what this emperor truly lacks is a soul.

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2018/03/07/Trudeau-New-Clothes/

you make the bill as simple as you can make it.

nothing else besides daca.

you reject all amendments.

you force an up or down vote.

and, you get the two thirds required in each house to tell the president to eat a shit sandwich.

capeche?

don't expect it.

an unwillingness or inability for congress to act can never be an excuse for the arbitrary use of executive power.

congress has to eat this. and, voters should be holding them accountable for their failures to get a popular bill passed.

and, that lottery is a dumb idea, anyways.

are you telling me that congress can't pull together a supermajority to support dreamers without funding a wall?

bullshit.

it's not the role of the president to pass decrees on immigration status.

only congress can fix this.

and, if the president is being an ass, you overrule him with a supermajority.

i repeat: daca must be resolved by congress, as that is their role in the american system.

chuck schumer is full of shit - and not remotely interested in solving the problem.

he'd lose way too many votes...

do a survey.

ask habitual marijuana users: do you smoke by yourself or with others?

be prepared to learn that almost all of them smoke alone, and prefer it that way - that they even use it as a way to escape being social. and, then put 2 +2 together around it.

if what you're thinking is..

if we make it so that marijuana users have to stay inside, then they'll stop having fun and stop doing it.

...then that's completely wrong, and based on a total misunderstanding of what marijuana is all about.

that might work for cocaine, or meth. but, marijuana users hate people, anyways, and would rather smoke alone, and pout by themselves - that's why they pick the stone, rather than the high.

what you will end up with is chronic, paranoid marijuana users stuck on disability for life.

but, if you encourage them to come outside and meet people and be more social, you might even help them break the habit a little.

potheads are not, never have been and never will be the archetypal cool kids.

potheads have always been and always will be the introverts, the ostracised and the socially inept. see, realizing that the data shows that marijuana doesn't create inept behaviour is only getting half of the picture: it misses that these things have become correlated in the popular (mis)conception for the precise reason that people that are already socially retarded are so heavily drawn to it.

so, part of a marijuana legalization strategy should be to stop people that are already losers from using the drug as an excuse to reinforce their anti-social behaviour.

in the end, your average pothead might not become a gregarious social butterfly. but, helping them connect with each other could at least minimize the arresting behavioural habits.

so, if marijuana doesn't belong inside peoples' homes, where does it belong?

i think there's two places where marijuana should be smoked:

1) outside, in dark alleyways.
2) at bars.

where it belongs is in the back patio at a dive bar, shared amongst patrons enjoying a beer. and, it should be available for purchase at said bar.

if people prefer to avoid alcohol, there are always coffee bars, as well.

but, like alcohol, there should be a focus on designated consumption sites and a policy to get it out of the home - partly because smoking alone, like drinking alone, is going to contribute to mental health problems, not help resolve them.

these are people that you want to encourage to go outside and meet friends, not encourage to stay inside and fester in a state of arrested development.

the thing i held on to for a few more years was civ2 on pc.....but i was done by about 16 or 17....

i never did the first person shooter thing, although i remember watching friends play goldeneye at parties.

i just never found the idea of killing things to be very appealing.

sorry.

i had a sega genesis when i was a kid. about 10-13 years old.

then i grew out of it.

that is all.

i would support an outright ban on first-person shooter games, regardless of whether or not it leads to gun violence, on the basis that it's destroying lives and wasting potential.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/trump-reopens-a-seemingly-settled-video-game-debate-1.3832555

the new (lack of a) tobacco reduction strategy is a concrete example of where this government is actually worse than the previous one.

i can't believe that the government put a policy of reducing the wage gap for cancer researchers in it's updated tobacco reduction strategy, which is no strategy at all, but the worst written policy document i've ever seen; this is not a professional report, but an undergraduate paper that any competent prof would grade with an F.

minus.

this is a government that is fundamentally unserious about anything.

and, i'd never thought i'd say it, but at least harper was serious.

no, changing tax rates doesn't affect people's behaviour.

so, tax cuts don't create jobs. and, they don't increase gdp, either. nor will tax increases reduce carbon emissions - or smokers.

the idea that taxes affect behaviour is just a bunch of right-wing propaganda.

we've made good progress in reducing the number of smokers, here. but, it wasn't due to taxation. it was due to a combination of restrictive policies that made it hard to smoke, a lot of public health information and a lot of social coercion that rejected smokers as untouchables. we made smoking socially unacceptable - that is what worked.

personally, i'm strongly in favour of utilizing peer pressure as an informal mechanism of social control to carry out social engineering goals - and getting smoking out of apartment buildings would be a desirable end that peer pressure could be effectively used as a means for.

we're going to have to replicate this with marijuana smokers - and, god forbid, crack smokers, too.

science always takes primacy.

sorry.

hey, i didn't make that up, it's just what the science has discovered.

if you are a palestinian today then you may have some genetic drift from the surrounding areas, but you are actually a descendant of the ancient jews, who were converted first to christianity by the romans and then to islam by the arabs.

the jews are not your cousins, or even your brothers, but your actual selves.

and, so this is the truth we must come to: some hebrews are jewish, and some hebrews are muslim, but they are all hebrews - and should live together under a pluralistic hebrew state, with equal rights for all.

see, the point you're all missing about palestinian origins is that the roman genocide actually worked.

the romans were quite good at genocide, actually. they successfully carried out several of them...and they had a particular hate on for semites of all types....

today, almost two thousand years later, the palestinians don't even know that they're hebrews. they think they're arabs. that's pretty impressive, isn't it?

wiped right off the map...

and, somewhere in hell, a roman legion is chuckling.

and, who do you think gave you those drugs in the first place?

huh?

if i could get away with it, i'd march down there, kick the door down, take their crack pipes away and kick them out into the street.

of course, i'd need back up.

the man won't allow it, though.

hey, where'd you go?

oh, there you are back there - hiding behind the man's legs.

safe there, huh?

and, now you're calling me a terrorist...not until critical mass....wait...patience...

but, you know that's what the man does, right?

the man exists to protect your property from anarchists like me, that don't acknowledge your contracts or deeds.

do i want to destroy your way of life?

you betcha!

"you mean you don't....accept....property rights...i can't...who ever heard of such a thing...?"

and, what makes me laugh is that the status quo will look at you in shock, right?

"this...this...revolutionary...wants...she wants to change social norms...i can't...even...."

yeah.

and, you're the person i'm launching the revolution against.

who did you think i was going after? the government is you.

maybe you saw yourself as something different. but, you're probably just a status quo neo-liberal like everybody else, lost in delusions of your own feigned uniqueness.

and, that's what i want to burn down: your delusions of free choice.

what i want is to make government at the centre of people's lives: we need government at work, government at school, government at home - government everywhere.

democracy everywhere!

ok, ok.

ideally, the tenants vote.

but, ideally, we have actual mobility, too.

i have a problem with telling poor people to choke.

hey, don't look at me like that.

i never claimed to be a libertarian, or to have any interest in "keeping government out of people's lives".

i'm an anarchist of the left. i think that we are the government, and the idea of "keeping government out of people's live" is incoherent on it's face - a contradiction in terms.

i would have liked to see something a little bit more proactive than a measly tax increase.

just more incompetence from this government...

https://ipolitics.ca/2018/02/27/liberals-hiking-tobacco-taxes-boosting-control-strategy/

but, i need to be clear: i'm right about this.

history will uphold this plight.

and, i intend to win, in the long run.

so, how am i feeling?

well, given that i'm caught up on sleep, it's not that strange that i'm having a long day. i'd better get some sleep in the next 12 hours, though, or i'm going to find myself back at the hospital.

and, i will keep going to the hospital until they give me the right answer.

i'm not high. not racing. not feeling palpitations. i'm getting a mild nose bleed, but it's dry in here, and i need to clean the remnant smoke off the walls and floors. it's suspicious, but it could be a coincidence. my headache never fully went away, but it's currently manageable.

i've patched up the worst area for now, and it does seem to be having an effect. and, i've got the windows wide open. but, the wind has not been blowing directly at me since the first onset of winter, and i'm above hot air rising, so i'm actually getting a lot of negative pressure. the forecast suggests that the wind might shift in my direction this morning.

thankfully, the landlord was here this morning to patch the hole in the bedroom. he's suggesting it may need two more days. but, my hands are tied until i can get in there.

see, i need to clean in here, but the space is packed full of stuff. i really need to be able to clean in the other room first and then slowly move things in, which will give me enough space to clean in the main room.

i've decided that i need to use a brute force approach, which means taping over every inch of the walls. it's going to look like a rubber room. but, that's what non-smokers are going to have to be doing to deal with this.

i am of course in support of marijuana legalization, at the least, but i would also support a law banning smoking inside of apartment buildings. as it is, property values for older buildings are going to crash when this becomes legal. we're going to see the creation of "pot houses" that nobody except pot heads want to live in; on the other hand, we're going to need to pay a premium to avoid living with potheads. it's going to be a factor in further class stratification. and, the people forced to live in these buildings due to low income are going to incur all kinds of unnecessary respiratory diseases that are going to bog down the medical system.

expect a lot of people in the hospital complaining about smoke inhalation over the next few years....

i'll eventually have pictures up, and i'd fully recommend that people emulate this approach, if they're in the same situation.

for now, like i say: i should be getting tired soon, and will have reason to be concerned if i don't. but, i'm otherwise feeling ok - besides the little bit of blood in my nose, and the mild lingering headache that i think should lift when i can finally do a good clean.

i almost fell over when i first heard this.

a familiar, comforting voice in a refreshingly new context.

best cure song in decades.

but, i mean....

i've been crystal clear that i reject the claim that i'm not working.

not only am i working, i'm working harder than you are, and i'm being more productive than you are, too - because, at the end of the day, nobody cares about that hole you get paid to dig.

you're just brainwashed...

sorry.

software should be free in both senses.

you would expect me to take a harshly realistic view on software piracy, right?

i do not and never will have the means to purchase audio software. so, i can steal it or just not use it at all. as such, i'm not actually cutting into anybody's profit margin, because i was never going to buy it, anyways.

if it was a guitar or a synthesizer or some other physical object, i'd buy it in a pawn shop. that's the better comparison; and, either way, the creators aren't getting paid.

that said, i'm an artist, and keenly aware of the need to convert my labour into food, or starve. but, i'd prefer to lean towards a ubi or gai than towards an enforcement of property rights. and, we can have this debate this decade, but it won't be long before property rights aren't a serious option, and programmers are uniting with artists in their requests to abolish the market.

some things in my playlist this evening:

i'm on a 65dos kick.

and, also, a mammatus kick:

there were a lot of things wrong with that ipsos poll, but the basic reality is that the demographics of it were almost impossible.

i'm sorry, life long conservative supporters, but your movement is literally dying. your party is experiencing structural negative growth - much like the economy, when you're in power. the romantic narrative of the mulroney years is fading into the mists of history. and, the narrative of the harper years was never romantic, to begin with, but full of anxiety and trepidation.

wherever the liberal numbers fling around to, the conservative party, as we know it, will probably never reach 38% again.

ever.

http://www.nanos.co/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Political-Package-2018-03-02.pdf

"responsibility", like everything else, has to be socialized in a modern economy.

"personal responsibility" is a nineteenth century concept that you can't even define in modern terms.

i mean, we're talking about going into an election where 60-65% of the vote is totally disenfranchised, beyond any pretension of representation.

and, that's he kind of thing that does lead to weird outcomes, like fluke green sweeps, the return of quebec nationalism....or conservative minority governments.

trudeau has absolutely no credibility. may is unelectable. and, singh is a libertarian crank. so, you tell me what happens next, when the country swings left 3:1 and doesn't have a party it can vote for...

all i can tell you is that it's going to be strange.

i mean, the fucking conservatives could very well pull an end around and come out on the centre-left at this point and win a majority that way...and neither trudeau nor singh would know what hit them....

see, i can talk about stable party systems reconstructing themselves out of a systems collapse, but it assumes that the parties are competent enough to follow their own self-interest.

to have a spectrum composed of parties that are this incompetent - across the board - may be unique in the history of western democracy.

there is not a single political party in canada with competent leadership, right now.

legalizing all drugs is not a centre-left position, it is a radical right libertarian position. it may not become a ballot question, but, if it does, the country is going to discard jagmeet singh and the ndp as completely fucking bonkers. the dominant centre-left position on this topic is more or less the status quo, perhaps with increased funding for treatment.

and, if you look at the ndp platform carefully, this is a constant: it's "progressive" in the same way the progressive conservatives were....

- strong support for oil
- lip service to the environment
- balanced budgets
- expanding universal healthcare [but, this is a consensus position in canada]
- support for free trade
- less government regulation
- upholding constitutional civil rights

that is the new ndp.

sounds like the old conservatives, to me.

to be clear, this is the spectrum we currently have:

1) quasi-fascist ("conservative party"): fading support. obscure future. but, this must exist in the spectrum....

2) moderate conservative (liberal party is competing with the ndp for this place): will never get more than minority support in a stable system.

3) left-leaning centrist party (currently vacant): this is the majority position in the canadian spectrum. but, all of the parties are avoiding it.

4) social democratic party (currently vacant): the greens will eventually move into this space when may is removed or steps down.

and, if we go to an election like this, the result is going to be mass apathy and record low turnout.

but, they pulled a switch on me: mulcair's attempt to leapfrog the liberals to the centre ended up swapping my predictions around, for the moment.

right now, in 2018, the ndp and the liberals seem to be in a competition with each other for irrelevancy.

liberal is the new conservative.

doug ford would not have jurisdiction to legislate on abortion if he were premier of ontario.

sorry.

well, unless they rig it, of course.

then, the candidate they want to win will win. which is probably mulroney.

http://www.lfpress.com/2018/03/05/amid-tight-race-doug-ford-wants-paper-ballots

the reality is that the younger, female part of the tory base that mulroney was supposed to appeal to is going to see more of themselves in a feisty christian activist like tga than they will in an elite, agnostic aristocrat like mulroney.

these people will just interpret mulroney as a status quo liberal.

rather, expect mulroney to do better with older voters that are nostalgic for her father.

i just want to post a last update on the ontario pc race.

as expected, the media is mostly assuming that tga is taking votes from ford, but i can't imagine that this is actually true - tga is probably mostly taking votes from mulroney, and to a lesser extent from elliot. what that means is that the modelling is probably exaggerating both mulroney and elliot and under-estimating tga.

the reason this is happening is due to the phenomenon of women that lean hard to the right, but would vote for a centrist female candidate over a right-wing male candidate, at least on the first ballot, due to the overwhelming pull of identity politics. the modelling is going to get this completely backwards.

i still expect the results of the first ballot to be as follows:

1. ford.
2. elliot
3/4. tga / mulroney

i think the real race is between tga & mulroney for last - and it will be very close. tga could beat her in the end.

mulroney's votes would then go to elliot. but, tga's will go to ford in the end.

the result is that tga's effect in the race will be to steer votes from mulroney & elliot to ford, in the long run.

and, ford will win comfortably for that reason. 55-60%.

if tga were not running, i would still expect ford to win, but not by the same margin. in that scenario, it would really be the toss-up that the models are throwing out, because that path to ford wouldn't exist.

this is the kind of dumb idea you usually hear from the ndp.

i'd rather have it raised to 21.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/03/05/let-youth-start-voting-at-16-urges-liberal-mpp-in-private-members-bill.html

speaking of which, i had a nice long conversation with an undercover cop at the hospital, yesterday.

but i'll leave it that.

an anarchist would say something like "we are the ungoverned", or "we will not be governed", and not "we are the ungovernable" - as though we would rather be governed, but, alas, just can't be.

cops are, in fact, exceedingly simple to identify...they give themselves away....

i mean, i could just imagine how much fun a group of actual anarchists would have in deconstructing a ridiculous slogan like "we are the ungovernable".

there is a 100% chance that a cop came up with that, and a 0% chance that an anarchist did.

almost certainly cops, but it's not clear what they're up to.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/03/04/mob-dressed-in-black-damages-vehicles-smashes-storefronts-on-hamilton-street.html

see, if you like what trudeau says, you ought to be voting for wynne - because she's actually doing it.

the feds will not be introducing legislation of this nature, they'll just hold press conferences on it until they're replaced.

so, can we keep wynne and turf trudeau instead?

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/03/06/ontario-to-bring-in-pay-transparency-bill-that-aims-to-close-gender-wage-gap.html

continuing to negotiate further is clearly a waste of time.

there is no use in pretending that negotiations are going to lead anywhere.

so, let's pull the rug out from over his head.

wait until this guy is gone, and start over again, then.

canada needs to unilaterally dissolve nafta NOW.

is there not some hope in the israeli judiciary, to at least direct the process in such a way that upholds rudimentary constitutional principles, even if that leads to annexation, in the end?

after doing some cleaning and taping this morning, i really feel better than i have in days.

but, i don't think the crackhead ever made it in last night.

it's just confirming what i've been sure of...

i've got some spaghetti in the microwave. let's hope i can get something done after breakfast. i'm due for a long day, but i need to avoid being drugged in order to do it...

i need to make sure, though, that i get tested for heavy metals as a part of my yearly blood tests next month.

lead poisoning also leads to aggressive behaviour, although it doesn't explain the high i got last night.

i wonder if lead or arsenic may act as a catalyst for certain stimulants...

the crackhead is yelling outside my window to let her in.

hey!

hey!

lol.

all i'm thinking is that maybe i can get some fresh air tonight if she can't get in...

and, i'd like to reiterate that i have never smoked anything inside of any apartment i've ever had.

when i was a smoker, i always always always went outside.

and, i never have and never will smoke a joint inside, either: always, always outside.

...so, when i relapsed last month, i was smoking outside.

that said, one should temper their views on tibet slightly.

in the real world, things are rarely black and white.

http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

in the long run, i would fully expect china to treat the rest of eastern asia - with the exception of japan - the same way it's been treating tibet.

this is the future of states like cambodia, laos and vietnam.

wilful blindness doesn't help anybody.

more likely is that the meth psychosis is going to have me shooting at imaginary nazis on the street.

"but, they gave wwII soldiers meth. so, it must be safe."

yeah. just like all those other chemicals they've exposed soldiers to.

it's not like the government uses soldiers as guinea pigs, or anything.

besides. i might be known for arguing with racists online, but i've never tilted at a windmill so far that it made sitting on my computer anything at all like fighting nazis through trench warfare.

the test came back negative, and, while the doctor at least heard me out, his suggestions were no less silly: not only have i never had anxiety before, but one does not get high from anxiety, and i was high as a kite.

the connection between the second hand smoke and the effects i experienced is too obvious to be altered in my mind.

so i'm left with one of two options:

1) my tolerance to meth (or crack.) is so ridiculously low that i got scary high from an amount that was so low that it didn't even show up in the sample. this is actually consistent with my past experiences with drugs: my tolerance for everything is extremely low. i need to take children's dosages....and that itself might be the answer to the quandary: i'm going to get smashed from a smell, in the first place.
2) whatever stimulant they're smoking was not tested for - so is neither meth nor crack. i have no further suggestions, right now. glue?

i don't know know what the next step is, but i know that if i continue to get high from this second hand smoke, then i'm going to continue to seek medical attention until we can figure it out and devise steps to address it.

something i could try is taking a sample of the air in the apartment to a lab.

and, i could also try and replicate the urine test, and see if i can tweak it to be a bit more sensitive.

i may end up moving, in the end, but not until i can figure out a way to get the landlord to swallow the costs. this is ultimately their legal responsibility, not mine.

...and there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that i'm taking drugs to combat the effects of other drugs.

last one.

and, this song's a little special, too.

careful.

let's consider a few facts:

1) i have zero tolerance to meth, because i've never done it.
2) i am underweight.
3) it seems as though the downstairs neighbour is smoking every twenty minutes or so, indicating that she has an extremely high tolerance.

i would probably get ripped from the bare minimum amount. and, she probably needs enough to stun a horse.

so, i could very well overdose on a quantity that wouldn't even get her high.

given that, is a contact high that absurd?

i feel ok, now. i just ate four bags of doritos, which i would not have otherwise done. my metabolism just got tweaked up and down; that's what happens. i'm not going to fall for the drugs, but i'll fall for the munchies. this time, anyways.

so, what's tonight's saga?

i started getting floaty around 9 or 10, and overwhelmed about 11:30. same deal: odour wafting up that seemed kinda like pot, but didn't feel like pot when inhaled.

i didn't get a headache tonight, so i wanted to work through it, but, like...

i can't grasp how they're giving this shit to kids to get them to focus. i could understand giving kids marijuana if you wanted them to focus, because it wipes away the distractions; it turns off the noise and lets you focus on the signal. uppers, on the other hand, exaggerate the noise and drown out the signal. i could barely sit still, and barely look at one place on the screen. my heart was racing, and my head was buzzing....

so, i did two things:

1) i drank a lot of water.
2) i sat down in a yoga pose and did a lot of deep breathing, basically waiting out the high until it was gone.

is that why you're not supposed to drink the water in the ganges?

that's probably not what you're supposed to do on meth. but, you're not supposed to drug people against their will when they're trying to read, either. fuck.

about a half hour later, it was time to get up and urinate. i've now got three bottles to submit for testing in the morning...

i fully expect to get the same response.

"but, you need to be in very close proximity to get the effects of second hand smoke."

yeah, that's what they said about cigarettes for decades, too, if you'll recall. let's do the test and see what comes back. that's empiricism. if you're going to walk around in that lab coat, you've gotta fucking act like it..

and, i'm going to state this flat out: the reason i'm confusing to you, on point after point, is because the idea of free will has become foreign to people in this society - foreign or native born.

i'm not full of contradictions at all; i'm really quite consistent.

you just don't understand what agency is.

and, so i would rather flip the situation around and request that muslims refrain from appropriating the local winter clothing as some kind of religious symbol, when it is nothing of the sort.

you can find these for a couple of dollars at pretty much any store, around here:

maybe i should make this clear.

i have a ski mask. two of them, actually. i bought them for bicycling in subzero weather. but, it gets cold in canada, so sometimes i wear it to just walk around in.

i am not a muslim, and do not wear a hijab.

nor would i wear one in solidarity, as my solidarity would be with the women that throw away the hijab as a tool of oppression.

i was kind of hoping she was muslim. she's jewish...

but, i would encourage sports illustrated and others to reach out to muslims to start broadcasting this particular message, because it's true.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfJR1JsFR8b/

i apologize for the untrustworthy source, but they cite their research well enough

https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/health/us-life-expectancy-study/index.html

WHAT ABOUT THE PRINCESSES !?!?

science: we have a major obesity epidemic that needs a serious public education campaign to prevent us from actual decreasing our average life expectancies.

third-wave faux "feminists": but, what about attractive upper middle class white teenage girls obsessed with the male gaze and that spend more on fashion magazines and make-up in a month than they could even make on minimum wage?

and, in no-fucking-shit news...

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/obesity-is-an-eating-disorder-just-like-anorexia-and-its-time-we-started-treating-it-that-way-a6891166.html

it boggles my mind that anybody could be so blind and/or daft as to not recognize obesity as an eating disorder.

but, when you live in a society where 60-70% are overweight, and those numbers are increasing, maybe it's at least easy to understand how people can't see their own disorders when they look in the mirror, and mistake themselves for being healthy when they're not. after all, they're the same size as everybody else around them, right?

of course obesity is an eating disorder. and, it dwarfs anorexia in terms of the number of people affected as well as the costs to society.

so, i'm not at all interested in hearing people argue that we can't address a problem that affects 70% of the public because doing so might upset 1% of it. that's just irrational.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/you-must-be-hungry/200909/is-obesity-eating-disorder

daca remains an issue that can only be solved by congress.

but, nobody wants to solve it - especially not the democrats.

it may depend on what's true on the ground.

brian masse is less objectionable to me than cheryl hardcastle. we'll see who the liberals run...

...but, right now, it looks look i'll probably stay home and lob missiles at everybody from my misanthropic perch over the detroit river.

i mean, i'm not going to vote for conservative economic "policies" just because the liberals have given up on policy; an absence of policy from the liberals doesn't make the enemy seem appealing, all of a sudden.

and, the ndp are still the stupid party...if anything, they're dumber than ever...

canada's system doesn't have primaries, so it's not likely to produce a sandersesque saviour. the flip side of that is that we have almost no restrictions on party membership, so it's a lot easier to create a new party. but, that means that we get movements on the ground, or nothing at all - which is better in the long run, but takes time to build.

i mean, you could argue that what the system here does is make the false hope presented by a populist sanders style jesus impossible, and rather forces us to build the kind of movement bernie really wanted in the first place - which is harder, but more effective. do we have the attention span? and the will? and the resolve?

a backbench revolt would be easier.

they've given up on policy; they're going to run on trudeau being a celebrity.

and, i'm going to make sure to hammer them on it...

...but i'm not going to say it's a losing strategy, because the other options are terrible. it should be a losing strategy. but, that's not clear.

i really wish the green party had spent the last four years preparing for a serious run in 2019, rather than on continuing to be a vanity press for elizabeth may (who is unacceptable as a serious candidate).

and, this is the problem: i want trudeau thrown out of office, and the door slammed on his ass as he's pushed out. but, i can't endorse anybody else to replace him.

so, i'm going to say it again: the best hope we have right now is a backbench revolt in the liberal party.

i have no problem looking a jew in the eye and saying "you stole this land from the canaanites, and you should give it back to them."

but, god said...

"that's not a valid argument. sorry. do you not admit, yourself, that you stole this land?"

...despite the fact that i know that's not actually true.

as i've said before: the actual true owners of the levant are in fact...

...the neanderthals.

but, the best we've got, today, are the non-arab components of the lebanese.

everybody else around there are invaders, and most in the historically documented period.

a greater persian empire would not be complete unless it included afghanistan.

it's a province of persia...

that was the point, right?

and, just about the only counter-argument that anybody around there is going to come up with that makes any sense is to partition the south into pakistan.

it's 8:00, and what's going on?

well, i'm feeling alright. the sum total of the smoke inhalation yesterday afternoon appears to be that i'm a little tired - and that i have a rash on the inside of my arm, that may be due to some nasty perspiration.

the remaining smell i'm getting is that smell you get when you cross a mild dish soap with heavy grease and let it sit. so, imagine using dawn to let a pot full of hamburger grease sit.

they could be doing dishes.

ugh. let's just hope it's gone by tomorrow.

once again, i would have liked to get more work done today. there's still some chance i could get a second wind.

i just have no interest at fiction at this point in my life; i can't interpret sitting in front of a tv set as anything more than a waste of time.

that applies equally to the entire genre of film.

you could make a movie about me, and i wouldn't even know it exists.....

it might be a really good show. sure. i can still think of a million other things i'd rather be doing...

when somebody talks about a tv character named 'dexter', i think of this.

i don't want to have to be a narc, but my health is more important than their freedom...

that said, i'm starting to adjust my understanding of what's happening downstairs.

the smell has shifted this morning to a very strong chemical smell. so, i'm starting to think that i may be on top of a meth lab, and that the seemingly ridiculous amount of pot smoke may actually be intended to cover up the smell.

well, it's canada. pot will be legal here, soon.

this is a different sort of problem.

but, i'd still rather wait until tomorrow and hope they just clean up and set up elsewhere.

i need to remind you that i haven't watched tv since the 90s, and i have no concept of popular tv shows that have existed since then, at all.

i've had random people suggest to me that i remind them of a character named "dexter", but i simply don't understand the reference. and, that's all i have to say about it; i can't deny or affirm something i don't understand.

i mean, i'd like to know how often it happens that kids taken away from meth addicts are then prescribed meth to deal with the symptoms created by their parents being addicted to meth.

it's fucking insane...

...and don't even get me started about the absurd idea of giving meth to kids to fight a condition that doesn't even exist.

that's a type of abuse that boggles my mind.

i just want to point something out, though: i've run into the pcp problem before, i'd say on average every six-ten months, but this is the first time i've been convinced that i've run into meth-laced marijuana, and i'd have actually been the first to suggest that such a thing doesn't exist, if somebody had presented it to me before last week.

i'd be skeptical if i were you, too.

but, i'm good at logic, and i'm pretty much convinced that this is what we've got, here.

moments after i published the last post, i got bombarded with what felt like a chemical weapons attack: smoke coming from every room of the apartment at the same time, with an especially powerful concentration in the kitchen, which is a few feet away from any window and consequently almost impossible to neutralize without letting it air out.

it seemed both co-ordinated and intended to upset me.

the one thing you can do is try and steam it out by running hot water and burning water on the stove at the same time. but, the hot water was out - strangely. this is twilight zone shit, really.

about an hour in, i started to freak out: i had been drugged against my will yet again, and there was nothing i could do but escape. but, i couldn't escape...it was coming from every direction...

as somebody who has hotboxed many things, i would hazard a guess that there was roughly ten grams of pot released into the air over that hour. this wasn't a j or two. this was an onslaught...like they were burning open leaves as incense...

once again: i didn't feel stoned, i felt agitated and angry. i wanted to smash something in. the headache was creeping back (and is still there, nine hours later).

what does meth do? well, some of the literature focuses on the hormones, but this isn't really what a user actually experiences, despite the drug industry propaganda. the only hormonal reaction i'm getting is a headache, which is probably an acute withdrawal symptom. but, i don't want more drugs, i want to detox

what meth (also called speed) does is give you a really short burst of energy, followed by a really terrible crash. if you're dancing, you might look like this:

do they look that ridiculous?

worse.

because they can't dance like that. rather, they flop their arms around and stamp their feet like children having a temper tantrum. it lasts a few minutes - twenty at the most, but usually more like five. they can be easily identified by how obtuse they appear. and, then they zoom off the floor and go pass out somewhere.

the sensationalized media portrayal of meth is just that. most people at the rave really actually just have a few drinks, maybe a few tokes. mdma is fun, if you can find it. if you're of legal age, you probably know better. balloons are quite popular, as well. and, the people taking uppers that last the night are mostly taking very small hits of actual cocaine up their noses. these little spoons they carry around...

the speed addicts are really rather rare, and are the isolated losers; they don't last on the floor very long - because speed isn't an endurance drug but a short burst and a long crash. the effects of the drug might last you 12 hours, but the high is only a few minutes, and you'll spend most of the night struggling with the come down in the bathroom or outside by yourself. as addictive as it is, you often hear things like "i made the mistake of trying that once....never again...."

that's if you're dancing.

what if you're having an awful fucking day? then, that burst of energy is going to manifest itself as anger, as violence. and, that's what i've been going through repeatedly with this: the smell pisses me off, and then the effect of the drug takes over, and i get very uncharacteristically angry. i yell and scream for a few minutes, it passes through my system in an hour, and then i sleep it off for ten-twelve hours.

and, i don't want this to happen again. ever. there is no reason at all that i need to tolerate being drugged against my will - and arguments that i do are ridiculous. if you think that being a liberal means getting stoned because your neighbour is, you don't understand liberalism so well.

today, i stormed downstairs and banged on their door and demanded they cut down their intake. and, it seems to have had enough of an effect that i'm starting to clear it out of my system.

so, i'm going to give them a grace today, tomorrow.

but, i'll be at the clinic early monday morning if this happens again tomorrow night.

i've also decided that i need to apologize. i don't yell at people like that. it's deeply uncharacteristic. i need to explain that i believe my behaviour was a consequence of second-hand smoke exposure, and that what they're smoking is clearly laced with something. i'm going to present meth as the most likely culprit..

but, how much smoke is getting up here?

1) enough that i can see it in the apartment. clearly. a stranger walking in here would assume i'm a smoker just via what they can see with their eyes.
2) enough that it's frizzing my hair out.

it's a lot...

i'm feeling far more alert, today...and i didn't go through a messy phase last night, although i slept a lot...

if i'm going to catch meth or crack in the urine, it's going to need to be within a few hours of being poisoned by it, so there's no use in going today, because i didn't feel it last night.

we'll see what i feel like in the morning.

i mean, if they're done, they're done. i mentioned that it wasn't bad until a few days ago; some of  the vocal snippets i'm hearing from downstairs suggests that some parents or grandparents may have been away for the week.

that would explain everything....

we don't really have separate branches of government in canada, like they do in the united states. our system of government is still the same system that the british set up in the colonial period; we have the system of government that america revolted against, and replaced. so, what we have is a parliament and a judiciary, and it's actually really the judiciary that sits at the top of the hierarchy and gets final decision making authority, here.

the most powerful person in the country is the chief justice of the supreme court, not the prime minister.

so, because the legislative and executive branches are not separate, we end up with internal power struggles - and that's fine, it prevents gridlock. but, the legislative branch is supposed to be the dominant focus; the executive branch is supposed to operate as an arm of parliament, and ultimately be subservient to it's decisions.

the prime minister is not even directly elected.

rather, the prime minister is merely first amongst equals - just one voice at the table, of no greater importance than any other. it is the mps that elect somebody to this office, not voters. that makes the prime minister no more powerful than the speaker. in theory, the office is actually superfluous in our system - it's unnecessary, and our system should be able to operate perfectly fine without it. in my more bitter moments, i've advocated doing just that - abolishing it.

but, as a first step, we need mps to stand up and take back their constitutional roles and stop letting this plastic jesus tell them what to do.

if anybody's to be systemically ignored in our system, it ought to be the prime minister, not the committees.

the committees are the actual government. the executive branch is supposed to fall in line, not the other way around.

this is really a co-option of our system.

the idea that the prime minister can just pull the plug on a parliamentary committee, as though he's the king, is completely absurd in the context of a westminster system of government. but, we have a tradition of parliamentary spinelessness in this country that really needs to come to an end...

i think that the members of this parliament should have turfed trudeau months ago. and, i've been vocal about it. how long will they let him run roughshod over our democratic institutions for?

and how long will we keep electing mps that just do what they're told?

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/03/02/the-trudeau-government-says-its-listening-if-so-not-to-parliament.html

i think what donald trump meant to say is:

if you don't have stolen land then you don't have a colonial state.

right?


or


if you don't steal land, you don't have a country.

that could have been a daley-level typo. alas...


i think this article gets the right point:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/2/1745982/-Tariffs-aren-t-good-or-bad-but-the-way-Trump-is-imposing-them-could-be-a-disaster

look at this guy.

he even looks next level.

shit, i'd take laurier over any one of these poseurs, any day.

that was a man with some serious principles. you don't see that nowadays.

and, he was right, too. world war one was a pointless bloodbath. we should have launched a revolution over that shit....

....but, i just want to point out that the idea that trump may actually be trying to break some unions is not that remote.

if the actual intent is union-breaking? well, that might work....

but, is it not clear yet that the 'free trade' part of nafta is a joke?

if i was in this government, i'd be looking at a cost-benefit analyses on complete withdrawal.

we can talk bilateral reciprocity with the next administration...

i've made my views on tariffs clear...

they're neither good nor bad, but they're complicated. and, you need to be really, really, really smart if you're going to start throwing them around with any meaningful intent.

the trump administration is not smart enough to do this without it coming back to hurt them.

and, canada must immediately retaliate.

i could no doubt deconstruct this into a probable actual movement from liberal to undecided (i promise you that the conservatives are not up 5 points), but the polls at this stage in the cycle are realy just propaganda, anyways, and that's the better way to look at.

what i'm going to tell the liberals is this: the pandering to minorities was always a bad idea, and is going to blow up in their faces if they don't stop. nobody is going to vote for trudeau because he wears traditional indian clothing on a trip, but lots of people might vote against him because of that.

minority voters are generally more sophisticated than this and will at best ignore it.

but, low education white voters (many middle class) are broadly not more sophisticated than this at all.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4058984/justin-trudeau-india-trip-ipsos-poll/

...so, you let the 5-6% of addicts that will beat it come to you, and you stop wasting resources ordering the rest of them around...

and, let's be frank - keeping a couple of visibly hopeless addicts on the street is just about the best disincentive you can come up with.

“The therapeutic community claims a 30% success rate, but they only count people who complete the program.” Califano adds that 70-80 percent have dropped out by the 3-6 month marker.

so, you're looking at something more like around a 6-9% success rate.

are you willing to redirect billions of dollars in health care spending for a program with a 95% failure rate?

you'd have to be pretty religious not to see the folly of this.

...or perhaps get very large checks from the relevant industries.

so, i do support needle exchanges, and a few other harm reduction approaches, because studies have shown that it helps maximize resources.

put simply, it's cheaper to give them clean needles than it is to treat them for aids and hepatitis.

our scarce public health resources should be focused primarily or solely on people that don't create their own preventable problems.

and, i'm going to present similar arguments for smokers and fat people that i will for drug addicts.

and, i've been clear enough, but people kneejerk on this: i've never suggested punishing users, i'd rather advocate for non-intervention altogether, but i think that the dealers should be basically executed in public.

and, i mean, that doesn't mean that people should be denied services, either. if they want help, let them come to it. and, volunteer services should deal with this.

my concern is that the resources are limited, and i don't want to see money for addicts competing with money for other services. what bothers me are outreach services, and the amount of resources wasted by the system on a problem that shouldn't exist at all.

i'm sorry; i just don't consider this something that room should be made for in the public health budget.

but, i'm the densest flac you've ever heard: there's not a compression algorithm in the world that's going to let you take a byte out of me.

i don't even listen to hip-hop.

i can feel myself decompressing.

wow.

so, you could call me the black sheep of the family.

i'd rather call myself the white sheep in a black herd.

my mom is still alive.

i don't talk to her much, and haven't since i was a teenager and she got very heavy into heroin. i abandoned her more than she abandoned me, and i actually don't regret that; i could see as clear as day that she was hopeless, and that i had to make a choice about it: was i going to let this affect me for my whole life, or was i going to move on?

i was about 14 or 15 when i decided to move on.

there was never a talk or anything. i just showed up for a scheduled visit once to find her passed out, naked on the couch and washed my hands of her. we made no attempt to contact each other for years afterwards. i don't know if she had overdosed at the time or not.

to this day, she's a heavy methadone user that comes in and out of heroin relapses.

she got it through AA - drinking buddies looking for something stronger. she may have been blacked out when she first tried it; i don't know. maybe we can call that the "rob ford defense", moving forwards.

nobody and nothing gets 100% blame for this, and lots of entities get partial responsibility. but, knowing my mother, i don't think she would have sought it out. i think it was presented to her, and she went along to fit in. i'm consequently very much of the opinion that restricted access could have prevented her from walking down that path.

the best way to stop kids from doing drugs is to drug their parents.

you can just imagine the political discourse, fifteen years from now.

liberal prime minister justin bieber has just announced legislation that is designed to appeal primarily to the powerful children-of-dead-addicts lobby....

there may even be a reason to think the reaction may be that much worse.

if you grew up in the 60s or 70s, you may have ended up bitter about your parents basically being stupid potheads. and, if you grew up in the 80s, you may have seen your hyper-materialist cokehead parents through a very unflattering prism.

but, kids of addicts growing up in the '10s are only going to hear stories about their parents.

because they're dead.

that said, the distribution networks that you do catch should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

there's been a lot of ink spilled about how the collective consciousness of gen x was formed by revulsion at their parents' drug use. in that sense, i am firmly gen x.

but, how do you actually do this, then?

well, i've been clear that i support legalizing a handful of drugs. but, the ones that should not be mad e asily accessible are mostly heroin, meth and crack. what you'd do with these is shift to a kind of grey market - i don't want to blow up villages in costa rica to keep the crack out, but i don't want to make it available to buy at a store, or with a prescription, either.

i'm essentially an advocate of ignoring it and letting it run it's course.

i got some more sleep and am finally feeling a bit better.

20 years ago - even ten years ago - if somebody had told you that opposing the war on drugs meant being in favour of supporting drug use, the opposition to the war on drugs would have labelled that a ridiculous straw men.

for, the war on drugs was always really about controlling the supply of drugs. and, what opposing the war on drugs always meant was opposing war crimes in central america, not the free or liberalized use of chemical agents.

nowadays, opposing the war on drugs really does mean supporting widespread drug use, and arguing against widespread drug use is the same thing as supporting the war on drugs. i'd like to claim this is surreal. bur, it fits a pattern with the millennial generation, which has never known anything besides backwards orwellian arguments.

once again: i'm just waiting them out and crossing my fingers.

i think a good sign will be how the younger generation ultimately reacts to cell phones. if they grow up without really ever spending time on actual computers, we're probably screwed. but, if they're able to look at the phone and then at the laptop and say "that cell phone is of little actual use value", then there's some hope for the future.

i understand that the way meth is supposed to work is to mess up your rewards system. you end up addicted to a hormone, and not to meth itself.

but, my response is not give me rewards, or give me death!

rather, it's stop "rewarding me" and fuck off.

maybe there's some connection to the fact that i've never been a keener. i've never had an interest in being at the top of the class, or working my way up the ladder, or really winning at much of anything - i've always preferred to project mediocrity in the physical realm, and then be a god in my own fantasy reality. so, what meth is doing is setting off a hormonal reaction that i've never craved in the first place. and, i'm not craving for more, but pleading that they turn it off.

as i've always said: what "reaching for the top" means to me is that i must have left my beer on the top of the book shelf.

being awake for days is fun.

and, being stoned is sometimes fun.

but, being awake and stoned for days is the definition of hell.

i don't need or want drugs to help me stay awake for days at a time.

the manic phase is far more enjoyable when it's organic, because it doesn't come with an artificial buzz.

getting out of the apartment this morning took me away from the poisonous smoke for long enough to allow me to come down, which gave me an opportunity to actually sleep this afternoon, and i took it over running around looking for a means to incriminate the source of the smoke.

i'll get the drug tests done in the morning.

i have the windows open and my winter jacket on to compensate. but, there will no doubt be plenty more poison wafting up tonight.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pharmaceutical-drug-company-doctor-physician-payment-disclosure-transparency-1.4169888

occam's razor is that the doctor was/is a shill for the pharmaceutical company, and was just looking for a new victim.

but, is there a chart? and is somebody taking orders?

you can never be sure what they do or who they call when they turn that corner...and mu experiences have made the paranoia hard to completely shake...

i think they'd jump at the opportunity to wipe me out. sure.

and, to the fucking dipshit calvinists left standing, get this through your thick heads: my aversion to labour has nothing to do with drugs.

i am sober, and i still don't want to work.

and, if i had to waste all fucking day at some stupid waste of time piece of shit job, i guarantee you i'd be more interested in blasting away my individuality in a blaze of dead brain cells, because i'd have nothing else to live for besides my own self-destruction.

i've told you repeatedly that this is a philosophical position, not a mental illness. and, people of the future, in a post-labour world, will look back on me as the only sane person on the entire fucking planet.

meth really isn't so dangerous - er "doctor" in windsor, ontario

my neighbours are smoking meth.

it's making me sick, so i went to the hospital.

they tried to prescribe me opiates as a painkiller.

fucking society. here's my prescription: destruction.

i'm not straight edge, but i'm a punk at heart, and i don't want to take non-recreational habit forming drugs unless i need to.

i have no interest in living in a designer drug society that prescribes a different pill for every problem.

so, you could imagine my frustration when the doctor listens to my description of being drugged by my neighbour's second hand meth smoke and responds with a suggestion to prescribe me painkillers.

i'll stick with aspirin, thanks.

"we don't prescribe aspirin."

yeah - i bet you don't have a contract with them, do you? you fucking pusher...

the thing is that she didn't drop it. she insisted that i accept an iv. and, i called her on being a pusher and stormed out.

all i wanted was a write-up for a vitals blood test. i want to know what they're poisoning me with, and how much damage it's done.

so, i'm going to try the clinic, instead.

fuck...

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

maybe i can try this...

i think we get the idea that if it's warming faster in the arctic then maybe that warmth can jump into the atmosphere, and split the vortex in half. it answers the question: where did the heat come from? i grasp this is easy to make sense of, it's just that the proposed physics of taking the heat from the land to the sky are getting a big thumbs down from the physicists, themselves.

but, you can at least make sense of a mechanism. what does it have to do with the sun?

well, it's kind of the opposite idea. every single winter, the vortex expands. but, this is a confusing way to state it, as the vortex does not expand so much as what was keeping it bottled up retreats. in physics, cold isn't actually a thing, but the absence of a thing, namely energy. so, the cold air doesn't expand; the hot air retreats. this isn't actually quite as simple as a reduction in sunlight, but it kind of is, though, yeah.

if the vortex expands far enough, it could break. it's less like pulling an elastic band apart and more like ripping a piece of bread in half. but, this would actually be a consequence of less energy in the atmosphere.

the air in the middle, where it's broken apart, would then be warmer because it's rushing in from all sides. you could imagine that being something more like ripping a bag of potato chips open. calling it "sudden warming" would then also be misleading, as it's really more of a sudden rushing.

we don't know which idea is right, yet. we know the mechanism for one of them is fishy, and we don't have definitive data for the other one, yet.

the connection between the sun's output and the jet stream is not on a "how bright is it shining?" level, but on an ultraviolet radiation level. and, it has to do with how the ultraviolet energy spreads out as it hits the earth, on an angle.

so, while breaking the correlation between temperatures and solar output after 1980 was key in determining the relationship between carbon emissions and a warming climate, pointing to ssw when the sun is down at the north pole doesn't quite work out so well - because fluctuations in ultraviolet radiation happen nonetheless, and act at the place where they hit the surface.

those warm temperatures at the geographic north pole migrated in with weather systems from further south.

my basic position is that i don't care what the consequences are for them.

i care what the consequences are for me.

i think this is what i'm going to do:

i'm going to go to a clinic tomorrow and ask to get tested for everything they can test me for. then, i'll take the results to the landlord & the cops and ask them to move on it from there.

because, i don't know.

but, i'm starting to change my mind: i need to know.

it'll be clear and concise: my neighbours are smoking something, i think it's meth, it's making me very sick, and i need medical attention.

should i go to a hospital for detox?

i might...

if i become convinced it's meth, i have no problem sending the cops in over it.

might they even be able to tell me if it is via blood test?

i'm not there yet, but i'm close.

the symptoms need to be gone by the time the sun comes up.

i'm leaning towards it being meth.

this is a good summary of how i'm feeling.

http://www.methamphetamineaddiction.com/the-five-most-common-meth-withdrawal-signs-and-symptoms/

ok, everything else aside, july of 2015 was actually a heavy posting month so let's hope i can pick things up in august.

the plumber fixed the shower but left a hole in the wall for smoke to seep in through, so i've moved into the living room until it gets plastered over. of course, the retards below me followed me in here - because they seem to be trying to get under my skin. you have to just ignore immature people, like that, and maybe hope somebody decides not to break for them, the next time they cross the street. they're obviously feeding off of my discomfort, due to there clearly being something wrong with them.

all of the windows are open and they will probably not close again until december. but, it's warmer in the other room, so it would be rational for them to stay on the other side of the building. hopefully, they take the bait.

i feel like i'm being harassed, but there's no use in letting whatever they're drugging me with get me upset about it.

all i can do is try and get as much oxygen in here, to fight the constant tension headaches being caused by whatever kind of hard drugs it is that they're doing, and i still have no idea if this is a meth addict or a crackhead, down there - because i've never been in direct contact with either substance.

i just feel tired, yet can't sleep. it's constant headaches, and constant stomach aches. i'm getting tracers, but it's not different from what i was getting with the migraines, and think they're being triggered by the headaches rather than by the drugs. so, you tell me: is that meth or crack? i don't know, and don't really care, i just want to air the place out.

there is no possibility that i'm going to ever enjoy whatever the fuck this is.

so, as has been the case the last few nights, i'm going to try and get some work done, with little confidence in my ability to do so. i will probably spend most of the night trying and failing to sleep.

how do i use so little electricity?

- i haven't turned the tv on since i moved in, and am considering trashing it.
- one computer on at a time. well, usually.
- no dishwasher.
- no a/c.
- i cook with the element but not with the stove.

i actually sleep with the lights on, usually.

things i have on all the time: fridge, cable modem, router & that's it, really.

what kind of an idiot looks at a bill like this and blames the cost of electricity on the government?

the credit means that i have nothing to complain about.

$39*24 = $936.

are they going to pay that out at the end?

but, if i was going to get pissy about it, i'd be angry with enwin for the delivery charge being twice the cost of actual electricity.

and, how do i know erin is a cop?

incitement to violence & property damage. classic agent provocateur.

i was too smart to fall for that. perhaps others weren't.

and, i'm well aware that she is/was a cop.

erin was probably the least attractive person that i've ever met, and i found her revolting on multiple levels. not only did i make no attempt to make any pass at her, but i rejected her own advances on me on numerous occasions.

but, i respected her talents as a musician and was hoping to utilize them at some point. further, because she was so much younger than i was (and quite immature for her age, even), i often found myself in situations where i needed to act like an adult, for her benefit. i was too responsible to bail on her. perhaps that was an error.

that was all there ever was to it.

i have not spoken to her or thought much about her since i asked her not to talk to me any more, which was almost five years ago.

i'm not normally somebody that has difficulty focusing. when i sit down to do something, i normally have a really laser-sharp focus; i'll spend days or weeks lost in a task, to the expense of things around me, and not really care.

so, this is something i'm not sure i've experienced before. i have no memories of this, at the least.

i almost feel like i'm not the same person, or something.

the emotions i'm feeling are a combination of anger and frustration. it's making me want to lash out at something or somebody. it's beyond uncharacteristic. it's almost got me wondering if somebody's put something in my water, or something, as this is what i'd imagine that somebody on anti-depressants is likely to feel like.

but, i know it's the smoke and i know i just have to wait it out.

i do not think i suffer from depression. i have never been seriously diagnosed with depression. i do not think i have a chemical imbalance. and, if somebody is drugging me against my will, that person or entity should face severe penalties and consequences: because this is beyond unpleasant, and in no way medically jusrified.

i'm literally feeling an urge to beat something into a pulp. i'm somebody that has been on testosterone suppressors for almost ten years; that does not make sense. and, i've never experienced that before.

it's not pot. i don't know what it is; i've never done anti-depressents. i've never done cocaine. i've never done meth. i've never smoked crack. i don't know what they taste or smell like, or what they feel like.

but, i know that this is the worst i've ever felt in my life.

i've got almost nothing done in days because of this....

i'm not going to be able to handle much more than a few more days like this without freaking out.

so, the shower had better be fixed, soon, so i can start taping these holes up.

there's going to be a violent confrontation if i can't keep the smoke out.

meth is not something you fuck around with.

an accidental overdose could lead to mass organ failure and instant death.

with the exception of heroin (& derivatives), it is singularly dangerous amongst "recreational" drugs.

i would literally go down there, knock their down and beat the shit out of them on the spot. i'd then blame it on the second-hand smoke wafting up, and intend to win the argument.

are they smoking meth down there, or what?

fuck...this is simply hellish...

i guarantee you that trump's sudden support for gun control is just going to end up putting a lot of black people in jail on flimsy charges.

i think i'm starting to like chris murphy.

wow.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/02/26/the-north-pole-just-surged-above-freezing-in-the-dead-of-winter-stunning-scientists.html

i need to be clear: the chances of any given statement from trudeau being true, at this point, are much less than a coin toss.

you have to assume he's lying until he can prove otherwise.

see, i don't know why hoskins does this, unless he's serious. i'm sure part of the calculation is that he was looking for a way out of what might be a very bad election for the provincial liberals in june. but, he could have taken a job at a bank. i'm sure he's serious.

but, whether trudeau's handlers are just stringing him along is another question...

at this point, trudeau's credibility is so ridiculously shot that you can't give any statement from this government more than a 25% chance of being true, a priori.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/02/28/are-the-trudeau-liberals-serious-about-pharmacare-this-time.html

i don't care about jaspal atwal.

at all.

sorry.

also, they finally updated my electricity balance.

it's at -39.50.

that's right: enwin is crediting my account by $40 for february.

well, use less electricity, then.

i don't feel stoned.

i feel really, really, really hungover.

i got a few hours of sleep this afternoon, but i woke up disoriented, and i still feel like i had a lobotomy. my brain just feels gone. i'm not really here, and i don't like it at all. i'm taking aspirin every 5 or 6 hours and it helps with the headache, but not with the disorientation. i've also consumed something like two pots of coffee over the last 48 hours, and it's only barely helping me fight this crappy woozy feeling.

the plumber replaced the broken cartridge this morning, but he had to rebuild the system to do it, and now there's apparently a leak in the pipe behind the shower head, so he's going to have to come back tomorrow to tear the wall down.

i'm actually looking forward to this, because it should give me a better opportunity to patch the holes in the wall, in the long run.

i might not stay awake very long. but, i'm going to try to work through july tonight. and, then i'm going to need to pull everything out of the bedroom so he can work with the plaster in the morning. and, like i say - i'm ok with this, because it will give me a chance to tape the walls down.

the temperature outside has fallen, but i don't really care. i'm going to need the windows open until i can find a way to stop the smoke from seeping in.

if you find yourself smoking so much marijuana that you barely even get high anymore, i'm going to suggest that you save yourself some money and just switch to tobacco.

at least it's filtered.

this is long overdue.

and, the current political climate around the sitting president could very well facilitate this getting through congress.

that 1973 act happened under nixon, remember.

wait.

you're not still talking about the philips curve in 2018, are you?

that was debunked like 50 years ago. which is laffier at this point?

listen: you can't get out of this by boosting interest rates and cutting spending, either. that's even worse. you'll get a recession in no time.

there's no reason for us to be paying interest on government debt.

i've posted about this at length elsewhere, but, just to clarify, if i wasn't clear: the problem that canada faced with the imf in the 90s wasn't actually about debt. it was about interest rates. it's not that we "spent too much" - that doesn't mean anything - it's that we borrowed it from banks at 15-20% interest rates.

then, chretien inherits this ridiculous debt (that ballooned under mulroney, not trudeau). but, the debt was not spurred by spending in the 60s and early 70s, it was all interest accumulated in the late 70s and early 80s...

what this did was give investors leverage over the government, because we owed them their pound of flesh. so, they started thinking they could tell us what to do.

and, thankfully, our government at the time didn't fold. it restructured, and it sold off some assets (oil, planes) but it didn't touch the social fabric of the country. harper would have. i think trudeau will, too, if we get there.

the solution is not to cut spending. that doesn't matter. and, it has it's own negative consequences, too.

the solution is to ensure that interest rates stay low, so we don't build up this external debt. or, if we find ourselves unable to control the rates, to stop borrowing from private lenders.

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/new-research-interest-rate-cuts-dont-shift-corporate-investment/

but, i mean...

i'm in favour of just using the bank of canada to print money interest free. then the market can do what it wants and i don't even care about interest rates at all.

if i was a conspiracy theorist, i might even suggest that the whole interest rate theory is just a ploy by investors to rip taxpayers off.

at the least, that is what actually happens.

trump isn't fixing something that wasn't broken.

he's breaking something that was working optimally.

and, no - a quarter percent modification of the interest rate doesn't lead anybody to change their decisions.

if interest rates have any effect at all - and i'm not even at this point - then it is purely on the level of statist brainwashing. this is gramscian theory, not economic theory.

but, what is bad about high interest rates is that it makes it harder for governments to run deficits, which just contributes to the downward spiral created by removing the stimulus.

liberals are not economic oracles, either.

but, conservatives do not understand economics.

at all.

again: you'll have to wait a few months to see what i'm saying play out. and, something else could happen to negate what i'm saying.

but, two major things happened with the market:

1) the end of quantitative easing, which should plunge the market by tens of thousands of points by the time it's done and is both structural and long term.
2) tax cuts, which should provide a short term burst that fizzles out, relatively quickly.

so, the tax cuts are having this kind of buoyant effect.

but, it's like putting a life jacket on the titanic.

or using an umbrella to protect yourself against a falling piano.

and, this is just what capitalism is.

the area we today call afghanistan was actually once the wealthiest and most advanced parts of persian civilization, rich in irrigation systems, and both at the centre of global trade routes (and perhaps of global trade, itself) and a distant refuge of learning and spirituality. those bamyan statues were perhaps the last relic of what was truly greatness.

white people right?

well, the persians kinda were white at the time, actually.

it was the mongols. they slaughtered entire cities, laying waste to the whole countryside, destroying irrigation systems, raping whatever was left and leaving desolated and expanding desertification in their wake.

it was so total, that it's never been rebuilt.

to truly rebuild afghanistan would be the legacy of a god-king. and, one might hope that that is one of the upsides of the expanding chinese dominance in the region, as they no doubt remember it as it was better than anybody else.

if you're curious, the stress i was under did lead to a nicotine relapse over parts of december and much of january. but, i turned it around at the beginning of february, and it's now been about three weeks since i had a cigarette. i'm comfortable in stating i'm back on top of this.

the last couple of days have been pretty brutal.

i've been unable to sleep for something like a week. an hour or two here and there. i've spent most of the last 15+ hours trying to sleep with no success...

this has left me with a headache and a stomach ache, both of which are being compounded by a large amount of second hand smoke coming up through a hole in the floor, which is going to need to stay open until i can get the plumbing fixed, and it is unclear when that will happen.

i feel like death.

in the mean time, i've been forced to leave every window open in the apartment, and i have no intention of closing them until i can fix the hole in the floor that's exacerbating the headache.

back at the old apartment, i pointed out repeatedly that there was no solution in moving to a different apartment, as i'd just recreate the same problems. up until last week or so, this place legitimately seemed  a lot better, but there appears to be a lot of marijuana coming up from the floors all of a sudden. i think i can fix this by taping over it. but, i have to wait until the plumbing is fixed.

i don't expect to be able to do much of anything useful until this problem is resolved, and it's unclear how long this is going to take.

but, as was the case before, there is no solution in changing apartments - as i've just demonstrated.

i really wish there was a law against smoking inside of apartment buildings...

as it is, i have no recourse but to slowly seal off all of the cracks, until they're all gone.

neither optimism nor pessimism are well defined ideas.

there is rather a choice between realism and delusional thinking.

listen, this is just a policy disagreement, minor in scope if major in consequence, and i'm not about to be bullied into quieting down on it via specious accusations or ad hominems because there are multiple horrific implications to continuing on the wrong direction with this.

hell does not exist.

but, you can follow that road lined with good intentions to it's endpoint of destitute failure, nonetheless.

now, will you acknowledge that this is a grounded, reasonable and obviously correct criticism, or will you stick your head in the sand and call me names?

(i'm aware that the majority of syrian refugees are not religious fundamentalists, but rather have been fleeing religious fundamentalism. but, special care is still required to ensure that the kids are properly integrated. and, the government isn't doing this...)

now, let's just hope their kids secularize properly, which may be difficult given how isolated and ostracised they're going to end up.

looking at the facts would have concluded that these people don't speak english, don't have marketable skills and are consequently not going to thrive here - no matter how much they really, really, really want to.

magical thinking doesn't work, kids.

as we can see...

i guess that, if you can't see that then you can't see that.

history will see that.

this is just another example of how faith leads to irrationality and poor decision making.

....and this is very much at the core of why it's so important to eliminate all religious influence from public decision making.

again: i don't care about what your opinion is, or about how something makes you feel inside. and, you shouldn't either.

what i care about - and what you should care about, too - is what the facts are, and about how the facts should guide you to make reasonable deductions.

i mean, it's nice to pat yourself on the back thinking you did something good, for whatever trivial reason, but it's really only your ego that's benefiting if an objective factual analysis concludes that everybody is worse off by your supposed act of beneficence.

and, a rational agent is just going to conclude that you're all completely insane.

see, i don't have any contempt for these people.

but, i just want you to read the article and ask yourself whether it made sense to bring them here, at great expense, and for little gain.

i'd have rather have sent the assad regime weapons to help them fight isis.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/syrian-refugee-update-1.4545226

do i seem like i want to deal with a fucking character limit?

i have to remind people once in a while that i do not and never did have a twitter account.

that's not me.

sorry.

http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/indigenous-nationhood/2018/02/trudeaus-dance-deception-indigenous-rights

you could even say that i didn't really vote for justin trudeau, so much as i voted for the ghost of stephane dion...

i repeat: the only reason i got up to vote liberal was a vague hope he'd be better on climate change.

spoiler: i endorsed trudeau for the singular reason that i thought he'd be better than mulcair on climate change.

it was a hail mary, granted. there was this infrastructure bank in the platform that has since evaporated.

it's been a disappointing several years. but, i'll stand by my claim that mulcair would have been worse.

i don't see anything i'm opposed to.

more money for science sounds good, but i don't know what that actually means. i doubt that the feminist bit ends up more than pr.

the absence of carbon transition commitments is no longer surprising but is jarring and disappointing.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/02/27/news/budget-delivers-new-conservation-fund-avoids-climate-commitments

collective bargaining is not explicitly protected in the charter of rights and freedoms.

but, it's one of those things - like abortion, in both countries - that is quasi-constitutional in scope.

it had might as well be in there...

i'd like to comment on the janus case, but this is a situation where the american jurisprudence is so different than the canadian jurisprudence that i can barely understand it.

not only does right to work not exist anywhere in canada, but i am not aware of any politician at any level even thinking about contemplating it, for the reason that it would be instant political suicide. it would be on the absolute fringe of canadian politics. in fact, one of the demands that trudeau made around nafta was that the president abolish right to work at a federal level.

put bluntly, i don't understand what free speech has to do with union dues. not even abstractly. i can normally imagine an argument, and debunk it; but, i don't think that free speech and union dues have anything more to do with each other than bananas and sauerkraut - it's just incoherent on it's face.

so, i'd have to start at the very beginning, and walk very slowly down this path. i'm no doubt going to find many, many things that strike me as basic logical errors at the very beginning of the argument, and that even the american left has taken as precedent.

the way i would analyze this, without looking at the case law, would be that taking a job means signing a contract, and that if union dues are a part of the contract then employment becomes conditional on paying them. you can't sign a contract and then pick the parts you like, and then ask a judge to scratch out the parts you don't like, claiming "free speech". you can breach the contract if you like, but that would mean your employer could fire you for breach of contract.

i'm just not able to imagine where the first amendment enters into this, or at least not on my own.

canada and america are close neighbours and everything, but this is really foreign to me.