democracy is not something that happens when you elect somebody in a ballot box, it's something that happens when members of the community get together and govern themselves. the model that antifa uses is actually an example of actual democracy, rather than some kind of antithesis to it. but, the burden of proof then falls on the antifascist body to ensure that what it is struggling against is real.

i've said this repeatedly: if i felt that antifa were actually struggling against actual nazis, i would be on their side in a second. the people marching in charlottesville were clearly actual nazis. as far as i can tell, that is the first time in recent months that that has actually been true.

you can't argue with nazis any more than you can argue with a lion. i understand his historical arguments, but i suspect that what he is saying is too literate for most americans to follow. this is something more tangible for people that don't know the history: imagine you're face to face with a mountain lion. do you think you're likely to talk your way out of this, or do you think you'd better defend yourself? now, let's all recognize that nazis have the mindset of remorseless predators. you are not an opponent, you are prey.

it's just absolutely imperative that you identify nazis correctly, and that you do not misidentify conservatives or liberals as nazis and then treat them the way you would treat nazis, which is what was happening at some of the other protests. and, the way you do that is you involve yourself in the collectives; the answer to the problems inherent to democracy are, in truth, almost always more democracy, as they are truly problems of democracy being poorly applied.

these are perspectives coming from an anarcho-communist, who is both a socialist and a civil libertarian. there's no conflict between these viewpoints; in truth, they make the most sense in conjunction with each other: true libertarianism is communism. you should be wary of people that want to set up a dichotomy, as what they are telling you is that they do not truly believe in civil rights and are using the situation for personal gain, and perhaps dangerously so.

he is right that there is no equivalency, but his arguments really leave a lot to be desired.

i also want to point out that if the administration starts falsely blaming attacks on leftists then it is not likely to be the consequence of some inability to deal with reality, but a tactic of suppression. i'll need to break my own advice here and use a historical comparison: hitler dissolved the legislature by burning it down and blaming it on communists, then claimed he needed special powers to fight them off. this is another reason why it is so important that antifascists pick their battles wisely as, equivalency or not, the reality is that the majority of the country abides by a pacifist christian value system that sees all violence as equivalent and will be easily manipulated into handing over stronger police powers should it be shown enough pictures of "left-wing extremists".

smashing nazis is necessary. but, you have to make sure that what you're smashing is actually a nazi. it's critically important.

i did an apology tour last night to the people that i puked all over. i think it went well, although there was an encounter afterwards at donovan's that i simply didn't understand at all. i reiterate: i didn't understand at all. maybe somebody can explain that to me at some later date. i dunno.

but, i'm learning that i have doppelganger in detroit. this person may frequent ann arbor, as well as the clubs in corktown and mexicantown in detroit.

i suppose it would be useful to meet this person. however, i can't react to things i didn't do. and, i'm sorry - it's kind of other people's responsibility to make sure they've got the right person.

october 7, 1763.

it was actually an important date in the history of both the united states and canada: the royal proclamation, that declared that the king of england has sole ownership of all indigenous land in north america. therefore, colonists were forbidden by law from purchasing land directly from the native americans. instead, only the crown could buy the land from the natives, which would then partition it to the colonists using a feudal parcel system that we refer to today as 'fee simple' - all land in the colonies would be arranged into fiefdoms owned by the crown, for rent to colonists. this is an understood factor in the war of independence, as the colonists wanted what is called allodial title, in buying land from the natives, who up to that day were considered sovereign land holders under british law. this would give them real ownership, and avoid the ability of the king to inflict property taxes.

the royal proclamation essentially extinguished a right of indigenous land title under british law; at the stroke of a pen, the king declared himself the owner of the entire continent, despite the existence of sovereign tribes living on the land.

you would think that indigenous groups in canada would look at this day as the darkest in their history, as it was the end of their legal sovereignty under colonial law. but, they are instead taught that this was the day that the king recognized their rights under the law as british subjects. there were public celebrations in indigenous communities to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the proclamation.

i've been in absolutely surreal debates with indigenous people around this topic that have just left me baffled.

this is a small step. but, everybody should welcome it.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/ontario-first-nation-ottawa-sign-self-governing-education-agreement/article35996541/?reqid=8b5fdb28-f90e-4239-a0eb-e5dc62b02f71

treating your workers like serfs is not a "specific efficiency", and bringing in the ricardian machinery around it is simply disingenuous. but, you expect that from the fraser institute.

http://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/unifor-hopes-to-put-mexico-in-check-with-once-in-a-generation-nafta-re-negotiation

i've been over this with nafta polling before: nobody's ever opposed the idea of a trade agreement with the united states, what's always been contentious are certain aspects of it. you have to get really modular in your polling if you want to get a handle on what people are thinking about this. you want to see the trees here, not the forest; these vague questions just obscure the point.

i was too young to be actively engaged in the debate. but, i think that the liberals were both right to oppose it and right to sign it - and i think that most of the ways they criticized the deal have proven astute and poignant, and overwhelmingly correct.


remember: the liberal position was never against reciprocity (it was their idea...), but against certain components of the deal that were seen as surrendering sovereignty. what happened, of course, is that the ndp performed very well under broadbent and the party split the vote; polls in the 80s were not aligned with the conservative position, but split between the liberal position (necessarily trade, but not necessarily nafta) and the ndp position (no trade deal at all).

i certainly hope the party approaches renegotiating the deal with the same broad mindset it had in 1988, with an attempt to try and fix some of the problems they had to let get away at the time. again: their criticisms of the deal have proven astute, poignant and overwhelmingly correct. there's the part on chapter 11, for example: i'm not convinced that a turner or chretien government would have been able to overcome opposition in their own party to sign a deal with that in it. and, it has caused serious damage in canada. we would be far better off without that chapter. it probably wasn't worth cancelling the deal over, though. freeland included that in her list of demands, and you just wouldn't see that kind of language coming from a conservative government because they've never opposed it.

on the other hand, democrats and republicans say basically the same thing on trade; you could take statements by bush and obama and throw them in a hat and mix them up and legitimately not know who said what, except maybe through hints in sophistication of language. and, obama ran and won on the same buy america provisions that trump ran and won on, too.

granted: in the end, the liberals may end up sounding like the conservatives on trade. more precise polling would demonstrate that this will be a liability for them. but, if the older voices in the party win out, the canadian position on certain things may even be (perhaps pleasantly) unrecognizable to even well-informed canadians. as the american trade people have up to this point done essentially all of their trade negotiations with conservatives, they may not see this coming, or even be aware of these differences, and we may catch them off guard on certain points that the conservatives have never opposed, or bring issues to the table that the conservatives never brought to the table.

the liberals should know that people are going to be paying attention, and are going to want to see the liberals demonstrate that they are not just the same thing as conservatives, on trade. this is a substantive voting issue. and, the party has an opportunity to finally define itself properly, on it, by drawing attention to the differences, which is what it should be doing, at least domestically.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-nafta-talks-polls-1.4247820

aug 15-16 vlog, where i go back to the anarchist house to apologize for the food poisoning outburst, unaware of the potential underlying cause of iron deficiency.

no, actually, i'm sick of this.

enough time has past that you should be able to throw your party allegiances in the trash, or at least put them aside, when it comes to clear empirical observation. whether you were a disgruntled sanders supporter or a trump supporter, you need to pull your head of your ass, now: it was the most obvious thing in the fucking world that trump was the media's preferred candidate. that is the reason i predicted he would win.

all of the major networks gave him way more coverage. even the liberal ones. even the jewish ones. and, perhaps especially the liberal jewish ones.

if you're still holding to the absolute canard that clinton was the establishment candidate, you need to go kill yourself, already. ffs.

or, you can look at it like this: if she was the establishment candidate, she would have won, right?

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/info/20010/risk_factors_and_prevention/149/mediterranean_diet

so, what's my political wisdom on where trump stands on nafta?

i told you they didn't want to get rid of obamacare, and would fuck around for months over it. i was basing that analysis on things i had read at sites like counterpunch during the obama years, but i'm not aware of anybody else that saw what happened coming. and, i told you about the russian fiasco before it happened, too - because it was just the obvious logical corollary of the clear fact that the cia rigged the election to put trump in power. trump was an inside job! so, what about nafta?

in fact, i've already posted this here several times: "cancel the tpp and rewrite nafta" is going to, in the end, become "replace nafta with the tpp". and, you don't need to go to obscure sites or have a math degree to figure that out, it's all over the business press.

one of the selling points that obama used for the tpp is that it had environmental and labour standards, although how these would be enforced in a country like indonesia was never made clear. the precise focus of improving mexico's labour standards is a lot easier to grapple with, and consequently a lot easier to support. it's attainable. i mean, they told us that free markets would increase standards of living in mexico; that was a lie, and a malicious one, but it wasn't some fatalistic necessity - mexico should have higher living standards and doesn't due to absurd amounts of corruption. but, it's certainly created jobs, at least, and that's a precursor to use government to balance the playing field and actualize the promises that market economics has failed to deliver, and will always fail to deliver. i can support this. and, i don't know how you get mexico to let go of it's oligarchic corruption without getting threatening with it, either.

i've been saying for a long time that the way you save nafta is that you have to get tough with enforcement in mexico. they're a laggard, here. and, they're dragging the whole thing down.

the part of the tpp that was most daunting was it's strengthening of intellectual property rights, which is going to increase the price of everything at the benefit of almost nobody. this is something we're going to feel more in a country like canada, as it's going to hurt our regulatory systems that keep prices down. this is something the left needs to fight. it's going to be the focus of opposition.

but, i don't know what a cost-benefit is on this, yet. some of what i'm hearing may actually be a real improvement. is it worth supporting an agreement that levels wages out, if it increases drug prices?

i do think that the trump administration wants a "deal". but, this is different, because it has to co-ordinate with actors outside of the country. and, i'm not sure it's going to get what it wants, partly because what it wants is kind of outlandish.

there is a different government in canada now, as well. that is going to be the biggest difference between tpp negotiations and nafta renegotiation. obama was basically a republican, anyways, so he didn't disagree much with republicans on trade. trudeau is dealing with a different dynamic - he, himself, may share most of obama's views on trade, but he's dealing with a lot of opposition in his party that sees tpp and nafta style deals as a process of ending canadian sovereignty. the liberals were actually largely responsible for the auto pact, and it was actually the elder trudeau that initiated nafta discussions, but the liberals have been out of power for the actual substantive negotiations over the fta, the nafta and the tpp. they campaigned hard against nafta. so, the united states is going to find itself face-to-face with a different animal, this time around. there are prominent old veterans of the 80s battles in the party that must know this is their only chance to fix what they see as catastrophic problems - and these voices should be supported.

what i'm getting at is that canada is the wildcard here and that the outcome is going to depend on what we want, which isn't yet clear. the liberals were always confusing on trade. they never had a united voice.

but, is trump fucking around on this? no - he wants an update. and, what he's going to push is going to look a lot like the tpp.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/17/private-sector-advisory-group-suggests-nafta-rewrite-based-on-tpp.html

do you think that trump pushing for patent rights for pharmaceuticals or breaking up supply management is any less ridiculous or standoffish than a chapter on indigenous rights?

are we to believe that trump thinks that trudeau wants an agreement that allows for a final abrogation of canadian sovereignty, or the final takeover of canada by american capital?

i tend to agree with coyne in roundabout ways - rarely at face, but it's because he tends to miss the obvious and get to substantive points in these roundabout ways, instead. and, coyne is right, in a sense, here: this is a ridiculous and mostly pr-driven response to an equally ridiculous set of demands. and, if anybody set this up to fail, it was trump.

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-is-the-liberals-nafta-wish-list-a-sign-they-are-setting-up-talks-up-to-fail/wcm/e977f815-7311-4598-ab21-77df1d955acf

that sounds close to right, to me.

but, is she just telling us what we want to hear?

if she is, she left out water and pharmaceuticals.

no, seriously: this is a good start. it's certainly a lot better than it could be. that said, the drug thing is really key for everybody, on both sides of the border and is probably what a poll is going to identify as the public's biggest concern, in canada. but, i'm just a nerd on the internet, i can't go through this point-by-point. but, i can call on people more qualified than i am (toby sanger? maude barlow?) to get to work on it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nafta-canada-demands-list-1.4246498

tim kaine is going to run for president in 2020, whether you like it or not.

i'd take this a step further: these institutions should be secularized. why are tax funds going to catholic hospitals? but, they shouldn't be privatized or shut down, they should be converted into normal hospitals.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/assisted-dying-religion-ethics-accessibility-1.4244328

but, to be clear: it's not just that abolishing government means abolishing property.

it's that the reason you want to abolish government is that it's the only way to abolish property.

being an anarchist on the left consequently should really be thought of as the ideological position that attaining freedom means abolishing all property; abolishing the state is just a necessary, albeit not sufficient, step to the elimination of property.

i mean, you don't think property rights exist somewhere out there in the ether, do you?

a "property right" is a law passed by an oligarchy, and enforced with a gun. the term is older than orwell, but it's an incoherent contradiction in terms. proudhom deconstructed this well - for if you have property then you are infringing on the rights of others, and to uphold the rights of all is to abolish property. property rights are neither freedom nor theft but truly impossible, and the only outcome of a system built on property rights is an oppressive dystopia.

but, the basic point is that property can only exist in the presence of government. there really isn't a substantial difference between these concepts; government and property are largely the same thing. and, the so-called ancaps that wish to suggest otherwise are really just living in a fantasy reality.

an anarchist would not interpret regulatory bodies as "big government", because it would reject the underlying premise of property rights. the government does not exist to regulate the market, but to protect it from regulation. regulation - real regulation by democratic or scientific bodies, not captured industry bodies - is consequently a way to break through the statist system of property rights and assert control by the people over their own resources.

regarding meat....well, maybe we shouldn't really have slaughterhouses. but, if we're to have slaughterhouses, they should belong to the people, and not to corporations. what currently prevents the democratization of resources is the government, through it's enforcement of property rights. regulation is consequently not about the government "interfering" in the realm of "private production", but about the people abolishing the state's control over resources, through the tyranny of property.

what removing the government from the business of meat processing means is abolishing the property rights used by private corporations and setting up local councils that distribute the meat on a needs basis.

nonsense about "free markets" is exactly that.

these issues tend to follow conservtive governments, who cut regulations in order to "eliminate red tape" (that is, increase profit). this leads to a giant social outcry, and then either the ndp or the liberals try to rebuild what was destroyed. and, this creates long term damage for the conservatives.

the conservatives in ontario, for example, are still dealing with the memory of the walkerton water tragedy, which was blamed on the government's cost-cutting behaviours. there are people who will avoid voting conservative for the rest of their lives because of this.

canada did go through the same anti-intellectual revolt against logic that the united states went through under reagan, it just happened here in the 00s rather than the 80s. and, we have a lot of work to do in undoing the damage created by the previous government.

unfortunately, it's not going to be the current prime minister that leads the charge on this. let's hope that his successor is a little more pro-active about it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cfia-us-report-concerns-meat-inspections-1.4239198

see, this is what i want to hear.

and, it's similar to what the liberal party has historically held to - it's at the crux of their (i think very correct) historical criticism of the nafta deal. i've been over this here; it's similar to what happened in the united states, in that the deal was negotiated by the conservative party, but then the liberals came in in late 1993 and had to basically rubber stamp it, despite opposing it, because the alternative was dire...

i think the difference is that there's more real evidence that the liberals actually believed what they said, or at least that they did in 1993. i didn't vote for justin trudeau as a person so much as i voted for a hope of a return to the social liberalism of his father's liberal party; this is backwards in canada, but he struck me as a figurehead that would ultimately have little real decision-making power. it was the old liberal party machinery (the uplift in diversity, especially female representation, was certainly welcomed) that i wanted back in power. this is pretty much what that old party machinery would say. but, we've seen a lot of conflicting signals that the pmo leans more towards positions that are currently held by democrats, and were held historically by the conservative party :\.

everybody needs to be skeptical. but, this is a good signal, at least. it's the right approach, and for the right reasons. let's see what actually happens..

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/freeland-to-press-for-new-labour-environmental-sections-within-nafta-1.3544101

so, what have i been doing the last two weeks, anyways?

the last update was july 30th. i spent the first part of that week trying to watch vlogs and edit, but i lost myself in a variety of things, including legal wrangling. i picked up a bicycle on the 3rd in detroit for $35 usd ($45 cad) and then lost the weekend having fun; i was at least able to get through the editing over the course of last week, including necessary editing for the court process. i picked up a new bicycle lock for $30, as well. i finished this friday morning, and went out friday night; i'm in fact actually still a little bit oozy, but i feel i'll be back to full strength after the next sleep.

i need to spend the day getting things back in motion, but i should be able to get back to the living room makeover within a day or two, which is going to mean buying a lot of wood and building the cd shelves.

updated total:
airwalk shoes (payless): $33
bicycle repair (city cyclery): $23
bicycle lock: ($30)
3x40 gb ide hds (kijiji):  $10
dell ultrasharp 1703 fp with dvi cables (kijiji): $20
two lamps, one table and one floor [kijiji]: $15
tape holders [kijiji]: $15
bicycle for detroit [craig's list]: $45 [$35 usd]
 2x500 gb sshd laptop drives (best buy): $2x82
2 tb internal drive (best buy): $104
100 dvd-rs [best buy]: $30
50 bd-rs [best buy]: $45
2x2 gb laptop ram (amazon.ca): $2x15 + shipping, $47
8 gb sd ram for mp3 player (amazon.ca): $13
2 tb external drive (amazon.ca) : $123
50 cd-rs [amazon.ca]: $30
ps/2 to usb connector [amazon.ca]: $5
intel core i3-4710 [amazon.ca]: $243
atx mid tower [amazon.ca] - $52
asus p9d ws [amazon.ca]: $360
2x8 gb ddr3-1600 ram [amazon.ca]: $150
arctic silver [amazon.ca]: $11 $0
450 joule surge protector (amazon.ca): $9
600 watt psu (amazon.ca): $80
700 joule surge protector (amazon.ca): $10
laptop battery (ebay): $26
2x4 gb laptop ram (ebay): $2x33
ip68 phone (ebay): $128
m-audio audiophile 2496 (ebay) [used]: $60
250 gb ssd drive (newegg.ca): $135
200 jewel cases (newegg.ca): $117
bathroom supplies (food basics, walmart, loblaws, shopper's): $296
ps/2 keyboard (axxon computer corporation, windsor): $23
usb mouse (walmart): $15
universal battery charger + aaa batteries (canadian tire): $54
stereo table: $34  (antique store)
cassette deck: $23 (antique store)
bookcase for bathroom supplies: $30 (antique store)
==================
2360.37

"they made you sleep outside?"

to begin with, i didn't sleep.

but, actually, they didn't - they asked me several times to come in, and then they got a blanket for me, and tried to get me to drink water (which i didn't want to drink, because it was making me vomit). they told me point blank to come in and sleep inside. repeatedly. if anything, they seemed a little insulted that i wouldn't come in.

given my difficulties speaking at the time, i may have failed in trying to explain that i was going to get a coffee as soon as i could get up. but, i thought that was going to be before 7:00. my first bus back on saturday mornings is 5:55, so if i was going to get a coffee and sip on it for a bit, i would have wanted to leave around 5:00, or even a bit before, depending on when the night quieted down. they were trying to pull me inside well before that, and for quite a while at that. it just didn't make sense for me to go in and sleep at 3:30 when i was planning on leaving as soon as my body worked the toxins out. and, i didn't want to fall asleep there and miss my bus, because i left my 8:00 meds at home.

on top of that, i would have likely had to have been lifted in. i needed more than an arm. i'm not joking - i couldn't walk. i tend to get insular in these situations, and refuse to move unless somebody that i know and trust offers a hand. as kind as these strangers were, i have a lot of faith in the persistence of gravity and am pretty much always going to insist on getting up on my own, which means not getting up at all until i can.

in hindsight, i'm glad they got that blanket - i guess they realized i wasn't getting up as soon as i thought. but, i wasn't outside due to lack of trying to get me in; i just really wasn't able to get up, and consequently wasn't willing to be moved. further, if i was able to get up at all, i would have left.

i think i'm ok, now.

full effects were more than 30 hours.

for the record, my alcohol intake for the night was one beer around 10:00 followed by a shot of vodka, and then three and a half rockstar vodkas between 11:00 and 3:00. three and half because somebody took the last one away (i didn't argue). i drank more than half of it. so, i opened around 11:00, 12:00, 1:00 and 2:00. roughly. that's by no means excessive and well in my "can easily handle" range.

those rockstar vodkas have a mixture of energy drink components, including high caffeine levels, and are 7% vodka. i drink them because they keep me awake. while they've never passed me out, the caffeine has kept me up more than once; if anything, the caffeine might have delayed the onset of the thc.

there's no ambiguity, here. yes: there may have been an interaction in my stomach. so, if i wasn't drinking, i may not have vomited. but, the paralysis i was in was about the brownies. don't question that, it's true.

i prefer coffee over cocaine. and, in the future, i think i'll just stick to smoking it.

is there something to that idea, though?

is what's happening in places like virginia ultimately deconstructed into a kind of schism on the christian right, which is being torn between it's history and it's present? and, is the entire conflict really ultimately so insulated from the dominant culture as to be more or less irrelevant?

i would guess that a very large percentage of people probably share my apprehension in not really wanting to take a side in a conflict between nazis and christians, which is what appears to be actually happening on the ground, rather than the kind of imagined narrative on the alt-right about fighting jews and communists. the christian groups seem to be outnumbering the socialist groups by a substantial factor.

it's legitimately hard to imagine what the christian right is going to look like in 20 years if it doesn't open it's arms to hispanics and blacks. for all the concern about rising fascism, is there maybe even something valid in the idea that the culture of white christian dominance is actually in the throes of it's last dying gasps, and that it's about to be overtaken on the right by a coalition of conservative hispanics and conservative blacks, under the banner of a rejuvenated and pluralist christian right, as whites abandon religion for secular liberalism in an america-wide quiet revolution?

and, is there any real use in getting involved in a civil war on the right?

if i was there, i would insist that socialists do not protest with faith groups, but carry on separate protests. it wouldn't be hard to organize, either. but, i suspect i'd realize pretty quickly that this actually isn't about socialism at all, but about what christians want christianity to be.

again: i usually side with the aclu.

i'm a really strict ideological liberal on speech - but that actually doesn't imply a lack of oversight. ideological liberals should be holding to the harm principle, which was outlined by mill. and, i think there are good reasons to argue that some types of speech are harmful.

it's very careful, very delicate.

if an old man wants to walk down the street by himself and wave a flag as he holds to some delusional and scientifically debunked concept of race supremacy, is he actually harming anybody? probably not. but, if a militia wants to march down the street with guns and chant racist slogans, there's some serious harm being created, there.

what the aclu usually represents is something closer to the first scenario, and i'm usually going to side with them on it. the situation in virginia is getting dangerously close to the second situation. and, the organization should consequently ensure it's being properly judicious about what it's doing.

should this have been shut down ahead of time? it's a judgement call. but, some of what i've seen from these protests does get very close to incitement, and if that evidence did not exist before, it does now: there's a reason to shut future protests by this group down on the harm principle. and, there's perhaps a reason to charge some individuals with incitement, as well.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/12/16138326/aclu-charlottesville-protests-racism

i want to be clear.

if it's nazis vs. secular liberal democracy, i'll show up and fight back.

if it turns out to be nazis vs faith-groups, i'll let them kill each other off and go do something else, instead.

i've been apprehensive about trying to pick a side in these clashes, as i've considered both sides delusional - the antifascist groups are fighting imaginary nazis (that are probably actually mostly liberals), while the alt-right groups are fighting imaginary authoritarian communists (which actually sound like conservatives, if you go to talk to them). "hitler or stalin?" is a choice that millions of real people had to make in the 30s, and it's as shitty a choice now as it was then. as an anarchist, i'd want to fight the stalinists as much as i'd want to fight the nazis, but which side do you take in a struggle defined by competing strawmen? you just don't do that; instead, you take a step back and make misanthropic observations about the dystopic absurdity playing out in front of you.

but, these are actual nazis. and, all decent people need to unite to shut them down.

just, try and keep the counter-protests secular, please. you don't want to chase off allies by bogging things down with ritual. i've certainly avoided protests over this. it's just not the time to shamelessly promote your religious institution....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Unite_the_Right_rally

aug 13 vlog, where i try to explain what happened the night before, and devolve into a discourse about squirrel evolution, in the context of a hominid extinction event.

btw...

i still think the best way to understand the trump presidency, and i mean holistically, is to watch a season of inspector gadget.

and, how long did the effects of that little bite of bownie last for?

i want to be clear: i just took a little piece. i knew to be careful, i just didn't have any reasonable metrics to use: i didn't know the strength, and i didn't know what i could handle, because i had no experience with it. i took what i thought was a small piece that i thought i could deal with.

i was able to move around 7:00. i tried to eat when i got home, but passed out around 11:00. i tried to get up around 21:00, and finished eating, but passed out again around 00:00. it's now 4:40 and i'm still feeling it behind my eyes.

again: it was just a little bite. and, i'm an old pro...

is there anything more segregated in the united states than christianity?

the most enduring legacy of slavery in the united states is actually the black church.

so, i had my story about being overcome by unlabeled edibles, last night.

it was homemade, and just handed off to me. not only was it unlabeled, but it probably wasn't even measured; there likely isn't a person in the world that really knows the dosage of what i ate last night. i figured i've smoked enough pot in my life, right? what could it do to me?

i got through the concert, but not much more than that; it didn't knock me out, in fact i remember the entire night, but it left me completely useless for around 4-5 hours. i had two rounds of intense vomiting and wasn't able to control my legs well enough to get back on my bicycle until around 7:00. so, i spent the night outside. thankfully, i was around kind people.

if i was to describe the experience, it wouldn't be much like anything i've experienced on alcohol or marijuana. i've smoked some hashish that's knocked me down, but not quite like that. i've been unable to move on mushroom trips for a few minutes at a time, but mushrooms have a higher level of excitation to them - a "faster wavelength", if you will - and it actually wasn't a great comparison. acid can veg you out for a long time, but i didn't get any hallucinations - no tracers, nothing. the closest comparison to anything i've experienced was probably to the tylenol-3s i took when i got my wisdom teeth out, years ago.

i could understand the people around me, and i hope i thanked them for their kindness. but, i was pretty numb, really. and, i should be more careful about eating random amounts of random things...

aug 11-12 vlog, where i go to a doom rock show at the anarchist house in detroit, am handed something to eat and get trapped in my own body until the morning, awake but otherwise unable to function. 

the narrative here is of being given something to eat and reacting to the contents of it, but, in hindsight, i may have been experiencing the effects of iron deficiency. i did not have much to drink, and the alcohol alone was not the cause. that said, even if the reason for shutting down was due to iron deficiency, the brownie clearly had an overwhelming effect on me. i don't really know how to separate the issues, but i know now that i have long term iron deficiency concerns and that it appears to be exacerbated by heavy exercise.

in one of the strangest (and yet hugely widespread) contradictions i'm aware of, it is the truth that a large percentage of vegans are also cat owners. how does a vegan co-exist and care for an obligate carnivore without imploding into a mess of speciesist contradictions? and, yet, it is an easily observable condition in the actual universe that we exist within, thereby demonstrating once and for all that there are no underlying rational laws of physics underpinning the universe we inhabit.

i'm an ideological vegan. we need protein, but we should grow it using animals that don't have brains. so, i'll break on strict veganism by interjecting some actual real science - it is true that the animals that we enslave for our consumption are too cognizant of their own existences to justify that kind of treatment and that farming as we understand it should be abolished. a caterpillar, on the other hand, does not have a discernible brain, and consequently has no ability to understand it's own struggle. but, this is an empirical observation backed up by repeatable experiments, and not a claimed dictate by an entity that doesn't exist - or a rule determined by a committee that has given itself the task of distributing the earth's resources.

an economy of scale around insect production would actually solve a myriad of problems. it's something that should be actively worked towards.

as an ideological vegan roots their ideas in science rather than religion, a sympathetic attitude towards abolishing factory farms doesn't extend to non-violence towards all animals. we don't need to talk about mosquitoes and malaria; again, mosquitoes don't have brains. let me ask you this question: what makes the life of your neighbourhood feral cat more valuable than the life of the bird that it killed this morning, or even the rat that it killed last week? how can you stand up for the cat's violence while condemning the human's?

"a cat is being a cat" may be true. but, a human is being a human. and, yes: humans are animals, too.

nor is the premise that cats reduce pests thought out well, as the cats themselves are riddled with diseases and leave feces everywhere. humane rat traps are a better idea.

what would you do with a human that came back every day and took a shit in your garden? you'd probably kick the shit out of that human, if you got the chance, right? or, at least institutionalize them. you can't fine a cat. it doesn't give a fuck about your fiat monetary systems. it's just something else to poop on.

we don't need to torture them. but, we need to control them.

there were some people out culling the cats, tonight. this is excellent news.

but, you should have seen the look on the woman's face when i told her i didn't believe in standing up for all god's creatures.

"naw. those cats - they're vermin. they should be culled."

she looked like somebody stabbed her in the throat.

but, it's the truth of it: they're just useless shit producers.

fuck your god. fuck your culture. and, fuck your sanctity of life.

reality check: we are, in fact, on our way to building a majority atheist society, where judeo-christian values are flushed down the drain in favour of a science-driven culture. i welcome this. and, i will happily make enemies out of those that would retard our movement forwards, with the full intent of permanently destroying them.

this is the truth of things, but i don't want to even get there:

Where Board may dismiss

197 (1) The Board may dismiss an application without holding a hearing or refuse to allow an application to be filed if, in the opinion of the Board, the matter is frivolous or vexatious, has not been initiated in good faith or discloses no reasonable cause of action.  2006, c. 17, s. 197 (1).

Same

(2) The Board may dismiss a proceeding without holding a hearing if the Board finds that the applicant filed documents that the applicant knew or ought to have known contained false or misleading information.  2006, c. 17, s. 197 (2).

i want to be clear.

i would not expect the board to process the order. she is trying to evict me over behaviour that is happening off of her property, under the ridiculous claim that it is interfering with her enjoyment of her own property. it fails the test of causality. the board should not even hear this. and, i should be able to counter-sue for malice.

and, this is ignoring the fact that she placed an illegal date on the form, which voids it in the first place.

but, i don't want to go down this path. things can go wrong. i need the content of the order voided, immediately.

so, the property owner has really gone down the rabbit hole. the reality is that the order she served this afternoon is so incoherent that the law doesn't seem to have predicted it; it's so ridiculous, that i can't figure out a proper response

how does a tenant react to a demand by the landlord, when the landlord cannot make that demand? the landlord has demanded that i cease a behaviour within 7 days, or be evicted, but she has no right to make the demand. i could just ignore her - and suspect that the court would even refuse the eviction order - but i don't want to go through an eviction process. what i want is for the order to be voided from the start.

the closest remedy i can find has to do with charging her with criminal harassment. but, this is more of a consequence of stupidity than malice. i mean, it's both - don't get me wrong. but, it's so poorly thought out, that it would be difficult to prosecute; occam's razor is that she's just horribly wrong.

further, it would be difficult for me to make the case that the demand is interfering with my enjoyment of the property - for the reason that the point of contention is happening off of the property. the kind of obvious reaction relies on making the same incoherent legal error that's underlying her demand, in the first place. if this *was* on her property, i could countersue...but i know better....

what i want to do is bring the cease and desist order to a judge that will overrule it and tell her she can't file an order over this - that a judge won't hear it. but, i can't find the right documents. surely, i must have some recourse over an absurd accusation besides going through the process of eviction. can i not bring the cease and desist order, itself, to a judge, and request a stop order or an injunction? that form isn't on the page...

i'll have to call toronto tomorrow.

so, i came home tonight to a failed attempt to cut the lock on my bicycle storage space. this area is behind a pass code; the suspects are entirely internal, and really relegated solely to the guy with the a/c.

this person has now opened my mail, entered my apartment illegally and tried to cut the lock on my storage space. and, the property owner is just telling me to call the cops.

i'm an anarchist; i have no use for policing. what is a cop going to do? write a report and hand out a warning? make him pay a fine to the queen? what's the use in that?

civil liability is much more useful. this is the great benefit of tort law: it converts liability out of a social contract with the state and into a social contract between human beings. if he is to be found guilty of something, i should be the benefactor, not the government.

i've been over this before: we should abolish criminal law and replace it with tort law. all liability should flow between individuals.

and, conservatives can go shove their precious tort reform up their collective asses.

...but what i really want is neither criminal nor civil proceedings. what i want is for the property owner to law down some rules and enforce them - i want people to stop opening my mail and stop trying to cut my locks. sadly, it's becoming increasingly clear that this isn't going to happen without enforcing very hefty punitive damages.

feral cats do not have rights under the law.

in order to generate protection for a feral cat, you must claim ownership over it - at which point you become liable for the damage and nuisance that it causes to the quality of life of human beings, through waste generation or whatever other annoyance. i would be ecstatic if somebody would claim ownership over the local cats, as i could send bylaw after them for the waste problem. oops?

the idea that we have some obligation to live in the filth of wild animals is called barbarism. and, if you do not enjoy living inside of civilization, i would gladly invite you to leave it.

i have no patience for stupidity of this sort.

...and, if it was up to me, we'd round them all up and incinerate them.

"is she single?" - dennis rodman

the north koreans are rational actors, though.

just ask dennis rodman.

it's true. and, that's what actually defines their bluster: it's all very calculated to play the superpowers off against each other and get another shipment of food.

so, what does a rational actor do in response to trump's threats? nothing at all, really. and, you shouldn't expect much, either.

the sad part about this is that when trump looks at the north korean dictator, what he's actually seeing is his own reflection. for, this is what trump actually aspires to: the ability to bluster and bullshit your way into forcing the world to do what you want it to do.

and, the irony is that trump may very well be the man that america needed to send to north korea, for that reason: the regime may have met it's equal, and may be forced to stand down.

where i'm going to be, in downtown detroit, should be dark enough to catch quite a bit of it.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/perseid-meteor-shower-2017-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/84888/

i actually don't have any particular opposition to iran joining the nuclear club.

yup.

i will reiterate that i can hardly imagine the united states actually doing this, to begin with.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/misleading-information-haitian-asylum-seekers-1.4235565

i went to that hershey factory on a field trip for school.

you're not even beginning to imagine the production capabilities of creating that much biomass. we only smoke the buds, leaving the leaves and stalks for other use. right now, the plant has a split cultivation use; it is hemp that is used for industrial purposes, and it has been artificially selected for useful traits. this should be easily resolved through artificial selection on the bud-producing plants.

the reality is that marijuana holds the solution to a wide array of environmental problems, and this should end up driving numerous different sectors, from plastics to paper. this is the real "green economy".

it's going to take a while, but there will be a day when marijuana overtakes oil as the central focus of this country's economy. it will be on that day that we can start to seriously accelerate transition away from a fossil-fuel economy, and it will be marijuana that offers us those real solutions, both economically and in terms of tangible products.

so, this story is making the rounds, and it's no doubt causing eyerolls. but, it is in truth merely touching the surface.

marijuana is at the centre of the future of the economy, of the future of energy and probably of the future of the species.

https://www.mtlblog.com/whats-happening/marijuana-is-saving-these-small-towns-all-across-canada-heres-how

i've been over this.

my skin colour switches over the course of the year.

the reason my skin colour switches is that i'm a combination of races. and, it's actually truly staggering. there is some uncertainty on my father's side, but i actually have ancestry from the indigenous groups of four out of six continents (i'm excluding antarctica): europe, africa, asia and north america. and, south america doesn't really count, either. it's really only australia that i'm not genetically connected to.

so, if you saw me in the dead of winter, you'd be likely to pull out the norse or finnish in me and conclude i'm probably white. but, if you saw me last week, you'd have no doubt noticed that i'm actually a fairly dark brown, coming from my brown ancestors, which were native american (certain), middle eastern (certain) and sub-saharan african (probably).

just ask me questions, please. i'm friendly. and, i don't like religion. but, i'm willing to be friendly with atheists of any and all backgrounds; i don't care what colour you are - i care about whether you renounce the faith of your ancestors or not.

i'm not actually even white.

i keep telling you that...

i've protested with anti-fascist groups, and i'm usually on their side. but, calling me a racist - in the absence of anything remotely resembling evidence and the presence of a plethora of evidence that suggests otherwise - just demonstrates the intellectually vapid knee-jerks that these people so easily fall into. and, i know through experience that there is no value in arguing with them.

i can actually be a brown person that wants to abolish islam, as well as all other religions. and, it's kind of scary to me that the idea is beyond the general public's grasp.

what i want is for everybody of all races to unite to abolish superstition and nonsense. you can disagree with me, if you'd like. but, please keep your disagreements topical.

no, i still think you're not quite sure where i stand on this. try to listen, rather than fall into a false dichotomy.

so, as stated repeatedly, i'm an anarchist. first, that puts me on the left. you see that spectrum up there? see where i am? alright. and, second that means i want less government in people's day-to-day lives, or at least less formalities and less bureaucracy. and, that applies to immigration policy as well.

so, what does "less government" mean, when applied to immigration?

1) it would mean less enforcement around what you call "illegal" immigration.
2) it would mean scaling down efforts to actively bring people into the country - so, less "legal" immigration.

that is what "less government" on the immigration file actually means, applied in a consistent way that is actually thought through.

but, less immigration enforcement does not negate the principle of democracy, which asserts that people have the right to govern themselves, locally, how they see fit. and, while i would not vote against entry for people based upon ethnicity, i would vote against entry for people based upon religion.

nor does less border enforcement imply accepting a breakdown of labour laws. migrants need to have the same labour rights as everybody else and should expect to be treated the same way as other workers are.

does that make my ideology some kind of alternative? well, it's certainly an ideological alternative to neo-liberalism, and it's mirror reflections on the pseudo-left. but, what i'm expressing is a rather ideologically orthodox type of rather bland leftism. and, if you don't recognize it or think it's extreme, it's because you're the one that's not familiar with a leftist approach.

the right has historically not been strictly ideological, so it's been able to express itself in ways that uphold and contradict itself at the same time. hitler and churchill were both able to exist on the right, while holding disagreements that were strong enough to nearly destroy the whole fucking planet. but, you can trace them ideologically backwards to the same principles of a strong, centralized bureaucratic elite. they are equally valid expressions of the dominant ideas on the right, as expressed from hobbes through to burke and beyond, without having anything close to a comparable theory. terms like "alt-right" can consequently at least have some kind of coherent meaning, as it is possible to build an alternative to the right without exiting it.

the left is too ideological for this. while leftists are of course famous for their infighting, there is a simple question for belonging on the left, as well: do you advocate for worker self-management? this implies support for grassroots democracy. if you do not answer that question in the affirmative, you cannot be on the left. and, this has been the case all along. there is no such litmus test on the right, which opens it up to these alternative expressions of dominance and authoritarianism that leftists have always discarded out of hand (despite having sometimes lost to fraudulent expressions of the pseudo-left, which is the correct terminology on this side of the spectrum).

this term, "alt-left", is consequently not of the left but an attempt by the right to limit the realm of discourse and expunge any premise of the left from history. it's an attempt to enforce an end of history. in this narrative, "the left" becomes synonymous with the identity politics that anchor neo-liberalism in place. that is, "the left" becomes some kind of marginally less violent concept of capitalism. the next step is to reduce it to a slogan to divide opposition with.

but, a leftist can only frown and laugh at the absurdity of the discourse - while acknowledging that we perhaps will not object too strenuously upon being accused of offering an alternative to capitalism, or should become too upset at the elite for presenting an argument that renders them so fully irrelevant. for, this is the true graveyard of political elites: irrelevance.

it is actually not difficult to tell the difference between marijuana and skunk excretion. the similarity is only at the top of the smell. marijuana only exists at this top level of the scent, whereas skunk plunges much deeper into a multifaceted odour.

so, i'm tempted to conclude that somebody in the neighbourhood really needs to take a walk, late at night. but, the aroma consistently delves too deep for the cause to actually be marijuana. 

instead, i'm left to conclude that there is somewhat of a struggle going on between cats and skunks, out there.

if you try to contact me over facebook - especially after i've told you that i don't use it - there's about a 99% chance that i'm going to block you.

i repeat: if you try to contact me over facebook, i will block you.

my actual response to this is that i think it's a little bit hard to believe that the trump administration is actually in the process of sending haitian refugees back to haiti, and that this whole situation is probably in truth an unfortunate example of how bad media - perhaps bad social media - can lead people to behave irrationally.

but, i will repeat that - broadly speaking - i am not opposed to allowing entry to refugees that show up at the border. this can be a difficult journey. it's the idea of sending planes to the other side of the world to bring them here that gets under my skin.

as i've stated previously, i am broadly in favour of allowing what we call "illegal" immigration, but think we need to drastically slow down what we call "legal" immigration.

but, the solution here does not have to do with immigration policy, it has to do with calling the united states and getting a clear answer on what is going on - and then probably sending them back when it's realized that their fears are not well founded.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/border-crossing-quebec-asylum-analysis-wherry-1.4234050

aug 4-5 vlogs, which are two aimless nights out in detroit, where i'm really just going over to check on my bike. 

at this point in time, it was not possible to bring a bicycle back and forth across the border under the tunnel without disassembling it, first. it is now possible to do so. i should be able to drive across the new bridge when it's finished, if i'm still here, and if they do away with unscientific vaccination restrictions.

"that time you almost fell over the trombone player when the marching band suddenly took over the dance floor..."

but, it doesn't - or at least shouldn't - matter if i make the boys uncomfortable.

see, i like the place for what it is. but, like most of what i see in detroit, it is poorly run - and, management doesn't understand the problem.

the reality is that if you could snap your fingers and create a bar full of a hundred mes as regulars, it would be full of hot ciswomen within weeks. i'm what every bar in this city needs in order to build a good client base; i'm a walking fantasy for bicurious women. and, i understand that with great power comes great responsibility. but, it's the absence of hot ciswomen that is what you're whining about, right?

further, the girls would stop coming as soon as the guys that are regulars at your existing establishment started showing up. get it, yet? i mean, you're identifying a real problem, sure: there's not enough women at the club. that's the same problem that exists at every fucking club. but, did you take a moment to notice that your dance floor smelled like body odor because it was full of overweight, single men? i had to stay in the front for a good while last night just because the back stunk so terribly of smelly fat dudes.

you're like the kid in the south park episode that thinks they're entitled to profit, but can't figure out the important step.

i recently built a computer over amazon & newegg

it was frequently the case that i would purchase items on amazon.ca and have them shipped to me through the united states. i could have purchased them over amazon.com for minimal differences - if i could buy the gift cards here, or if i had a credit card.

the functional difference lay only in where the domain was registered.

the reality is that large amounts of goods purchased online are manufactured neither in the united states or in canada. sure: it would make sense to better integrate the distribution network, which is what actually exists on this continent. but, that's not really an argument to knock down tariffs, and you don't really need to do so to maximize efficiency in distribution.

don't let them trick you into using good ideas to push through bad ones.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/cross-border-shopping-1.4226427

so, yes - i have a bicycle in detroit, now.

there's lots of reasons i wanted a bicycle for detroit. i've been talking about it for months - years, even. but, the event a few weeks ago where i got trailed really demonstrated the necessity of it. i was trapped by the bus line.

it's becoming normal, now, for dudes to hit on me late at night. i like to talk. and i won't talk to people that don't demonstrate a veener of politeness. but, the disappointed reactions at the end give me pause.

the ability to bicycle away is a strong escape tactic. i hope that it stays realistic. and, i need to rely on the city to make sure of that.

i'll update my list soon.

that was yesterday.

the way you should think about dna editing is like this:

humans will never be able to assume the role of god, because god never existed in the first place.

what the science actually says is that you're not designed at birth by a magic molecule; you evolve over time as a reaction to your experiences. as such, you do not exist as a fixed entity. you are not innate to anything. you have no objective existence outside of the context you are in, and you are constantly and forever in flux, constantly modified by events around you that you do not have any control over.

you consequently do not get to make your own choices in life - or at least not in any defined, insulated way.

so, what is this shit about genetic determinism? in fact, it's actually the christians that believe in predestinaton and "god's plan" and all that bullshit of the sort. and, the media has spun you around and confused the fuck out of you - they have relabeled religion as science, and then fed it back to you through shiny media.

you can code for trivial physical traits like eye colour. if that is important to you, whatever. but, virtually everything that science fiction has presented to you as genetic is in truth a religiously motivated fraud that science treats as almost entirely environmental.

most of the science fiction that exists today should in truth be recategorized as speculative religion.

http://theconversation.com/forget-about-designer-babies-gene-editing-wont-work-on-complex-traits-like-intelligence-51557

aug 3rd vlog, where i go to farmington hills to get a bicycle, get trapped in cougar country in the rain, bicycle back to detroit, stop at a show, stay overnight and eventually get home early in the morning.

this is a real travesty.

i was planning on maybe going there this friday. and, the building is ancient. it's across from the old tiger stadium. babe ruth apparently used to frequent it...

ugh.

https://www.metrotimes.com/table-and-bar/archives/2017/08/02/construction-workers-damage-corktowns-ufo-factory

http://metapolis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Progressive-Coalition.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/03/23/rob-ford-canadas-trump-and-a-self-avowed-racist-was-beloved-by-immigrants/

i just want to clarify a point i keep coming back to about recent immigrants leaning right, because if you're outside of the country you might not have the context. if you're inside of canada, you probably already know this. maybe it's my fault for being a little bit vague.

during the end of stephen harper's reign of terror, the government took on a decidedly anti-muslim tone. but, while it was doing this, it was also strongly courting chinese and indian immigrants. i guess that the government ultimately made a cost-benefit analysis and decided it would be better off trying to work up the xenophobic parts of the christian base than expand it to a broader religious coalition. but, this is obscuring what was going on for the nine years previously.

i at no point meant to suggest that conservatism is an innate ethnic quality or something, and whatever correlation may exist in objective reality shouldn't be enforced on individuals, or taken with much meaning. globally speaking, randomness is the dominant factor in determining whether any person you meet identifies as left or right. but, we're not dealing with global trends or random expressions. what we're actually dealing with is gerrymandering.

now, before i get into this, i want to point out that this isn't an isolated example of this kind of thing in canada. canadian governments have frequently used immigration policy to further their own hold on power. one notorious example was the elder trudeau's attempt to flood quebec with french-speaking africans (and afro-carribeans) to prevent an eventual separatist referendum from succeeding - which, by all objective accounts actually worked. when the second referendum failed by a margin small enough that fraud hasn't ever been entirely ruled out, the separatist leader blamed it on "the ethnic vote". he's been chided for his language, but nobody has ever doubted the correctness of his statement.

and, of course, the colonial project itself has always been about population replacement.

there are less ominous examples. when we needed to bring in immigrants to settle the west, and didn't want to worry about them moving to warmer climates in the south, we specifically targeted ukrainians, poles and scandinavians for the reason that we knew they were used to the climate. there are large communities of these groups scattered across the west - and some of them did move south, into the dakotas and also into minnesota. my grandmother has ancestry in a finnish community in northern manitoba.

so, this isn't unprecedented...

....but this is what the harper government did: realizing that it had long term electoral liabilities in the urban centres, especially in the east, it went out and encouraged two types of immigrants to settle in the city cores, thereby weakening liberal dominance in the urban centres:

1) religious conservatives, mostly from south asia.
2) anti-communists, mostly from east asia.

it may surprise people to learn that stephen harper actually increased immigration very substantially. it was orders of magnitude; through the roof is an accurate expression. and, this is the reason why: he was trying to make the country more conservative, and specifically trying to make the cities more conservative.

so, when i talk about "the immigrant vote" being right-wing and overwhelmingly conservative, it's not a reflection of the ethnicity in any crude sense - it's a consequence of the way they were purposefully screened in a canadian type of gerrymandering.

did it work, though? it's too early to say for sure. this is ultimately what i'm reacting to: the concern that it may have worked, because i obviously don't want it to have worked. the conservatives have certainly done comparably well with ethnic voters in the greater toronto area over the last ten years, notwithstanding the last election which was less about ethnic voting and more about the collapse of the ndp. right now, we just don't know.

one strange ramification of harper's immigration policy was actually rob ford, who actually built his base on immigrant voters. this is well understood by polling agents in the gta, if largely not realized outside of it. some people have suggested that it was the personable nature that connected with people that felt alienated, whereas others have pointed towards the populist anti-elite and just broadly conservative messaging. but, the seemingly obvious deduction that ford built his support on top of white trash is completely wrong - he represented a heavily ethnic district and would not have succeeded were it not for heavy support by south asians, in particular.

i don't know if that's a sign of the future, but it's not really what harper wanted, either. and, that might be why he turned on them in the end.

the architect of this policy - jason kenney - is currently the leader of the provincial conservative party in alberta.

if you go into your backyard and you light a can of paint on fire, you're clearly creating a public health nuisance and opening yourself up to fines. almost nobody would argue against this point.

but, if you go outside and smoke a pack of cigarettes, you're upholding your rights in two ways: one as a smoker, and two as a property owner.

but, the functional difference between lighting a can of paint on fire and smoking a pack of cigarettes is that the paint is less harmful.

this is not thought through well, relative to the existing science, and needs to be updated to account for it. my position is that you should not have any more rights to light a cigarette on fire in public than you should to light anything else on fire; that cigarette fumes should not be treated any differently than any other kind of unnecessary pollution and that bylaws restricting property rights to create other types of pollution should be equally enforced towards cigarette smoke.

smokers are not currently being oppressed. rather, they are taking advantage of a special category under the law. the idea that you could ever smoke in public in the first place was always a loophole. that loophole has been slowly closing....

it needs to be shut altogether.

it's a really serious threat to canada. seriously.

i mean, if they keep it up, they might be able to hit japan by 2030. canada's only another several thousand kilometres away. what will we do?

these systems are aimed at china, and we should not get involved with them for that reason. we don't want to be permanently tied to the united states, like that.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/north-korea-u-s-canada-missile-defence-1.4229904

this guy is such a doofus. i don't know how he ever managed to become a talking head on the left, but he should really be shunned and ignored as the ideologically neo-liberal market fundamentalist that he actually is.

both britain and france have monopoly government price controls, cenk. that's why it's so cheap there. in canada, we balance it out by calculating a floating average over oecd countries, which gives the drug companies a bit of extra profit - largely due to the lack of price controls in the united states - but keeps it down, comparably. we're not a model, though - we need reform here, too. the problem in the united states is that you don't have those regulatory systems in place to keep prices down, not that you don't have a "free market".

it's economics 101 that a drug oligopoly will act like a monopoly and collude to set prices, not compete against each other. why would they want to compete against each other? competition hurts producers. you'd have to write laws that force them to compete with each other. but, that would cost so much in enforcement that it wouldn't be worth it, overall - and the enforcement agencies would just end up getting bribed, anyways.

my understanding of bernie's legislation is that it is meant to prevent lengthy drug patents. even the soft left has always opposed intellectual property rights for things like drug patents; you don't have to get as strictly anti-propertarian as i am to develop an opposition to drug patents, especially timeframes around them. but, the point of stripping patents in every other advanced country has been to allow the government to set price controls, which is often in conjunction with universal pharmacare coverage.

france, especially, has a very strong incentive to keep drug prices down - namely that the system is fully socialized. and, that is the most efficient approach to keeping costs down, not long-debunked and discarded intellectual masturbation about "free markets".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pf17uz2S9A&t=475s

to begin with, these guys are thugs, and you shouldn't stand up for them.

but, the government in caracas would not be doing this without american approval. and, if maduro does become a dictator in the end, it's going to be with american support - although you may have to wait a few decades for the documentation.

again: it would take mere days worth of a serious blockade to collapse the government in venezuela, and there's a reason they're not doing it. do not confuse yourself: given venezuela's absolute dependance on american capital, no government can survive there without american support.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/venezuela-opposition-leaders-house-arrest-1.4230086

1) the results of the venezuelan election are not surprising. the chavistas still dominate the mass of lower class voters and workers, while the opposition is mostly limited to a much smaller upper middle class. you have to remember that a country like venezuela has a very large impoverished class and a very small middle class. but, the upper middle class is able to make itself seem more influential than it is because it has so much more access to capital.

2) rhetoric aside, venezuela's primary market - both for oil and agriculture - remains the united states. if america truly wanted maduro gone, it would shut down imports for a few weeks and let the government tear itself apart from the inside.

3) the conclusion - as i have pointed out repeatedly - is that maduro is not quite what he seems to be. the reality is that the american bogeyman is a good distraction to allow for continued resource extraction, nearly solely to america's benefit.

for real, though.

gore can get your attention. maybe. but, you really need to listen to copernicus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_xI_8aLjds

"but, why won't al gore debate lord monckton."

stop laughing.

in fact, he did, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBzR0-j0O0o

i want to be clear: the ontario liberals have really been a pretty good government. they've made errors around energy policy (they overprojected electricity demand, and underprojected carbon demand). but, they've broadly upheld my own interests, at least.

it's just that this premier has this tendency to pander to the right. it's unusual, right - governments usually pander to the left. this one panders to the right, as all liberals in canada end up doing. and, they do it in ways that are horribly unpopular  - every time.

if you want to pander to the right, let's talk about lowering taxes for working people, or something. that's some good pandering that doesn't put you on the other side of the culture war. but, when you start pandering about privatizing (and actually do it) in order to pay off the debt, you trigger this reaction in an overwhelmingly left-leaning province that, if anything, wants to renationalize the energy sector, and couldn't give a hoot about the debt. and, then the conservatives don't vote for you, anyways.

this family values approach to pot is going to do the same thing.

i mean, maybe it's the immigrant vote. maybe it is. it's a great irony, right - immigrants don't vote, but they flood their representatives' offices. so, the mps are reacting to what they see in front of them. this is the reason you see so many visible minorities running in canada - the parties are reacting to demand, as reflected by calls to their reps. it's not always an accurate reflection of the diversity of the riding on the ground, though.

and, whatever they're getting flooded with at the mp office, it's not accurately reflecting a broader voting public. the data is consistent and clear on this and what they're doing is going to turn them into a joke.

http://hightimes.com/culture/how-marijuana-tolerance-builds-up-and-how-to-bring-it-down/

there seems to be this underlying misconception in government circles that marijuana users smoke as frequently as cigarette users. i think that's the thing that's got them so confused about this.

i hope they're not basing tax policy on that. they're going to be disappointed.

yeah: if you took a 14 year-old and got her smoking a pack of joints a day, she'd end up retarded after a month. do you know what else would happen? she'd build up such a tolerance, that it would no longer affect her at all. then, she'd get bored and stop smoking pot altogether.

maybe you've heard the old story about giving a kid a cigar and telling him to smoke until he pukes. what happens with pot is that you smoke until you don't get high anymore. and, it actually happens fairly quickly.

for that reason, one of the first things that young marijuana users learn - and are in fact taught by more experienced users - is that you need to space it out, that you can't just start sparking like they're cigs, that you need to give yourself a few days. i remember this very clearly, actually. i was maybe a little lucky, because the guy that introduced it to me in the tenth grade had also been a close friend since we were in the third grade. i trusted him as well as i could (i realized the need to fact check him, as he was not academically inclined), and he had my interests in mind. maybe you had your own conversation, but mine went a little like this...

"j, the most important thing - and i can't stress this enough - is that you don't want to build a tolerance. i've seen it. it's the most depressing thing in the world. you smoke with these older people, and they don't even get high. it's terrible. you never want to let that happen to you."
"what's your rule of thumb on timeframes?"
"j, just stick to weekends. you need to study during the week anyways, right?"
"yeah, that's probably what i'll do, anyways."
"you won't need to worry about it if you do."
"cool."
"but, i've seen it. i tell you - it's disturbing. they smoke these huge js and they don't even laugh or anything. it's like nothing. why bother, if you don't get high? don't let it happen to you."
"thanks for the heads-up, man."
"anytime, j. now about that math homework of mine..."
 "ahahaha....not a microphone man..."
"shit. sorry. i do that...."

it's a part of the culture to teach this. and, yeah, not everybody learns it. but, it's the ones that don't that burn out: these are your "former pot users", the ones that never learned you need to avoid tolerance.

the usage model needs to be to more like beer. that's your taxation model. and, it's how people use it.

and, the rare people that do smoke pot like cigarettes are people that have broader social problems - like alcoholics, not like tobacco addicts.

no. this is reefer madness.

the way that the provincial government is throwing around this data is completely irresponsible, and not at all representative of what the research actually states. they're making it seem like any exposure to the drug at all will cause brain damage, which is similar to the way that the flawed research that created that misconception was used in the first place.

do you know what they did to claim that marijuana kills brain cells? that "this is your brain on drugs"? what they did was take a monkey and place it in a hot box at concentrations that created brain damage due to oxygen depletion. then, they blamed that on the pot. it was discredited as soon as it was published, but anti-drug agencies ran with it for decades. it is the "science" behind the fried egg commercials. i'm not shitting you - look it up. it was oxygen depletion the whole fucking time.

the research that they're citing to claim that marijuana causes development issues is based on high exposure over periods of months. it's not that it's wrong - as a long time user, i do not doubt it at all - but it's hardly useful to draw public policy out of it. if you drink a mickey of vodka three times a day for a year straight, you're going to end up with brain damage, too. that doesn't mean we should increase the age limit, or run scary commercials that anybody with internet access can debunk; it means that we need to use vodka far more responsibly than that, and teach our kids how to do so, as well.

in fact, the same research they're citing for brain damage from prolonged heavy use (the most extreme results possible) actually also states that moderate to mild use has no effects on young people at all. it is the latter information that the public policy should be based around, as it is more representative of how young people use it - moderately, and usually on weekends.

that's not to say that people don't "smoke themselves stupid". it happens. but, the policy should not be based around these extreme exceptions - and, doing so misses the point of legalization.

these ads will be ridiculed. they should be. they're wrong. and, don't be surprised if it costs the government the election, in the end.

and, this is strike three for kathleen wynne caving to right-wing special interests in a cynical ploy for votes and having it kill her in the end; she needs to step down before she does long term damage to the party, if she hasn't already.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/07/28/ontario-prepping-reefer-awareness-campaign-on-the-dangers-of-marijuana-as-legalization-date-approaches.html

of course, youtube still requires flash to upload with, completely demolishing any claims that removing it had to do with security issues :/.

i've been tweaking a version of smplayer as an html5 workaround. what i've discovered about it is that:

1) seeking crashes the processor. so, don't seek.
2) pausing the video disconnects it from the server. so, don't pause video.

these are behavioural changes that i can deal with. but, i'm not convinced that the solution is even stable, yet. see, there's something like 20 video drivers to experiment with. the default seems ok, except that it doesn't like seeking. if that changes, i have a lot of options to experiment with.

i feel that i should be working this out before i move on to the next option. so, i'm going to be experimenting with smplayer for a while. that's fine; it gets it out of my head, and lets me focus on something else.

i'll need to do groceries tomorrow. i may get a bit of a headstart tonight, even. it'll be a nice bike ride out to the far store this evening.

i'm rebudgeting a little, in taking the hst money out of the 5000. this was useful for july accounting, but it wasn't really honest. the reason is that the $300 they gave me for hst actually offset the $300 i owed in loans. i then took that $300 and spent it a second time on bathroom supplies. letting the $5000 eat it cushioned my expenses a little, but it was always meant as a trick, and i always meant to take it out.

what that means is that it's going to take a full year to balance it back out in my accounting sheet. 25*12 = 300. so, my grocery allotment is decreasing by $25 this month, and each month for the next year. the idea is that i paid it ahead, so that will balance out over time.

but, what that means is that i'm $300 in the hole on the $5000. i'm not going to wait a full year, of course. rather, i'm going to have to hope for some quieter months in terms of raw expense. and, august & september may be those months - although october looks busy, just in time for that gst rebate.

i've been distracted again today, as i have been the last several days. i got some cleaning done, at least - the shelves are lysoled and the cassette holder is cleaned and drying. i might ave to do another coat...

rather than get right back to finishing the living room, i'm going to take some time to finish the next season of videos and get the next season started. i'm also going to get my documents for court ready ahead of time, this time. when that's done, i'll try again on kijiji before i get to determining how much it's going to cost to buy all of this wood.

so, it could be up to a week before i get back to this. hopefully, my remaining items at least get in by then, so i can start with a blank slate.

updated total:
airwalk shoes (payless): $33
bicycle repair (city cyclery): $23
3x40 gb ide hds (kijiji):  $10
dell ultrasharp 1703 fp with dvi cables (kijiji): $20
two lamps, one table and one floor [kijiji]: $15
tape holders [kijiji]: $15
2x500 gb sshd laptop drives (best buy): $2x82
2 tb internal drive (best buy): $104
100 dvd-rs [best buy]: $30
50 bd-rs [best buy]: $45
2x2 gb laptop ram (amazon.ca): $2x15 + shipping, $47
8 gb sd ram for mp3 player (amazon.ca): $13
2 tb external drive (amazon.ca) : $123
50 cd-rs [amazon.ca]: $30
ps/2 to usb connector [amazon.ca]: $5
intel core i3-4710 [amazon.ca]: $243
atx mid tower [amazon.ca] - $52
asus p9d ws [amazon.ca]: $360
2x8 gb ddr3-1600 ram [amazon.ca]: $150
arctic silver [amazon.ca]: $11 $0
450 joule surge protector (amazon.ca): $9
600 watt psu (amazon.ca): $80
700 joule surge protector (amazon.ca): $10
laptop battery (ebay): $26
2x4 gb laptop ram (ebay): $2x33
ip68 phone (ebay): $128
m-audio audiophile 2496 (ebay) [used]: $60
250 gb ssd drive (newegg.ca): $135
200 jewel cases (newegg.ca): $117
bathroom supplies (food basics, walmart, loblaws, shopper's): $296
ps/2 keyboard (axxon computer corporation, windsor): $23
usb mouse (walmart): $15
universal battery charger + aaa batteries (canadian tire): $54
stereo table: $34  (antique store)
cassette deck: $23 (antique store)
bookcase for bathroom supplies: $30 (antique store)
==================
2284.55

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/6vz9d6/why-death-grips-not-playing-their-own-shows-isnt-punk

the last couple of days have been slow moving and monotonous. where did we leave off?

i spent thursday morning searching through kijiji and found good leads on a television and on cassette holders. there weren't any bookcases in the size i wanted. i spent the afternoon walking up and down the strip on wyandotte, and did find a bookcase for bathroom and cleaning supplies. i spent the evening trying to negotiate a means of testing the tv i had a lead on, but it didn't go anywhere; insisting on an empirical test of a used electronic device was apparently too onerous for the seller, who i actually think was just retarded enough to be insulted by the insinuation. fucking small town midwestern christian dipshit mentality, right. the objective factual reality is that i don't know if it works until i test it, and if that hurts your feelings then you need to grow the fuck up. i managed to get the cassette holders, though, which is actually really important.

friday started a little later; the imbecile with the tv told me to email her in the morning, then didn't return messages. it's easy to draw conclusions that the tv didn't actually work, but i don't think it's actually true - i think she was just too stupid to work through the logic, and ended up with a bruised ego out of it, then decided i was rude. ugh. whatever. pro-tip: don't waste your life worrying about the feelings of idiots. so, i wasn't out until the afternoon. a lot of walking yielded nothing. and, when i sat down to eat i had to deal with the flash issue, which occupied my attention for the rest of the night. .

it was too cold (and it was a chilly dry cold, too) to go out last night. brrr. it was a little chilly on monday, but i think this is the first day this year that i stayed in because it was too cold. i hope we don't get a cold august. it's something that happens in canada sometimes, and it sucks when it does. you can end up with a solid week or two in mid august where the high is only around 20, and the overnights are close to ten :(. it's actually been a cold summer all around here in south detroit. i've got a bad feeling about this...

what have i done today? well, i spent the morning troubleshooting the playback problems. and i picked up my cases. the outstanding items are the phone, the laptop battery and the ps/2 connector and they should all arrive in the regular mail.

i don't have an optimal answer for the html5 workaround, yet, and will probably spend the rest of the weekend fighting with it. but, i've at least learned that the price of a used lcd tv is $50 and that i'm going to need to build my own shelves some time this week.
 
updated total:
airwalk shoes (payless): $33
bicycle repair (city cyclery): $23
3x40 gb ide hds (kijiji):  $10
dell ultrasharp 1703 fp with dvi cables (kijiji): $20
two lamps, one table and one floor [kijiji]: $15
tape holders [kijiji]: $15
2x500 gb sshd laptop drives (best buy): $2x82
2 tb internal drive (best buy): $104
100 dvd-rs [best buy]: $30
50 bd-rs [best buy]: $45
2x2 gb laptop ram (amazon.ca): $2x15 + shipping, $47
8 gb sd ram for mp3 player (amazon.ca): $13
2 tb external drive (amazon.ca) : $123
50 cd-rs [amazon.ca]: $30
ps/2 to usb connector [amazon.ca]: $5
intel core i3-4710 [amazon.ca]: $243
atx mid tower [amazon.ca] - $52
asus p9d ws [amazon.ca]: $360
2x8 gb ddr3-1600 ram [amazon.ca]: $150
arctic silver [amazon.ca]: $11 $0
450 joule surge protector (amazon.ca): $9
600 watt psu (amazon.ca): $80
700 joule surge protector (amazon.ca): $10
laptop battery (ebay): $26
2x4 gb laptop ram (ebay): $2x33
ip68 phone (ebay): $128
m-audio audiophile 2496 (ebay) [used]: $60
250 gb ssd drive (newegg.ca): $135
200 jewel cases (newegg.ca): $117
bathroom supplies (food basics, walmart, loblaws, shopper's): $296
ps/2 keyboard (axxon computer corporation, windsor): $23
usb mouse (walmart): $15
universal battery charger + aaa batteries (canadian tire): $54
stereo table: $34  (antique store)
cassette deck: $23 (antique store)
bookcase for bathroom supplies: $30 (antique store)
==================
2580.57

i've been saying for a while that mccain often says a little too much, a little too frankly and a little too clearly - and in the process tends to confuse people expecting the usual obfuscating language.

watch the show.

indeed.

i suppose he's not volunteering the seat.

hard core no bullshit realist analysis aside, it was still the right vote.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/28/politics/john-mccain-maverick-health-care/index.html

"but, you're an anarchist. wtf?"

my arguments are actually quite ideologically left-wing. you just don't know what anarchism is.

anarchism sees the family as an extension of the church, which is itself an extension of the state. the anarchist revolution must consequently abolish the family unit, as if it does not do so the underlying patriarchy will re-establish the state. so, anarchists will generally refrain from supporting things like gay marriage, which are seen as a way for the state to co-opt the queer movement, and instead argue for abolishing marriage altogether. this is not the same thing as a libertarian privatization of marriage; anarchists want the whole institution shuttered and left for dead. we often clash with mainstream pseudo-left parties, and in doing so put through the argument that their proposals are simply not of the left.

in replacement of the family - which i will again stress is an extension of the state - anarchists will argue for collectivized concepts of child rearing that implement democratic decision making. and, this is very key, for child rearing cannot be the decision of any one parent, as that is an undemocratic process. this isn't anything new, either. it's actually closer to the way we evolved. and, it's been proposed as least as far back as plato.

so, who are these gummamint-out-of-my-family types, if not anarchists? they're just conservatives. and, it's not some accident that they regurgitate these religious arguments that are meant to control them. if they wanted real freedom, they would support council democracies meant to overturn the influence of the church; they don't, though, they just want to follow the dictates of authority, and be led into believing what is right and what is wrong. the last thing they want is the ability to actually make decisions for themselves.

putting the control in the hands of a small number of doctors (to be enforced by courts upholding process) is not ideal, but it is at least transitional away from a system of religious authority. ideally, we would have more integrated councils with deeper medical consultation. but, the last thing we want is to give control back to the church via the vector of the brainwashed sheep. the authority here must be academic, and not genetic.