Saturday, December 20, 2025

this has no remote resemblance to nazi ideology. rather, they sound like canadians from the early part of the 20th century.

robert borden, who was prime minister around world war one, campaigned on the slogan "a white canada" and succeeded in almost completely blocking non-white immigrants from entering the country until the pearson-trudeau government opened immigration policy. there were essentially no black, middle eastern or asian people in canada until about 1970; the country was something like 98% european. while the civil rights movement was happening in the united states, canada was an essentially homogeneous white society. this was strongest in the western part of the country, but was due to the fact that the tories were initially in control of the country almost continually up to world war two. this was a very british, conservative party ideology.

the nazis, on the other hand, aggressively prevented anybody that wasn't white from trying to migrate. if you were considered sufficiently european, you could come in and out of germany, but you could not leave germany if you were jewish, black, gypsy, slavic (they thought poles, czechs and ukrainians were "mongoloids") or gay, as you were under essential house arrest until you could be enslaved by the master race. 

the nazis would have scoffed at the concept of expelling the inferior races, as it would mean that the gemans would be forced to work in the factories. conservatives, on the other hand, are in favour of keeping out immigrants precisely because they steal their jobs.

the nazis were weird and hard to understand using contemporary political ideas. they were a kind of vulgar marxist on some level, in the sense that they sought to use marxist ideology to advance the interests of an upper class, rather than the interests of a proletariat. they sought to use marxism against the marxists. being a communist, marxist, socialist or anarchist would get you sent to the work camps, partly because they'd call you a jew because they thought socialism was jewish. the nazis were actually kind of more like modern liberals, economically; it was a type of state capitalism. they were not very conservative in any sense of the term, except the most culturally narrowest, as inheritors of the prussian junker class system.

the nazis also loved islam because they saw it is a militaristic version of christianty and aligned with muslim groups to fight the british everywhere and anywhere. the purpose of what these people in the article are trying to do is reduce muslim migration to canada, but the nazis were actually in favour of muslim immigration and actually sought to build military and political alliances with muslims, often against christians, wherever they went. the nazis showed no aversion to arabs, turks, north africans or iranians, unless they were mistaken as jews.

these people are probably better described as trying to bring back the british empire than trying to bring back nazi europe and they may have some valid points to make, in that regard. if canadian law attempts to criminalize speech of this sort (it does not, in truth. that claim is false.), then the problem would be with canadian law, which would need to be corrected to allow for a more free exchange of ideas, but that isn;t actually the case. canadians should not be ashamed of their history or afraid to identify as who they are

Friday, December 19, 2025

i was able to confirm that the math i posted this morning is correct. so i need to get $3200 in the account before dec 31st and i need to get the transfer process in motion asap. i appear to have to do it by phone because there is no branch location for the brokerage and the online application doesn't have information about the rdsp, but i wasn't able to get through this afternoon. i sat on hold for two hours before the line accidentally disconnected, and when i called back it said they were closed. i'll need to call early on monday morning.

i took my rodent trap out this afternoon when they came to install the fan and it looks like something got caught and gnawed itself right through it. i put a few more out to see what happens, but i may have to rethink this.

the fan itself might scare them a little, but it's probably not a long term answer.

i must finish the legal writing this weekend because i'm running out of time. i'll post another update post and get back to the apartment writeups after i do that.
this has been a major concern since this mess started, as it is well understood that ukraine is full of russian spies and that, in the long run, the premise that kiev is going to tilt to berlin rather than moscow is laughable.

giving any sort of privileged information to ukraine is just handing it over to russia and, while i am not afraid of the russians and understand that we need to treat them as allies instead of as enemies if we want to succeed in containing the chinese and the arabs, who are the true threats to western culture, that's still not a good idea, in the short run.

something i need to do next though is apply to wipe out my remaining student loan using the dtc i was just approved for. i should have done that years ago, but it would have required me to get a doctor to sign off on being "severely, permanently disabled", which was harder to do before they set up the cdb. i couldn't bring myself to do it. so i just let it sit. nowadays, doctor are doing it so people can get the money. the threshold has fallen.

it's already been done.

i really just need to get a doctor to sign the paperwork, and the remaining $11000 in collections is cancelled.

even if i can't, that should be a minor concern, with all of this grant money, eventually. it's s hiccup, now, and not a block.

and that should get my credit score up a little without having to get a fucking credit card, which i don't want. i'd rather get a small line of credit, but if i don't need one, and i don't, then i don't want one.
i've seen some fairly creepy pictures of bill gates and bill clinton, but nothing that incriminates donald trump, or any republican.

chuck schumer is a complete fucking idiot.
somewhere, the pantheistic universe is petting a creepy feline, smashing it's fist on the nearest object and screaming at the wall,

i'll get you next time, jessica!

but it won't.

it never will.

things tend to work out for me.
am i rich all of a sudden?

no.

however, if i do this right, i should be able to take the money from the rdsp, the chb and the cdb and pool it together to buy a house shortly before or right after i turn 60. if i'm able to stay where i am for a while, i should be able to put quite a bit aside for that purpose. i'm not sure exactly how much to expect from the cohb yet, or if it backdates, but if it's over $400/month, it could make sense for me to just take the money they give me for subsidized housing and put it directly in the rdsp, until 2029, to eventually use it to buy a house with. i should be able to eat with the money from odsp. that gives me the $200+/month cdb to spend on things and go out with, which functionally doubles for the summer months, as i don't go out much over the winter. i might also find myself getting tax refunds for the first time since i signed up for odsp, because i still have $120K in education carryover amounts. for that reason, it might actually make more sense for me to pay taxes on taking the money out of the rdsp in 2040 and put it right int the tfsa to get the subsequent tax refunds on the unused tuition amounts than it does for me to carefully take it out in bits under the tax threshold, because the cra will just send me back the amount it takes out in taxes, anyways. i'll need to double check that.

all of this together should let me put something like $150K, minimum, into a mortgage. i don't need or want a fancy, rich person house in the suburbs. i'm in great health. so i'm happy to get a small, working class house in a working class neighbourhood for under $250K and i actually think prices are going to crash if i wait it out another 5-10 years. i should be able to pay essentially all of this down with the grants and bonds in the rdsp, and the interest generated from it.

if i wait until the cohb runs out and in the end use it to buy, and i'm paying almost nothing on rent when i do because my mortgage is almost paid down, and i use whatever is left in the rdsp to pay the rest down after 2040, the $1500+ in odsp i get for the remaining years, followed by the $2000+ in oas/gis/gains after that, which is more than odsp, should be enough for me to live fairly well. if i have no rent and no mortgage, and no taxes, $25000/yr is really fairly cushy. i don't travel, and at some point (which may have already passed), i'll be too told to go out. i haven't gone anywhere in years, as it is, due to circumstances. i'm realizing the culture is changing and i'm not so interested in what the kids are listening to anymore. i'll just want to spend that on working on my art, and staying in shape. i could build a kick ass studio in a paid for little house with $20,000/year and if i can stay in shape and keep my brain working well because i'm working on finishing the art i could live until i'm 95.

at some point, when i'm doddering and teetering, or in a wheelchair and can't go on, i'll sell the house and move into an apartment.

not rich - no. but comfortable.

i saw myself at the precipice, on the brink of disaster, and walked away from it. it's due to no fault of my own, but capitalism is a fucking shitty system to navigate through and it can shoot you in the face if you're not careful, and i need to adjust to make sure that doesn't happen again.

i'm going to get through this. i'm going to survive. i'm going to be ok.
i think my math for the max contributions to the rdsp was flawed. i'm getting conflicting information. i'm going to call a different umber in the morning, and begin the transfer process right way.

as i filed in 2025, i can carryover funds back to 2015, but that's apparently not really true. i understand that they'll match the 3x contributions first and the 2x contributions second but initially assumed the algorithm was smart and they'd either carryover the 2x contributions until they get used or let me match the 2015 contributions first, then the 3x and then the 2x so that i can actually carryover the 2x from 2015. if that were the case, as i initially thought, my max contribution for 2025 would be either:

$3500 for 2015-2021, with a $10500 grant and the ability to pick the 2x for 2015 back up when the 3x runs out (that would be smartest), or;

$1500 (for 2015), with a $3500 grant, plus $500/yr for the next 7000/3 dollars, which is 2333.33, which is five years and a bit. that would $3833.33 total for 2025. under this scenario, because it's the end of the year, if i just wanted to make sure i didn't miss out on 2015, i'd just get the $1500 in as a first priority.

however, i'm realizing that what it's going to do is force me to use the $3500 for 2015-2021 and just drop the 2x for 2015 and there's no way to actually access it. as a corollary, that means i'd better get the 2x for 2016 in over 2026 or i'll lose it, too.

the new max contribution for 2025 remains $3500 and the new max contribution for 2026 becomes $500*5, for 2022-2026, plus 3000/2 is $1500, but that is $1000 from 2016 and 500 for 2017.

after that, it would continually take $500 from the current year at $1500 and then 9000/2 from subsequent years, until i'm caught up. that would mean i'd max out at $5000/yr until i run out. 

for 2027, the first $500 would be for 2017 and the next $4000 would be for 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.

for 2028, the first $4000 would be for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 and the next $500 would be for 2026.

for 2029, the first $500 would be for 2026 and the next $3000 would be for 2027, 2028, 2029. so max contributions would be decreased to $3500 + $500 and max payout would be at $7000+ $1500 = $8500.

for 2030, max contributions would be $1500 at $4500.

i would consequently cash out at 10500*4 + 1500 + 7000 + 4500 = 55000 and would have some room to catch up if i miss maxing out after 2027. with the bonds, total payout is $71000.

however, i don't have $3500 and it doesn't look like i'm going to get it. i have $3375. however, i have $110 coming in on jan 5, $75 on jan 10 and $200 on jan 15th, in addition to the $408 on jan 31st and some unclear amount for the cohb in late january or early february.

i was thinking about going to money mart and taking a small loan for the remaining $125, but i'm deciding that doesn't make sense.

instead, i'm going to just put $3200 in for 2025 now and the other $300 in early in the year. the difference would be a few days of interest.

i can still max out 2026 by adding $300 (for 2021 )plus $2500 (for 2022, 23, 24, 25, 26) plus (10500 - 2800*3)/2 = 1050 (for 2016, 2017) to max out at 2800*3 + 1050*2 = 10500. that would be 3850.

i would then max out 2027 by adding $950 for 2017, $3000 for 2018,19,20 and $550 for 2021.

i would max out 2028 by adding $450 for 2021, $4000 for 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and $50 for 2026.

i would max out 2029 by adding $950 for 2026 and $3000 for 2027, 2028, 2029, for $3950.

2030 would still be $1500 to max out.

that would still be a total of 3200*3 + 10500*3 + 1500 + 3950*2 + 4500 = $55000.

(i fell asleep at around 5:00 this morning and woke up around 11:30)

the esdc will send me something at the start of the year to verify, but i want to put that aside, as i'm pretty sure it's correct. today, i want to call esdc to verify, then call national bank to start the transfer process.
maybe i've just been brainwashed by phil collins.


no scratching, tonight.

i have somebody coming to installing venting today. we'll see what happened when they open the hole back up.

Thursday, December 18, 2025

there's an old saying, "wouldn't even harm a mouse".

i have some rodents in my ceiling. they appear to be eating out of the kitchen in the apartment upstairs and nesting in the crawl space behind my laundry area, which i can't really get at, and which has a tremendous draft. rodents are pesky, and i can't say with certainty that they aren't coming in here, but i have all of the food sealed quite tightly and i haven't seen any traces of them in here. i've only seen the droppings in the laundry and i only hear them in the ceiling. there's no signs of chew marks on anything, and there's nothing missing.

i have gotten a few glimpses of them crawling around in the ceiling; i think they're large mice, but they might be small rats. i don't know. i'll have to catch a few to be sure.

however, if it's a mouse, and i think it is, this mouse is not afraid of me. it runs right by the taped over hole in the ceiling when i'm in the bathroom and seems to be nesting exactly where i spend the most time. it even squeaks when i come in to the bathroom, as though it's happy to see me. it seems to think i'm it's friend.

this is making me wonder where these rodents came from, as they seem more like domesticated mice than sewer rats. or, maybe it's a psy-op jedi mind trick by the sneaky rat, to trick me into thinking it's a cuddly wittle mouse, so i won't kill it. whatever the truth is, i have to get them out of here.

i'm unhappy about this. i don't want to kill them; they aren't brainless roaches or mind-hive ants, they have some level of intelligence, as i'm experiencing. but i have no option. they're truly disgusting, filthy creatures.

would i not even harm a mouse? the mouse seems to think so. and i wish i could just scare them off, but that's not going to work.

there are some glue traps set in two places and i'll probably know what i'm dealing with in a day or two.
trump just bought a fusion company.

is that based on insider information?
this demonstrates the problem in letting market advocates deal with carbon pollution.

there is no market or corporate friendly solution to the climate crisis. you have to make rules and order businesses to follow them.

i am not an expert in psychohistory.

there is no such thing as psychohistory.
it was clearly a tactical/strategic mistake for canada to avoid levying export taxes on the united states in an attempt to appease them. our liberals are appeasing donald trump. why would anyone have expected otherwise? we might have had leverage to trade something with the united states, to gain concessions and preferable outcomes. now, we have nothing to trade, so they're just going to bully us around and tell us what to do, instead.

carney has bent over backwards to do everything trump has ordered him to do, including changing domestic legislation, and it has had no effect on donald trump at all, other than to embolden him.

but, if we just give them the sudetenland, like they ask for, they'll surely behave more reasonably.

as the old saying goes, it appears as though we've been playing checkers, while the americans are playing a game of chess against us.

we don't just look weak and easily manipulated. we look stupid

and we don't even realize it.

it's not too late to levy export taxes in an attempt to gain leverage, but it won't have the same effect, it will look weak and desperate.

that being said, there is a smart analysis, here. what does donald trump want out of this? i think that if you're careful in your analysis of his behaviour, it's to conclude that the outcome isn't really the goal. trump is not driven by results. that is the part of this that the too rational liberal party can't get it's head around. if we're rational why isn't he rational, too?

logically, you ought to be able to give a lion hunks of meat everyday, and have a happy well-fed lion, but it won't act that way. the lion needs to be a lion; it needs to hunt.

for donald trump, this is all performative. he doesn't care if he gets the best deal for america, in the end. it doesn't matter if carney does everything ordered of him. trump wants to negotiate. that's why he likes the arabs so much, under the facade.

i am highly critical of middle eastern religion, and i am also highly critical of market economics. in fact, these things go hand in hand. it was carthaginian markets that ruled the mediterrannean before the romans showed up and burned them down. the romans intentionally destroyed their history, so we know much less about this than we should, but we know that if you show up at a market - a bazaar - in northern africa even today and you offer to just buy something at an advertised price, they will throw you out. paying an advertised price for something is insulting. no - they want to barter, they want to negotiate, they want to trade, they want to make a deal.

we need to stop appeasing donald trump and start arguing with him.

if we give him a good argument, a good tussle, a good fight, a sporting competition, but to be clear are sure to let him win in the end, we're much more likely to come out of this ahead than if we show up and prostrate ourselves and make ourselves look compliant and weak. 

trudeau's mistake is that he won the debate. carney's mistake is that he's not debating with him at all.

we have british liberals as our natural governing party in this country but we're not taking advantage of it and don't even realize that that's what donald trump is. we need to look at it like a good sprightly dog hunt.

send them john manley as the new ambassador and tell him to play his surname up a little.

Wednesday, December 17, 2025

the caq is on paper the right-wing version of the pq, or the pq's right flank forming it's own party, but that is misleading, as they would be considered centre to centre-left by most global metrics. they are secularist, oppose oil pipelines, are pro-abortion (and unusually feminist by any standards, as that is a cultural assumption in quebec), etc. calling this a conservative party is awkward, even if they are the most right-wing party in quebec's spectrum, which nobody disputes. they are not particularly fiscally conservative, and didn't run on it; they ran on secularism and on fighting religious authorities to expand rights for women and queers.

quebec is a very left-wing place, in a more traditional left-wing context than you see today in europe or the united states, where the spectrum has turned on it's head. for that reason, the ndp doesn't do well in this unusually left-wing district, as it has abandoned socialism and embraced identity politics.

it was very weird for this right-wing flank of the pq to win in the first place, and it was more of a refection of internal collapse in the pq, and a general consensus amongst quebeckers that the liberals are unacceptable at the provincial level, partly because they are too pro-immigration (which is a right-wing/capitalist position in a traditional socialist discourse, which argues for low immigration levels, degrowth and sustainable birth rates). the party swung to the caq to give the pq time to rebuild itself, without bring forced to elect the liberals to do it.

what's developing is an isolated spectrum in quebec, but that's not unusual in canada. bc, alberta and saskatchewan have political spectrums that are unique to them and the liberals basically don't exist west of winnipeg at this point, while the conservative parties are all distinct from the federal conservative party. that is because canada is a collection of smaller colonies from three main sources - indigenous, english and french - that are spread out across the country (much of manitoba and saskatchewan was french, too, although not in the louisiana purchase) and united for security and economics, and not a nation state in the sense that england or france are.

it is likely that quebec will alternate between the caq and the pq for the near future, with the liberals being the party that falls off and is banished, unless it's able to redefine itself as being a party of quebeckers instead of a party of foreigners, which is how it's seen by most quebeckers right now. this march of the liberal party to obscurity in quebec at the provincial level will mirror it's obscurity in the west, and may foreshadow similar outcomes in manitoba and ontario in the near future.

manitoba seems to be on the same path as the western provinces, while ontario is in a bit of a contradiction. ontario is not a conservative jurisdiction, which is the reason the liberals can't beat out the ndp to win an election and the conservatives are currently in power. but the ndp scares a lot of the canadian left, for the reason that it isn't a traditional left, it's an initially christian left populist party that has become a kind of bourgeois party for the canadian nouveau riche. a raging socialist like myself really sees almost nothing of value in the ndp at all and, if you understand the history, the reality is the liberals have actually often been closer to traditional socialism, and pushing down socialist options to fight the free market alternatives pushed by the ndp, which is the reason we're so much more socialist - the liberals were, for years, a democratic socialist party in disguise, while the ndp were a progressive capitalist party and often on their right. people were generally confused by how this worked, but content with the outcomes, so they held with it. what took it down was a corruption scandal in the early 00s led by an rcmp investigation, which always stunk of political interference, but was never seen that way by naive canadian political analysts. the liberal party has emerged from this early 00s collapse and purge as a much more right-wing version of it's previous self, and carney has taken the final plunge, re-aligning the party with classical liberal style thatcherism. he has yet to face a verdict on that, but i don't think canadians are going to be happy about this, once they understand it better. the problem, right now, is that there is no alternative to thatcherism.

one example is healthcare, where the supposedly socialist ndp was actually pushing this group insurance model and building support for it, which forced the liberals to step in and say "look, this is bullshit. this won't work. we don't want this obamacare before obamacare. this solves nothing. if you want healthcare, we kind of agree, and we'll just build an nhs, instead. that will actually work, and will be a better use of public money than just pooling insurance contributions to get lower premiums. we're an advanced economy; we won the war and we can build a proper healthcare system like the homeland did. we shouldn't be hobbling together premiums like a third world country, and we won't allow that. we have some pride in ourselves. so, you can have your healthcare. it will be good for the economy, which is what we care about, and something which we understand better than most.". 

ontario may need to create a new party to get out of the funk it's in, as the liberals decline in the west, and the ndp declines in the east, leaving it stuck in between.

yeah, and the next step is to identify the diploma mills, identify them as such and shut them down.

i'm an advocate of moderate de-growth. global population levels should certainly be less than 5 billion and canada's population should be less than 25 million.

this is a good thing.






have you ever noticed that donald trump often looks like a grouchy ostrich?




this is the other reason, which nobody talks about, that exporting oil to asia is a bad idea.

the reasons are:

1) no business case
2) environmentally harmful
3) it will enrage washington and put us under threat of something far worse than tariffs.

is figure skating an area in particular need of fair rules for trans participants?

it probably is.

as norm macdonald famously asked the world from the weekend update desk,

if elvis stojko is such a good skater, why doesn't he just play hockey?
this is an interesting development after the swimming bodies took the opposite position.

i don't like competition. i'm not going to follow this. but i am trans, and i'm beginning to view this consideration as a litmus test regarding whether society is behaving rationally or not, given that there are a lot of issues in determining what's fair and what isn't and reducing it strictly to birth sex is the least rigorous way possible.

i have in the past suggested eliminating the gender category and focusing on tiers like weight, height and age instead.

doug ford is infinitely worse than ron desantis.
the rdsp account i opened isn't quite what i thought. i wanted to open an account that would let me buy individual penny stocks, in addition to mutual funds (or etfs) and would give me maximum flexibility to move money in the account around a bit. the bank i went to only sells mutual funds with rdsps. it turns out that what i want is a "self-directed rdsp", and the options for that are slim. the only institution that has something more like the account i want requires a 20K minimum balance to avoid a $100/year fee, which is coming soon, and still less than the difference in management fees.

i will need to make some calls in the morning. however, i'm probably going to switch banks immediately.

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

this reflects a bias in the white house and longstanding reaganite policy to prop up arab crazies to fight the communists, who they see as trying to restrict their "religious freedom" and are therefore seen as reliable allies, but negates history and empirical reality on the ground.

remember that jared kushner said the administration doesn't think history matters, which is the most retarded thing i've ever heard.

the reality is that gaza has almost no history inside of the arab world, as it's been under turkish rule since the crusades and was a key part of the roman empire until the 7th century, at the latest. the region was periodically under some kind of arab occupation for a few centuries from about 700-1000 that ended over a thousand years ago. the gulf monarchies have had no control over this area for many centuries and really have no business trying to decide it's future.

the problem is that most decision makers in washington just don't know that; they think the region must be arab because it's muslim, which itself is even not really true. they're also propping up the arabs to keep the iranians out. unlike the arab peninsula, persia actually has a long history in gaza, and that's not going to work due to the geography, specifically the massive desert, which we should not forget is partly manmade from overfarming. the fact that the gulf monarchies have all of this money all of a sudden doesn't open up a royal road from the desert to damascus.

if you don't understand history, or don't care, or understand it poorly, you're likely to create the same mistakes over and over. 

at some point, the fact that recent attempts by monarchist gulf arabs to colonize the levant with radical versions of islam are the cause of most of the problems on the ground rather than the solution to the instability needs to be understood to get passed this. 

take solace in the realization that the oil is running out, the temperatures in the area are climbing to uninhabitable levels and the small area of the region that is fertile after millennia of desertification is falling into the sea. this attempt to make arabia great again won't last much longer. their towers will fall, and their cities will crumble. the people of the levant need to tough it out.

our society's reliance on oil will cause it to make bad decisions and align with bad actors. i've said many times that if you want much of this to end, you should start by boycotting, divesting and sanctioning the oil industry as best as you can.

The group is on a sponsored travel trip organized by a Canadian registered non-profit charity organization, the Canadian Muslim Vote.

that sentence describes a large amount of what is wrong with canada, right now.
why doesn't canada just become the eighth province of rhodesia?

introducing the new prime minister of canada.....

....lord milner!

there are not more than two people in canada that want to suffer through jenny kwan's analysis of israel's settlement activity in historical judaea, and the canadian parliament has no jurisdiction over the region and can do nothing but play politics with the situation, which should be seen as unwelcome by both sides. it is not clear to me that anybody in palestine wants to talk to jenny kwan, and i wouldn't be surprised if she found nobody to talk to there. on that level, israel was correct to deny entry; these people were in the region solely to cause problems. they have no mandate, as canadian representatives, to comment on domestic issues in other countries; it's a performative behaviour directed at a subset of their voting coalition that has no relevance to their job description.

the recent history in canada is pretty clear: politicians that publicly side with palestine are constantly punished for it. don't be surprised if a majority of those six mps lose re-election as a consequence of this botched pr stunt, which has no valid purpose in the context of the canadian parliament. canadian voters are correct to ask why their representatives are flying around the world and meddling in foreign states instead of representing their constituents in canada.

that said, my understanding is that they would be surprised by what they found. the people that live in the west bank have deeper ties to israel than gazans do; a large percentage of them know their ancestors were hebrew and jews, and many families only converted to islam in recent memory, partly as a part of the arab revolt in world war two. gazans are less hebrew in ancestry, and have a lot of african slave admixture, due to the region being a part of egypt and being on the coast, where more slave trading happened during arab and ottomon occupation periods. that is the reason that so many gazans are dark-skinned; indigenous jews should be light-skinned to olive-skinned, but gaza is mostly african in ancestry, and so it is much darker than the west bank, israel proper, lebanon or syria. the violent resistance movement in gaza is almost entirely absent in the west bank, where many people see israeli annexation as a way out of exclusion and segregation, and are more interested in integration than "resistance". hamas is not popular in the west bank and the general position is that fighting the jews is stupid and self-defeating. they want jobs in israeli cities, they don't want more bombs and violence.

if you speak the language, you can converse with these people online, if you are interested in them in a non-professional capacity,  which should be the level of interest broadcast by the canadian mps. the west bank is not cut off from the world the way that iran is. if they were to talk to people over facebook, they might get a different perspective than what state-controlled media in the unfree dictatorships in the gulf countries are trying to manufacture.

they may have found that a surprising number of inhabitants in the west bank, which i will reiterate largely have hebrew ancestry, are actually in favour of annexation by israel. because how else can they improve their material conditions? bombing israel is stupid, and the west bank seems to have figured that out, while gaza is still struggling with it.
that would be utterly retarded and a giant step further into the backwards free market dystopia we've been suffering through since thatcher.

library books should be shipped entirely at taxpayers' costs, at no cost to the library at all, and it doesn't matter if canada post runs at a loss to do that. the problem in front of us is this utterly idiotic idea that canada post should be profitable. canada post should not be profitable, it *should* run at a loss; that is the reason we have a publicly owned post system, and why it was determined as a necessary government function in a working society several hundred years ago.

removing publicly owned mail delivery is a giant step on the road back to free market feudalism.

in the not so distant past, the british intentionally used opium - manufactured in british india - as a weapon of mass destruction against the chinese, and it worked extremely well. it essentially destroyed the chinese revival after the mongols in it's tracks, leaving the chinese insular and unable to keep up with a changing world. the british just wanted hong kong as a trading colony; they almost got wiped out by the russians and japanese in succession.

the chinese have no doubt learned from this, and would have reason to weaponize opium, or synthetic opium, and use it against the british, which are now the americans, as a tactic of revenge. that actually makes sense.

but there's no real evidence of this. the chinese are exporting the precursor materials, but they're made for cleaning supplies, and the chinese export everything.

this is not in the realm of fantasy, but looking into the eyes of nicolas maduro and seeing a plot to dismantle america with addiction is not real, and the data's just not there.

assad was worth standing up for, as he was the only moderate in the area, and the alternative was the bloodthirsty islamic fascists that biden let walk into damascus. the venezuelan opposition is not so scary, and maduro is as big an asshole as they get.

trump's behaviour is illegal, and he should be called out for it, but you won't see me lift a carpal tunnel damaged pinkie to stand up for the dictator of venezuela. this guy is a doofus. bolivarianism died with chavez.

Monday, December 15, 2025

this isn't greaser slang, it's self-deprecation.


so, scat is apparently 60s greaser lingo for "fuck off".

i'm still not sure how that makes sense. it's better than calling it a pile of shit, but it just puts words into the lady's mouths for them, because you will be told to fuck off, repeatedly, if you buy this car.

are there enough aging boomer fonzis at this point to justify a vehicle line?

or is this exhibit a of why north american car manufacturing is in an existential crisis?
introducing the brand new dodge scat:


it's every bit as shit as you remember it!
The Windsor Assembly Plant recently launched production of the new SIXPACK-powered, two-door 2026 Dodge Charger Scat Pack. 

everybody has known for years that dodge vehicles are shit, but i never thought they'd market them that way.

what the fuck is a scat pack? because it reads literally as a pile of shit, which is the perfect description of a dodge, which dodge would presumably want to avoid.

that third shift at the assembly plant keeps businesses open late in this area. when they shut the third shift, they closed the 24 hour grocery store, the 24 hour drug store and a handful of all night diners, which pissed me off because i sometimes like to go shopping at 3 am, if i'm coming home late from somewhere, or if i'm just taking advantage of the weather to get some exercise. hopefully, those stores will bring back their old hours, now.
we only tend to get about a weekend of winter all year in windsor nowadays. if we got it early this year, that's probably it. 

i'd expect a warm january and spring by early february.
i've been very loud about how disgusted i've been by nato's position in syria for decades, as it aggressively funded conservative, religious terrorist organizations to overthrow a secular democracy because it happened to have russian backing. the position that nato took in syria exposes every lie about western democracy that there is in the most brutal manner possible.

my solidarity is with the secularists, the apostates, the socialists and the democrats on the ground, which represent an overwhelming majority in syria, and which backed assad as a lesser evil. the reason assad did not fall is that he was popular and represented syrian popular opinion, which was and remains in opposition to religious tyranny, theocracy and autocracy. syria, unlike lebanon, is an arab state, but it's history is older, and syria was deeply tied into the persian, greek and roman worlds. it's people are mostly white, there is a large christian minority and the culture is moderate and secular and believes in democracy. syria is not a religious society and the syrian people do not want to live under theocracy or to be oppressed by islamic fascism. in fact, syria would be a more likely candidate as a european union member state, in the long run, than as a member of the arab league.

however, a false dichotomy in nato military doctrine going back to jimmy carter that is fundamentally about supporting islamic fascists as a bulwark against communism led to the collapse of the middle east's only arab democracy (i don't consider lebanon to be arab), and the region's most moderate state, in order to advance the goals of bloodthirsty autocrats in riyadh and try to steal a deepwater port from the russians.

it bother me that liberal media buys into this so fully. assad was not an ideal figure head, but he was a popular leader and he was effectively preventing the country's collapse into backwardsness. it is very sad that he failed to prevent the saudis from destroying the country, but you can't fault him for trying. in the end, the russians gave up - assad and syria got traded for something, but it's not yet clear what that was.

my solidarity remains with the secularists on the ground as they seek to overthrow the fascist nato-backed government and return syria to democracy.
it would make sense to shop at dollarama if you lack somewhere to store your food, and are just going meal to meal. that is a lot of people, admittedly - couch surfers. people camping out, the actual homeless or people living in their cars. anybody with a kitchen should go to walmart and look for items in bulk.
dollarama's business model is based on shrinkflating everything and then tricking you into thinking it's cheaper, when you're actually paying more for less.

so, you'll walk in and buy a can of soup at dollarama that is 10% less than retail and think you got a deal, without realizing it's 25% smaller. they do this for everything they can package, and it is rare that you're saving money; you're usually actually overpaying.

but you can't tell that if you lack grade school numeracy and cannot do basic math in your head, which is the sad truth for many canadians.
what it shows is that consumers aren't very good at math. that's why the company is seeing record profits.

when it comes to groceries, dollarama is actually usually a brutal ripoff, and what it sells has low to zero nutritional value.

the cheapest grocery store in canada for almost everything is walmart, but i also buy specific items at freshco, superstore and food basics. giant tiger is worth shopping at. if you can buy in bulk at wholesale or get into costco for free, you should. you want to avoid dollarama, shopper's drug mart and zehr's, usually, although they sometimes have sales. bulk barn is also often a brutal rip-off.

Sunday, December 14, 2025

i've been utterly exhausted for weeks and think it's more psychological than physical.

i don't want to waste any more time on this court fight, but i have no choice. i have documents to write and don'y want to.

i have shape around these investment decisions now, which is something else that i more have to do than want to do. i shouldn't bitch and complain about the free cash, really. planning for when you get older is something you have to do at some point, and the government is making it easier for me to catch up, which i should be appreciative of, even if i'd rather be pulling my fingernails out.

i made a conscious choice to avoid having children, which makes it that much more important to ensure i put some money aside for when i'm older, and i'm about to get on that. i want my life to be about me. i don't mind relying on state systems, but i despise relying on people. this fell into my lap without even thinking about it, but it's actually kind of ideal, for me.

so, what cheap stocks should i buy with the free money? send me an email.
no, i want to get as much in as fast as i can.

4500*1.1^5 - 4500 = 2747.295

that's the potential growth on the dropped 4500 if i only get $6000 instead of $10500 up front.

even if i put $3000 in, and get $9000, the loss is still:

1150*1.1^5-1150 = $700.

i might not be able to get the full $3500, but i should put as much in as i can and recalculate on jan 1st to ensure i'm hitting the max and not over contributing. that said, i'll also want to get in as much as i can, as fast as i can, to the max.

i'll call in the morning.

starting in early 2027, i will be switching to putting minimum $450/month in, until 2030. this will be roughly what they give me for the cohb and probably maximum potential contributions.
in fact, this account should open with $11000, not $10,000, and i'm going to be able to get $16000 out if the max $20000, not $15000. i should get $1000 for every year back to 2015 plus the $1000 for 2025 and, because it's the end of the year, i should get it all right away.

i'm pretty sure the carry forward doesn't run out after ten years but i'm going to cal to make sure.

nonetheless, if i only put $2000 in by the end the year, which would be $500 each for 2015-2018, and subsequently only received $6000 immediately, how would i recalculate?

the max for 2026 will then be 500 for 2019-2025 (7*500 is 3500 multiplied by 3 is $10500). 3500/12 ~300. that may be more attractive to me to start if i can't get a lump sum in from family.

the max for 2027 will be 500 for 2026 ($1500) plus 1000 for the first four years (2015-2018) (4000*2 = 8000) plus $500 more for 2019 ($1000), which is $5000. 500/12 ~ 420.

the max for 2028 will be 500 for 2027 ($1500) plus $500 for 2019 ($1000) plus $1000 for the next four years (2020-2023), which is again $5000 and again ~420/month.

the max for 2029 would be 500 for 2028 ($1500) + $1000 each for 2024-2027 ($8000) + $500 more for 2028 ($1000). same contributions.

the max for 2030 would be 500 for 2029 ($1500) + 500 for 2028 ($1000) + 1000 for 2029 ($2000) + 500 for 2030 ($1500) + 1000 for 2030 ($2000), which is an additional $3500 to get the last $8000. 3500/12 is ~300 again.

total grants wold remain $6000 + 4*10500 + 8000 = 56000.

that seems more attractive to me, i think, unless i can get a sum in immediately.
my immediate task is getting $3500 cash into the rdsp by the end of the calendar year. i have close to that in cash.

if i miss the target, i can recalculate the max amount for 2026, which will likely end up being a little less. it will rollover to the next year.

...although, i also want to make sure it all rolls over, and not just the last ten years. i assumed they'd take the first 7 years at $500, but i i lose the $1000 for 2015 then they won't do that. instead, i'd have to use the $1000 for 2015 right away and the new max would be:

$1500 for 2015 (500*3 + 1000*2 = $3500 in matching grants) + 2000 for 2016-2019 (2000*3 = $6000) + $333.34 for 2020 (333.343 = $1000), which is

1500+ 2000+ 333.34 = 3833.34

but if i just put the 3500 or the 3000 or the 2500 in, the rest will rollover, and i may just want to make sure i get the $1500 for 2015 in, and then start chipping away at it in january.

i will get a $1200 cdb transfer on dec 18th that i was always intending to move into the rdsp.
the bulk of it will go into aggressive mutual funds, to start. i've looked over this more closely, and it's by far the best choice. over time, i may divest and reinvest in ways i've identified as better than the mutual funds, but i don't expect i'll beat the funds without a learning curve, first.

i think it would be stupid to, for example, just buy $10000 of amazon stocks and cross my fingers, but the money may get slowly taken out of the mutual funds and directly reinvested in stocks, so that i may end up with something like that in the end.

...but i'm going to do the research and make some oddball buys, too, and hope it works out, and i will actually do that first, not last.
i mean, i need to be clear: i'd be highly unlikely to fund this account on my own initiative. i'm really not very interested in buying stocks or tending to investments; it's just not something i'm very interested in.

however, the government is giving me $70,000 in grants and putting it in an account that is singularly meant for this purpose. i can't do anything else with these funds; the money has to be invested.

so, i'd might as well make the best of it.
the truth is that my family owes me quite a bit of money.  i actually lent my father several thousand dollars in 2008 when the market crashed, and he seems to have lost it gambling, as he had an addiction to gambling. i've had an extremely hard time recovering those funds from his estate, because he doesn't appear to have told anybody, but rather told everybody that he gave me the money he lost gambling to pay my rent (he never paid my rent even once). there was an agreement that my stepmother would transfer me a small amount of money on a regular basis for a large amount of time, but she didn't transfer me a dime and when i moved out of ottawa i just walked away from it. as an odsp recipient, i had strict asset limits that have since broadened. at the time, it wasn't worth it. it has since become worth it, and i tried to go after a bit of the money they owed me when i realized i was going to have to move in 2023, and realized i was going to have to sue them for it, as they weren't intending to be honest about the money intended for me that was stolen.

i'm looking to transfer funds into this rdsp fairly aggressively; if i can move $3500 in before dec 31st and $4500 in in the first week of january, i will be eligible for $21000 in grants in addition to the $10000 it opens with. if i can get $30,000 into an aggressive mutual fund package before the spring, that could start to grow pretty fast, over $5000/yr, and i can continue to dump upwards of $15K of grants into it for the next five years. it could be at 50K in two years, and then i'm pulling in over $5000/yr fairly reliably. i can live on $10,000/yr, if i can get the housing situation dealt with independently.

i'm hoping i can talk them into transferring some funds into this account to take full advantage of the grants and in order to evade the imminent lawsuits that are coming, but they've become stubborn conservative idiots, and are leaving me with no choice but to sue them, which is something that shouldn't be necessary for me to do, and something i don't want to do.

i bought $10,000 worth of medium risk mutual funds on the strong suggestion of the advisor to open the account, and that's reasonable, but i'm going to want to diversify a little. as mentioned, if i'm aggressive about this, i could get $20,000 in grants within a few months. i might decide to buy more mutual fundsi n the end, but i may want to buy some stocks directly, as well and, over the long run, manage this myself. 

i have never purchased any stocks before, so i agree that buying mutual funds is the smartest thing to do immediately, but i could see the value in doing something like buying $500 of penny stocks in canadian mining companies set to ramp up production for critical minerals. i have time to do that research and i'm capable of doing it.

the fact that my father was bad with money and had a gambling problem is something i've tried to learn from. i don't gamble; i'm very financially conservative. however, i'm getting roughly $70,000 of free money from the canadian government in the next five years, put into an account meant to buy stocks and bonds with. i should figure out how to put the bulk of into stable investments, and make sure any contributions i make for myself are in the safest place possible, while taking some moderate risks with some of the free money, and some higher risks with a very small amount of it.

if i buy $500 of penny stocks out of the $70000 i get in grant money and $100 worth of those penny stocks get to $100 each, well, i'm an instant millionaire. that's worth it.

i've criticized carney's infrastructure plan as a ploy to manipulate the stock markets. i should take advantage of that, if i think i understand it.

Saturday, December 13, 2025

i got my rdsp yesterday afternoon.

this is the equivalent of an rrsp for disabled people, so i can buy stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc with money transferred into it.

- the account opens with $10000
- the government will deposit $1000 per year for the remaining five years, for an additional $5000.

the maximum amount of matching grants i can get are as follows:

- the first $5000 (500*10) deposited into the rdsp will be matched at 3x (for 2015-2025)
- the next $10000(1000*10) deposited will be matched at 2x (for 2015-2025)
- amounts for 2026-2030 will be an additional 500 per year matched at 3x and additional 1000 per year matched at 2x.

but there is a maximum matching amount of $10500 per year, to a total of $70000. it will carry forward each subsequent year.

that means that the max for 2025 (i deposited before dec 31, 2025) will be $3500. the government will match 500 for the years 2015-2021, that is 7 years at 500. so, if i can get $3500 in the account somehow by dec 31, 2025, the government will deposit an additional $10500.

the max for 2026 will then be 500 for 2022-2025 (4*500 is 2000 multiplied by 3 is $6000) plus 1000 each for the next 2 years, 2015-2016 (2*1000 is $2000 multiplied by 2 is 4000) plus $250 more for 2017 ($500). that would be a total of $2000+$2000+$225 = $4225. so, if i can somehow get $4225 in the account between jan 1-dec 31, 2026, the government will deposit an additional $10500.

the max for 2027 will be the $500 for 2026 (500*3 = 1500) plus $750 for 2017 ($1500) plus 1000 each for the next three years (2018-2020) (3*1000 is 3000 multiplied by 2 is 6000), plus 750 for 2021 ($1500). that adds up to 500+750+3000+750=$5000. so, if i can get $5000 in there over 2027, the government will deposit an additional $10500.

the max for 2028 would be 500 for 2027 ($1500), plus the 250 left from 2021 ($500) plus 1000 each for the next four years (2022-2025) (4*1000 is 4000 multiplied by 2 is 8000) plus 250 from 2026 ($500). that adds up to 5000. so, if i can get 5000 n there over 2028, the government will deposit an additional $10500.

the max for 2029 would be the $500 from 2028 (500*3 = 1500) plus 750 from 2026 ($1500) plus  $1000 per year for 2027, 2028 ($2000*2  = $4000) + 500 from 2029 ($1500) plus $1000 from 2029 ($2000).  that adds up to $4750 to max out at $10500.

the max for 2030 would be $1500, and the government would deposit an additional $3500. 

the government would stop contributing when i turn 50. so i would max out at 56000, less than $70000. however, with the extra 15000 in bonds, it's over $70,000.

that means i'm currently looking at getting $3500 in there by the end of the year to get the $10500 for 2025 and $4225 in there next year to get the $10500 for 2026.

4225/12 = $355.

i could do that.

Friday, December 12, 2025

canada eliminated pennies about 20 years ago.

the truth is that you buy 98% of things with debit cards or online nowadays, but you will notice that retailers will change prices to round things up. we have 13% tax in ontario. so, rather than see things advertised for $0.99 + tax, you see them advertised as $1 or $1.25 including tax (so, $0.89 + tax or $1.11 including tax). we don't tax food in ontario, so we see items advertised as $4.00 now instead of $3.99.

if you just use your debit card, though, it won't matter.
hey, i remember when kristi noem had emo hair, c. 2005.

the media is going after her pretty hard, and the truth is that she has become pretty gross looking. i'm almost 46, myself. i'm looking very slightly older (that isn't the reason there's been so few pictures, lately. i've been struggling with a lot and my overall hygiene has continually suffered since early last year. i'm stabilizing and i'd expect some pictures up by the spring, if things hold.), but i would never consider trying to undo it with massive botox injections. that just always results in yick. it has an almost 0% success rate.

the empirical evidence is pretty clear that plastic surgery almost never works.

if trump does end up dumping her for her looks, it won't be the first or last time. she probably should have toned it down a little.
if penny oleksiak doesn't take testosterone, then why does she look so much like a male rock star, c. 1990?

she looks like a dude. why do you think that is?

then, they go after the transgendered swimmers, who are the only ones not on male hormones. it's absurd.

Thursday, December 11, 2025

the thing that drove up rents was interest rate hikes. 

i think that there should be a law passed that says that you're not allowed to rent a property that you own less than 80% of, unless it's a new development. this would prevent people from buying second properties by getting second mortgages on the houses they own, then using the income to pay their banks. it doesn't make sense for middle or upper class people to expect low income renters to pay their mortgages, but that is what is driving up the rents - people just buy houses at whatever the costs, then pass it on to renters, without spending the time doing the math, or really caring.

the result is that the person working at the tim hortons ends up paying off the government worker's overpriced mortgage, which that government worker couldn't otherwise afford, and just in order to have shelter. that's not logical and that's not fair. that shouldn't be allowed. the system should be telling the middle class workers to pay their own fucking mortgages, and helping the wage slaves escape from the tyranny of serfdom. there should be far greater protections in place to stop the middle class from exploiting low income workers and students.

the purpose of housing is not to generate income. housing is not an investment. i'm not even arguing against capitalism, which is supposed to be critical of idle rentiers. deregulation has led us back into feudalism, and put us on the road to serfdom. 

it would also help if they just cut interest rates, but that's going to take a while to go through.

i went through some volatility, but then i got lucky. i got into a program that's going to subsidize my rent. i could technically afford over $1500/month for rent at this point, but am currently paying $1000 and don't want to move again.

not everybody is going to navigate the system or get into this program. there's currently a problem with people buying properties as investments instead of as places to live that needs to be addressed by the federal government. 

it's one thing to rent an old house you're not using because you inherited it or moved somewhere else, or your situation changed, or whatever else. but explicitly buying old properties in urban cores at high interest rates to immediately rent them at high prices to poor people is not good for society and is driving up rents and should be banned by requiring a certain level of ownership before you're allowed to rent. this will ensure that the property owners are getting more of the rent and the banks are getting less, so that property owners are not dumping the cost of their over-priced mortgages that they cannot afford onto the working class, which can afford it even less. that will open up more affordable properties for people with lower incomes to buy, instead of be forced to rent.

something else that is driving up rents is the recent near ubiquity of property management companies, which are introducing an unnecessary bourgeois layer that needs to get paid. there are very few rental units, at least around here, that are just run by somebody renting their basement, anymore. everything is run by a management company, with some absent owner behind it that just gets a cut, and which is increasingly hiding ownership concentration. what we see are these dozen or so management companies; what we don't see is that they're managing portfolios of dozens or hundreds of properties, all owned by the same person. the state needs to step in and break up these hidden ownership conglomerates by passing rules on how many single-family houses one entity can own, and how far they can live from the properties they own.

the city and the province can only do so much. it's the feds that need to step in and start breaking up concentrations of ownership, but they have broadcast that they are more interested in maintaining high property values. 

*quack*

*quack*

*quack*

waddle over here, donald duck.

i'll save the descartes for later. it's coming.

i voted for trudeau's liberal party in 2015 because the local representative in windsor, who lost, campaigned on pushing the liberals to re-open nafta and because i strongly supported the green infrastructure bank, which was supposed to use the bank of canada to print debt-free money to finance the public infrastructure required for carbon transition, but that the liberals eventually converted into this horrible public-private thing to build pipeline infrastructure, like it was run by joe fucking clark. i regretted that vote, and wished i had voted for the greens.

i was a supporter of stephane dion and a very loud critic of michael ignatieff.

i did not vote for trudeau to legalize pot, and really didn't have a lot of support for the idea. at the time, i was indifferent to it; i figured it didn't matter. there's some convenience in being able to buy the odd quarter once or twice a year at the store, right? it's not like my life revolved around it. i didn't really actually care. in hindsight, the ndp and thomas mulcair probably had a better marijuana policy than trudeau did, but i would not be somebody that would be likely to determine my vote on marijuana policy. mulcair was running on new labour thatcherism and was a non-starter for that reason. as it is, i have purchased essentially no legal marijuana, after trying it and realizing it was engineered to create dependency. for me, the result of legalizing pot in canada is that i've started to strenuously avoid it.

i want my low key, underground, quiet neighbourhood hippie grow-ops back.

i have not voted for the liberals since, but have voted for the greens a couple of times.

there is no possibility that i would vote for or support mark carney in any way at all.
progressives used to talk about fining marijuana users for smoking, both tobacco and marijuana. trump might actually like that idea, i think. the fines should be intended to stop people from smoking in places where it bothers people, both in public and private. i would strongly support the ability to fine people for smoking in their own homes. an upside is that it might weaken property rights, which are a terrible idea.

as for responsible users that smoke in reasonable places like outside bars or concerts, or in recreational areas away from residential housing, it is better for us to keep it underground than to sell it in storefronts. if you ask around, that's actually a consensus position. most people support various decriminalization schemes rather than outright legalization.

you want to protect the marijuana plant from the drug industry, which will ruin it. that's what has happened in canada, where we now talk about Big Canna.
i would like to see the united states classify tobacco as a schedule I narcotic.

that would be truly progressive.
i would be more like to argue that ketamine should be classified as schedule I than that marijuana should be classified as schedule III. i actually think that marijuana should remain classified as a schedule I narcotic because it clearly has absolutely no medical use.

marijuana should be treated the same way as tobacco or to a lesser extent, to alcohol - it's a carcinogenic scourge that creates mass dependency and kills scores of people, but it does it slowly via cancer and heart disease, rather than via overdoses. it is possible to use it responsibly or irresponsibly. where marijuana is far worse than alcohol and on par with tobacco is in it's second hand smoke phase, and it's ability to create nuisance and public health emergencies for people that don't smoke it habitually.

the data is abundantly clear that legalizing marijuana in canada has been an absolute catastrophe and a total failure, from any analysis point - from a public health perspective, from an addictions perspective and also from the perspective of a casual user.  i have generally enjoyed smoking very small amounts of marijuana on an infrequent basis and have preferred low thc levels so that it's actually fun. nowadays, it's mass marketed as a drug for addicts and is 5x as strong as it used to be. it's not fun anymore, it just knocks you out like a retard on heroin. i would rather buy periodically from a hippie with a grow op in his basement making low potency pot, but that market is wiped out. you have to buy it in overkill packaging at potency levels designed to create dependence and bad experiences. as a casual user, i would rather it was illegal again.

it's led to extreme difficulties finding non-smoking housing in the country's urban areas and it has almost entirely reversed decades of progressive health initiatives to reduce indoor smoking. people have stopped caring, and started looking at you funny if you complain that they're smoking inside. it's a complete embrace of anti-intellectualism and scientific backwardsness.

the latter point would make it fitting for trump to be the president that is actually dumb enough to make this mistake, where every other president has thought about it and looked at the data and stopped. data is of no concern to donald trump.
for a substantive period of their rule, the nazis actually banned emigration because they wanted to enslave the inferior races. no escaping; that's not fair.

the nazis consequently didn't really have a problem with immigration, as not many minorities were interested in moving to nazi germany, but were rather trying to stop people from fleeing.
the nazis at no point ever argued that immigration was ruining european society. 

in fact, the nazis were very pro-muslim and built military alliances with the muslim world, across the middle east. the most obvious answer, a common hatred of jews, is the most correct one, but there are a number of angles. 

it is true that the arabs were in revolt against the british, which is how arabs usually explain the situation today, but that doesn't explain the nazi alliances with muslim groups in eastern europe, or with turkey. 

one of the few intellectual sources in nazi "theory" is edward gibbon, who claimed the roman empire (the first reich, which nazism was trying to rebuild) fell because it embraced christianity, which made the romans weak. gibbon contrasted that to the arab societies, which remained militant because they converted to islam. the contrast was between the slave-morality christians and the master-morality muslims, and gibbon decided the muslims were superior to the christians because they did not have a slave morality (to interject somewhat anachronistic language). gibbon argued that the first reich would have survived if it had converted to islam and the nazis picked up on that and tried to model their militarist christian society on muslim culture. does that sound like what donald trump is saying?

the basis of nazi expansion was that the aryan race was superior and therefore needed more space, liebensraum. the inferior slavs, the russians, were to be exterminated to make more space for the aryans. does that sound like what donald trump is saying?

what trump is saying is that the europeans are weakly, inferior and in the process of being colonized by stronger races, including the arabs. he's disappointed by this, but he's not arguing in favour of white supremacy, but rather in favour of white inferiority. it's essentially the exact opposite position taken by the nazis.

trump is therefore abandoning europe as inferior weaklings not worthy of an alliance with america and seeking to build alliances with stronger, more dominant societies that are not in decline, like the russians and the arabs.

there is some truth to trump's position. europe is clearly in decline. immigration is more of a result of that decline than a cause of it. the major cause of european decline has been it's acceptance of it's role as a us client. europe is weak precisely because america decided it ought to be weak, because it identified it as it's only serious competitor.

is europe still worth protecting? it's less clear. the resources are dwindling, and they've become an import-reliant economy. they're no longer the global centre of research or education. if europe thinks it's still worth protecting, it should make the argument a little more forcefully.

but, this is not nazism; this is the exact opposite of nazism.

factually, i think he's incorrect. europe is actually still recovering from world war two. the immigration will dry up when the wealth collapses and europe will be able to refocus on itself again when that happens.

a million dollar fast track around an h1b wouldn't be a policy i'd have come up with.

but i'm having difficulty criticizing it.
this looks psychotic on it's face, but it's a form of progressive taxation.

trump is an asshole, no doubt, and some of his policies are horrific. he's neither as polarizing or as substantive as a napoleon, a stalin or a genghis khan, and i hope he doesn't get there. but future historians may have some difficulty with this guy.

is this...conservative?

right-wing?

it kind of almost seems a little...

wait for it.






SOCIALIST.

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

were indigenous europeans religious?

it depends on what your definition of "religion" is.

we lack good sources because they were destroyed or written over by christian propagandists, but the sources we have suggest that the celts and germans were pretty similar to the very ancient greeks and that the reason is that the greeks ultimately came from the same origins as the celts and germans, before they migrated into greece. for that reason, the greek literature, in conjunction with very old literature from india, is the best information we have about what indigenous european culture was actually like.

we know that the europeans believed in democracy, which is why europe still has democracy; the christians were not democratic, and would have done away with it if they could have, but they couldn't and they failed. we know that germanic legal systems mostly followed processes that we still have remnants of in tort law, rather than civil law codes written by kings or churches, or the perpetual authority of the king.

we know the german and celtic gods were very similar to the greek gods, which is partly why the germans and celts let the greeks in to trade and largely avoided conflict with them but then fought the romans, years later. a lot of the cities in france were built by greeks and you can see the remnant overlap in the architecture, particularly in the cult of dionysus/diana, which is considered foundational to the spread of christianity.

it's no more clear that the germans or celts really believed in god, per se, than it is that the greeks did. when you have gods instead of god, you have magic and you have mysticism, animism and the sort. that is superstition, but it isn't clearly religion.

i think there's no clear answer to that question, and whether you should call indigenous european culture pagan or atheistic or superstitious or spiritual or animistic is not clear, but it is clear that europeans could never accept monotheistic belief or middle eastern legal codes, and never did.
i also have to reiterate my position that the idea of a historical christian europe, let alone a white christian europe, is a nonsensical myth. it never existed. it is strictly a fantasy of conservatives, and of the christian upper classes that have held to it for centuries, as the entities that wrote (or rewrote) the histories, that engaged in the genocides, and that wiped out the indigenous cultures of europe in a process that started with julius caesar and did not truly end - firmly - until napoleon.

it is more accurate to talk about a failed attempt by brown romans to colonize white europe that went on for thousands of years and ultimately failed than it is to talk about "christian europe". we universally condemn the inquisition, but fail to stop for a minute and realize that there were still enough pagans in europe at the dawn of the enlightenment to justify a crusade in the form of a witch hunt against them. the church was still launching crusades against white pagans in northern europe in the 17th century. it's christmas; you are still worshiping odin and not christ and should realize it. what do reindeers and  christmas trees have to do with a barn in israel, where it almost never snows? that's north germanic pagan iconography. the romans spent centuries trying to pacify white tribes in the north and were eventually first thrown out of europe in the 4th and 5th century by pagan indigenous groups (the roman sources call it the great barbarian conspiracy; it was an indigenous uprising), in a process that repeated over and over again in waves of pagan revolutions, culminating in the last viking invasions. england itself, the alpha culture of north america, is based on a pagan law code that was introduced to the island by saxon pagans, who were still in power in england in the 11th century, when a warlord from france named william invaded it under the direction of the pope in order to re-implement christian rule. we gloss over the fact that the norman invasion of england was basically a crusade against the furthest fringes of roman/christian colonial rule, and against an island that refused to christianize. the brutal despotism that followed was the last serious attempt to enforce christianity on england, and it failed to even establish a christian legal code, as the saxons would not let go of their democratic institutions, but instead enforced a magna carta on the norman nobility that ultimately returned power to parliament, that constructed the common law and, within a few centuries, had thrown the romans out for good. the english kings were so unchristian by the late dark ages that they didn't even believe in monogamy, and figured a serial philanderer could run an english church just as well as the fucking pope.

but if there was any christianity in europe at all it was restricted to the nobility. the regular people of northern europe were never christians and spent centuries evading taxation from the christian aristocracies and fighting their feudalism, while returning to their indigenous belief systems whenever they could and suffering immense persecution and cultural destruction for it. they actually teach you in school that indigenous european cultures were illiterate and had no history, which any cursory investigation into the matter will expose as a brutal lie, but these histories were destroyed by the christian aristocracies in a process that did not significantly differ from what they did to the aztecs centuries later.

it is the fact that white europe emerged from this process of cultural destruction both uncolonized and as a cultural tabula rasa, with no history of it's own, that allowed it to make such a clean break from the past, when it did. europe had no choice but to start from scratch, because everything it used to have was taken from it by brown christians from rome and lost in ruins and engulfed in flames. europe wouldn't be what it is today if it hadn't been thoroughly destroyed by christianity, while simultaneously refusing to accept it. all the christians had to show for their efforts in the end was a pile of rubble and a population no more willing to accept it than it had been in the first place.

the result is that while white europeans won - we defeated christian colonization - the victory was deeply pyrrhic. we lost who we were in the process, and had to redefine ourselves by reading greek mythology, but we did it, we dd the homework, and we emerged as a new society with new institutions that had little to no cultural baggage tied to the past.

there are few constants through history, but one is that white people make shitty slaves. we can't be broken, and they've tried, over and over. we don't want your religion, we don't want your slavery. we'll burn your cities down, in the end, if you won't fuck off and let us live in freedom.

it follows that there is really no likelihood that muslims are going to succeed in taking control of this power vacuum left open by the forced retreat of christian colonialism, and if they try to do so, the same thing will happen. the danger is not in the uncertainty of the eventual outcome, but in enduring the hardship of struggling against a new type of middle eastern colonialism. it's a shitty way to spend the next thousand years.

europe will win in the end, but it may have to do so the hard way, and may have to endure a new dark age, if it doesn't learn from it's own history, and allows these middle eastern groups to try to walk into this vacuum and continue to try to colonize it. it's up to them how they want to do this.

it should be clear that white europeans will not, in the end, accept middle eastern religion. it spent a thousand years defeating christian colonialism and won, and it will spend the next thousand years defeating islamic colonization, if it must.
i want to be clear that, as an atheist, i have no interest in taking a side in conflicts that are developing in the west between christians and muslims. dawkins' position on this question, for example, is disappointing and wrong-headed; i would prefer to take a marxist class analysis, which dawkins would not do, but which hitchens might have, especially when he was younger. i've found dawkins to be greatly disappointing in recent decades.

due not to any enlightened social attitudes in the upper classes but due to the fact that white people fought against our aristocracies and reduced their power in law via a series of revolutionary movements going back to the collapse of rome but picking up after the fall of constantinople, the white aristocracies have largely retreated from trying to enforce christian dogma on their populations, until recently. this is not out of their own volition or choice, but because we forced them to stop, and we took away their power. this is the great victory of modern enlightened/secular european society over medieval christianity (a mostly brown-skinned religion from the middle east that remnant roman/jewish groups tried to colonize white europeans with, and mostly failed at doing) that created the modern world. this great victory of the white european masses over colonizing brown christians from rome opened up somewhat of a power vacuum, and islamist groups that are basically the same things as christians are now trying to walk into that power vacuum, which is scaring the remnant roman christian aristocracies into thinking they're being replaced by muslim aristocracies, who never faced that revolutionary back lash, and continue to viciously enforce what is really exactly the same religion on their own people using violence and coercion. that is the reason the christian aristocracies are trying to fight back now, as they are trying to protect what they see as a threatened position in society; they withdrew from enforcement, because we forced them to, which is allowing these other religions to walk in and take their place. you can in fact see that in the statistics they present, which appear to me to be valid, that show that religious belief amongst nonchristians in north america and europe is increasing at a rapid pace, while christian belief continues to decline, which is something that is being brought on by immigration policies authored not by the aristocratic elites but by the bourgeois political establishments. the bourgeois political establishments are trying to do things like increase gdp and really aren't concerned about religious belief, or the role of the religious aristocracy, that has never truly gone away, but has continued to exist in the background. this isn't an intentional attack by the bourgeoisie on the aristocracy, but rather an unintended consequence. the aristocracy is nonetheless interpreting it as an attack and responding to it as one and trying to retake control of that power vacuum before a new foreign born aristocracy manages to wrestle it from them. up to this point, the bourgeois class has largely responded to this by calling the aristocrats insane and accusing them of perpetuating conspiracy theories, but i think that a solid marxist analysis should show that the concerns of the aristocrats (from their own perspective) are very real, even if the capitalists don't really comprehend what they're doing.

but i'm neither a christian aristocrat, nor a bourgeois capitalist. i'm an anarchist, an atheist and a proletarian. the aristocracy and bourgeoisie can kill each other off all they want. i don't give a fuck; if anything, i'd egg it on, as it weakens them both, which makes it easier for an eventual proletariat overthrow of both of them.

my atheist position on the increasing tendency towards conflict between muslims and christians is really that we should step back and let them kill each other off with an eye on divide and conquer, while keeping the following things in mind:

1) our position should not be in protecting one of these communities from the other, but in ensuring that neither of them are able to project violence towards atheists or is able to mount any kind of attack on freedom, individuality or reason and
2) that our greatest threat is not this or that religionist group, but the haunting spectre of religious integration, of communalism, of syncretism and of inter-faith collusion and cooperation. our real concern should be in preventing christians and muslims from aligning with each other against us, not in taking a side when they fight each other.

the religionists, like any other groups, are stronger when they work together, and weaker when they fight against each other. the atheist position should be to step back and let them fight each other and not to try to bridge differences; it should be to get out of their way and let them kill each other off, while protecting our own from their violence as best we can, which means self-defense when required, and it will be required, eventually. for now, we're better off getting out of the way than trying to intervene.

likewise, the proletariat has no position to take in trying to protect white aristocrats from brown aristocrats, or in taking a side in a conflict between the capitalist bourgeoisie and the remnant christian aristocracy, at all. the proletariat should focus on advancing it's self interest, and avoid getting involved in these conflicts which they have no part in and no interest in. but it should also ensure it understands what is going on and is able to react to events as is required.

it is obviously true that islam is a greater threat to freedom than christianity is, in contemporary western society. but we should address that truth without getting lost in class conflicts that we have no stake in.
conservatives will always approach new things by trying to ban them. that way, things can stay the way they are now, or go back to the way they used to be, which is always the goal - identifying what has made things different, and trying to reverse it.

kids need more exposure to technology at a young age, not less. they need education, not protection. this is real life and they'll have to learn how to exist in it. those that fail, and many will certainly fail, will not succeed in reproducing or in thriving as individuals.

Tuesday, December 9, 2025

what a disgusting eyesore.

there used to be a nice green space here, and they ruined it with a stupid hockey rink, like a bunch of immature eight year-olds.

as soon as we get rid of mayor dilbert, we should bulldoze this over and plant some trees.

Monday, December 8, 2025

if trump doesn't want to negotiate with canada, we shouldn't push him to, we should shut up and wait for the next guy.
the bible and koran are just regular books, like any other books. they contain words authored by humans and written down onto paper. they are no different than political pamphlets, fictional narratives (they should clearly be categorized as fictional in the dewey-decimal system) or any other type of written texts. there is nothing special about them. they are not above the law.

while i would rather see these hate crime laws abolished altogether, having special exemptions for a specific political position is legislating that position above the law, which is an affront to the rule of law. the law must hold everybody equally accountable.

i consequently strongly support the legislation but, more importantly, i welcome the debate. we need to return to a more open discourse about religion in this society, and stop being afraid of offending people.

Sunday, December 7, 2025

while it's predictable that the kids that grew up in the 00s, the oughties, have a more nuanced perspective about it and are re-evaluating it, i align with the gen x consensus that the 00s fucking sucked in terms of popular music. you had to look to some pretty obscure corners of the music world to find something exciting going on.

this record is one of the few counter-examples and one of the few albums i keep coming back to for that reason. it's one of the rare classic records released so far this century.

it's certainly a hysterical over-reaction to the situation in the united states in 2006, which is why it's fun. we are closer to this point now than we were then, but it's still a great distance away.

a society where these concerns are not hysterical but are very real is the middle east and levant and i would, today, mostly recommend this record to syrian or iraqi refugees fleeing isis, hts and al qaeda (including the current syrian regime), hezbollah or hamas. it is mostly arab refugees of islamic fundamentalism that would be best able to relate to this record as something very real, in 2025.

this wasn't the most popular punk record released c. 2005, but it was one of the best.