i missed this, but it's a good tweak.

i support this.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/patent-drug-board-changes-1.5241413

i've said this before: if orwell was actually right, you wouldn't actually know it.

and, the more right he is, the less you'll be able to figure it out.

it was generally understood that a few of the people hanging around were cops. nobody pointed fingers at each other. and, the truth is that we weren't doing anything particularly sketchy, either.

but, i actually think the truth is quite a bit more startling than that.

i actually think i was at parties where 15 out of the 20 people in the room were cops. i think that it was cops that dominated the organizing committee. and, i ultimately think that the point of the whole thing was a sting.

so, it's not a question of finding the cop. most of the activists were/are cops.

why did i think erin was a cop?

because she was an agent provocateur. i caught her trying to incite violence several times, and she once tried to talk me into smashing up somebody's car (i didn't). it was classic, textbook undercover cop shit.

she was also way too old to be a first-year student.

there were other tip-offs. but, the incitement/entrapment is the classic giveaway, and she was about as obvious as could possibly be about it.

ok, so i've got up until the end of the 18th synced and have posted my last correspondence with esa/erin/shelly. i want to clarify a few things before i stop to eat.

although she did make a few dodged passes at me, erin and i did not have a romantic or sexual relationship at all. whereas sarah was polyamorous, or at least saw it as an ideal to attain to, erin was just a lost soul. it's true that i was a little older then, but it's also true that erin was older than sarah was in the relevant time frame. by the time sarah was erin's age in the time i knew erin, she had already had two kids.

erin's language was colourful, and seemed to suggest a deep level of promiscuity, but i'm actually not going to call her a slut, because i don't think most of what she said to me was actually true.

my initial interest in erin was purely musical. she had perfect pitch, was a competent guitarist and songwriter and was also a concert-level pianist. and, she had confidence in herself, too. she was a real musical talent and i regret not being able to do some work with her.

but, she was completely disinterested in me as an artist. in the end, i don't even know if she liked my writing, because i couldn't even get her to listen to anything. whereas i saw erin as a potential collaborator, she seemed unwilling to look past the fact that i wasn't technically a music student. i was studying law when i knew her, and that's what she saw me in the role of. the fact that i may have actually had more music credits than her at the time (it would have been close.) didn't matter; she seemed unwilling to accept that kind of cross-pollination. she seemed to firmly insist on a strict division of labour....

...or at least that's how it seemed, naively, from a distance.

i told you there was a twist, and here it is: it was several months previous, some time in the spring of 2013, that i first became convinced that esa was actually an undercover cop. so was illuminous. and, i suspect the wobblies were, too.

my awareness of this was quite acute, and it strongly affected how i behaved, but i took the opportunities provided to me as they arose.

and, if you go back and look at the situation from this prism - one where she knows she's a cop, and i know she's a cop, but she doesn't know that i know she's a cop - some things may begin to align themselves more rationally.

i've made some progress, but it seems like i'm in for the night, and maybe the weekend. we'll see how i feel tomorrow.

i mentioned that this was going to come off as a periodical, because i launched the appspot site and am mirroring it here. so, the politics document is going to probably be close to 400 pages because it has a dozen essays and as many more short writing assignments in it, whereas the music journal is only going to be around 100 pages, if that.

as an aside, what about these old book reviews? am i ever going to back to these? eventually, it's just that i've been trying to prioritize finishing the music. i know - that sounds like a joke. but it's actually true, and, ranting aside, i insist i've done a lot of work on this, and that it will start to come together soon enough.

i'll concede that i'm doing too many things, but i'm not giving up on any of it, and i know where my priorities are in getting the discography finished first.

the flip side of that is obvious enough: when or if this does get done, expect me to dive into piles of books pretty quickly.

and, yes - i think this is worthwhile. i wouldn't be doing it, otherwise.

listen.

i can be steadfast in my refusal to vote for somebody without hating them. and, i can wish them the best, even as i insist that i don't want them making decisions. i can feel empathy for them, even as i'm just hoping they quit as soon as possible...

actually, i think this is kind of sad.

i don't want to be contrite. i don't want to say it's too little, too late. it's more like the girl that's falling all over herself to appeal to the guy at the party that doesn't know her name.

i've been massively critical, but at, this point, this isn't the right approach; at this point, it's just self-debasing.

in the end, i hope he has the self-respect to step down.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-jagmeet-singh-addresses-turban-head-on-in-new-quebec-ndp-advertisement/

i'm still calling for autopsies on the dead humans, but understanding the mechanism of what's happening is key.

it seems to be more or less equivalent to the tar build-up you get from regular smoking.

and, if you're surprised by this then you're stupid.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/e-cigarette-vaping-lung-damage-1.5270986

the ndp may very well lose every rural seat that they have in this election.

and, i'll say it again: the greens need to have people on the ground ready to pick up those voters.

(don't tell them that may is a minister)

the fact of the matter is that the ndp are resorting to calling people racists because they're embarassed at what happened. it's a face-saving mechanism. but, they're just digging themselves deeper into a hole.

i don't doubt that there's probably a lot of unease about singh's religious beliefs and personal appearance, but to act surprised or shocked by this is just stupid. it was the most predictable thing that's happened in canadian politics in decades. i predicted it immediately upon seeing the headline.

and, i'll expand on the point: in addition to these kinds of issues occurring in eastern canada, the ndp should expect to see declining numbers as a general phenomenon in rural ridings, including in northern ontario as well as in bc. and, i've seen recent polls where they're even running behind the liberals in fucking saskatchewan.

this is a catastrophe for the ndp, and it is absolutely about the leader. but that's not racism, per se.

i probably wouldn't have much of a problem with jagmeet singh if he presented himself more like ujjal dosanjh, or niki haley. it's not the skin colour that bothers me, it's not where he's from and it's not what language he speaks. what bothers me is that he openly displays his religious beliefs in ways that make it clear that they will be a factor in how he governs, and while you might be able to make sense of that in the context of the social gospel, this is something that is broadly inconsistent with where the ndp has stood in the political spectrum since the retirement of tommy douglas. it's not surprising that ndp voters across the country would react poorly to the thought of electing somebody that is going to put his religious values ahead of pretty much everything else. and, frankly, i agree with them.

i pointed out years ago, now, that this would be a disaster for the party if he refused to cut his beard. i was right.

and, the party needs to stop calling people racists for this and get their head around the actual point: left-leaning canadians don't want to vote for religious people.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-racism-new-brunswick-green-party-elizabeth-may-jonathan-richardson-1.5269606

and, i think opposing this for ethical reasons is a red herring.

being a mouse is going to suck, regardless: minimal cognitive abilities (despite advanced emotional abilities), low lifespans and probable eventual death via predation. i mean, if your most likely endpoint is being eaten alive by an owl at 30% of your maximum lifespan, then why is being grown for pancreas cells so terrible?

i mean, you realize that the mouse can probably feel it's own brain being ripped out by the claws, right?

i'm not even arguing that their lives are meaningless, either - this isn't an exercise in absolute nihilism, and i'm not suggesting that we should discard their experiences. what i'm pointing out is that there's nothing really preventing a donor mouse from being happy and well taken care of. in fact, as it would be for a pregnant mother, you'd want to ensure that a mouse that is bred for this reason is well-fed and kept away from environmental harms.

i have a harder time justifying purely experimental research, and largely argue against it. i don't think we should torture them. that's cruel.

but, we're the advanced species, here, and i don't see why we can't do this humanely.

https://theconversation.com/human-animal-hybrids-are-coming-and-could-be-used-to-grow-organs-for-transplant-a-philosopher-weighs-in-121228

so, let's all understand this.

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

well.

are they going to put patents on it?

if it came down to it, i wouldn't feel particularly constrained by any laws restricting my use of chinese gene-editing technology, here in canada - i would consider those laws to be unnecessarily restrictive, and ultimately unjust. sorry.

in the past, i would have expected canada to get this right under a liberal government. but, we're heading towards a dark age, here.

https://theconversation.com/genetic-engineering-and-human-animal-hybrids-how-china-is-leading-a-global-split-in-controversial-research-121473

if we could abort the reprobates, should we?

well, my lumpenproletariat wouldn't be much of a revolutionary force, would it?

i think the better question is: if we could abort the reprobates, would we? and, i'm not sure we'd be able to stop the experiment, which would ironically make us a bunch of reprobates, wouldn't it?

it would be a struggle.

as it is, we actually can't, and we'll never be able to, and that's what the science actually says.

and, i'll reiterate the basic point: the inheritance of personality was, at best, ever a speculative hypothesis. it was never upheld by any actual science.

if you care to look at the actual record, rather than be manipulated by dishonest religious and conservative groups, what you will find is that, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the actual scientific consensus was caution. the period between mendel and watson/crick was one where biology was reaching towards but ultimately grappling with something that it didn't fully understand. mayr's modern evolutionary synthesis came quite a bit later, and still has some unresolved problems around the species concept and the role of selection v the role of drift, so we're still not entirely there yet. and, the recent change in attitudes around the heritability of homosexuality is instructive in getting to the point - a popular consensus, even amongst working scientists, is not science itself. you have to actually do the research.

the politicians were saying one thing, it is true - often with the support of the church and often broadcast over mainstream media. there was a developing popular consensus around the inheritance of personality, precisely because it upheld the existing protestant religious doctrines. further, a specific interpretation of social darwinism was used to justify a specific concept of competition within capitalism. let us not forget that classical liberal economics predates natural selection, and that the influence flowed from the field of economics into the field of biology, and not the other way around.

but, what the scientists were saying the whole time was "hold your horses. let's back this up. these hypotheses are interesting, and may be right, in the end. but, we need to do the actual research, first. we can't jump to these conclusions like this. and, we don't have the data to draw the inferences you're drawing."

it turns out, in the end, that what we've learned by actually studying dna at a molecular level is that genetics code for proteins, which in turn code for your body chemistry. so, your dna defines the chemistry in your body, including how it produces and reacts to hormones, which have some effect on your behaviour. but, dna does not do things like create ancestral memories or control for behaviours, and we are not genetically predetermined in the way that the calvinists and other protestant groups believed we were. these things are determined primarily by the environment, and at least provide for the illusion of free will.

what that means is that these hypotheses were mostly wrong, and you can't abort the reprobates, after all.

but, it isn't contrary to christian teachings, or at least not contrary to the calvinist ones.

the fact is that it was often used by protestants to try and kill off catholics and control the descendants of the slaves and indigenous groups. and, let us remember that slavery itself comes to us via religion, as well, even if many prohibitionists were, in the end, driven by religious conviction.

https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_54-60.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4001825/

this is the ultimate origin of eugenics, right here:

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

https://www.google.com/search?q=Total+Hereditary+Depravity

the fundamental reason that we had nazism and "progressive" eugenics was what weber called the "protestant work ethic".

there's just a lot of lingering ignorance in religious communities about this, and a lot of denial about the fundamental and defining role that religion played in the historical "progressive" movements that mostly existed on the west of the continent.

the real root of the problem lies in calvinism, and it's idea that you can be born without the ability for redemption. i'm actually open to arguments that calvinism isn't even really properly categorized as christianity, because it doesn't believe in forgiveness. but, it's at the root of the problem, here, in it's arguments that you can be born lazy, and can't be reformed.

"racist scientist" is a contradiction in terms.

if you're a racist, you don't believe in science, and if you're a scientist, you don't believe in race.

like, as soon as you mention race, you're doing pseudo-science.

there is a very clear, broad consensus about race in the scientific community: race is not a scientific concept.

"Let's just state for the record: talking about needing 'population control' through ABORTION for the sake of CLIMATE is talking about EUGENICS," - some conservative idiot

no, it isn't. and, the use of caps lock doesn't help the argument.

eugenics is the idea that you can improve the genome through artificial selection, and shouldn't be seen as a blanket negative or a bad word. so, something we've been able to target and almost get rid of, for example, is tay-sachs disease, a debilitating condition with no potential upside. that is eugenics, and we should all support doing it. i understand why conservatives are afraid of this, as it challenges their religious perspectives, but we're walking into a future where gene editing via crispr will provide us with incredible opportunities to revolutionize the genome, and we should enthusiastically embrace this as a way to make us better. i support this, wholeheartedly.

in the past, what we've had is politicians driven by poor understandings of the science of genetics that have speciously done things like tie negative personality traits to base racial characteristics. there was never any science that upheld any of this, and the idea of tying their actions to science was always rooted in ignorance. these politicians were in truth usually religious and usually driven by the speciousness of calvinism and evangelical christianity in general; when they justified their actions using science-y language, it was always shoddy and always just a gloss to push forward their backwards religious convictions, more comparable to a contemporary anti-vaccine activist or anti-gmo activist than any contemporary concept of genetics. hitler himself was a roman catholic, not an atheist.

likewise, the idea that you can eliminate gay people or autistic people has always been pseudo-science. with the latter, it's not something to celebrate: if we could eliminate autism, we should do it, but you can't, and the science has never suggested you could. autism is currently understood as a series of mutations in real-time, not something you can flip in a test-tube. the danger has never existed with the actual science, but always existed with corrupt politicians that want to use pseudo-scientific theories to advance their pre-existing agendas. and, that's the irony here: these religious groups might think they're fighting against science, but they're really just fighting against their own ignorance.

providing women with real reproductive choices is not about artificial selection, although it could be argued that there's a basis of natural selection in undoing the existing systems of patriarchy and dominance. one of the reasons that religion needs to be destroyed is that the patriarchal systems it perpetuates are undoing the necessary role of women as gatekeepers of the genome, which is distorting the effects of natural selection. again: i understand that conservatives think "god" is making choices here, but they're wrong, and should be ignored.

so, this isn't about eugenics, and suggesting that it is is just alarmist demagoguery.

i unabashedly and unashamedly want women in africa to have more access to abortion, and i'm not not ashamed to admit that it's partly because i realize that they need to reduce their fertility rate.

and, if you don't like that then vote republican to stop me from giving it to them.

and, if the democratic leadership won't say it, i will: if you don't believe in rights for women, then stop pretending you're a democrat. vote republican.

there should be a goal in the next democratic administration to ensure that, when they inevitably lose power, the next incoming republican administration does not reverse this policy.

they should be fighting to win this one for keeps.

listen.

i'm not interested in fear mongering and emotional manipulation. i want to look at data. let the republicans be the stupid party.

this is a map that measures where people are being born.

you'll notice something - countries with low birth rates are correlated with countries where women have rights. why is that? because, when given the choice, women tend to prefer to have a child or two, not become baby factories.

so, why do we have these unsustainable birth rates in the developing world and what do we need to do to take them down to the more sustainable rates we see in the developed world?

and, the answer is that we need to fight hard to ensure that women in third world countries have the abilities to make their own choices, by struggling against the systems of religious and patriarchal dominance, by educating them about specific things and by giving them better access to birth control, contraception and abortion.

and, all of the democratic candidates should stand up and say this - or be grilled as to why they don't support women.

this is a debate we need to have, and a debate we need to win, and a debate that the conservatives of the world need to concede their wrongheaded position on.

why do they let this woman publish?

she's a buffoon.

let the conservatives yell and scream, at the end of the day they'll need to explain why they're opposed to basic rights for women, and they're going to eventually lose this debate.

sanders should double down and repeat himself gratuitously - because he's right, and his position is both feminist and populist.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/05/now-this-is-legitimate-graph/

what are my views on restorative v adjudicative processes nowadays? do i think we should have sentencing circles or fire and brimstone judges sending people up the river?

neither.

i think we should replace the process with a system of tort. and, i've already been over that.

this would be a fundamentally restorative approach in scope in that it would focus more on restitution than retribution, but it would retain the function of the judiciary to determine guilt and sentencing. in extreme cases, you'd have to remove people from the population, still, mostly due to the realities of mental illness. but, in most cases, the judge would order the offender to do something for the community and something for the victim, with the dual purposes of undoing whatever harm was done and reintegrating the person into the community.

i do think this is a novel approach to the text.

in an analysis of 1984, nobody expects the spanish inquisition.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/10/christian-imagery-in-george-orwells-1984.html

the "review" was too incompetent to even challenge.

i'll just ask for the judge to do it right.

so, in a situation where there's questions of racial bias, the citizen comittee is maybe a useful propaganda step. maybe that black guy wants some people that look like him to look at the case, and maybe he's too stupid to figure the system out.

but, they add nothing to the legal process, and in my case were just a waste of time.

and, i will reiterate that the statute should be revisited: there should be some process where i can choose to bypass such a thing, and go directly to court.

what the report they produced has - and is intended to have - is propaganda value, because many of these debates are mostly fought in the public arena. you may often have situations where the police are technically correct, but did something morally wrong. that is the purpose of bringing in this "citizen committee".

so, for example, let's say you had a situation where a white cop is accused of roughing up a black man. the cop may not have actually broken the law, but the situation looks bad. so, what you do is get a committee with some black people on it to say the cop didn't break the law. then, the report gets circulated to media, which is where the debate is actually happening.

in my scenario, i actually have a real legal argument because the cop actually really broke the law. i'm not making a moral appeal, and trying to gain concessions by appealing to public opinion. in fact, i don't really give a fuck about what popular opinion is at all. what i care about is the narrow, legalistic interpretation, which the citizen committee was completely incapable of even beginning to understand.

so, by actually having an actual case, i fell through the cracks of a system that is designed to manipulate the media.

when i file the judicial review, the request will be to put aside the citizen committee's analysis as irrelevant because the proper basis of review was correctness. we're not going to argue with them. we're going to just completely ignore them, as though they don't even exist - because, in context, they actually shouldn't. so, we're going to have the judge look directly at the initial report and carry through with the review that the citizen committee was incapable of doing.

and, listen - i told you from the very beginning that the phony report from the phony police department was going to be a waste of time. i told you they were stalling. i told you that there wasn't anything i could do but wait.

so, to suggest i was anything but completely correct would be disingenuous.

what you have to understand is that what they produced is not actually a legal document. these people have no formal legal training, and the exercise has no value in court.

so, i haven't lost a legal battle. i've just had to deal with a wasteful statute that's slowed the process down.

the legal battle will begin in earnest when i launch the appropriate judicial review, and finally get this mess in front of somebody qualified to rule on it.

and, i told you that ten months ago.

i mean, let's have this reality check, here.

the fact that a substantial number of americans - i would think less than a majority, probably - think they have the right to smoke and bbq in their yards at the expense of their neighbours' health is exactly why the rest of the world, including canada, hates america.

do you understand that?

so, fuck your bbq.

and, fuck america, too.

this is instructive, eh?

i mean, you certainly don't think i'm pro-american, do you?

and, if you're going to call me anti-american (or anti-australian, as it may be) for my position on this, that's fine.

i'd volunteer myself as anti-american for a thousand other reasons, anyways.

i can understand a certain level of cluelessness and ignorance about the dangers of second-hand smoke, and the need for people to change their existing patterns of behaviour. we're talking about a substantive change in how people behave and act, here. it's going to take time, education and effort to get people to stop doing this.

but, i can't forgive people that push back after being educated about it, that refuse to learn or that refuse to care.

so, no.

it's not an issue of "property rights".

it's a question of if you have an enough respect for the people around you to avoid doing things that harm, bother or annoy them.

and, if you don't, you're a piece of shit. simple.

stop.

find me the place in the universal declaration of human rights where it talks about the right to smoke.

because i can cite lots of similar documents that talk about the right to fresh air.

i am an anarchist.

i'm not a nihilist.

and, i actually think that most people would agree with me.

living in a residential area should mean

- you don't burn leaves
- you don't burn plastic
- you don't burn garbage
- you don't burn tobacco
- you don't burn marijuana
- you don't burn coal
- you don't burn dead animals

and, in time,

- you don't burn gasoline

if you want to burn things, move to the sticks.

no, really.

if you're living in an urban area, it's really hard to justify burning anything outside at all. it's completely backwards, primitive behaviour.

if you insist on the need to burn things outside, you should move to a barn on the outskirts of town.

if i were her, the immediate thing i'd do is buy a lot of foliage, and essentially try and smoke them out.

if they want to hang out in their yard and smoke, they should get used to giant plumes of sage and leaves going all night.

the basic idea underlying anarchist thought is that your rights end where the rights of others begin.

and, if you don't understand why barbequing and smoking in your backyard is infringing on the rights of others, you're an idiot and a lost cause.

i would support passing more strenuous bylaws that forbid barbequing in residential backyards. if you're going to have a barbeque, you should go to a park or a bar, where you're not bothering your neighbours.

i know it's easy enough to argue that this is some kind of infringement on your freedom, but it isn't. you don't have the right to unnecessarily pollute the air and bother your neighbours. you're just a disgusting, inconsiderate piece of shit that doesn't give a fuck about anybody except yourself, and you should be called out for it and ultimately fined for it by a local government that is insistent on upholding actual, meaningful rights to things like fresh air and an absence of unnecessary noise.

as it is, i would support the woman's law suit. if there wasn't enough evidence before that they're trying to cause a nuisance and bother her, there sure is now.

and, i would support charging each and every person that attends the event with causing a public disturbance and disturbing the peace.

if you disagree with me, i guess we don't want to live in the same sort of society, or have the same kind of concept of what freedom or anarchy means.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5853199/vegan-sues-bbq-neighbours/?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014

there is a history of unwanted sterilization in the united states, often perpetuated by people that called themselves "progressives" (and were in truth usually the worst kind of reactionaries) and that's something that people that call themselves "progressives" have not done enough to take responsibility for and try to atone for.

but, if you have some kind of example of cia agents tracking down brown women in the global south and forcing them into unwanted abortions, i'd like to hear about it.

i mean, that is the issue, here - the tendency of the right to think it's up to the state to make reproductive decisions for women, via patriarchal and religious institutions, regulations, laws, customs and, in some cases, via flat-out rape and intimidation.

it's actually an example of right-wing demagoguery, and something that should be attacked head-on - because at some point this needs to stop. at some point, republicans need to stop reversing this policy.

so, it's easy to argue that sanders walked into a trap like an idiot, but i actually think he's right.

the scare-mongering and alarmism is coming from conservatives on this, who want to frame the issue as one of totalitarian governments seeking out and terminating brown children. that's not reality, and not underlying any sort of actual government policy; if that is your concern, you should be more afraid of elon musk and bill gates than bernie sanders or al gore.

rather, the idea is that if you give women educational opportunities and reproductive autonomy then they will freely choose to reduce the number of children they have, which is something you see across the divide between the developed and undeveloped world.

in countries where women have rights, they tend to prefer to have less children. so, it follows that a way to get the population under control is to give women more rights. and, if conservatives have a problem with that, they need to explain why they're opposed to women's rights.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/05/bernie-sanders-abortion-population-control/

like, how reliant is bell's inequality on the myth of euclidean orthogonality?

ok.

so, it seems like some people are figuring this out.

this is essentially what i'm actually saying:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/498c/57b589b4109cea874e3cd994fa646eba2be4.pdf

but, it doesn't eliminate the frustration of watching some introduce quantum mechanics using linear algebra over euclidean vector spaces.

but, it's true: this is the screwy doublethink business model of modern physics instruction.

they teach you things that are wrong, and force you to do it wrong, even if you can figure it out. they'll tell you you have to do it wrong before you can do it right, like a sick, twisted hazing ritual. and, then they do it over and over again.

so, you need to resign yourself to the fact that they'll teach you a different wrong thing next year, and then undo it the year after.

and, if they just told you how to do it right in the first place, they'd collapse their ponzi scheme: you wouldn't need eight years of physics, you'd need two or three.

"they generalize to hyperbolic vector spaces in the next level course".

oh, you son of a bitch.

(i don't think that's actually true.)

physicists should get this better than the internet seems to suggest they do, too. but, reading through threads full of poorly thought out reasoning is also useful in better articulating my own.

so, what i'm saying is that the vector space should be reflective of reality, which is curved. i'm not talking about "curved vectors". the vectors would be straight, in the curved vector space.

"woah", you say "how can something be straight in a curved space? crazy mathematician."

but, i must interject that you're a bad physicist, because every straight-line you've ever seen in your life has existed in reality, which is a curved spaced. this is not crazy. it's a first principle.

listen: i can empathize, but you need to relent. i went through this, too. they teach you it wrong every year, starting in like grade 11, until you get to the end and realize there isn't even such thing as a straight line. it turns kant and descartes on their respective heads. and, it's enough to make you give up and just fucking play guitar.

hyperbolic geometry isn't just some set of silly escherian drawings. it's the correct way to describe the space that particles move through, and thus necessary to understand in modelling their behaviour. you have to adjust to the point, even if it makes the math almost impossible.

but, you do this: you bring in these awful correcting terms to do basic newtonian mechanics, and you might grit your teeth, but you know you need to take it, like the bad medicine it is.

you need to start doing it in quantum physics, too. you need to discard the childish myth of orthogonality. you need to move completely out of the classical world.

and, to be clear: i'm not talking about co-ordinate systems. that's a relabelling process; it's a triviality.

what i'm talking about is:

1) the curvature of space. we should be able to do linear algebra in a curved vector space, but we have to make sure we're using the right rules, when we do.

2) the stability of space. this is more challenging, as it's going to require constant adjustments, not just lorentz-style multiplication factors. but, we know that space is not a static concept, and we know that these effects should be more powerful at the quantum level than at the relativistic scale.

so, i've decided to watch every video at the stanford youtube site in the order it was uploaded (with minor corrections to ensure series are in order), and the first thing in the list is an introduction to quantum mechanics. he first goes through a review of what was, for me, first year linear algebra (although it may have been a higher level course for non-honours students, or physics students, especially engineering physics students). and, there's an immediate problem that jumps up.

i never took a dedicated course in quantum mechanics like this (i did take a dedicated course in relativity theory), so it's somewhat of a different presentation, and seeing it plopped down on the table like this really exposes the nature of the problem i've been trying to draw attention to all of these years.

it's the geometry of space that's at the heart of these contradictions. he's building the whole thing up over orthogonal vector spaces, when we know damned well from relativity that space is curved (and probably hyperbolic). there's even an axiom of orthogonality, which is ridiculous, in context.

the point i keep trying to draw attention to is that the general field theory may very well come out in the wash if you stop doing relativity in hyperbolic space and quantum physics in euclidean space. so, how do you adjust? well it's actually a job for a mathematician, right?

in theory, these ideas ought to generalize if you just do them right. but, a hilbert space is going to be associative by assumption, and a corresponding vector space in a hyperbolic geometry isn't. so, that right there is going to screw up the math.

i've asked this question here a few times: if you were trying to understand space (which is both expanding and curved) using euclidean geometry (which is fixed and orthogonal) wouldn't you expect your reference frame to see an illusory multitude of non-existent dimensions?

i just have this nagging feeling that this is actually a lot easier than anybody realizes.

so, after recalibrating, i'm finally back on track and want to get most of this done before i stop to eat...

i just like to go out and see concerts and go dancing. really.

if i'm looking for anything when i go out, it's actually a drummer. finding that would be far more satisfying to me than any kind of sex.

well, whatever it is, it's pretty stubborn.

where it's located on my bed is below my knee when i'm lying flat on my stomach, but i actually tend to sleep in the fetal position. so, even if it were physically possible, it still wouldn't make sense to suggest it was from a dream.

and the way i masturbate, when i do masturbate, infrequently as it is (like, a few times a year), is that i end up lying on my back and thinking about being penetrated. i haven't fantasized about sex with a woman in years and years. so, that wouldn't make sense either, even if it wasn't impossible.

so, are soy stains that stubborn?

i've lysoled it pretty thoroughly. it'll have to wait until i do laundry in a few days.

(excluding the night i think i was drugged, of course)

i haven't done a lab test. i guess i might have spilled some soy milk.

but, it sure looks and seems like a semen stain.

and, it really, truly could not have been me.

the simplest and most honest way for me to explain no sex in well over ten years is that i told myself years ago that i wouldn't have sex until after the operation and i've held to it.

i'm not sex starved, in that sense. i largely tend to avoid circumstances where it come up, but i've had several opportunities, and turned them all down because i just didn't feel comfortable in my body.

it's not the easiest thing to explain, but i think there's enough awareness out there that i don't really have to. even in a situation where i'd otherwise want to, i wouldn't, because i couldn't get into it.

as it is, i just want my testicles gone and done with.

i haven't had sex since...i think it was 2008. i'm not sure. i don't even remember.

it was a long time ago.

before i went back on hormones...

i can orgasm. and, while i haven't really masturbated much in a very long time, i do have the odd dream.

so, i'm not trying to tell you i haven't orgasmed in ten years. that would be false.

but, when the orgasm happens, the ejaculation doesn't follow because the testicles cannot produce the sperm due to the testosterone blockers.

now, i suspect if you sat there and milked me like a cow for six hours, you might get a little bit, after the tenth climax. but, i'm 100% sure that it couldn't have been me from a random dream...

i've been taking 100 mg/day of this stuff (which is the maximum recommended dose) for ten years.

i couldn't produce sperm for you if you begged me for it. if you offered me a million dollars. it doesn't matter - there's no way for me to do it.

and, i'm waiting for a call back from my doctor to get my testicles physically taken out.

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

i mean, if i catch him coming down here and jerking off, that's not a landlord/tenant board issue.

i'd be calling the police.

so, this story is getting grosser.

a few minutes ago, i noticed what appears to be some semen on my bed.

now, i need to be clear about this point - i haven't ejaculated since, like, 2011 or something. it's not a question of if i forgot doing it, or if i had a wet dream or something. i have undergone a process of chemical castration - i am incapable of producing semen. it's literally impossible that it was me.

i haven't had anybody else down here, and i'm sure of it.

the only potential suspect is the increasingly creepy loser upstairs.

it's not the first time i've suspected him coming down here when i'm not home, but it wasn't clear to me what the purpose of the visits were. as it is, the idea of him coming in here and jerking off is pretty gross.

i'm going to need to set up a web cam the next time i'm out, i think.

for now, all i can really do is lysol the fuck out of it.

she's right, in theory.

but, what is more likely is that the liberals will go into coalition with the conservatives.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/may-greens-won-t-support-any-minority-government-given-current-climate-plans-1.4576188

ok ok.

i've wasted far too much time.

i need to get back to getting through october, now.

overnights for the next 5-7 days are in the mid to low teens, so i'm probably in for the weekend, and i think it's for the best.

1,2,3.....go.

"i'm a lesbian cow right here, bitch! suck it!"

the link is dead, though.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x1628414

i guess gross subscription revenue at jstor must be down a little, because they appear to have opened up the database to indian bestiality porn.

when even jstor has resorted to porn....

....but, that is the internet, right?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23348707?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

"that cow is going to hell."

i didn't actually watch this, and i'm not going to.

so i don't know if i'm getting trolled or not.

wait; if the cows get virgins, they're lesbians.

and, yes - i'm sure there are cow lesbians. i don't mean humans, i'm being literal. but, this is a contradiction.

maybe if they sent bulls, they'd get virgins.

or, maybe this is all bullshit.

moooove over child soldiers, there's a new cud on the block.

how many virgins do the cows get, though?

it just demonstrates two things. (1) you never could try and figure out motives from so-called suicide bombers, because it was never clear who was actually getting blown up via nintendo-radio and (2) it's just a matter of time before they start using robots, and then what?

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/a-weakened-isil-has-found-a-new-wave-of-bombers-cows-in-explosive-vests

good.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tmx-legal-challenges-1.5269605

these are the end times for the ndp in canada.

as we know them, anyways.

i feel ok.

obviously, this is seismic.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-greens-nb-1.5268498

and, it's about time for him to actually call the fucking election, too.

trudeau's decision to avoid the debates - because he's too chicken shit, obviously - is just the most recent harperism.

and, i don't want to see this happen again.

i would like to call on one of the smaller parties to run on passing a law mandating a set number of debates for the prime minister, specifically, to appear in. this is a question of accountability, a question of accessibility and, in the end, a question of democracy.

the prime minister should not be allowed to evade his critics. he should be forced to be there.

the current reality in canada is that, from the top to the bottom, across all the bureaus and all of the parties, in the media and in the institutions, the oil industry has almost unchallenged hegemony over policy.

there are very few other inputs going into these decisions, as they're being made.

we are a petro-state.

oil is everything.

the big difference in canada is that the banking elites don't actually give a fuck about manufacturing jobs, which is an unintended consequence of keeping our labour politics separate from our bourgeois left. as elsewhere, they're supposed to care about inflation, but, as it is elsewhere, that's a farce.

canada is a resource-exporting economy, which is another way to say that it's a colonial state, ultimately more comparable to brazil or nigeria than it is to japan or germany. so, we've never really belonged in these lists of "advanced economies" - we have a high standard of living, but our economy is, overall, not very advanced. we're still lumberjacks and kayakers; the bankers still make their money from exporting oil and chopping down trees, not from services or technology. that might not ever really change, either.

so, it's true that a lower dollar would help our manufacturing sector, as well as our farming sector, but nobody in power actually cares about them. they're happy to let the dollar come up and down with the price of oil, without paying much heed to the necessities of stimulating consumer demand. and, they're happy to focus on creating extraction-economy jobs.

so, if their inaction leads to an increase in the dollar, and that creates job losses, you're not going to get much action from them. they'll wait until they have an issue that affects investors and property owners, first.

that means that we need stimulus from the fed, too - and due to the open economy, that your stimulus helps our economy, as well.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-04/bank-of-canada-holds-rates-steady-even-amid-global-easing-trend

yeah.

we're probably still going to feel lingering negative effects of the tightening for a while, though.

this is tricky to predict, especially with the end point of stagnation.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-01/fed-move-ends-the-short-era-of-global-quantitative-tightening

so, i think they're ending the tightening, but not bringing back the easing.

that might stop the bleeding....

so, this is a silly article written by a silly conservative, but i may have missed the memo on this.

are they bringing back qe after all?

that would help them avoid a recession and potential market crash before the election, anyways. but, is it too late to avoid the pain from what they already did, though?

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2019/05/29/the-feds-dangerous-new-normal-000902

and, if you're confused, i'll clarify: my position on the fed is the exact opposite of ron paul's.

ron paul wanted to end the fed. i disagree very strongly. what i want is for the left-keynesian perspective on the role of the fed to return to the status quo, which actually means giving them more power.

so long as we have this trickle up economy where all the wealth floats up to the top, i'm in favour of perpetual quantitative easing and willing to blame more or less everything that happens in the economy on weak demand as a result of inadequate government spending. now, you can make arguments about this or that, but at the end of the day it's the government that makes the money, and unless you want to stop that, as some people on the right do, you can't really get around the need to ensure that the state is creating enough paper wealth to go around. chances are that i'm going to argue that your position is rooted in a triviality, and that, even if i agree with you, it doesn't change the need to keep creating money at high rates.

so, the arguments presented by jordan weissman are mostly red herrings. the issue with quantitative easing is really about demand, and the shift in mindset that we all need to have is that the economy simply can't stand on it's own two feet by itself. trump may have been concerned about his own legacy mostly, but he's right on this, even if it's by accident.

nor does quantitative easing have any measurable effect on inflation. that's a relic of an outdated model; there's no evidence for it.

the main point, the main takeaway, is that we need to stop seeing quantitative easing as an emergency policy to bring in as a last resort and start seeing it as the new normal; the next time it's brought back, we should create legislation that keeps it permanently in place. if that requires jettisoning the independence of the fed then i'd support that, too - that's not something i ever really supported, anyways.

of course, you can expect the democrats to try and blame any upcoming recessions on trump, and while you can expect that i'll try to fact check them as best i can, you shouldn't expect them to resist that kind of framing, even if it's completely delusional, in truth.

the problem is actually at the fed, and trump has even come down on the right side of this.

https://slate.com/business/2019/04/trump-fed-quantitative-easing-quantitative-tightening.html

i'll reiterate my position on tariffs.

i'm not ideologically opposed to them. but i know that they're hard and would argue that they need to be used carefully, and only by very smart people, as they tend to create unintended consequences. trump's tariffs have targeted allies like canada and germany, rather than opponents and adversaries like mexico and china, which has not made much sense and may have been counterproductive.

so, yes: the united states should be using some tariffs, and they should be using some tariffs against china and mexico, but trump is the wrong guy to write the policies around their use, and the policies he's promoted have often been flat-out confused.

i'd like to see some actual data that causally ties any actual movement of manufacturing jobs to a set of tariffs that nobody expects to last very long. basic economics is that you're supposed to wait these kinds of things out, which is the actual flaw in trump's negotiating strategy: for all his bluster, he has no actual leverage, in even the medium term, when every other candidate is promising to reverse his strategy, and everybody knows it's a matter of time.

it's also too early to expect to see these kinds of results, even if they turn out to be real.

so, the idea that the decrease in manufacturing is being driven by tariffs is probably a political story more than an economic one. these tariffs are not really doing anything besides driving inflation, and giving people heart attacks.

a more likely explanation for the decrease in manufacturing is the end of quantitative easing, which the trump presidency brought in relatively early, but is probably more a consequence of the party's policies than of trump's. this isn't a trump thing but a republican thing; it's a reaganomics things. this leaves us with a frustrating possibility: that we might have an almost exact replay of the 2008 crisis in front of us, and it might get masked by the president's flair for controversial, if largely irrelevant, manufacturing policies.

that may mean, in the end, that we end up implementing more neo-liberalism as a "solution" to fix an illusory problem, rather than recognizing that the heart of the problem is neo-liberalism, itself.

in the current global order, the united states must print a lot of money, and, if it doesn't, you're going to see things like decreasing industrial output, as demand for goods falls in proportion to the amount of money being destroyed.

so, this recession is long overdue. and the only thing stopping it from happening has been "consumer confidence", which in context just means mass delusion.

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/05/manufacturing-falls-to-lowest-level-of-trump-presidency-tariffs-take-the-blame/

(edit: i thought this article was more recent than june, but it doesn't change my basic points.)

i've bounced around on this, and what makes the most sense.

i've often argued that immigrant religious groups are an unstable coalition for the bourgeois-left parties, that they will eventually grow tired of organizing with people they have little in common with and, in the end, bolt to the right. i don't want to make it an issue about their loyalty; they're just really on the wrong side of the spectrum. it just really doesn't make any sense...

but, if the bourgeois left holds to these groups for long enough, then they will become embedded within their identity and start changing it from the inside. so, you can imagine that, all of a sudden, the liberal nominating committee in whatever riding will start banning queer people from attending, because it's been taken over by muslims. in the end, that's how democracy works...

in a lot of ways, it may come down to whether or not the right can stop being racist. if the right can find a way to convince these groups that they're welcome in their spaces, they will eventually align with their own values. but, if they can't do that, or don't want to, you could see the opposite thing happening: an influx of more moderate voices into the right-wing parties could swing them into more acceptable positions on cultural issues. and, then the spectrum completes it's swap, with white liberals on one side and conservative, religious minorities on the other....

so, i will continue to argue that i'm defending myself from attack by what are increasingly belligerent religious groups that increasingly want to change the laws in canada to ban me from existing. this is what religion is - a system of domination and control.

so, for me, this is self-defense.

but, i'm not an island - i'm reflective of general trends that are unfolding, a microcosm in a broader development.

if you thought the culture wars of the 90s were over, you were wrong. they're just getting started. what's changed is that the lines have blurred, and in some sense the parties are re-aligning around them.

i'm about as hard left as you can define, in terms of 90s culture war alignment. but, your average self-identified hard leftist nowadays is a champion of religious rights, and doesn't really believe in free speech. they talk about muslims more or less the same way that the religious right talks about christians, leaving what was an understood cultural left as a sort of an outlier. it's two different strains of conservatism that are actually fighting it out on the ground.

for right now, the bourgeois left parties are still holding to the cultural left around things like queer rights and abortion, but what i'm drawing attention to is that how long that holds depends on how strongly it embraces religious rights. in the long run, you can't have religious muslims and rabid feminists under the same tent. the policies will clash. it's not sustainable.

if the movement on the bourgeois left is clearly towards the religious right, it's less clear that the bourgeois right is moving in the other direction on cultural issues; as much as trump went hard after union voters, he's been as bad or worse than any other recent republican on the cultural stuff. contrast that with the conservative party in canada, which avoids queer issues but isn't afraid to run pro-choice feminist candidates. if it's easy enough to imagine a republican party that swings left on cultural issues to attract white voters that are fed up with organizing with right-wing immigrants as a corollary rather than a contradiction, there's not any evidence on the ground of it happening - even as the liberal and ndp vote are both caving in canada, and their support for this kind of stuff isn't irrelevant in it happening. i'm not abstractly philosophizing; this is happening right in front of me.

so, it's not clear how this works out. but, it's clear enough that this is at the fulcrum of the future, and more so in canada, as we have larger groups of religious minorities - and a growing atheist youth population for them to clash with.

mass immigration into the country means that we are going to be having large scale, difficult political debates about what canada is, about what canada's future is and about what it means to be a canadian.

most of us don't want these debates, we don't want to mobilize along these lines and we don't want to have to fight battles that we think belong to our grandparents. but, reality is a shitty thing, sometimes.

so, this is a country with an unstable future. it might not survive these internal pressures, and, if it does, it might emerge as something that is not currently recognizable or even predictable. there will be deep conflicts that will tear at the fabric of the existing society and inevitably create new orders that many people living today may not like.

but, so long as i am alive, and so as long as my potential offspring via unaccounted for samples in shady sperm banks are alive, i'm going to do everything i can to make sure that the legal structures here remain rooted in enlightenment values intended to maximize freedom.

and, i will not mince words at those that want a less free and less scientific future, or restrict myself from any legal avenues in standing up for myself, when i'm inevitably attacked by them for it.

there's no time frames around the judicial review until i launch it, but i want to do everything at once. so, soon. soon....

again, the four cases are:

1) the ongoing human rights case against the discriminatory landlord (which i need to call for a status update on, soon).
2) the constitutional rights challenge against the police force for the illegal arrest.
3) the judicial review against the police oversight body's pathetic ruling.
4) i also need to challenge the rcmp on an access to information request, via the provincial fippa.

i'd rather make music.

but, we need some leadership.

so be it.

i'll lead the way towards a better future, free of ignorance and faith and superstition.

if you need that.

follow in my footsteps. together, we'll make the world a better place.

i'm not interested in living in an islamic theocracy.

i will fight back as hard as i can, and reassert the rules of liberal democracy - the rule of law, freedom of speech, the supremacy of science and the reliance on evidence and reason over belief and subjectivity.

i don't want this fight, but it's here, so let's have it - and, let's be more aggressive about doing it the right way, over the proper legal channels. let's beat religion down, and stand up for what's actually right.

ok, no.

i can finish october, first - it should be done already, it won't take long when i sit down and do it.

it's wednesday. i did groceries yesterday, and, if i stay in this weekend, can probably get to the legal stuff by monday.

i probably posted this.

let's review.

this was the document i filed with my review, minus a few screenshots.

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

On the Question of The Arrest

So, let us begin with the basics, and I am not sorry for being matronizing, as none of this should have happened at all.

There are three types of offences in the Canadian Criminal Code:

1) Summary Offences

2) Hybrid Offences

3) Indictable Offences.

The nature of the charge in R v. Storrey, namely aggravated assault, is very important, as it is purely an indictable offence. The nature of the offence is, indeed, what the case is actually about. We can quote directly, just a little bit:

At trial it was contended that the arrest and detention of the appellant contravened the right guaranteed to him by s. 9 of the Charter.  That section provides that: "Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned".  The trial judge then conducted a voir dire to determine whether there had been a breach of s. 9 of the Charter.  Unfortunately, the reasons he gave at the conclusion of the proceeding indicate some confusion on his part.  The appellant was arrested without a warrant on a charge of aggravated assault.  Therefore, the basis for his arrest is to be found within s. 450(1) (now s. 495(1)) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1970, c. C-34.  That section provides that a peace officer may arrest without a warrant a person who has committed an indictable offence or who, on reasonable and probable grounds, he believes has committed or is about to commit an indictable offence.  Nevertheless, the trial judge stated that the arrest was unlawful because it did not comply with the requirements of s. 450(2) of the Criminal Code.  That section was inapplicable in this case.  It only applies to an offence which is either a summary conviction offence, a hybrid offence or an indictable offence listed in s. 483 (now s. 553) of the Code, which list does not include aggravated assault. 

Well, if we’re to make a simple deduction from this case, it would be that the Supreme Court would agree that the arrest would have been unlawful (and the accused would have had his s. 9 rights infringed upon) if the charge was a hybrid offence, like criminal harassment. Oops?

Let us revise the language so that it is applicable to the situation at hand:

On review it was concluded that the arrest and detention of the appellant did not contravene the right guaranteed to her by s. 9 of the Charter.  That section provides that: "Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned".  Unfortunately, the reasons he gave at the conclusion of the review indicate some confusion on his part.  The appellant was arrested without a warrant on a charge of criminal harassment.  Therefore, the basis for her arrest is to be found within s. 450(2) (now s. 495(2)) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1970, c. C-34.  That section provides that a peace officer may not arrest without a warrant a person who has committed a hybrid offence, in any case where he believes on reasonable grounds that the public interest, having regard to all the circumstances may be satisfied without so arresting the person, and he has no reasonable grounds to believe that, if he does not so arrest the person, the person will fail to attend court in order to be dealt with according to law. Nevertheless, the investigator stated that the arrest was lawful because it complied with the requirements of s. 450(1) of the Criminal Code.  That section was inapplicable in this case.  It only applies to an offence which is an indictable offence, which does not include criminal harassment. 

What does this actually mean, though? Well, this is the entirety of 495(2), which is clearly meant to restrict the arresting authority of police, and which has my emphasis added:

Limitation
(2) A peace officer shall not arrest a person without warrant for

(a) an indictable offence mentioned in section 553,

(b) an offence for which the person may be prosecuted by indictment or for which he is punishable on summary conviction, or

(c) an offence punishable on summary conviction,

in any case where

(d) he believes on reasonable grounds that the public interest, having regard to all the circumstances including the need to

(i) establish the identity of the person,

(ii) secure or preserve evidence of or relating to the offence, or

(iii) prevent the continuation or repetition of the offence or the commission of another offence,

may be satisfied without so arresting the person, and

(e) he has no reasonable grounds to believe that, if he does not so arrest the person, the person will fail to attend court in order to be dealt with according to law.

One will note the importance of the logic operator, and. I have some academic background in law, but my actual degree is in mathematics, so I can be pretty oppressive in my enforcement of logic. Any statement in the form (A and B) is true if and only if both A is true and B is true. What that means is that the statute reduces to the necessity of the officer to prove I was a flight risk, which means producing positive evidence to suggest as much, and which was never even contemplated - the discussion is merely of “reasonable grounds”, which is never coherently defined, but clearly assumed to be in the inapplicable context of an indictable offence.

If this discussion comes as a shock to you then I am sorry, but it simply demonstrates your incompetence - and perhaps demonstrates the lawlessness defining standard arrest procedures both in windsor and throughout the country. The reality is that this is what the law actually says about the matter, whatever day-to-day policing actually is.

What that means is that the officer had two lawful choices in how to approach the situation:

1) he could have issued a summons for me to appear in court or

2) if he insisted on arresting me on a hybrid offence, and could not demonstrate a flight risk, he’d need to get a warrant first.

Simply claiming “reasonable grounds” to make an arrest on a hybrid offence is in fact unlawful in this country, whether it happens frequently or not.

Now, I have attempted to find some actual relevant jurisprudence around s. 495(2) and have not found much at canlii; it seems to be that the issue doesn’t come up much, hopefully because Canada is a free society, so people don’t get arrested on bullshit charges or arbitrarily detained very often. My faith in the system is shaken, but not broken; I am going to hope that the lack of precedence around 495(2) is a positive signal that Canada is indeed still a free country, after all.

Nonetheless, I did find the following statement produced in passing within R. v. Boudreault 2018 SCC 58, in an entirely unrelated context, which upholds the logic operator; this emphasis is the court’s:

Assuming (without deciding) that warrantless arrest can properly be used as a means to compel attendance in these circumstances, I note that this can occur only if the peace officer has reasonable grounds to believe that it is in the public interest to arrest the person and that the person will fail to attend court (in accordance with s. 495(2)).  In determining whether arrest is in the public interest, the peace officer must consider whether arrest is necessary to establish the identity of the person, to secure or preserve evidence, or to prevent the continuation of the offence or the commission of future offences. 

There is simply absolutely no indication that anybody involved in the arrest had any understanding of any of this; all evidence suggests that they were relying on a completely inapplicable precedent intended for strictly indictable offences, and perhaps do so on a day-to-day basis. This is actually quite startling.

But, what of these “reasonable grounds”, anyways?

I am rather baffled by what appears in the report. The investigator made the argument that the arrest was based on reasonable grounds that I was communicating with the property owner - which is clear enough, and really not in dispute. The emails exist, and I’ve never denied sending them. So, there are clearly reasonable grounds to conclude that I sent a bunch of emails to the complainant. Ok.

However, that's a gross misinterpretation of the statute. Reasonable grounds, in context, if they were relevant, would not be related to the fact of communication, but to the question as to whether there was any basis for fear. So, the officer would need to demonstrate that he thought there was a convincing reason I might harm this woman, and there clearly was no such thing.

Again, let me point you to the statute:

264 (1) No person shall, without lawful authority and knowing that another person is harassed or recklessly as to whether the other person is harassed, engage in conduct referred to in subsection (2) that causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.

So, the thing that's against the law is to scare somebody - not to communicate with them. As we live in a free society, there's no law in Canada against repeatedly communicating with people when they've asked you not to, nor is the request to ask you to stop in any way meaningful or relevant, if the communication does not reasonably invoke fear. That is essentially the definition of free speech.

Subsection (2) is a list of ways you can scare somebody, but these behaviours are not criminalized, themselves, outside of the context of being scary.

So, repeatedly communicating with somebody with the intent of scaring them is indeed harassment, under the law; repeatedly communicating with somebody with the intent to sue them, or the intent to annoy them, or the intent to rent property from them is not, and hopefully never will be.

Reasonable grounds consequently consists of evidence that i'm scary, not evidence of communication. It is blatantly clear that no such evidence existed; at no point did i communicate any sort of threat of harm, and i have no criminal record. It is rather clear that no such reasonable grounds existed at all. Worse, to suggest that the arrest was justified on reasonable grounds due solely to evidence of unwanted communication is both disingenuous and grossly incompetent; this is exactly why warrants exist, and exactly why the statute demands them before making an arrest of this nature.

So much for “reasonable grounds”. Pfft.

I must insist that the question of the legality of the arrest be revisited.

Are the Officer’s Words Credible?

When a witness makes a demonstrably false claim, their credibility is generally called into question. I have clearly demonstrated that the officer lied about the time of the call, positioning it at 6:08 PM, when the timestamp on the audio file is 3:56 AM. I was also able to pull out an incorrect address in the report on the neighbour. If the officer is going to lie about the time of the call, why would you believe anything else that he says? Further, if the department is going to uphold a lie in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, in an apparent attempt at a cover-up, why would you believe anything else that the department says?

I can resend the file, if it’s been lost. For now, here is a screenshot of the voicemail, indicating the time of reception.

Regarding the Question of Intimidation and Harassment By The Officer

I documented three occurrences of harassing behaviour by the officer, leading up to a series of legally incoherent threats and an eventual illegal arrest and arbitrary detention. However, the report did not make any attempt to put the situation into context. Given the clear illegality of the arrest, and apparent cluelessness of the department in general, I must insist that these accusations be properly investigated.

Regarding the Question of Transphobic Bias

A key part of my complaint was a feeling that the officer was behaving out of a transphobic bias. By referring to me using masculine pronouns, despite my clear indication that I have a female identity, the report perpetuates the bias that I requested be examined, leaving me more concerned about a bias than I was to begin with. While an explanation for this does appear in the report, it hardly seems credible; it is rather quite readily apparent that the insistence on masculine pronouns is intended to insult and degrade me. There is really no other way to explain it.

For the record, I have been on high potency hormones for nearly ten years. I am not at the start of a transition, but functionally through it. My appearance is unambiguously female, and the continued claims to the contrary are not grounded in empirical reasoning but simply in a continued insistence on prejudicial bias. I’m a girl, and it is clear to all who have eyes.

The report really just confirms my suspicion, so I must insist that this question be more thoroughly examined.

Regarding the Question of The Foot in The Door

My recollection of the situation is clearly rather different than the officer’s, but the officer nonetheless clearly acknowledges placing a foot in the door; rather than deny the encounter, he has made up an excuse to justify it, one that doesn’t even contradict the accusation. I will deny that I yelled through the door and rather insist upon my recollection of events, which was that I asked him to move his foot multiple times (reminding him that he did not have a warrant) and was unable to close the door until he left. Why, exactly, would I file a false complaint, in context? Given that the officer’s credibility is in question, his recollection of events should be taken with a grain of salt. I must insist that these claims have been substantiated by the officer’s own statements - that he acknowledges preventing me from closing the door, whatever his excuse, and should be held accountable for it.

Regarding the Question Of The Badge Number

The reasoning utilized in the report that I must have been provided with a badge number because I heard part of it is facile to say the least. Again - what would the purpose of filing a false report of this nature be? If I had the badge number, would I not have provided it? To suggest this is unsubstantiated is disingenuous; the fact that i got a few of the numbers correct actually substantiates the claim pretty strongly. I must insist this be rethought.

About The Phone

I initially responded to the voice message on the morning of Sept 12 (when i woke up), and received the following response at 9:48, and fairly quickly iirc. If the phone was a loaner, that would mean that it was returned to the office and lent back out again between the hours of 4:00 AM and 9:48 AM - a stretch, if you ask me. I must insist that this question be revisited.

and, you will note my clock is military - 09:48 is 9:48 am.

About The Officer’s Understanding Of The Law

My statements were clear - I asked the officer to define what harassment is, under a clear concern that he hadn’t the slightest actual clue, and he specifically referred to the idea of being “annoying”, which is simply objectively false. This was a few weeks after he tried to tell me that nuisance does not exist under the criminal code. While I understand that the officer is neither a lawyer nor an encyclopedia, one would expect that he would at least look up a law before he tries to make an arrest, or get a warrant if he’s not sure, and at least take it to heart when somebody tries to explain something to him, which I did rather clearly. The cliché is that there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity; we are all ignorant of many things, it is a natural condition of existence, but we are only stupid when we refuse to acknowledge our ignorance. This would not have happened had he simply listened to me, and made an attempt to understand me. The report attempts to frame the issue around the officer’s obligations to explain the law to a civilian, which is just a red herring - the issue at hand is not whether I understand the law, but whether the officer does; this is an officer that aggressively pursued a completely ridiculous interpretation of the statute, with no interest in the truth of the matter. Such an officer is a clear and present danger to civilians, as he operates on ideology rather than on evidence or reason. I think I explained this point clearly enough at the top of the page, and would insist that the issue be revisited - does this officer understand the law well enough to continue being an officer? Is he capable of learning it? This is the important question here, not whether he tried his best to explain a statute to somebody with a math degree and three years worth of law credits, and that understands it better than he does.

The Emails

I will attach the emails that I have in a separate file. Nobody ever asked me for them.

Conclusion

While the report is unreasonable, it is also incorrect and it is the correctness basis of review that I wish to draw a stricter attention to.

1) The main issue at hand, in hindsight, is the question of whether the arrest was legal, and this was not dealt with correctly.

2) There was no attempt to determine whether the officer’s behaviour constituted intimidation or harassment.

3) I believe that Count #1 remains unclear and requires further investigation, although the tone of the report further substantiates it.

4) I believe that the report substantiates count #2.

5) I believe that the report substantiates count #3.

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but, it was "reasonable" because it "cited case law".

right.

he could have cited something from law and order, and they wouldn't have been able to sort it out.

it would have been "reasonable" because it "cited case law".

if i had been arrested on a strictly indictable offense, the arrest would have been legal.

but, i was arrested - without a previous record - on a hybrid offense and then held (without cause) before eventually being charged with a summary conviction. those charges were dropped within a few weeks, because there was not any actual evidence of any actual harassment.

in the report, the officer cites case law that is strictly applicable to strictly indictable offenses. the exact case cited by the officer, which is a frequently cited case, points out that the arrest in that case was legal because the charge was strictly indictable, and would not have been if it were a hybrid charge. and, the law itself is quite clear, in context.

the review then claims that the officer's report "cited case law", and this was reasonable. but, the citation was completely wrong, and used in a completely wrong way, in context.

well, they're a civilian review board, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about....they just think it's reasonable to "cite case law". it's a farce.

when an actual judge finally looks at it, she'll set things right.