incredibly stupid idea.

i would normally strongly oppose subsidizing the tar sands, but it's a better idea to let trump increase gas taxes and socialize the losses than it is to try to prevent canadian crude from getting to american refineries. americans won't accept increases in gas prices for very long. they didn't vote for that. they'll throw the bums out in two years, and that would be a good outcome for canada.

if trump wants to charge americans more and increase inflation for american consumers, we should just let him do it with a minimal response - except things that specifically hurt american policy objectives like sanctions on uranium - and wait for the midterms. we shouldn't get into a fist fight with somebody that is stronger than us.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/2025/01/24/trudeau-explains-how-tariffs-on-imports-and-exports-work-and-who-pays-for-them/

i don't think elon musk even knows what a sieg heil even is. you can't assign that to him.

more interesting to me is that his body language, as usual, looks like that of a young child, like a little kid playing with his toy trucks. there's a certain stiffness in their shoulders you only see with young boys under the age of 10 and musk has it constantly. it's quite apparent when he speaks publicly.

i would diagnose him with a mental disability from a distance; perhaps not autism, exactly, but some level of delayed development, certainly. you can't miss it. he's blatantly retarded.

it speaks to the ability, or lack of ability, of the market system to effectively make choices based on merit. capitalism simply doesn't select the best or the brightest, it more frequently selects the most immoral or the most ruthless. sometimes, it outright selects retards that succeed because they don't understand what they're doing instead of because they do, or because they've done something better or at a higher level. an actual scientific analysis is that markets frequently generate random outcomes.

the irony is that this movement wants to eject any kind of social control mechanism and instead let the market pick winners and losers (which actually makes the market the socialist control mechanism. actually functioning markets are the absolute worst kind of vicious socialism.). well, who did the market pick? the answer is these guys. is that the government we want? the society we want? the culture we want? the world we want? really?

i might want to suggest something rather different than this as an outcome, and it would require a centralized control mechanism other than market competition making choices about what it perceives as "merit". these guys are just wrong. this outcome is shit.

hrmmmn.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declassification-of-records-concerning-the-assassinations-of-president-john-f-kenned/

deportation and migration concerns are not likely to be very important to me over the next four years, and i am unlikely to say much about this issue in this space at all, as i haven't in recent months and years.

it's not my issue; i have pressing economic issues to deal with.

how should enlightened people approach immigration in the next four years and activism around it, for better or worse?

i think it's important to realize that this is happening because the system - both in the united states and here in canada - requires some reform. you can't scapegoat migrant workers without the existence of economic uncertainty, and the cultural issues exposing themselves are entirely real. i'm currently fighting with neighbours that moved into my duplex and expect me to abide by islamic law because there are muslims in the house. that's not how we do things here, and isn't how we're going to start doing them, and i'm not about to start abiding by islamic law, but it will be if they get their way and people don't realize that the legal system of democratically enacted laws and common law (judge made law that can change, and is not fixed to the dark ages because god says so) needs to be supported and won't continue to exist if it isn't. if you don't support your culture, it won't exist anymore.

trump is kind of right in a sense; you need boundaries, or you don't have a country, don't have a culture and don't have a society. the question is how to do it fairly and reasonably. you don't need to mirror the islamic extremists to protect your culture; indeed, it's better if you don't. 

activists should insist that anything and everything coming from trump and the republicans utilizes due process. there are people that won't be able to stay. they need a fair process.

however, there are also currently very real economic and cultural concerns at play that the left needs to adjust and react to, rather than kneejerk or dig in on. i want a secular left to support, so i don't have to juggle the fact that i'm not in the same class as the right-wing political base and there are economic ramifications of that with the reality that that very truth demonstrates economic value in specific right-wing xenophobic positions. i don't want to be forced to balance that. i want a more realist left, like currently exists in quebec.

don't be surprised if the actual way the americans keep oil prices down is to increase saudi imports at the expense of canadian ones.

in fact, that might even be the actual point - to slap a tariff on gay ass canada so trump can help his friends in the saudi monarchy recapture the american market.

the canadian oil industry - and this has been parroted by our government - has for many years argued that the americans are better off buying oil from us than, say, saudi arabia. who would argue that?

i watched part of the davos speech by accident tonight; it came up on autoplay after i rebooted on a computer that i don't log into.

canada is going to have to take a step back from it's previous argument, at least for the next four years, because it is abundantly  clear, and doubled down by his statements at davos, that donald trump thinks that canada is a morally inferior culture to saudi arabia, and the saudis are the more ethical choice. donald trump does not like trudeau, but he's very good friend with the saudi royals.

some substantive non-zero subset of the very conservative united states agrees with him.

she's come off as incredibly bored before, like they have to pump her full of fentanyl in exchange for having her do this shit job, or like she was out all night partying and slept walked into work.

this is something like what i was trying to say and like what danielle smith is also trying to say. it might be good politics to want to go toe-to-toe with the yankees, and just react by eating more spinach, but it's not a very smart approach.

carney has been annoyingly quiet. he should be a better source of answers right now.

we might have to do this but we should do everything possible to avoid it and we don't want to be excited about it.

google actually couldn't find me a picture of gretzky in a covid mask, so maybe all of the bitching actually got to him, subconsciously. you'd think somebody snapped something somewhere, right? apparently not. i found one of his daughter, but that doesn't count.

i wish i could find one, because i would then have to ask trump to go off on gretzky for wearing a surgical mask in public. it would be required.

actually, i think she's on to something with the comment about donald trump complaining about whiners; is donald trump really just america's don cherry? we understand don cherry, right? trump can't be that hard. he just needs to blow off elon musk and get a ron maclean, clearly.

and tell gretzky to get rid of the fucking face mask. it's european or muslim or something.

this could actually open up some housing spaces and i am at the top of the list so i might benefit.

1) i need to type up some court documents today

2) i need to pack

3) at that point, i'll have to figure out what i can and can't do

it's far from an ideal situation.

https://www.citywindsor.ca/newsroom/city-facing-significant-financial-implications-in-relation-to-federal-government-asylum-claimant-process-changes

mark carney is a kind of an old fashioned keynesian liberal and chrystia freeland is very much a post-reagan neo-liberal. they actually represent very different ideologies.

carney would not be my first choice for much of anything, and it's almost comical that he's trying to run as an outsider, but he's the soft left candidate and people are going to have to get behind him.

i actually slept all day, but i was waiting to see what the tariffs look like before making a decision on whether i'm going to try to find an apartment in windsor for march or not.

right now, it's looking like i'm going to need to move my items into storage some time in february and then look for an apartment while sleeping on the floor in here for march 1st before moving into a hotel for march 1st, but i do have one further appeal path (again, i'm being blocked by something behind the scenes. the court of appeal is behaving extremely inappropriately. i could potentially file a complaint against the registrar, but if the court just ignores me then i'm going to run out of time, and all i can do in response is point out that the courts in canada are corrupt and broken.) and i want to make some attempt to look for something, first.

i spent the weekend starting to pack up and i'm about 30% packed. i need to be about 90% packed within a few days, so i get up and leave on very short notice, if i need to.

i am desperately in need of any amount of cash because i may have to stay in a hotel for a few months, so if you want to buy something at bandcamp or send it to me via the donation button on the side or just via interac or paypal to death.to.koalas@gmail.com, that would be exceedingly appreciated.

while i have been less productive recently than i'd like to be because these disgusting arab animals won't leave me alone, packing everything up and leaving it in storage for 4-6 months while i wait for subsidized housing doesn't help anybody. it looks like it's going to be reality, unfortunately, because the rental market in canada is almost impossible to rent in on disability, and i am both incapable of participating in the labour market and entirely disinterested in doing so. i'd rather sleep outside than waste my life doing pointless work.

disability will give me enough to pay the $200 or so for storage, and i'll need to find somewhere to sleep for cheap and just work on my writing until they can move me in to city housing somewhere.

it's an absurd abuse of power.

i'm not exactly looking forward to trump, but good riddance to always wrong biden, truly one of the worst presidents in the country's history, who broke the global economy and nearly started a nuclear war.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/biden-last-minute-pardons-1.7435857

"are you with us or against us?"

this kind of stupidity should never be tolerated, but should especially not be tolerated precisely when you need some kind of subtlety of thought, and not by people that are supposed to be liberals.

trudeau should be embarrassed by his blatant lack of intelligence, and should be roundly condemned for it.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/with-trumps-tariff-threat-looming-trudeau-launches-canada-us-relations-council/