listen...

i don't know if this guy al-baghdadi ever existed or if he was like big brother to the islamists or what. i mean, i don't know if they killed bin laden when they said they did, or if they even killed him at all.

i do know this: when they push something like this down, it signals they're changing something.

so, the facts on the ground are never clear, it is true, and there's no use in trying to figure out specifics around something that might have only ever existed in fiction. but, when these figureheads die, this thing we call al qaeda - whatever kind of cia-saudi joint operation that it actually is - tends to shift.

it seems like they're broadly abandoning syria to the syrians and the turks and the russians. maybe not all of it. but, mostly.

we'll see what happens, but the experts always said that the best way to beat isis was to pull funding.

so, i've been awake, at least - i've napped briefly a few times, but i've been awake since last night.

and, i've made it up until the end of nov 20, 2013 - not as much as i'd hoped, but a fair amount, nonetheless.

the politics archive is at 225 pages and counting, and will probably be over 300 pages. there's no single component to this.

the music file is at 85 pages and will certainly be over 100. the dominant component is bandcamp links.

the deathtokoalas document is also at 85 pages, and will also be around 100 pages. there's no dominant component here either, but it's a subset of the politics site.

the heat is now on, and the nature of the smell has shifted to burning gas, but the nature of the issue hasn't altered. i appreciate the heat, and the totality of it might be less, but i still need a plumber.

and, whether it's actually marijuana or not (i think it is), i'm more and more convinced that the smoky smell is the same smell that i smelled on him yesterday. it's him, one way or the other. - if it's pot or gas or meth or whatever else.

i haven't eaten since yesterday, either, so it's time to stop and do it. and, we'll see if this is a blip or if i'm going into the manic phase. i want some very long days, right now. if i can stay straight edge for a bit, hopefully i can have a long november in terms of being awake 22 hours a day for the whole month. i'm tired of these sleepy days...

so, eggs it is. let's get cracking...

remember this?

what happened?

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/11/however-unexpectedly-strong-opposition.html

so i'm through 41 of the 70 html files. there's one more for the 3rd, and one for the 19th, but the remaining 27 run from the 27th to the 29th. so, i can put that aside for a bit.

i've already mostly cleaned up the actual music production part. that's why it took so long to build the master. and, there are dozens of uploads through mid-november, too, from 1996-2000.

the next thing is to rearrange the email communication i had with sennheiser over the 3rd-8th, roughly, which is actually the bulk of the document, because i just copied over all the forwards and stuff. i initially arranged this in the form of a conversation by condensing a dozen emails into a single exchange, but i'm going to replace this with the same kind of emails i had previously produced, as i've moved to a more detailed format.

that might take a bit, but it should be pretty fast after that.

so, he wasn't here long.

the shower issue was indeed with the handle, and it appears to have just needed to be tightened. the handle wasn't turning the actual faucet anymore. i could have done that myself, and probably would have if it weren't for the broader situation and the fact that i knew he was coming down anyways; if i had broken it, i wouldn't have had time to learn how to fix it.

upon looking at the cleanout, he seemed to realize that the issue was real, but he didn't commit to actually doing anything about it. he seemed more interested in taking pictures.

but, perhaps more instructive was that i learned that he smelled exactly like the gas i was trying to keep out of the unit. as soon as he opened the door, there was a huge whiff of it, and he stunk the place up quite a bit just by being down here.

when i got a little bit closer to him, i could put the complex smell together a little bit better - it's a combination of third-hand smoke, gasoline and rotten eggs, either from the sewer or just from farting. the gasoline was perhaps diesel-ish, which makes me wonder what he's smoking. but, if i had any previous questions about his habits, they've been cleared up - you could definitely smell it on him, enough that it actually got me coughing. i guess the other option is meth, but i couldn't identify the smell of crystal meth on a user's clothes, because i've never actually been near it (or at least not on purpose). i mean, what does an elephant smell like? you'd have to have experience with elephants, or you just wouldn't know - and, if you're like me, you just don't have that in your odour database.

so, while i'm not convinced that i'm any closer to an answer, i did learn something - either he lives in the smell without noticing it, or he's actually the cause of it, himself, through some combination of his own habits. if it's the latter, there might not be a solution to this. and, it's kind of what i was worried about.

he's a white male in his mid 40s or very early 50s with a very scottish name. i doubt it's what he's eating.

i guess if he hires a plumber, we'll go from there. otherwise, we'll talk this out in court. but, i need to think this through a little more carefully now that i realize this.

i got some fruit after he left, took a shower and passed out for a few more hours, from about 14:00-19:00. there's the remnants of that hurricane coming through, but i dunno, really. i know that i'm going to stop myself from making eggs until i can get through most of the rebuild. so, i'm keen on being focused tonight, anyways.

i fell asleep at like 20:30 and have been having difficulty staying awake since this morning.

i'm flustered and agitated and not likely to be useful this weekend at all - i'm going to sleep for days, and i know it.

*shrug*.

he might not take my rent check, which will just make it that much easier to get to toronto to file the appeal. and, i need to make a number of calls on monday morning. there should be an order on the request for the police to reveal the defendant's identity, by now.

the water to the shower appears to have been cut this morning. that's a serious offence, in ontario - you simply can't do that. he's doing an "inspection" this morning, and we'll see how he reacts.

i insist on all communication being in writing at this point, so i won't be verbally communicating with him other than to ask him to put it in writing. i will, however, be recording what he says to me, and hoping he fucks up badly.

so, am i awake? i'm not sure it matters, right now.

the legal system in ontario really needs serious reform from the bottom up.

i'm learning that.

these enforcement bodies that they've set up are awful - they think they're a part of the judicial system, and they're not.

so, i slept in a little, got out around 10:00 and filed a little after noon, after some running around. i picked up a thermometer on the way home - and it has at least warmed up here, that's a positive - so we'll see what the temperature falls off at. it's coming in right now at 21, but it feels a good five-six degrees warmer than it was last night. that's fine, the approach worked; he needs to keep it up, though.

i was home around 14:00, ate some eggs, took a shower, checked my email and came to the stark realization that the landlord does not understand that he needs to file to the board to evict me. he thinks his n12 is sufficient, and he has some kind of authority in the matter. this is not a potential problem that i'm going to let linger; i'm going to get the enforcement unit on his ass asap, and throw him in jail if required. so, i told him that, and he just continued to act as though the legal steps were not required.

so, i called the unit, and...this unit doesn't seem to actually take complaints. it's kind of a joke. i've called them before, and they think they have the power of adjudication. they won't file reports unless you have a "smoking gun", which is not how any comparable body is supposed to act. they're supposed to gather evidence, do an investigation and let the judge figure it out. the cops aren't supposed to be a part of the legal system, they're not supposed to have discretion like that - they're not trained to. it's not their job. what they're supposed to do is take complaints, lay the facts down on the table and diffuse scenarios before they occur.

what they're telling me is that i have to wait for him to actually try to evict me illegally before they'll even call him at all, or that he has to explicitly make a threat. this is actually wrong - most judges can pass a fourth grade reading comprehension exam, and put together the meaning of his statements. he doesn't need to be explicit to be convicted of anything. it's enough to be implicit. this is why we have courts.....

i mean, it's the irony of it, right?

as it is, do i think i could convict the guy at this point? yes, probably. but, that's not the intent. what i need is for somebody to call him and explain to him that he has no power of eviction. i don't want him to try to forcibly evict me and go to jail for it, i want to prevent him from trying to forcibly evict me. it says on their website that that's what this unit is supposed to do, upon receiving complaints. and, that's what cops are supposed to do, in general. they're not supposed to convict people over the phone. if the situation festers, i'll have to call the windsor police instead, and get them to do it - and if i do that, he'll be facing a t2, too. and, at the end of the day, if he tries to break in here, i'll have to treat him as a trespasser and defend myself, as is my right to do. this unit is supposed to exist to stop things like this from happening.....

i can keep trolling him, though, in an attempt to get him to say the wrong thing. i'll have to record the conversation, tomorrow. all i actually wanted was for the cops to call him to warn him that he'll end up in jail if he tries it, but if i can get him on tape, then i can press charges, instead. again: not what i want, not the most elegant solution, but if this is how the stupid system wants to stupidly organize itself...

i could in theory bring it to a justice of the peace, and i do think i'd have enough evidence as it is, but i'm not there, yet.

for now, i'm ready to get back to work for the night, and let's hope it's productive, at least.

but, i'm bracing for a physical confrontation at new year's - because i'm not going anywhere without a court order, and i'll stand my ground if he tries anything stupid.

if he hadn't sent me the eviction notice, i would have filed on the 31st with a request for maintenance. i wouldn't have asked for a rent rebate - i would have just demanded he fix the plumbing.

but, he played his cards too early and got burnt; it's a costly mistake.

you can't expect me to feel badly for him - he's trying to evict me because i'm demanding he fix the plumbing. i can't have mercy, here. that woulds be irrational.

ok.

so, that's done. let's see how much of nov 2 that i can get done with before i file this morning.

we'll see how long it takes for him to figure out how to file this. but, if he files today, we could end up doing this on the same day. if he waits, the tribunal will need to separate the issues.

i understand that it's hard to fight a personal eviction, even in a situation that is as bullshit as this. remember - i took the position last time that the ruling was flawed, but decided to drop it because i wanted to leave, anyways. i decided that the smoke in that unit was too powerful, that i needed out. i think i would have won on appeal.

given that he lives upstairs, he's going to have a more difficult argument to make to the tribunal, and i'm going to be more aggressive in pushing the statutory exceptions this time - something i didn't do enough of last time. but, i'm still at a strong disadvantage.

yet, if i win my case for $3500, and he wins his, he'll still need to pay me out $750 on top of the $3500, and give me back last month's rent, too. so, that's $5000, added up.

i'm such an anarchist, aren't i? fuck the landlord. *thunder crack*. muahahahahahahaha...

so, i want to get my case filed asap, and hope it creates enough of a delay in his own reaction that the cases get scheduled at least a week apart.

so, the claim is $3600. i can't e-file because this street is listed incorrectly in the canada post database, which is frustrating, but whatever. i'll need to do it in the morning.

*shrug*.

all i wanted was a plumber.

i'm not doing up a separate t2 for the heat, it's just an addendum to the t6.

and, i think the heat just turned on. finally. maybe we'll get some rationality in the end, after all.

so, the official response to my request for a plumber is an eviction notice, which is an intimidation attempt and subject to legal censure.

the change of plans for the night is that i'll have to do the write up to file for tomorrow morning....

the wild card here is that i'm hoping to get into subsidized housing, and if i can get a plumber in here sooner than later then it might make sense to drag him through a divisional court appeal, as i'm siphoning out a rent reduction via not paying rent.

i didn't want a legal battle, i wanted the plumbing fixed and the heat turned on. now, he's going to get ordered to pay me $3000-5000 in rent overpayment. this was the single dumbest thing he could have possibly done.

so be it.

so, when i supported trump's withdrawal, i didn't mean a half-assed withdrawal or a redeployment to protect the oil, although nobody should be surprised by this, as it is more or less what he said from the start.

shifting from "protect the kurds" to "protect the oil" just makes the existing illegal occupation that much more illegal of an occupation. they've just dropped the pretext.

so, i would call on the president to keep his promise and uphold his mandate to end the war and withdraw all of his troops from syria.

i would also call on the united states congress to pass a carbon transition plan that makes this kind of nonsense a thing of the past.

actually, she already appears to have a title of "special advisor to the prime minister". which means what, exactly?

between mclellan, carr, murray, wilkinson, sajjan and qualtrough the west seems covered, to me.

seems like a tempest in a teacup.

and, if they have to do something, the best thing to do is to appoint anne mclellan somewhere.

the west a made a choice to be in opposition.

let them live with it.

actually, i think the liberals should make it a point to exclude alberta and saskatchewan from cabinet, as a consequence of their voting choices.

alberta doesn't deserve a consolation prize, here - they voted their cabinet ministers out and should have to deal with it. and, saskatchewan just voted out ralph. what a bunch of idiots.

the west can be and should be represented via the liberals in british columbia and manitoba.

maybe they'll make a better choice, next time.

i've known people that actually smoke three grams, per average, every day.

at the height of it, they can barely tie their own shoes. i had one friend that got addicted to smoking up and jerking off.

and, there's a pattern - after a year or two, they end up born-again christians or yoga instructors or something. they go totally straight edge; they don't touch the stuff.

people will tell me things like "but, our market surveys suggested that people smoke, on average, three grams a day".

we just went over this with the bradley effect.

i think it's a pretty sad reflection of society, but i think everybody knows it's true - if you call up people on a saturday night and get them to answer your survey, they're probably going to exaggerate the amount of pot they've smoked. they don't want you to think they're a prude, or a loser, or something. as they answer your survey on a saturday night...

so, those surveys are of limited value due to the presence of an obvious bias: nobody wants to admit they don't smoke pot at all, and pretty much everybody is going to exaggerate the amount they've smoked in the past. it's sad, but it's true.

the actual sales data is far more instructive, and nobody should be surprised about the disconnect.

i ended up shivering in the blankets all afternoon before finally getting up around 15:00 and taking a good three hour shower.

did it help?

when i was in there, yes, but it didn't warm the apartment up much.

i've sent him a note reminding him of what the law says, so he can't say he got the case unexpectedly. but, the heat has not turned on. so, what option do i have but to sue?

why am i constantly surrounded by these irresponsible assholes and hopeless, lawless idiots? the law is crystal clear. this shouldn't be necessary - he should just fucking do it.

he still has a week to surprise me, but i'm not counting on it.

i slept a lot this week, when i wanted to be working. what can i do? i'm going to get up soon, make some eggs (hopefully that helps a little) and try to get to work.

but, i'm still cold.

so, i might have to take another hot shower...

yeah, if you look at the way the government approached this, the model they used was tobacco. 'cause you smoke both of them, i guess.

but, the way most people use it isn't even comparable to beer. it's more like hard liquor. smoking a joint after work isn't like having a beer, it's like having four beers - or taking a few shots.

people are going to argue that it didn't cut into the black market, and i don't have any data to argue for that one way or the other, but, based on what i saw, it was obvious that the government missed the mark on what to expect.

if you set up a system that expects people to buy it daily in large quantities and it turns out they but it monthly, or biyearly, and usually in small quantities, then, yeah, you should expect to see some major losses.

you basically can't exist in day-to-day life as a pothead; even if you binge, you have to back off fairly frequently. the major users are all kids (that can't buy legally anyways.), unemployed/disabled people or people working in illegal or unusual industries (from prostitution to sound art).

there should be an across the board re-evaluation that tries to fit the data to vodka instead of to tobacco.

https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/cannabis-market-proving-costly-for-province-no-sign-of-turning-a-profit

well, that was a lot of sleep today - another 7-8 hours. i wanted to be productive this week, but am just shutting down and falling asleep in the cold weather. as mentioned, i'm tired of this guy's negligence and am sick of chasing him around to get him to follow the law. right now, it looks like i'm filing for an order to maintain the heat about 20 degrees, on the first.

i'm still woozy, but i think i'm at least awake.

so, let's see if i can get through the next batch of stuff. it's about 15 more html files, and then it should pick up.

it was another early crash last night - around 21:00 - after some questionable, if mild, odours from somewhere.

i was up around 2:00 and have made it through the first day of november, which was a lot of html files, and one of the more time consuming tasks.

i'm stopping to eat and making some coffee, but i think i'm destined for a more healthy nap afterwards.

no. stop.

if you're not religious, then the matter of free will doesn't matter, because there's not a moral question attached to it. maybe it's biology, maybe it's not. who cares?

it only matters if you're religious, and the religion is supposed to be about free will.

so, if the purpose of pretending that we don't have a choice is to appease religious idiots, it's just a pointless contradiction, which is probably why this approach doesn't actually work very well - if they were to actually accept the premise, they'd have to abandon their religious principles in the first place, so why not just tell them to discard their religious beliefs and be done with it?

to tell me i don't have a choice is preposterous, and fuck you for trying to do it.

i mean, isn't the whole basis of the religion supposed to be that i can reject god or not?

so, i reject god. easy.

moving on...

my question is this: are you claiming that i can't decide to be queer?

really?

just watch me.

but, what if i told you that i consciously decided to be queer, and there's nothing you can do to change my mind, and i don't care if you like it or not?

are you going to claim that's impossible?

like, what's your counterargument, if i take that position, and am convinced of it?

i'm actually not giving trump credit for lifting the sanctions on turkey, because he was a fucking idiot for putting them down in the first place.

i mean, if you want to talk about playing into putin's hands...

alright, i'm alert, and i'm posting.

no, actually, i'm going to double down on the point: there is no green solution to air travel. nothing has been "debunked". most of us will simply need to stop doing it.

the "solutions" being floated around amount to glorified helicopters, that you could use as short-term air shuttles rather than as passenger jets. ok. the problem that can't be solved is the amount of energy required for lift; if you want to solve that by creating thousands of lightweight two-seater aircrafts (which can't even take basic luggage), which would require thousands of pilots, and thousands of tonnes of plastic, i might have to concede on the engineering as a triviality, but i'll tell you you're delusional in practice. that's not debunking anything, it's just demonstrating the point - if that's the best you can do, there's no future in it.

so, if you want to put this in the list of things that you think technology will solve, that's fine, but you need to line-up with the carbon capture people and the "markets will save us" fundamentalists. but, this is worse than that - because it's actually putting faith in technology and markets to solve something that science is pretty clear can't be solved. the faith-in-technology optimists are telling us the battery technology might be here by 2050. i mean, c'mon.

frankly, i don't exactly know what the pushback even is. wouldn't you rather stay on the ground and take a train, anyways?

welcome to hell, alberta.

if anything, the retribution is overdue.

there's a fire burning in the west?

really?

you're that fucking awful?

let the western bastards burn in their own filth.

it's michigan that i'm more excited about, because i really only smoke at concerts.

i bought a few grams when i was in toronto in april. i think it was 3.5.

i have otherwise not bought any legal pot in canada.

as mentioned, they're finally opening a store in windsor on november 1st. i'm sure i'll be there eventually, but i anticipate infrequent small purchases. i really don't expect to be in there more than a few times a year.

yeah, that was the longest sober sleep in months. what did i smell yesterday afternoon? it smelled mildly like pot, but i didn't state it as such because if it was then it wasn't a strain i know. it smelled more chemically. and, it just knocked me out for twelve hours.

i prefer to buy high potency, but i then take it in very small doses. i can get 6-8 rolls out of a joint, and those little pinners will do me for like six hours at a time. that was when i bought twice a year at most - something i haven't done since christmas, 2017. there was no headcave in july, 2018 and no headcave in christmas, 2018 and no headcave in july, 2019, either. it didn't even cross my mind this summer.

we'll see how i feel at christmas, but i'm not planning on it. more likely is a pre-roll near the solstice, if the store is still open.

i'm still groggy, but let's hope i'm awake.

i'm not going to pretend that the air quality is as bad here as it was in the other place, because it isn't. it's an improvement.

so, i'm more frustrated and annoyed by getting knocked out than angry.

i've heard something or other upstairs, but it might be the furnace. the unit has been officially empty for more than ten days, now. i dunno....

let's just hope i can rebound quickly, and let's hope it doesn't pick up and doesn't become a recurring problem. because that's all you're going to get out of drugging me - it's just going to make me really tired, and less productive.

and grumpy about it.

the truth is that i just didn't really get started today.

i had to get my recycle out this afternoon, not long after my last post. i spent a while cleaning, and then sat down to keep typing at about 15:00. i smelled something coming in from outside, and it knocked me out until around 19:00, when i got up to eat. i had to wait for my sheets to finish in the laundry before i could take a shower, so i'd have something to get out into. i took my second shower today when it was done, and my load of towels just finished and needs to be moved to the dryer.

the heat is at least on, finally. so, it's not as cold in here.

but, now i'm sleepy again...

i wanted to do a longer, more formal and more structured reaction to the election, but i found myself too tired to be useful this afternoon, and just slept it off, instead. at this point, i feel like i got the ideas i want to get off across, and don't really feel like doing it anymore.

i'm going to try to get a good start on the rebuild overnight, so long as i'm able to stay awake, which i'm not confident about.

what the liberals need to do is define an actual ballot question - a reason for people to put down the bong and go vote - and then call an election as soon as possible.

if there was any other reason to vote yesterday besides the fact that it had been four years since the last time, they would have gotten enough people out for the majority.

quebec was ahead of the curve on this.

the rest of the country has to stop being politically correct about it and start asking these questions. this is a valid, real concern: do we want a person of faith holding the balance of power in this country?

i don't.

what do i think about the results of the election, as a canadian rather than a mathematician?

this isn't the worst case scenario - but it's close to it, and more or less exactly what i was trying to avoid. the ndp lost 2 of it's three seats here (which wasn't projected by anybody), but kept the one i'm in. the liberals won the seat next to me, and the conservatives won the seat below me. i was hoping the liberals could take this seat, but they lost to an ndp candidate that is now more useless than he ever was.

walking around the riding yesterday, it was clear enough where the class divisions exist. i didn't see any signs on my street, or even really in my little area. but, the liberal signs were lined up and down the single homes, while the ndp signs were lined up on the row houses. in this particular race, this is actually backwards - brian masse was the more bourgeois candidate, with more conservative values and with less of a history of doing real activism, on top of less of a history of actually governing. unlike her, he's really demonstrated little interest in the actual well-being of the actual people that live in this riding, which is one of the least wealthy in the country. as mentioned: sandra pupatello was clearly the better candidate, on any potential meaningful metric. but, those party affiliations can sometimes die hard, i guess, leading people to make decisions that are simply not supported by the evidence. in an election where the area rejected the ndp, this riding bucked the trend, held to friendship over logic and made the wrong choice. *shrug*.

but, i got out and voted because i was hoping to prevent a minority with this specific configuration of power and i got more or less what i was trying to stop.

it's not as bad as it could be because the ndp don't really have any meaningful leverage. and, let us all dispel with the ridiculous notion that the ndp - who just lost half their caucus, and are led by a thirty-something year old with no executive experience at all - are going to actually play any role in governing over the next four years. they're not. if you thought that electing the ndp would hold the liberals accountable, that they'd threaten the liberals with an early election if they didn't stop the pipeline, then you've got this backwards - the liberals will be ordering the ndp to vote for the budget, or else. the ndp will not want an election; next time could be even worse.

but, that doesn't change the fact that we now have a dangerous religious extremist holding the balance of power, a man who has no meaningful life experiences to draw upon, and who interprets the world through a filter of faith and belief rather than through evidence or logic. that puts the country on a dangerous path towards backwardsness and ignorance. the liberals may find him easy to manipulate, but manipulating him means playing into his perceptions, which is going to bring out the worst elements and instincts in the liberal party. if my intent was to vote for the secular left as best as i possibly could, to try and block the increasing influence of religion in government in the most effective way available to me, the existing configuration of power is just about as bad as i could imagine it. singh & trudeau aren't going to see eye-to-eye on much of anything else - this is going to be a government that is oriented towards faith as a governing principle, due to the fact that it's what's on the actual table.

i would plead with the liberals to resist this, to put reason over passion in their deliberations with the government, and to not be afraid to go back to the polls.

the liberals are at a crossroads here. they are the country's (indeed, western culture's) historical secular political movement, but they've been toying with moving away from that for quite a long time, now. unfortunately, i'm not sure that they realize the importance of their secular history in terms of their actual existence, or in defining the separation of the new democrat and liberal political traditions, anymore. and, powerful people in the liberal party even seem keen to jettison liberalism in favour of "progressivism" - an error that would decimate the party forever.

but, here we have it in front of us, in the starkest terms possible: it is going to be the task of the liberal party over the course of this minority parliament to resolve it's identity crisis. will it re-embrace it's history as a secular party, or will it align with the religious left in an attempt to redefine itself as an extension of the "progressive" movement?

my vote next time around may very well depend on the answer to this.

but, let's understand what happened.

in the east, the liberals were only down by amounts proportional to turnout, and it didn't hurt them because their opponents were down, too. but, the ndp were nearly obliterated as a consequence of their rejection of secularism - even losing parts of their base to the conservatives. what is the obvious lesson for the liberals, here? is the religious left a path to victory in canada?

in the west, they lost large amounts of support as the price of not being the conservative party. if the answer to holding support in the west is being the conservative party, how sustainable is it for the liberals to use that as a path to hold power?

if turnout had not decreased, they would have probably won seats in ontario and not lost as many in quebec. and, how do you maintain turnout in canada? the answer is by appealing to the secular left, and getting serious about policies that get us out to vote - the policies that were abandoned in 2015.

if the liberals interpret this as a need to move right, that's a shot in the foot. and, if they get lost in a faith-based coalition with the christian left, they'll end up destroying their own brand.

i would have had - excuse the language - faith in the old liberal party to figure this out right.

but, i half expect the younger trudeau to choose passion over reason.

we know he's his mother's, at least.

so, i argued the conservatives were going to get spanked in ontario because they were way down there from 2015.

and, they did lose quite a few suburban and exurban seats. do they have any left?

but, they were only down a little rather than a lot, and they seem to have gotten an assist by rural ndp voters that helped them make up for the losses.

so, their numbers seem flat, but they're actually inflated - they will likely lose some of those seats pretty fast, while there's less evidence that they'll be competitive in the 905 again any time soon.

i was expecting those ndp votes to swing green, and maybe they would have if ms. may prioritized these areas a little more strongly.

i was tired last night, i'd been up since before sunrise and had done a lot of walking, so let's try to get this across again.

i got the west almost perfect - i claimed ndp-15, liberals-15, greens-4, conservatives-rest. if jwr joins the greens, i almost nailed it.

i argued the models were overselling the bloc, who would get closer to 30 than 40. they got 32. i argued that they'd be shut out of montreal; they were. i claimed the liberals were being lowballed and they would win the province with about 40 seats; they ended up with 35. i argued that the conservatives would get 13 seats in the east (including quebec); they got 14.

i argued that the ndp were experiencing a bradley effect in the polling and would win roughly 5 seats east of winnipeg, all in ontario; they got 8, 6 in ontario. i pointed out the possibility of the greens causing chaos in the maritimes, and they did in fact score an unexpected upset win. i had the liberals at 27 seats in the maritimes; they got 26.

i argued that the liberals would sweep toronto and ottawa and pick up seats in the 905 as well as in smaller urban centres like windsor, and they did.

but, i argued that the conservatives would experience a massive vote split in rural ontario due to everybody moving to the greens, and that did not happen - and that is where i was substantively wrong, and what cost me my prediction. but, i should make the point clearer - it's less that i was wrong and more that the polling was wrong. i can only rely on the data, which had the greens in double digits in rural ontario; that simply didn't happen. if the polling had the greens where they ended up, i would have fallen in line with predictions of a liberal minority.

the thing is that it made sense to me to have everybody move to the greens - racist new democrats (and i don't like singh, but for different reasons than them), scared conservative property owners & pissed off liberals, alike. it was a perfect storm. and the numbers looked like 2000 - i will defend the argument.

but, it didn't happen - the greens got 6% when the polling had them at 16%. so, blame them...

that said, i acknowledged that it seemed like a stretch; i saw the data, but realized it was kind of unusual, too. so, i corrected myself - i claimed the following numbers in ontario were more likely, roughly, and gave myself some room for error on top of it:

liberals - 95
conservatives - 21
ndp - 5

but, i'm still off. why?

i still overshot the effect.

i was looking very carefully at the polling, which had the liberals roughly flat (they finished down about 3 points, which is roughly flat), the conservatives down by 8-10 points (they finished down about 3, which is actually roughly flat), the ndp roughly flat (they were. literally.) and the greens up by like 10-12 points (they finished up by around 3). so, in working this through my bullshit detector, i reasoned that, even if the greens only took 5% instead of 10% from the conservatives, it would still be a good bite, so long as it was localized in rural ridings  - and still enough to let the liberals squeeze through, so long as they polled roughly flat. so, i was essentially arguing that the greens and conservatives would split the vote, and let the liberals up the middle; if it was really bad, it could wipe the conservatives out, but if it was a more moderate split, it would just knock them down on their ass - and leave them with 20+ seats.

but, it just evaporated entirely; it didn't happen at all. the greens were up by a few points, but it didn't pool anywhere, and they appear to have had little effect, whatsoever.

what did happen in the rural areas was a movement from the ndp to the conservatives, which allowed them to make up for their losses in the 905 by stealing a few seats from the liberals and the ndp that they may have a hard time keeping in the long run.

if the greens ever get their break in ontario, my projection for this election may be prophetic - it's what would happen if the greens were to actually get that kind of bump. the results in the east are instructive. and, the polling presented the signal, too. but, it didn't happen this time...

what i actually should have done, the error i actually made, was that i should have given myself a larger error bar - i should have talked about 30 seats instead of 15.

i'm going to make a series of posts before i move on.

i'm sluggish; it's cold in here. at this point, i actually want the temperature to fall so i can turn the heat on. i get tired and unproductive when it gets cold....

but, once i find a way to get the temperature up enough in here that i have enough blood flow to my brain that i can think, we're going to do a detailed analysis this morning and then put this aside.

i do not expect to leave this basement again until at least oct 31st and i want something concrete done by then.

the liberals could get over 160 when the smoke clears, but i'm conceding a minority. what happened?

i had the numbers for the ndp and liberals and bloc pretty close, and my seat counts are pretty good everywhere except ontario, although i don't think i overexaggerated the ontario numbers by more than the models underexaggerated them; i made the right correction but overcompensated on the greens splitting the rural vote, which didn't happen. the bradley effect seemed to be a real thing. it seems like i got the 905 right, but we'll need to wait. i mentioned that if i got something wrong, it would be on the greens not splitting the vote, so it's not like i'm that surprised, but i argued it shouldn't affect the outcome - and was wrong on that point.

i more got nailed on the crumbs.

so, i had the ndp at 20 and the bloc at 30; actual numbers were 23 or 24 and 32. that's 5 or 6 seats i had given the liberals. i had the conservatives at 13 in the east and they got 14; i'm going to be off by a handful out west, too.

these are minor errors, but they made my big error - the greens running low in ontario - matter when i argued it shouldn't.

so, my number was 195, and i pointed out that i might be off by about 15 in ontario. in fact, i was off by about that, then missed a number of seats that the conservatives unexpectedly picked up due to ndp support switching to the conservatives, including in kenora and essex. that was something i didn't factor in - that the conservatives may also benefit from low ndp support.

so, i was wrong about the greens splitting the vote, but anticipated it; i was right about the liberals benefiting from weak ndp support, but i missed anticipating the conservatives also benefiting from weak ndp support. final numbers are not in, but if i lowballed the conservatives by a few points, it's because i had the ndp higher than they actually got. that cost me another few seats in ontario.

i'm sleepy. we'll do this better after i take a nap.

but, of all the claims i made, i got most of them right. and, i think i beat the models, and that my criticisms of the models were correct, even if i went too far, and i didn't always provide a better proposal; i was right to point out they were wrong, but my corrections had problems of their own.

they called the election on the popular vote falling, and i understand why they did that.

but, i'm not at all convinced.

they're barbarians, you expect that kind of shit.

don't say we didn't arm the kurds.

yeah, but are those american potatoes, though?

you know, i've noticed this before - whenever my computer gets into a crash/reboot cycle, the thing they go after is adblock.

that seems to be the thing the cia is most concerned about - that i watch the fucking ads.

listen...

i have no fucking interest at all in the ads. there is a 0% possibility that i'm going to even look at them, except maybe to laugh at them. the only way i'm going to ever click on an ad is by accident.

you can't brainwash me. i'll close me eyes. i'll scream "la-la-la". i just won't watch it.

and, the more i see an advertisement for your product, the less likely i am to want to buy it. like, the act of seeing an ad is enough. i don't care what the ad's about - it's mere existence is enough to get me to boycott you.

i actually think i'm at the ultra-paradoxical stage with it, where over-exposure to advertising has brought me to the point where i get a negative reaction to it. nothing about the ad really matters to me - just knowing it exists is enough to make me hate you.

i've mentioned before that i couldn't live on an internet with ads. if they somehow break adblock, if they take this away, if they force the ads on me, i'm going to end up going to the library and reading books instead. it's actually one of the reasons i stopped watching tv.

i just can't handle it. and, i'll fight it as hard as i can.

i was being lazy in leaving my computer on and my internet on. so, if you want to get aggressive with me, i'll go back to disconnecting from the internet when i'm not using it. that's fine.

i want to clarify a point in case it's unclear.

if singh hangs around for a few elections, if he can hold off the inevitable leadership challenge, he could end up with a bigger and more durable coalition than layton could put together. this isn't really a question of total appeal - there's lots of indo-canadians here, and the religious left has a history here, too.

but, any kind of longterm coalition or tent that singh is going to build is going to be dramatically different than layton's - and the outcome of this election is probably going to be more about breaking up layton's lingering coalition than building singh's new one.

the older parties, the liberals and conservatives, have roots in their communities that go back centuries. that's not true of the ndp, which shifts in allegiances through different leadership phases. tommy douglas' base was drastically different than broadbent's, which was different than layton's, and singh's will be unrecognizable from any as well, should he be able to build it. so, if you're building a model, it would not be a good idea to rely on past ndp results the same way you'd rely on past liberal results. the same thing is true of the bloc, even if it's only going through it's second shift. remember - it started off as a splinter of the conservatives.

douglas was a religious reformer, a prairie populist, that preached the "social gospel" of wealth redistribution, as well as fire and brimstone for the gays. he supported eugenics, and opposed abortion. he was wildly popular amongst farmers, but viewed rather derisively by people in the cities that saw him as a bit of a nut. in the end, he was pushed out by the first lewis, a socialist jew, who tried to swing the party to the hard left. it wasn't even until broadbent in the late 70s that they became the union party, and only after unionism had started to decline. layton took over after nafta ripped them apart and tried to convert them into a party of latte liberal urbanites that supported small businesses, family values and social programs. in the end, he built a coalition of quebecois leftists, rural libertarians, young people and advocates for the urban poor. mulcair, a right-leaning former quebec cabinet minister who ran on eliminating the deficit, lost quebec and lost young people, but kept some of the party's legacy in tact. this is what singh inherited: a dying union movement, skeptical anti-poverty advocates and a mish-mash of rural parties.

singh is not going to do well with much of any of these groups. his coalition may include students, if he can hold them, but he's not going to win back quebec. he has a lot of work to do in winning over antipoverty activists, as well, and in the end may abandon them. his coalition is more likely to include ethnic voters in the 905 and in vancouver that have historically leaned a little right, but see something of themselves in him. and, where his religious beliefs are a liability in winning secular leftist voters, he may find it an asset in winning votes in more upscale, ethnic-dominated areas of vancouver and toronto.

so, how do you fix the model?

you need the data first.

i'm not going to break this down in too much detail; i've done this in the past. but, i want to use this chart to explain why this kind of modelling doesn't work well in these kinds of situations.

what he's doing is taking national and regional polls and trying to cram the results into local ridings. he may look to past results in specific regions, but that's just going to confuse the outcome, if you try to separate it from context - sometimes, when you overcomplicate, you just confuse things. and, then you've got rounding - so he adds an extra 3.5 ndp seats as a consequence of rounding error. it's bizarre.

so, i look at this and i see 2.6 seats for the ndp in the east and the initial question i ask is "where". and, if your model throws out 2.6 seats (are you rounding up or flooring on that? or threatening to cut the seat in half and giving it to the one that objects?), and you can't find where they actually are, you need to pull back from the model, right?

well, i took a look through the map, and the only seat he's calling for the ndp is the one in st john's, newfoundland. so, his map contradicts his model. so much for mr. fournier.

he would appear to actually be calling for liberals 24, conservatives 7, ndp 1. if the ndp are lucky - that seat is listed as a toss-up.

likewise, i can only find one seat for the ndp in quebec, and it's in montreal, and isn't outremont. crucially, he has the bloc listed second, probably because they did well in that riding in the duceppe years. but, an urban riding that voted for duceppe isn't going to find blanchet nearly as appealing - this is a statistical relic, and all you're doing by bringing in duceppe numbers is confusing the reality of it.

that's probably true for the bloc across the province. blanchet may appeal to the nationalist core of the old bloc, but he's lost the social democratic bent that gave them their actual electoral victories. if they stick with the ndp - and vote qs provincially - that's going to leave the bloc uncompetitive in montreal. and, that is indeed likely the difference between the 30% they're at and the 40%+ they ran at under duceppe. but, how many seats do qs have, in a riding system that is more favourable to them?

if the ndp hang on, it will indeed likely be on the island.

but, i wouldn't count on it...

likewise, he has them winning three toss-up seats in toronto (despite local polling having the liberals running at 70% in the 416), holding three very close ridings in hamilton, holding a toss-up in london, and holding a toss-up in windsor, along with two more likely ridings here. so, that's ten seats, if you add them up - but at least seven of them are a coin toss. he also has them winning five seats in northern ontario based on the strength of ndp results ten or fifteen years ago, when all of the polling i'm aware of has singh doing exceedingly poorly with rural voters, for obvious reasons. and, three of them are toss ups.

so, that's fifteen seats - but ten of them are a coin toss, and that coin toss relies on the premise that people look at jagmeet singh and see jack layton, a pretty sketchy premise, given the actual data in front of us.

i penciled them in at five, and i was being conservative when i did.

i counted five liberal seats in the prairies (4 in wininipeg + ralph), and 2 ndp seats (niki ashton + one in saskatoon). so, why does he have the numbers he does? where? show me. his model is going to overshoot conservative numbers in winnipeg, on the strength of the conservative rural vote, and this actually happens every election, and the pollsters just don't fucking learn. so, when i said 5-7 in winnipeg, i was undoing the aggregates on purpose. but, still - he needs his numbers to accurately reflect his actual map, or he's just demonstrating that his model is flawed.

we agree that alberta will probably go entirely conservative, and by large margins. except he still has the ghost of linda duncan holding on...

i can count 13 ndp seats and 9 liberal seats on the map - numbers that are at least consistent, and that i have less disagreement about, even if it's by accident.

so, on his map, he has the ndp winning 32 seats, including ten very tentative wins in ontario that rely on singh getting the layton vote out. i had them at 20, give or take a reasonable error in bc. what i need to do to put the numbers in line is take that layton phantom effect out of the numbers - something i'm more than willing to do - and round them back down out east.

so, singh will need a divine intervention to get to 37 - and maybe he's into that, but i'm not. my numbers do not attempt to quantify the effect that jack layton's ghost will have on current ndp voters, many of whom were toddlers at the turn of the century, and are consequently more realistic...

again: the difference is those ten toss-up votes in ontario, and another handful in quebec and out east, which there's not any convincing evidence for - it's a relic of an over-reaching model. essentially all of the 15-17 seats should be liberal at the end of the day. the exaggerated bloc seat totals is also a relic of duceppe that is neither justified by the current political alliances nor by the actual numbers. that takes the ndp down to 20, the bloc down to 30 and the liberals all the way up to 161 - and is all in the east.

what's left is the question of the 905 and urban ontario - will the conservatives get 37 seats in ontario as the model suggests or 6 as i trollingly lowballed them at? the fact is that the 905 polls have them well ahead, meaning they're poised to not just hold but pick up. and, we'll see if the greens can split or not, but, i acknowledge the sketchiness of this in my write-up, and i'm less confident in really pushing it down.

as has become the norm, this election will be won or lost in the 905. and, if we split the difference between 37 and 7, you still have the liberals with 176 seats.

i tried to avoid this until the last minute, but there you go.

so, to summarize, themes are:

1) the ndp retreats from secularism and gets wiped out of the east as a result of it.
2) the greens had an opportunity to walk into the vacuum left by the ndp but squandered it, opting to a run as a rural christian party, instead. they will see almost no gains, but they may take a good bite out of the conservative vote in the east.
3) the conservatives are in the process of packing up and going back to where they came from, but they're taking their time in doing it.
4) the bloc are half-back. not really. last gasp....last hurrah...
5) the liberals win by default - because they're the natural governing party.

so, i stopped for a second around 23:00 last night and crashed, unexpectedly, instead.  i had a few system crashes over the weekend (i suspect that csis is trying to stop me from spreading russian propaganda about the election at the last minute :\) which forced me to retrace my steps a few times  but, the master is updated and synced, now, and ready to be broken apart.

the sewers never really resolved themselves this week, forcing me to run the water for most of the weekend, and exposing that the p-trap may be a dominant but not a total cause. the temperature seems to have something to do with it. and, i'm increasingly suspecting that the natural gas is wired incorrectly through the piping, because there seems to be excess natural gas in the lines, as well. it's a subtle difference in smell, and i wouldn't have been able to tell the difference even a few months ago. but i'm (unfortunately) gaining the experience to differentiate it. i need a plumber to figure this out. as far as i can tell, he just still hasn't come home yet so the lines are still sitting dry upstairs. i'll need to send him a note when i get back this morning...

i need to pick up an rx balance and get some end-of-the-month grocery shopping in so it does look like i'm going to vote this morning. i haven't seen any last minute voting shifts that change my analysis - i still think the liberals are headed to a majority, and the ndp "surge" is mostly just a bullshit bradley effect, except in bc. and, the conservatives are actually probably headed for the lowest levels in the east that anybody's seen in decades.

so,

- expect the ndp to poll in the 20s in bc and in the low teens almost everywhere else. weak ndp support east of the rockies will be a theme. they may keep most of their seats in bc, but it's going to be brutal elsewhere, and expect calls from the east for jagmeet singh to resign immediately.
- expect the liberals to poll in the 40s in ontario, quebec and the east and the 20s (or lower) in the west. exceedingly weak liberal support west of winnipeg will be a theme. but, it may make little difference in terms of actual seats if they get out the vote in the east. they're essentially set to lose seats they don't have much chance of competing in by even larger margins than they've ever lost them before. justin may turn out to be the less popular trudeau, in alberta.
- expect the conservatives to poll as high as 70% in the west, but as low as 10% in quebec (and in the 20s in ontario and the east). weak conservative support east of winnipeg will be a theme. expect people to be taken aback and surprised by low support levels in ontario. scheer took a hard right turn in the last weeks of the campaign that could have long-term consequences. the narrative over the next few years may be how the conservatives are retreating to their roots as a western protest party, and their decline in ontario may actually just be starting - it could get worse for them.
- expect the greens to poll in the teens in the far west of bc, in rural ontario and in the eastern provinces and lower than that elsewhere. the greens will not get the breakthrough people projected earlier in the campaign, but they have put themselves on the map nonetheless, perhaps unexpectedly (and for some people undesirably) as a primarily rural party that does not do well in the urban cores. i don't know of any other rural green party. but, they seem to be attracting the same kind of rural voters that picked sanders over clinton in 2016 by large margins, and it could throw a serious wrench into conservative support levels here. they ran on jesus, that's what happens when you do that. but, it's good for democracy to give the conservatives a run for the rural vote, too. i'm disappointed in the green campaign, too - they could have and should have run as a secular environmentalist alternative to the liberals, not as a christian left alternative to the conservatives and ndp. greens should be running on the future; maybe it wasn't purposeful, but by picking up ideas like the responsibility to protect and by focusing on christian values, they ran on the past and scared urban people (including me) off. it's not going to win them seats in the rural east, but it may split the vote enough to let the liberals win in unexpected places.
- expect the bloc to poll in the high 20s or low 30s in quebec, and to be shut out of montreal, which will expose the limitations of flirting with running on the right in far left quebec. they seem to think this is a smart strategy; i think the results will demonstrate that it's not. so, expect a moderate increase in bloc support, but also expect them to come up against a brick wall in terms of seat counts and to find themselves with little opportunity to expand further. the bloc may win their core base of constituents back, but the strategy they used is a dead-end, and opens up more questions than answers. it's going to be another four years of soul searching for the bloc...

as it is, my vote is local, not national.

if i were to use a ranked ballot (which is the electoral reform i'd prefer), i'd vote like this:

1. green
2. liberal
3. ndp

the election will be a tight race between an incumbent ndp mp with a bourgeois voting record (he's not a hard leftist new democrat) and a popular former liberal mpp that is known for anti-poverty activism. as an odsp recipient, as well as a secular leftist, my self interest is to vote for the local liberal candidate. she'll be a prominent voice to the left of justin trudeau, but she's also well connected enough to the banking establishment to actually get heard. brian masse will sit in the house as a representative of the wealthy autoworkers, and nobody else, and essentially just get ignored. as mentioned: from a purely local perspective, this is actually not that hard of a choice. she's obviously the better candidate.

the conservatives will probably finish a distant third, but conservative voters in an area like this are also mostly recent immigrants and the fact that upwards of a third of the region (if not the riding, right now) is recent immigrants opens some questions as to the strength of the conservative vote. it's a mostly white riding, with large numbers of international students from india (who i presume mostly cannot vote.) and a muslim (mostly arab) minority of something like 5%+. the conservatives have run conservative muslims here in the past, but are opting for a pro-market east asian this time around in an attempt to key in on the ethnic vote. we'll see which approach works out better for them (i suspect the former). in this election, the conservatives are unlikely to seriously compete, but the trendlines are something to keep an eye on. there's some evidence that the conservatives may be more competitive in the riding next door, which has a larger ethnic voting bloc that would naturally lean to the right.

it will be close - potentially very close. a few votes could swing this. so, i feel compelled to vote.

one last time....

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

magic beards aside.

as it may be.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

it's not about a division of powers. we have these constitutionally enshrined, but they're fairly fluid on a lot of points. we could do most of what singh is talking about.

....if he were to win a majority.

but, the liberals won't even talk to them about most of this stuff. and, i'm left convinced that we're better off avoiding the waste of time of minority governance, in context,, and agitating directly, instead.

singh is not going to have much leverage.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i want to make a comment about the ndp's housing proposals.

first, i should point out that the greens had a better platform on that issue, so i would have picked them over the ndp, if it came down to it. and, i'm moaning about it all of the time, so why don't i just go ahead and do that?

if the ndp (or the greens.) were anywhere close to actually governing, this would be a relevant point to make. but, the ndp are not going to win this election - and i think they'll actually finish a distant 4th.

there are some issues where a minority party leader can make a very big impact, but housing is not one of them, and the reason is because of the way we fund it. it hasn't always been this way, but a liberal government in 2019 is going to treat a housing strategy as a primarily provincial concern. so, it might make some aspirational guarantees, or something. but, the kind of housing plan that singh is pushing for is not going to be on the table. it just isn't.

nor is dental, pipelines or most of the other things being talked about - many of which are also primarily provincial responsibilities, at the current time.

what is actually on the table? well, they seem serious about some kind of pharmaceutical plan, but the legislation to this nationally would be pretty messy. are they going to open up the canada health act? are they going to threaten to withhold funding if quebec or alberta refuses to go along with it? it seems unlikely.

and, i question the ndp's own commitment to the environment, let alone mr. trudeau's. for all of notley's scorn for being ignored, i have little doubt who holds more influence in the party. mr. singh sounds quite a bit like mr. trudeau did not too long ago, on the environment. but, that is nonetheless what a tough agreement from the ndp is likely to look like - planting the trees that doug ford cancelled. it will be presented as a strong win after tough negotiations, too.

it's easy to tell me about pearson, and ms. may will be happy to do so, but my dead father was in grade school at the time. that was a different era, with different challenges.

as mentioned: i might have a different perspective if mr. singh was an entirely different person, with an entirely different perspective. but, as it is, i don't see what he can actually accomplish in a minority government, and i'm not convinced he'll hold support where it's important. rather than stand against the government to stop these pipelines, he's likely to stand with the government on...well, everything.

so, on some level, i may agree with the ndp on housing, it is true. but, that''s something i'll give more thought to in the next provincial election, where it matters.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

again.

i would feel comfortable voting for ujjal dosanjh.

and, i would feel comfortable voting for niki haley (not actually, she's terrible.).

but, i don't feel comfortable voting for jagmeet singh, and i don't feel comfortable voting for elizabeth may, either. in fact, i don't feel comfortable voting for elizabeth may for exactly the same reason that i don't feel comfortable voting for jagmeet singh.

i'll let you work out what that means, and what it doesn't. but, remember: i don't actually care what you think of me, and i won't let your opinion of me affect my existence in any way at all.

you mean nothing to me.

at all.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

so, i realized earlier this evening (it's the morning, now. wow.) that my links for the month of november, 2013 are all out of sync, and i'd have to go back and correct them as best i can. i just want to post a short clarifying update about that.

what happened was that my headphones broke in the first week of november, when i was in the process of remastering inri001, the second cassette demo. i clearly remember just putting the last few tracks through the same izotope patch i'd been using, uploading inri003 without touching it and then waiting for the cord to come in - which didn't happen until early december.

so, i had a month to wait, and no way to move forward on the remaster. what i had at the time was a pair of traveling sennheisers with noise cancellation in them, which were useless for mastering.

so, i focused on the write-ups, and just uploaded everything mostly raw, focusing mostly on editing the tracks to remove simpsons samples. the actual remastering didn't happen until the first week of december, and i deleted a lot of posts when that happened, something i regret.

a few months later, i lost a hard drive and the raw data for the remastering i'd done over the previous months. as the tracks i uploaded in november were transitional, i didn't have them saved anywhere. so, they ended up entirely lost.

i'm trying to be as accurate as possible, which means i want links to the exact tracks i uploaded over the month, which were neither the originals from 1998/1999 nor the remasters i did in december. the tracks are closest to the files from 1998, which are mostly only available as bonus tracks, if they have vocals. if they're instrumentals, i should have original streams available.

so, many of the links i'm going to post for inri015 and inri021 over november are either going to be to "download only" bonus material or to actual dead links, and it has to be that way because the actual data is lost.

that flips over when i get my phones back in early december, but i didn't repost anything when i uploaded it. so, this is going to be awkward - i'll need to do a full album update, all at once on top of all of the dead links....

i want to finish updating the file before i stop to eat.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

he still has 11 days to respond. i've heard nothing at all, at this point.

right now, i'm planning to file on november 1st for two court orders:

1) an order to hire a plumber.
2) an order to ensure that the temperature in the unit is at least 20 degrees celsius at all times.

both landlord obligations are in the residential tenancies act.

it's an open and shut case of obvious negligence.

my aim at this time is for him to carry out his responsibilities under the law. so, i'm not going to immediately be seeking damages. it will only be if he refuses to abide by the court order that i'll be seeking compensation for his negligence.

right now, i want him to solve the problem, not for him to write me a check.

i'm hoping i can drag this out long enough to get a space in subsidized housing; the root cause of these perpetual landlord negligence problems is the fact that they're forcing disabled people to use market housing. this is what happens - complete negligence. i have to take him to court to get him to turn the heat on...

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

it's becoming more and more clear that, while the cause of the smell is gas entering the unit from the sewer via the cleanout, and likely faulty p-traps, the thing that's actually driving the pump that sets in is temperature. i'm seeing this as the temperature comes up and down this week.

when it's a lot colder in the sewer than it is in the apartment, there would be a transfer of energy into the sewer, which would displace the air and send it up here. i suspected that earlier, but it's only becoming that much more clear as we're actually doing this experiment.

the correct answer, for now, is to turn the heat up to better dissipate the energy. and, when the heat is on, the issue actually mostly resolves itself. the thing is that it isn't 20 degrees in here - so by refusing to turn the heat on when he's obligated to, he's worsening an existing plumbing problem. and, i really have no option but to compensate by trying to find ways to put more energy into the ground, which include: running the hot water through the pipes, dumping hot water into the cleanout.

as far as i can tell, he actually hasn't come home yet.

and, i really need a plumber to tell me (him) how to stop that from happening, asap.

if he doesn't stop ignoring me soon, he's going to have a messy, expensive lawsuit on his hands.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

yeah, i'm in tonight. it's a combination of things - i am actually feeling a tad better (i'm at like 95%, now), but it didn't warm up quite as much as forecast, and, despite feeling a little better, i still don't really feel like smoking anything at all tonight.

i'm kind of happy in my blanket tonight, actually, and don't really want to leave it. it happens. i'm more interested in getting through 2013 - as it will be final when i do. like, that's the end of that. forever.

i wanted to start the journal off in mid-1989, as well, and was hoping i'd already be there. but, i'm going to wait until christmas before i get antsy about it. i may do the full six months at once, and start off in 1990. or, i may get a journal for christmas and reflect back a little, just starting fresh in 1990.

i don't think i can put aside the time to live full time in my 9 year old self, so i think i'm looking at infrequent alter-reality updates for a bit, anyways. i will need to plan this out by looking at things like release dates, and trying to figure out specific life events. christmas...

i could be done november by monday, anyways. really.

for right now, the update is that the master document is entirely synced and finished. and ready to cut up. it's 350 pages, smaller than the last few, and will shrink even more because a lot of it is email relics. there's 70 html files to deal with, but i think this is the last month like that for a good while.

i also wanted to get january, 2014 done before i fire up the music pc, so let's hope i can get through this by the end of the week.

and, if i'm in for most of the winter, let's hope 2-3 days turnover time is realistic for most months. can i get to the end of 2017 by christmas?

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

byzantine history is really truly surreal and fascinating and horrible, all at the same time. any would be prince, or dauphin, should be far more well-versed in it's intricacies than i am.

i think the best way to describe it is like something out of star trek, when you periodically had kirk and the gang run into these creatures that were so far ahead of them that the humans couldn't even recognize the truth as it was. the byzantines existed past the initial fall of rome, all the way through the dark ages and into the beginning of the renaissance, although they were drastically reduced by the time the latter started. there is even a theory - backed up by evidence in the form of migration - that a substantive underpinning of the renaissance, as it existed in rome itself, was a consequence of the collapse of constantinople as a major power. but, i digress.

the period we call rome "byzantium" is pretty much exactly the period where the remnants of roman and greek civilization were defending themselves against a multi-directional onslaught from the barbarian world, a process that took a thousand years for the romans to finally lose. and, in that period, the theme that constantly reinforces itself is just how much more advanced the romans really were. if we had a modern concept of species at the time, we may have been tempted to label the romans superhuman in intellect, at that junction. there really was a substantive difference, then.

so, the thing that comes up over and over again is these roman generals that just effortlessly treat these barbarians in their complicated configurations as figures on a risk board. if you look at maps from the period, it restricts the roman empire, proper, as greece, turkey, the balkans and (usually) southern italy, but the actual reality is that they were the hegemonic power all the way around the black sea, and they had the ability to project power all the way over the steppes, and far into central asia. the generals in constantinople no doubt had a better understanding of the intricacies of the tribal allegiances in the steppes than the tribes in the steppes did, themselves. i mean, they kept histories, to start with - the barbarians didn't. the difference between understanding reality in segments of centuries or millennia, or understanding it in segments of decades (at most), is pretty daunting in managing the world.

this wasn't without consequence. by the end, the barbarians saw the imperial throne with contempt, and spoke of little more than treachery in the context of alliances - in the end, nobody trusted the emperor or his generals anymore. but, that was a process that took centuries, and there wouldn't have been an empire to defend had these manipulations not run their course.

i tend to have little patience for people that want to understand history through a lens of morality, and i actually find it scary to hear people talk about geopolitics in these moralistic terms. if the byzantines had stuck with their allies without reference to changing facts on the ground, they would have been raped and slaughtered in no time.

america likes to pretend it has a history in roman civilization, but it constantly demonstrates that it doesn't understand the subtleties of it. moscow is the true third rome, not washington. and, we should let the empire govern.

if america seeks to be the empire, it needs to throw it's bible away and read more machiavelli.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

stop.

why do we have public education?

why do we spend all of this money and expend all of these resources on this?

surely, it's primarily because we understand the importance of an informed populace for the maintenance of democracy, right?

or, at least, we used to, anyways.

nowadays, we seem to be content with the premise that people are too stupid for democracy to work, and they need to be brainwashed in order to be told what to do. and, if we hold to this mentality, if we continue to refuse to educate our kids, we will have a self-fulfilling prophecy, because it is at least true that a society that can't work out what is true and what isn't cannot be a democratic one.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

actually, there is something we can do about it - we can educate our kids to be smart enough to know how to process information intelligently.

this kind of thing shouldn't work on an educated and informed populace. and, this is the actual question we need to ask here: how did we let our education system devolve to the state where people can't figure this out?

https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2019/10/18/theres-little-canada-can-do-to-stop-the-flow-of-false-viral-stories-from-buffalo-website.html

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

you think i'm being facetious?

so, for a while the late romans had these bulgars, initially a turkic tribe, sitting on their border, who were a threat to their well-being. unruly bulgarian barbarians could interrupt trade routes, or even threaten civilians around the danube. but, there were always barbarians in this region, and the romans learned that you have to just fucking deal with it.

so, what they did was study the tribal configurations and try to find ways to divide and conquer the barbarians, so they would fight against each other, instead. and, they learned a valuable lesson - there was a powerful nation to the north of the bulgars, namely the rus, that could be brought into imperial service.

so, this is what they did, for hundreds of years - whenever the bulgars got restless, they'd send money to the rus, who would threaten the bulgars from the north. this drew them away from the danube, thereby securing the roman areas.

in the mean time, they would send emissaries to the bulgar areas in an attempt to civilize them. and, over time, the bulgars would be romanicized, christianized and even slavicized, which brought them into the empire. yet, as had happened for centuries, they were merely replaced by a new barbarian threat, the moment they were assimilated. so it goes.

this barbarian management strategy is actually what led to the alliance between the rus and the romans, which is arguably still the dominant geopolitical reality in the region, today.

trump is an idiot, we'll agree on that point. but, be careful who you're calling ignorant. you might see that backfire.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

the romans referred to this kind of thing as "barbarian management".

there's a very long history of it and a very rich literature around it.

and, it's a necessary part of running an empire - there are going to be irrational barbarians that you have to deal with.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

"but, that's exactly what putin wants".

well, he's the responsible actor, here.

he wants what's best.

continuing the war is exactly what the saudis want.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i want to post some comments about syria, though.

it's clear at this point that if trump ever understood what he's doing then he already forgot. the premise that the turks are going to slaughter civilians by the thousands is not real, and the kurds are clearly not going to leave on their own. so, i don't know how you make sense of trump's analysis of his own behaviour. but, that's pretty normal - he's often incoherent, and he often contradicts himself in the same sentence.

a part of my position on this matter from the start is that the kurds need to pick better friends. they shouldn't have expected perpetual protection from the hegemon; that was not realistic, regardless of who is president, in the long run. this was not if, but when.

but, everybody else in the region - the russians, the turks, the syrians, the iranians, the saudis - have a much clearer understanding of what happens next. so, even if the truth is that trump got tricked into this, by who we don't know, he still made the right choice, by accident.

how is this supposed to work? well, we saw a preview of it a while back. the goal, here, is syrian territorial integrity, in the end, which requires pushing the kurds out - the war can't end until the kurds go home. they don't want to leave, though. so, how do you get them out?

1) the turks threaten to bomb them. if they just threaten them, and they're rational, that should be enough to get them to leave - they should know they can't win and give up. unfortunately, the kurds have demonstrated repeatedly that they're not rational actors, that they think they can beat the odds through manifest destiny or whatever other ridiculous thing, and you can't manipulate them through incentives or game theory like that. they don't seem to have that department in their military, unlike all the state actors involved.

2) so, if you can't treat the kurds rationally, if you have to bomb them to get them to move, what you do next is offer the syrians up as protectors. the western media is presenting this as some kind of catastrophe, but it's exactly what the plan should have been from the start. by integrating the kurds back into assad's forces, and maybe you even have them fight a few battles together, you reconstruct a concept of syrian nationality in the kurdish rebels. by fighting side by side, they once again become brothers.

3) the turks have to play along, here, in order to get this to work. yes, they have to blow up a few cities, kill a few civilians. c'est la guerre. it's not like a lot of people haven't already died, here, or the united states isn't already responsible for truly outrageous levels of carnage. but, they're not there to massacre civilians. err, i mean - tell that to the kurds, sure, let them believe that. the turks want to slaughter you like it's 1915, kurds. boo! it's not real, though - the turks know what will happen if they do that. and, what is the evidence? i think the death toll is a few dozen civilians, at this point. i'm sorry to call them collateral, but they won't leave. they won't act rationally. it is, in many ways, their own fault.

4) then, once the syrians have reestablished themselves as the dominant and rightful force in the region, the turks pull back - as they intended to from the start.

so, what is this about?

it's about scaring the kurds back into assad's arms.

and, i know that the saudis and their muppets in washington hate that, but it's the responsible way to get this done and over with.

if trump understood what he did, that's what he'd be saying, right now.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

me?

i don't give a fuck if you're so goddamned stupid that you actually think i'm a racist.

i know i'm not, and i know people that know me know i'm not, so why the fuck would i care what you think?

i want you to think that i'm honest. that's what i want.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

and, i'll remind you that these were the bc numbers in 2015:

liberals -35%
conservatives - 30%
ndp - 26%

"surging" from 14 to 23 at the last minute isn't much of a win, when you're still down 2-3 points - that's still going to lose you some seats. 

that is, if it's happening at all - if the truth isn't just that people don't want you to think they're racist.

the liberals ar5e supposed to do better than this

see, even this goofy online propaganda says the same thing.

all logic suggests that if the ndp are experiencing growth, it should be at the expense of the liberals, in some combination - in conjunction with undecideds and greens perhaps, and conservatives if it's strong, but there should be some swing, there.

but, the liberals are actually up.

there's a big swing from the undecideds, and a small swing from the conservatives and from the greens. who are the liberals pulling from, then?

i'm actually not surprised about the numbers in bc - i expected them to hold some seats there, unless the greens really picked up momentum, and they haven't. i've made this point explicitly; the spectrum is different in bc, and the ndp are broadly seen differently, there. they might even have a base there, which they don't even have in saskatchewan any more.

but, even this looks phony.

i think they're going to be disappointed, in the end.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

if i don't get a sufficient response on the plumbing, the case i file is going to focus on the heat, as well.

the law says that the heat needs to be above 20 degrees celsius. that's not an opinion - that's the law. i'd rather it was closer to 25; i would have the heat on until june, and turn it on in september. so, i need to get a thermometer down here and start documenting it...

if i get a rational response on the plumbing, i'll overlook it, as i have been for some time. but, i'm not going to hold back, if i have to file - i'm going to throw the book at him, all at once.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i had to lie down for a few hours (i didn't actually sleep. but i was so exhausted i couldn't move, for some reason that might be related to the air quality. i don't know...), but the first run through the master document is in fact now done.

it's very cold in here. and, i didn't get a chance to seriously address the drain. so, i'm going to need to deal with laundry and stuff, get something to eat and then presumably actually sleep.

i should get a second pass in soon enough, and then i'll get to start posting to pretty soon. again: there's not plot this month, it's almost entirely blogging and music. which is what i wanted....

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

also, the sewers are acting up again...

and, yes, i can tell the difference between a sewer gas and a gas leak. the sewer gas comes out of the cleanout. the gas leak comes out of the heater. given that they're on opposite sides of the closet, it's not hard to figure out, so long as you stay on top of it, which i have.

so, we're going to have to dump another 50L or so down there before i get to bed..

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

yeah, i'm putting the chances of going out tomorrow at roughly 10%.

the actual reason is that my throat is still a little raw. i never really made it up past 90% health - i may have gotten a little worse a few days ago, and then kind of flatlined around it. i'm certainly feeling relatively healthy and everything, but maybe bicycling across detroit in 15 degree weather (and back in 10 degree weather) isn't the best idea right now.

i'll see how i feel tomorrow.

it's also going to depend on if i can actually patch that tire or not, and i don't want to look at it until i wake up, which should be in the morning.

this master document tends to misbehave fairly predictably. the computer flat out crashed last night when i was sleeping; i don't seem to have lost anything, but i don't see any good reason for the crash, either. and, the document froze on me this afternoon, making me start over on the time consuming web page section, after i was half done.

i'm half done again and have it saved, at least. but it should be done by now. alas...

i was hoping for before noon; it looks like before i crash makes more sense. and, if i'm in, i should get most of it done with by the time i leave the house again next, which would be monday.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

ok.

time to shower, and get back to work,

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

what are the eight seats that the ndp have in ontario, and how safe are they?

- three in windsor
- one in london
- two in hamilton
- two in the north (one of them is sort of sudbury, the other is an "unsettled" or largely indigenous area)

the federal ndp do not currently have any seats in ottawa or toronto.

in years past, hamilton was "safe" for the ndp. but, trudeau won seats here in 2015, and it's an overwhelmingly white union town. when the numbers were hovering around 10%, this was vulnerable. at 15-16%, they could maybe hold on - but if they dip any lower than that, don't be surprised if the liberals win these seats.

the london seat is vulnerable, as it's a three-way race. the sudbury seat is vulnerable, as the liberals do well here - it's more like rural quebec than rural ontario.

the ndp has, in recent decades, done very well in the northern areas - northern quebec, northern ontario, northern manitoba, northern saskatchewan and northern bc, too. the ndp will probably hold this. if anything is safe, it's this.

what's left is windsor, and the riding i'm in is not safe, because there's a very strong challenger. the riding to the south of here actually usually leans conservative. and the riding i used to be in is actually a bit more wealthy, and arguably more vulnerable than the one i'm in. it has voted liberal in the past...

again: if the numbers are trending up, these are the places they're trending in, and there's reason to think they'll hold them. but, if there's actually a bradley effect at play, and those numbers we saw last month were more accurate, there's not really any compelling evidence to think they can hold any of these seats, except that one in the far north.

they don't really have a base of voters in this province.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

what are the fifteen seats the liberals can win in the west?

- about seven-ten seats around vancouver
- ralph
- about five-seven seats around winnipeg

what are the fifteen seats the ndp can win?

- a few in manitoba
- a few in saskatchewan
- probably not that one in edmonton
- the ndp have historically won seats in both urban and rural brtish columbia. there's likely at least ten there for them, if they're still running over 20%.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i think i'm ready to make a final forecast. i'll let you know if this changes.

these are nik's numbers for yesterday:

conservative - 28.8
liberals - 28.7
ndp 17.3
greens - 8.6
bloc - 5.6
people's - 1.6
lost - 0.4
undecided - 9.0

over the last week, the liberals and conservatives have been more or less flat, while the undecideds have moved to the ndp.

i think this is a bradley effect. but, i suspect a lot of these voters are also a little younger and unlikely to actually vote. so, i'm going to to split the difference, and readjust:

conservative - 28.8
liberals - 28.7
ndp 15.0
greens - 8.6
bloc - 5.6
people's - 1.6
lost - 0.4
undecided - 11.3

this is where turnout matters, and i where i introduce jessica's theorem, aka the fundamental principle of canadian elections: the conservatives do terrible with undecided voters. they get maybe 20% of them. the greens also tend to underperform, and while it looked otherwise earlier, it doesn't look that way anymore.  let's get them 5%. i'm also just going to give the bloc an extra 1% and the ppc an extra 0.475% and leave it at that.

that leaves 7% to distribute between the liberals and the ndp, and the results of the election will depend on how that works.

as mentioned, i think there is a bradley effect, but i'm actually going to point more to the liberal ground game. i've yet to see an election where it works out the other way, at least. so, i'm going to give the liberals 5% of this and the ndp the rest.

lib - 33.7 %
con - 31.1 %
ndp - 17.0 %
greens - 9.2%
bloc - 6.6 %
ppc - 2.1 %

those numbers are not that strange. but, you need to look regionally to understand the results.

the ndp and conservatives are outperforming their average in the west, and underperforming it in the east; the liberals, the opposite. so, i'm going to split the country in half. there are 104 seats in the west, and 231 seats in the east. there are also 3 seats in the north.

in the west, including bc, the conservatives seem likely to win by large margins, while the ndp and liberals fight it out for second place. in 2015, the totals in the west were as follows:

liberals - 29
conservatives - 54
ndp - 20
greens - 1

at current numbers, ignoring any bradley effect, the ndp may be able to keep their existing seats if the decrease in liberal support does not benefit the conservatives too much, and the increase in green support does not affect them too negatively. i think this is all too optimistic for the ndp. rather, we're going to take them down by a few seats. it does not, however, appear as though the greens are likely to make a breakthrough, after all. rather, i would expect the conservatives to gain a number of seats from the liberals in the west, and the outcome will look something like:

liberals - 15
conservatives - 70
ndp - 15
greens - 4

defeating the liberals will be pyrrhic for the anti-pipeline forces in bc, but the question really remains open: does the federal ndp even oppose the pipeline in the first place? the greens are your best bet here, in the long run. but, i'm not voting for them on monday, either - i get it.

in the east, the 2015 totals were rather different:

liberals - 152
conservatives - 45
ndp - 24
bloc - 10
greens - 0

at current numbers, the ndp are likely to lose all of their 16 seats in quebec (where they are down at least 15 points) and some, but not all, of their seats in ontario (where they are roughly flat). it would not appear as though they will gain seats in ontario, anyways; how many they lose would appear to rely on the strength of the presumed bradley effect. i see little evidence that they're going to pick up seats in the east. that will leave them with around 5 seats, at best.

the liberals are also roughly flat in ontario, but the conservatives are down dramatically, at the apparent benefit of the greens. this combination - ndp & liberals flat, conservatives down, greens up - is just about the best outcome that the liberals could possibly ask for. they may only steal a seat or two from the ndp in ontario, but they should steal 25+ from the conservatives, and in areas that are usually conservative locks, too.

expect something like this in ontario:

liberals - 110
conservatives - 6
ndp - 5

in 2015, quebec was a complicated four-way race that was difficult to call, resulting in split races with weird results. with the retreat of the ndp (mostly to the benefit of the bloc), you should see something more predictable in this election: the bloc should sweep the rural areas, while the liberals sweep montreal, gatineau and the south shore urban spaces and the conservatives nab a few seats in quebec city. that means you should expect the conservatives to lose a few seats, actually - and that the liberals may be able to hold steady, if they're lucky. but, the bloc will be the big winners here.

i do want to temper this slightly, though. i haven't seen a poll with the bloc above 30%, yet. they used to poll way, way higher than that in the duceppe years, and it does open up a few questions - is there enough lingering ndp support to help the liberals on the split? how may seats can they actually win with 30%?

i'm going to suggest the following in quebec:

liberals - 40
bloc - 30
conservatives - 8
ndp - 0

in 2015, the liberals won all 32 eastern seats, and ran over 50% in all four provinces. nobody predicted that. they have nowhere to go but down, but they are still leading the region by a good margin in all of the polling that i've seen. the greens may beat the ndp in this region, but they are taking support from the ndp itself, and i don't see any evidence that they'll actually win anywhere. that said, the east is likely to actually like elizabeth may for who she is, so some space for an upset should be accounted for.

that said, i think the reality is that the conservatives are not actually running much higher here than they were in 2015, and that the movement on the left is largely to be mostly inconsequential. it would be very unlikely for the liberals to sweep the region a second time, but nobody else is really stepping up, either.

something like the following is likely:

liberals - 27
conservatives - 5
ndp - 0
greens - 0

that adds up to a big win for the liberals in the east:

liberals - 177
bloc-  30
conservative - 19
ndp - 5

yeah. ontario...

there's three seats in the north, and they usually vote liberal.

so, here's my prediction:

liberals - 195
conservatives - 89
bloc - 30
ndp - 20
greens - 4

that would be a liberal majority.

what are some issues to draw attention to?

as mentioned, the greens are a wild card out east, but they're also a wild card in rural ontario. if they underperform in ontario, you could see the conservatives lose a few less seats; if they overperform, they could lose a few more. likewise, the greens could produce some confusing results in the east, but i'm not predicting it.

there's some possibility that the ndp could overperform these results in bc, as well, but we're talking a few seats, and i would consider that error.

in 2015, i tallied up 169 seats for the liberals - one seat short of a majority. so, my prediction was a strong liberal minority or a weak liberal majority (subject to error). most of the models actually predicted a harper minority, although some of the smarter kids clued in at the very end - but nobody that i know of predicted a liberal majority, except one forum poll released a few hours before the vote. the reason they got it right was because they picked up a last minute mass movement to the liberals in quebec, specifically. and, that was my error - i was suggesting a stronger showing by the bloc. i overestimated the bloc tally by 15 seats - the amount the liberals were short by. i was also dead-on with my conservative numbers.

if i'm wrong in 2019, it will likely be an overestimate by the liberals of roughly the same amount, and probably in ontario. but, 195 seats is actually a fairly comfortable majority, and i can eat that and still get the outcome right.

so, that's my prediction: a weak or comfortable liberal majority, but a liberal majority, nonetheless.

the liberals are still supposed to do better than this