i'm still waiting for the landlord to react regarding a few things and it's creating a bottleneck but things are getting closer to being set up. i will get back to the write up i was doing relatively soon, but i'm more focused on doing it than writing it out.
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
Sunday, May 3, 2026
my best guess is that they're trying to get the iranians to shoot at them, but the truth is that they already have been. claims that this action are in breach of "international law" are absurd - iran has been attacking american interests in the region for decades. arguments might be made about proportionality, but how could anybody argue the americans haven't shown restraint? they are refusing to replace the government. i'm opposed to what they're doing because it's far too restrained, and is being restrained naively, to attempt to arrive at an impossible outcome.
nonetheless.
if they are trying to get the iranians to shoot at them, to sink something, to justify making this a real war, it is legally unnecessary, but overdue, nonetheless. this should have been a short operation to tear down the aristocracy and get out, not a drawn out attempt to sign a treaty with an irrational cult. they don't need this justification, but if they want it, so be it.
arab americans are almost the perfect archetype of post-reagan american republicans - pro-market, anti-communist, social conservative, religious. and, no, they don't like jews. the only difference is that they're muslims instead of christians.
that's why they scare the hell out of me. just when christianity was finally dying, stupid liberals went and imported millions of muslims, who have given the christian right a major shot in the arm and could very well save it from dying.
american leftists are clueless because they see everything through a filter of race, which nobody else in the world does. arabs and africans come to america and don't understand that they're supposed to be brown. democrats then get confused or pissed off when they don't act like descendants of slaves, like they're supposed to. they're "ungrateful" when they don't act like house niggers. i guess the democrats haven't really changed that much, have they?
but that's not my concern. it's not my problem, it's not my issue.
my concern is this influx of a new religious right, when we had just about done away with it, and having the foresight to identify it as a substantive political opponent, rather than fall into delusions around pretending it's going to be an ally. they're not allies, just because they're brown. they have brains and ideas, and they're an overwhelmingly conservative demographic that is going to help the right tremendously in the upcoming decades.
the fact that they don't like jews is a commonality, not a contradiction. it's worth remembering that hitler was aligned with the arabs, in an attempt to drive the jews out of the british mandate. hitler was a popular leader in the middle east. the nazis were not anti-muslim at all, but admired their militarism, in comparison to what they called the softness of christianity. this came out of an analysis on the decline of the first reich by a british historian that was influential on the nazis, named edward gibbon. it was thought in nazi circles that the roman empire (which they were trying to bring back) would not have fallen if it had converted to islam instead of held to christianity. these considerations are not very concerning to the likes of tucker carlson, but don't think that he doesn't realize that his own anti-semitism has deep roots in the arab-american community, or even in the so-called "pro-palestinian left". of course it does. he knows it. that's the fucking point.
an alliance between these groups makes sense, as they are both conservative fringe groups. as a secular atheist socialist that's tired of pretending i give a fuck about religious minorities, i'd be just as happy to leave them behind, let them find their tribe and move on.
i think this is dead wrong.
"pro-palestinian leftists", in truth, tend to be religious social conservatives that have far more in common with tucker carlson than bernie sanders, in terms of their vision of america, and what they actually want for the country. arab-americans also tend to be exceedingly pro-market, as markets are an arab cultural institution. western history derives capitalism from medieval italian city states, which is true, but it doesn't address the cultural borrowing from the islamic theocracies that those italian city states were doing almost all of their business with, as they were forced to, in the process of importing stuff from india and china. the taxes these arab theocracies imposed, which led to inflation in europe, was a major stimulus for europeans to get into boats to sail around them, in the end. however, the reality of arab imperialism stuck between europe and the east was a reality for several centuries, and had a substantive influence on how capitalism developed in the section of europe that was focused almost entirely on doing business with arab imperial power. what i'm getting at is that capitalism, as we understand it, developed in italy out of arab beginnings, and you can see that by going to an arab market, which developed out of phoenician roots in modern lebanon. the romans and greeks were state-capitalist pseudo communists, in comparison. arabs tend to like capitalism and tend to be violently opposed to communism, which is why they made such good allies to the americans during the cold war.
arab-americans will find greater allies in the republican party, in the long run. they won't have to deal with the gays, or pretend women are equal. they believe in god, or at least pretend to; democrats will need to increasingly embrace non-belief as the atheist population grows, and young americans become increasingly impatient with religious politicians. in 2026, i won't vote for or support anybody that doesn't explicitly call themselves an atheist and campaign on it.
for these reasons, arabs and hispanics are both going to find themselves increasingly more aligned with the right, as the democratic base loses interest in and patience with aligning with them, against their self-interests.
while it's very difficult and sad to deal with these situations, health care staff has no discernible legal right to restrain an individual seeking to kill themselves, which is their inalienable right, as an autonomous individual. it sounds like medical staff did the right thing in allowing the individual the right to make his autonomous life-ending decisions.
it's anybody's guess whether these kids are still alive, although it seems doubtful. but it's clear that they aren't anywhere near the place they disappeared from.
i normally point to animal predation in these cases and make the argument that human children are actually a prey item for a variety of top predators, including cougars, wolves and bears.
however, my understanding is that there is evidence that these kids were removed from the property by a waiting vehicle on the night of their disappearance and this is probably a trafficking case. they could e anywhere, but they aren't on the farm. and they could be in any state of existence.
donald trump is not on the ballot in november, not directly or indirectly, and his ability to act as commander in chief, which is his job, is not reliant on his control of congress the way it is in a westminister system.
in the united states, these are entirely separate branches of government that have no relevance to each other.
only members of congress are on the ballot this november, and it is not the case that americans will be voting for the president by proxy. americans will be voting for their representatives, based on their own performance. that is a well understood feature of the american system that is very different from the british system.
Saturday, May 2, 2026
this narrative is false and needs to be discarded of.
the president of the united states is not an economic advisory position, and the president has no proper role to play in the economy. that role is held by congress. the presidency is a military and foreign policy role, which is primarily about commanding the military.
the confusion that the british press may have about this issue would be related to comparing the prime minister to the president, but that is a false comparison. the prime minister's role in britain is quite broad due to the fact that the king has taken on a dignitary role. in practice, the prime minister is both the leader of the house of representatives, there called the house of commons, and the functional commander in chief, because the king holds no real power. in the united states, the president is not the leader of the house of representatives and does not hold the responsibilities associated with it, but is strictly a military and diplomatic role.
economic legislation is not written by the president but by the congress and the congress will rightly be judged on it's economic performance.
the president will be correctly judged on his foreign policy performance, as that is his role and his job in the american system.
i had to rewrite that a little, because the statistics are written in such a way to emphasize smoking and de-emphasize obesity as causes of cancer. the reason for this is that smoking is seen as unacceptable nowadays, whereas there is still a lot of retarded political correctness around obesity.
so, the statistics will say "smoking" as what it is, but will split obesity into five or six categories. the result is something like this:
smoking - 20%
obesity - 13%
diet - 6%
low exercise - 4%
but what that really says is
obesity - 23%
smoking - 20%
i don't want to split hairs. obesity and smoking are both major public health problems, and both major causes of cancer, heart disease and other health problems. i'm happy to adjust the language.
but obesity is in truth the larger problem, because it is getting worse, and smoking rates are coming down. there are still a lot of boomers that have to die in the next few decades, but those statistics are going to be dramatically different in a couple of years. obesity is going to shoot up to the top of that list very soon and be the leading cause of cancer by a good margin by 2040.
the leading causes of cancer in the united states are smoking, gasoline and obesity, and the dominant cause of obesity in the united states is overwhelming amounts of corn consumption.
you should try to almost completely cut all corn - gmo or not - out of your diet and replace it with things like soy and whole wheat. corn has almost no nutritional value.
the idea that glyphosphate causes cancer is a fringe conspiracy theory with no scientific evidence supporting it and mountains of research contradicting it. the whole point of using the genetically modified seed - which is what this is really about. opposition to gmos has hit a brick wall because the science is so overwhelmingly clear that they aren't dangerous, so the conspiracy theorists have shifted focus to the pesticides, hoping to grasp on to straws that in fact are not actually there - is that it reduces the reliance on pesticides like ddt that are known to cause severe problems. roundup was intentionally engineered as a solution to carcinogenic pesticides, and it is one.
the amount of ignorance on the left around this issue was extremely embarrassing when the issue first developed. i remember helplessly watching good leftists fall for terribly researched right-wing conspiracy theories that had the intellectual weight of an alex jones expose. it was exasperating.
it's helpful to see these people land out in right field, with the conservative fringe, which is where they've always belonged.
americans are horribly unhealthy and the amount of corn they eat is a major cause, not the gmo seeds used to plant it or the pesticides used to grow it. americans need to drastically reduce the amount of corn in their diets and reducing subsidies for the corn industry would be a positive step in helping reduce the amount of corn in their diets.
Friday, May 1, 2026
this is the biggest mistake the united states has made in centuries. it is a bigger mistake than vietnam, a bigger mistake than iraq.
keeping germany under the control of america's jackboot by stomping it down at the neck is imperative for maintaining global security, and allowing germany to rearm will lead us directly into a third catastrophic world war.
the german chancellor is right: iran is making a fool of the united states, who has proven itself easily led around by it's nose. the americans have beaten the iranians very badly in the war, but that advantage has been squandered by an incompetent push for diplomacy, which is an act of weakness, rather than a strong drive to finish the job from a position of dominance. only inherently weak actors seek diplomacy over the use of force.
what the germans will learn from this is that if they insult the yankees then they'll fuck off and go home. are the japanese paying attention?
i'd like to better understand this as well. i don't want to come down too harsh because i have called for a sovereign wealth fund in canada and would strongly support one. specifically, i'm strongly concerned about the tactic carney announced a few days previous about trying to fund these projects with foreign investment, which is an idea that only makes sense under american hegemony (aka us-backed globalization), which carney has claimed is ending, which i don't think is a correct analysis, but which i don't think is the right approach, nonetheless.
canada should seek to avoid doing things like selling airport or oil infrastructure to foreign investors, which mostly means arab investors. when a country doesn't own it's own wealth, it loses it's sovereignty. this idea was doublethinked and politically correctified over during the first part of the post cold war era of american hegemony / globalization. there was nothing scary about letting foreigners buy up your resources and take control of your wealth. that's racist.
but as american hegemony has unfolded, the dangers of this kind of thinking have made themselves apparent. deindustrialization and the offshoring of wealth has created tremendous problems in developed economies. the next step is dealing with the social and political ramifications of having your economies controlled not just by foreign states, but by repressive and authoritarian and theocratic foreign states.
if i had to choose, i would rather join the united states than be taken over by saudi arabia. the latter is no solution to the problems posed by the former.
so, yes, canada should be trying to keep control and ownership of it's own resources in canada. the era of american hegemony is probably not over, but the era of globalization that required the projection of american dominance has taken a hit and may not recover. the americans no longer seem to be interested in protecting free markets within the structure of an american empire via overwhelming american force, but seem to be shifting towards using that military hegemony to advance their own interests, at the expense of their client states, which they now see as competitors. without the protection of american military dominance, the idea of selling our resources to anybody at all - even european countries that seem friendly today but have horrible recent histories - seems perilous, and the idea of selling them to the arabs or chinese appears flat out stupid.
i would not have proposed what carney is proposing. as mentioned, the details are thin. it's a very homo economicus approach. i am no advocate of free markets and i know what happens when you try to democratize via dividends. is there even going to be a guarantee that canadians are buying into it, or will it be open to the rest of the world? by making share ownership difficult to track, it may do the opposite of what's being suggested - it might backfire and result in difficult to understand, measure or regulate and increased foreign ownership of the resource economy. or maybe that's actually the point.
the liberals are famous for campaigning on the left and governing on the right. today, they seem to be campaigning as economic nationalists and governing as globalists. we should not have expected anything different.
i would prefer to see these projects funded via the bank of canada and set up as crown corporations. i've been calling on this for over ten years but the liberal party seems to have some deep ideological opposition to it, and it's not likely to develop. there was a clause in trudeau's platform in 2015 about a green infrastructure bank as a part of the bank of canada that i strongly supported and that the liberal party hierarchy has violently prevented. it would upset certain large investors, who don't want to unravel the nixon shock.
most of what i'm calling for was supported by pierre trudeau and torn down by brian mulroney, then side-stepped during the chretien years, put off for later, and now forgotten about. some time after the martin purge, the liberals became violently opposed to their own legacy and deadset on destroying it. the liberals have run on these ideas because they know they get votes, but they won't implement them until something changes at the top of the party or a real left-wing alternative gets elected.
as it is, carney seems to be trying to be a nationalist and a globalist at the same time and is likely as tied into the doublethink as anybody. i expect that the globalism will overpower the nationalism, to the detriment of canadians.
i'm not interested in canada buying up resources elsewhere, although canadian companies certainly own large mining and mineral resources in africa and latin america. a canadian sovereign wealth fund as it exists in norway would look something like nationalizing canada's substantive foreign mineral holdings, which carney would not contemplate doing for ten seconds. that would be interfering in the private sector and deeply un homo economicus. it would be a heresy against the church of free market economics.
appendix C - additions to the house
i'm going to approach this with the perspective that the landlord has discretion to refund me. i moved in here with the understanding that i would need to do some work, and i will do that work for free to better the space. that's fine - i wanted a big space for cheap and i got it, and i'll do the work required to fix it. that was the deal. however, as i'm not going to take these things with me when i eventually leave, as they are now a part of the house and will be inherited by the next tenant, the landlord should volunteer to refund me for the materials.
| item | total cost | amount
used |
did it work? | purchased from |
brand, link |
receipt | should i request costs? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| crack sealer caulking | 20x$3 + taxes ~ $70 | 20 of 20 | it helps a lot | canadian tire | alex dap, link | i can't find them but they're around. | the windows and walls had a lot of cracks. this approach has kept out bugs and kept in heat. it's imperfect in terms of thermal insulation, but it helps a lot with the bugs, particularly ants and roaches. i'm also using paper towel and packing tape to create a kind of cheap blocking layer that helps dissuade rodents, although they could eat through. they don't like to chew through caulk or tape and avoid it, although they can. i created a weak barrier on purpose to figure out where they're coming in and they just didn't come in. fine. this would be a tenant cost of <$10 if it was one or two containers, but the fact that i've needed 20 containers and counting makes it a landlord cost, imo; sealing drafts is tenant when it's minimal, but should really be landlord when it's dramatic, and the amount of sealing needed in this space has been dramatic. the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen are basically done. i will likely need to buy another 5+ containers to finish up in the living room and hallways and need to take a different approach altogether in the laundry and front entrance. |
| pink interior insulation | 2x$25 + taxes ~ $60 | almost 1 of 2 | yes | home hardware | owens corning, pink-panther r12, link |  |
there's a large hole in the backyard leading directly into the laundry creating access for rodents and creating drafts. insulation should always be a landlord cost. certainly. |
| 12 rat traps | $22.50 + taxes ~ $25 | all | not very well | amazon | lulucatch, link |  |
this is a landlord responsibility, and my position is that whether the landlord should pay for tenants buying traps should be dependent on if it works. landlords shouldn't pay for tenants to aimlessly and ineffectively hunt rats, but if a tenant does something that is effective, they should be compensated for costs. i did catch a few rats with these traps, and they did alter their movement, so they made a difference, but they mostly went around them. that was good enough for me in the short run. i haven't seen any rats in a few weeks. there was apparently some baiting done outside, and it has worked in the very short run for now, so this has been dealt with, at least for now. this is of least concern to me. maybe split it in the end. i am reusing these traps to catch cockroaches in the hole in my bathroom under the upstairs sink. and in the front entrance area, with the intent of drawing them out of the house. |
| downspout extender | ~$20 | all | yes | amazon | binazon, link |  |
the water is falling right on the foundation and leaking into the basement. this is absolutely a landlord responsibility to fix. |
| water proof rubber sealant | ~$20 | all | tbd | amazon | flex seal, link |  |
the holes in the sunroom, both on the side and in the front, and under the spout, are the result of poor work that was done. this sealant was purchased to address damage created by water leaking in from the downspout, coming off the roof. if there's any left, i'll use it to weatherize the hole on the side from the inside. the hole should also be bricked over from the outside. this is landlord, but i'd do it myself and not think about it, if there wasn't so much to do. let's see if it works. |
 |
|||||||
| leak plugging tape | ~$17 | all | yes | amazon | link |  |
the window frame around the bedroom window has had difficulty keeping rain out during downpours. i tried to use the dap but it was not completely effective and gave out completely during the tornado last month. i applied the dap over what looks like an old application of great stuff, which was no longer working, if it ever did. this is again the result of poor previous work. so that doesn't seem to be the right approach. i believe the water is actually coming in from the upstairs window, which is open because it has an air conditioner in it. i will take a look outside soon to see if i can clean the area up and identify places the water is pooling. i was going to use some of the tape to weatherize the inside of the hole on the side, but i may re-evaluate, after noticing it was kicked in. due to the most recent vandalism, the exposed drywall may need to be completely redone before the outside is bricked over. this is landlord, but it's also the kind of thing i'd just do myself and not think twice about it, if it weren't for the fact that there's so much of it to do. let's see if it works. update: it is working, so it should be treated as a fix and refunded. |
| weather proofing tape | ~$23 | all | yes | amazon | link |  |
this is to address drafts inside the unit and keep heating costs down. i will run it around parts of the windows, around the doors |
| duct tape | ~$20 | ~50% | yes | amazon | link |  |
i had purchased some duct tape as well. it turns out the duct tape works better than the wood in blocking holes for now. i'm also noticing a developing roach problem that seems to be in the venting. i roach proofed the inside of the unit as the first order of business when i came in. the reason all of my food is secured was not for the rats but for the roaches. i half expected roaches. i didn't expect rats. i've lysoled around the areas in the ducts i can but i'm going to focus on sealing the ducts up with tape and on leaving the blower running for now. i have not seen roaches inside the unit proper but i'm increasingly seeing them in the laundry, only, and particularly around the ducts. again, i would just do this myself and forget about it, if it weren't for the compounding costs. let's see how much i use and if it works. update: i used the better part of a roll in the laundry room and a bit of it for myself as well. right now, i'd say i used half on the apartment, mostly around the furnace but also in the ceiling. the furnace needed this done for efficiency and to prevent the ducts from being a transit for roaches. i may use more when i go into the furnace room to clean it up. |
| drip trays for stove | ~$20 (17.99 + tax) |
all | yes | amazon | link |  |
the stove was filthy but works fine after a thorough cleaning. the drip trays are long overdue for a change. i've kept the old ones if you still want them, but they're basically rusted completely through, and may have been ripped open by rats. this is up to you, but i don't want to take the drip trays with me, so they ought to belong to the stove and i ought to be refunded for this. |
| chain locks and door stops | ~$72 | all | yes | amazon | link (stops), link (chains) |
 |
i have installed door stops on the two front doors and have one ready for the side door when it gets installed. i have installed a total of six chain locks on different doors and windows as well. i will show you where as the vlogs come up. the total cost for the 9 inside locks was $72. i may get more chain locks for more windows and will update if (when) i do. i might unscrew these and take them with me one day, and i certainly will if you don't purchase them from me for the apartment, but i want to suggest that they are a massive benefit to the apartment and they should stay where they are. the chain locks on the windows are a huge increase in security. this is up to you - you can buy them and they become the apartment's, or you can not buy them, and i'll unscrew them one day when i go. |
| kitchen light fixture | ~$12.50 | all | yes | amazon | link |  |
when i moved in, there was a stove hood screwed into the plaster above the stove. the stove hood was quite heavy, and it was not anchored to any kind of wood, but just drilled right into the plaster. this is not how you should install something heavy like this and it fell out because it wasn't anchored to anything. it doesn't make sense to try to screw this heavy object back into the plaster. further note that the fan isn't actually exhausting anywhere, but is just blowing in place. it's pointless, all around. instead, i bought a cheap light fixture that does not weigh very much and that i can just tape over the hole in the plaster. this will provide for a light over the stove without the need to replace the hood, which did not have a functional fan. the hood is in the back. i can certainly take the item with me in the end and i will if it doesn't get refunded, but i think it should belong to the house as a replacement for the hood and that i should be refunded for it. |
| wire mesh for windows and gaps | ~$56.50 | all | so far | amazon | link | two of the windows had no screens in them at all and three of them did not fit into the windows correctly and had large gaps around the corners minimizing their function. i did not rescreen any of them, but i have fixed all of them, and what i did should last. all of the windows now have screens, all of them lock and all of them have blackout curtains. i have also put steel screens over a couple of key rodent access points in the laundry, which should impede their movement. the installed mesh is a hack, but a dramatic improvement. we can let it sit for a while. again, while this is clearly a landord responsibility, i would have just done it and forgotten about it if it weren't for the amount of things like this that i'm doing, but because it's a hack, and the windows are not rescreened, let's split the difference. i'd calculate a low likelihood that the windows were going to ever get rescreened here had i not installed this hack. | |
| running costs | $315 | $70 (caulking) + $30 (insulation) + $12.50 (half of rat traps) + $20 (downspout extender) + $20 (drip trays for stove) + $23 (weather-proofing tape) + $72 (inside locks) + $10 (half of duct tape) + $17 (leak-plugging tape) + $12.50 (kitchen light over stove) + $28.25 (half of steel mesh) = $315.25 i'm not yet done with the sealant but i am now ready to draw conclusions about the leak-plugging, weather proofing and duct tape. if i fix the holes in the house, it's going to cost me concrete and bricks. as with everything else, i'm happy to do the work to fix my own space for free, i'm just looking for a refund in materials. i have also installed a lot of shelving, a paper towel holder and a couple of key racks. these are installed using adhesives and pegs that can be removed with a spatula and a hot towel and may require a paint job afterwards. the wood was mostly repurposed, but some of it was bought for shelving in a different space in 2013 and the big pieces under the sink and on top of my bed were recently purchased at home hardware, for some amount. the oversized pegs were about a $1 each. the paper towel holder was $12.65, the key racks were $14.23. i am not going to put this in the list and i would plan to take all of this with me one day, but it was built for the space amd if you want any of it to stay in the unit, tell me what it is and make me an offer for it. this is discretionary and a request. i'm not going to sue you or anything. the rent is affordable. it would be different if the rent was higher, but it isn't; low rent comes with this kind of thing, and i expect it. but the flip side is that if i'm going to do this work as a tenant, a responsible landlord should volunteer to cover materials, and write off labour as the deal in the low rent, in my opinion. to an extent, what i'm doing is drawing your attention to the extent of what's being done. |
i also have a list of items to do that i cannot do myself and are going to require some contracting:
front entrance area:
*1) the incorrectly closed hole on the side of the front entrance, under the stairs, needs to be bricked over, and the drywall may also need to be redone. update: i'm on the brink of doing it myself this week.*
2) the poorly boarded up front window needs to either be replaced or boarded up better. there is some water damage as a result of it not being closed up well. on closer inspection, it's not as bad as i thought. i thought the window was smashed and boarded up half-assed. it's merely cracked and the board seems to be functioning more as a light blocker. the water damage may have actually been from the front door. while i'd rather use the sun room as a sun room (i may even plant some food in here if we're sure about the rodents), i will focus on weather-proofing this, instead.
2a) update: i have seen the water coming off the roof and realize now that this was the cause of the water damage in the front. i haven't taken a look at it yet but some tactic to reroute the water away from the door would be necessary
4) electrical work: light fixture at top of stairs, converting junction box to outlet under the stairs
side entrance:
- *installing a door to minimize the drafts and increase safety*
kitchen:
bathroom:
- chuck punched a hole in the wall to fix the plumbing which was never patched. i taped over it and that kept the rats out. the plumbing leak left substantive water damage. the rats came back to that area and left a gross mess that needs to be cleaned up. some drywall/plaster work is necessary in here from the basement side and somebody is going to need to get into the floor to clean it out, either from down or upstairs.
update: i have opened it up and cleaned it out and taped it back up. the difference in smell was not immediate as the stench appears to be coming from more directly under the floor. i've been running bleach in the shower and it's getting better.
update again: i'm going to tape over it with cardboard and paint over it. whatever. this needs to be eventually fixed but i'm moving on. the cardboard is surplus. the paint is trivial.
last update: i have taped over it with cardboard but did not paint it. this doesn't cost me anything and doesn't actually fix it but it hides it until the issue can be addressed.
backyard:
- *the hole in the back needs to be properly sealed up with cement or concrete. update: i'm on the brink of doing this myself this week.*
- there are cats crawling into the vents. rats are smaller than cats, if barely sometimes. that would need some kind of cover on it.
pest control:
- the rats are gone for now, although i have noticed some random candy wrappers and what might be orange seeds in the laundry. something might be running around in there, still. no droppings. i hope it fell through the floor and i duct taped over some more cracks to try to stop that. as of june 16th, i have not seen anything downstairs for weeks but have heard periodic rat feet upstairs. i'm trying to block entry with wiring.
- i got the cat out of the vent and to the humane society for medical work. it was starving to death. i want to help this cat. i hope the evicted tenant goes to get the cat as it was frantically looking for her. if it's not adopted quickly, i will bring it back here and it can be a house cat. i'll take care of it and let it roam. it's a friendly cat that will be good with kids and that i think would even like kids. the humane society is indicating the cat is likely to get adopted quickly because it's such a smart, friendly cat. as of june 16th, i believe the cat has found a home.
- i haven't seen anymore roaches in the back after lysoling and sealing the vents. there may be roaches in the walls eating the rat carcasses and their feces. it may be a problem in the long run.
- there are some kind of beetles, though. they seem to be nymphs. i don't know what they are, but i'm killing them when i see them, mostly in the bathroom.
- there are a lot of blow flies, coming from everywhere, indicating a lot of dead things. the flies are actually the biggest problem right now, but it should clear up on it's own. as of may 22, the flies are gone, for now. they haven't come back in large numbers. the wire on the windows should help.
- there are some ants in the basement, which means there are ants outside the house. i'm attempting to find and block holes inside and have had some success. as of june 16th, the number of ants inside has decreased dramatically.
Thursday, April 30, 2026
there's nothing more pathetic than an aging person trying to hold on to their youth. it's ok to get older. that's called maturity. rejecting aging is called immaturity.
that doesn't mean you need to fall into bad stereotypes.
but an intelligent and mature person should not be able to relate to cultural ideas being marketed to 20 year-olds and those that try to are either being pretentious poseurs or are legitimate immature retards. growing up a little means your tastes in music and other forms of art should mature to reflect things that older people can relate to.
at this point, i'm far more interested in music that is explicitly about aging than i am in pretending that i'm 15 years old. i'm not. and i don't want to be.
valid, talented, worthwhile, substantive artists should age with their listeners.
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
the removal of american troops from germany, if it happens, would signal the actual end of american hegemony, and the first act of retreat - actually - of the american empire.
i do not think the united states is in decline at all, but withdrawal from germany would be an act that would imply clear decline.
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
see, i never thought kimmel was funny. he's not as cringe as fallon but he's not funny. at all.
is "expectant widow" even a joke? i dunno. i think she has some expectorant for your window.
the comment is actually in poor enough taste to justify a smack upside the head, and it has to be pretty fucking bad if it makes me, of all people, cringe. he should apologize for being a shithead.
i frequently go to that freshco.
i've bicycled through there and seen groups of people looking ominously. i'm from the wrong side of the tracks. i've learned how to avoid. but that area has given me the creeps more than once.
the homeless drug users are a problem but they aren't the same kind of problem as the culture of violence in the low income housed population, who mostly don't do drugs, and can afford the ones they do. it's a difference of scale. the focus is getting them off the street, but that often just makes them worse.
as mentioned, i was feeling better at the start of the week, but i lost the weekend, again. i bought some items on amazon to clean up the front with, but i need to wait for the landlord to do some work in there first. i shifted focus to the laundry and the bathroom instead and the laundry is pretty much finished. the bathroom is next, but i again need to wait for the landlord to get in to clean some things up. these issues are going to slow me down and act as bottlenecks but so be it. in the mean time, i can keep cleaning and ordering small things as they come up.
so, that was today, and yesterday, and saturday as well.
Monday, April 27, 2026
Sunday, April 26, 2026
i've repeatedly called for the assassination of donald trump and think that that would be the correct outcome in the american legal system. i've called for the intelligence agencies to remove him, as a national security threat.
i might applaud if some random person took him out, but that's not what i've been calling for. i've been calling for the intelligence agencies to do it.
i certainly would not do that myself. i'm not a martyr for any cause. i don't believe in the "greater good", and i don't care about the children. i'm driven by self-interest and maximizing my individual goals and i'm driven so much by self-interest that i don't care about societal goal posts like family or status. i have no interest in measuring myself against others. i completely reject any and all form of competition and i'm completely opposed to market economics.
i'm not even an american citizen. i'm not going to put my own country ahead of myself, let alone somebody else's country ahead of myself. that would be retarded.
if they ever tried to conscript me, i'd make a show out of killing the officer that tried to conscript me. i'd be safer in jail. great.
so, it would not be in my self-interest to commit suicide for the greater good in that context or in any other context and i would not be considering doing that.
it's not my job.
assassinating a president like donald trump, who is a clear threat to the national interest, is the job of the security agencies. i would again call on them to do their jobs, but i have no interest in putting myself at risk to do their jobs for them. that would be irrational; it would be idiotic.
if our increasingly far right fascist government in canada moves to ban internet access for young people in any way, we need to start organizing street protests at once. the idea is unacceptable on it's face and should not even be being discussed. we should immediately move to shut the society down in response. this is an issue that would get me out on the street protesting.
i would suggest organizing the protests in a way that emulates the street protests in iran.
fear of technology - let's call it technophobia - is a growing, developing threat in our society that needs to be addressed with education and exposure. when people have a better understanding of technology, and are exposed to it more, they tend to have less fear or resentment of it.
banning children from technology is not a socialist position; socialists embrace technology as the solution to wage slavery, which is the characteristic of capitalism that makes it little different than feudalism or other historical forms of slavery. wage slave capitalism is just the current world's form of slavery. civilization needs slaves to function. only technology offers us an escape, where we can build a civilized society without the coercive wage work or other types of physical slavery that are required for the civilization to function.
banning children from technology could only be seen as an extremely right-wing political position, and those that advocate for it should be correctly considered to be far-right, technophobic extremists.
canadian politicians have been bitching about "competitiveness" for decades, and then they keep doing retarded things like banning kids from technology. you think that's going to make us more or less competitive? i mean, c'mon.
if you let these right-wing conservative politicians in the ndp make decisions for the country, we're going to end up looking like iran.
there's a country that bans internet access for young people: iran. is that what we want? it seems to be what the ndp wants.
you very well might have stupid, useless, worthless children. that might be true.
but, it's your own fucking fault, and the fact that you're considering banning them from using technology is a symptom of the poor parenting skills that led you to this situation, not a solution. maybe you should start giving them things instead of focusing on taking things away.
your stupid idiot kids are not jeff bezos' fault. they're you're fault.
take responsibility for your failures as a parent and stop blaming it on technology.
Saturday, April 25, 2026
getting your kids technologically connected at a young age will help them build the tools they need to survive in the modern world, off the amish farm, out of the kibbutz, away from the teepee, and preventing them from accessing the technology will merely retard their development in a changing world.
the times they are a changin'. eh?
you adapt, or you die.
don't hobble your childrens' development by blocking them from the real world. give them access to the tools they need to thrive and survive at a young age. help them adapt. don't condemn them to stagnation.
i might even go so far as to characterize banning your kids from technology as a form of child abuse. it is rigid, conservative parenting and an idea that has no place in a free society.
i have no remote moral or social opposition to "enriching tech bros". technology makes our lives better. i do not resist it, i embrace it.
if the premier of manitoba wants to be a primitivist, he can go live with the amish or sleep in a teepee. that's his choice. i don't care. that's not my problem.
but he has no right to enforce his beliefs or his values on other people, and he can go fuck himself for thinking he does.
he can take his bullshit law and cram it up his asshole.
manitobans should respond with open and rigid contempt by ignoring any law as outside of a basic social contract and entirely unconstitutional. they will not police their children's behaviour online - their children are free to do as they choose.
i was feeling better this week but i just crashed near the end of the week.
i'm told the crackheads "broke in" upstairs on thursday night, that they took a shit and that they basically then left. i'm pretty sure they smoked something up there first. it was explained to me as drug addicts on autopilot and that they just needed to take a shit and couldn't process what they were doing.
i am not convinced they broke in but i did crash on thursday night and that explains why. i've also been told that the upper unit got rented. if somebody moves in on may 1st, the situation had better clear up.
there's two working parts here - an owner and a manager. i'm virtually certain that the manager is a drug addict, and was doing drugs with the crackheads, although i have no clear evidence that he was selling it to them. i don't know about the owner. the owner seems clean, seems distant and seems reasonable. he doesn't seem to be involved. but that's just the point
i'm a reasonable man.
right. those are the ones running the finances. business is business. so it goes.
i'm being careful about this.
if somebody moves in on may 1st, it should be the end of it. if this continues, i have to get out of here.
i can tell you this son of a bitch would have a hard fucking time forcing his opinions and values on my kids. there would be no such ban on social media or ai in my house.
this guy is an overbearing asshole that thinks he has some right to tell people how to live. and a piece of shit. he can go fuck himself as far as i'm concerned.
i understand that peaceful coexistence with the terrorist occult state of iran is impossible. this is not in the set of possible outcomes, and pretending that it is is retarded. all that trump has done is let the chinese set up anti-air defenses, let hezbollah import more missiles, let iran plan more terrorist attacks and extend the war by however long it takes to undo that. by opting for a negotiation instead of a prosecution, he completely fucked the whole thing up.
but even if it were possible, it would be unacceptable.
i don't want to coexist with the terrorist death cult in iran. i don't want to share a planet with these people. they're intolerable. i want them to cease to exist.
you can't just show up out of nowhere, steal people's land and enforce your concepts of land ownership on them. that was always illegal under british colonial law. even the fucking romans knew that was wrong, and the romans had some broader problems with right and wrong. the romans would have decided it was illegal, the british would have decided it was illegal and canada has upheld an ancient precedent in confirming it's illegal. something i learned recently is that the british adaptation of roman law was actually formulated by francis bacon in the early 17th century.
the unilateral imposition of european fiefdom concepts of land ownership on british columbia was always illegal. even according to the 1763 proclamation, it was illegal; the proclamation claims the land for the british, so that other european powers cannot claim it for themselves, but it also says that the indigenous groups have to sell the land to the crown, and can only sell it to the crown. it is a land claim, but it doesn't extinguish indigenous title.
it is absolutely baffling that the government in bc, which is supposed to be a left-wing government, is having difficulty with this.
not only is it not new, it very well might be the oldest law in canada.
this really isn't difficult to understand.
british columbia is stolen land. there is no legal basis for canadian sovereignty over most of bc - the british just stole it from the indigenous groups. the closest thing to legal justification for canadian sovereignty over british columbia is the royal proclamation of 1763, where the british king unilaterally declared sovereignty over the west of north america, but this would be considered absurd if interpreted as modern law. that's it. there's nothing else to cite. it's that flimsy. in today's world, which is very far removed from the wild west of cowboys and indians, that theft has been recognized and understood as illegal. as such, the government has no legitimate legal basis for passing any laws in the region at all.
british columbia is technically an illegal occupation, under international law.
this is not new. it is not a result of the dripa. it did not develop over the last ten years. the indigenous groups have never accepted canadian sovereignty, and the courts recognized it decades before dripa. dripa developed out of a completely different process - it is international law. however, in some sense, dripa was also a codification of existing precedent.
nor does bc need to reinvent the wheel here. eby is apparently simply ignorant of the development of this legal process in his own jurisdiction, which wrote the rules for how this developed elsewhere. there is actually a workable framework for indigenous title allodial land rights called the nis'gaa agreement. this has already been negotiated, and it's up to eby's government to pull their head out of their ass, enforce the rule of law and follow the framework.
the days of the wild west are over.
send eby the memo. he seems to have missed it.
Friday, April 24, 2026
the idea of giving people hallucinogens to prevent them from killing themselves perfectly summarizes everything wrong with america.
why don't they just legalize assisted suicide instead? if you really believe in self-ownership, you should support suicide rights, as they are more fundamental - committing suicide doesn't harm anybody else, but drug use invariably does harm the people around you.
society would be better off letting them kill themselves than giving them drugs. it's less harm to society.
Thursday, April 23, 2026
it is abundantly clear that marijuana has no legitimate medical use whatsoever. the science is in and closed and the debate is not worth having - it has no clinical value of any sort. only the most ignorant retards would argue in favour of using dope as a medicine.
the question of whether it's dangerous or not is more subtle.
it is certainly extremely carcinogenic and overwhelmingly dangerous on that level, which should be important, but doesn't seem to click for many people, including legislators in canada. while true, this doesn't seem to matter, for some reason.
the ambiguity with dope is that it's always been difficult to figure out if potheads are stupid because they smoked themselves retarded or if they were already retarded in the first place. are they stupid because of the pot or were they attracted to the pot because they were stupid? nobody has a clear answer to this. the correlation of immense levels of stupidity with even moderate marijuana use is abundantly clear, but there is no rigorously demonstrated cause and effect. it's probably a poorly understood feedback cycle.
the problem is that our culture sucks. we make shit movies, listen to shit music, watch shit tv, vote for shit politicians, eat shit food, etc and all of it drives home this necessity to fit in and be cool. the tv says drugs are cool, and virtually everybody gets brainwashed by it. it's very difficult to escape the mind control. so, it's difficult to do controlled experiments.
it's certainly true that people are stupid while under the influence of marijuana, and that it can lead to impaired decision making of any and all sorts, including delayed reaction times.
these challenges may be manageable with some effort, but i don't see what the benefit of managing these challenges is. however you crunch it, you end up with a net drain of resources and no discernible benefits. should we not have something to show for the effort of managing the challenges? only the capitalists benefit, and that is not a good reason for legalization.
but when you look at it carefully, that's what the reality is. these arguments for legalization are all a lot of bullshit. legalizing marijuana benefits the producers that profit from selling it at the expense of an array of manageable social concerns. if you think that is worth it, you support it. if you don't think it's worth it, you don't.
i think that legalizing marijuana in canada was a generational mistake that we'll be paying for for decades.
my primary concern is rights for non-smokers. i really don't care about drug addicts. at all.
i support laws that strengthen the rights of non-smokers and continue to decrease the amount of interaction smokers are required to have with non-smokers. i could generalize: i support laws that strengthen the right to a substance-free existence for people that choose to live that way. nobody has the right to force their drug habits on other people.
i have no interest in legislation that legalizes drug consumption.
i want to request that whatever moves in here puts a focus on returning to a 24 hour business. it's probably the reason the business closed.
one of the most frustrating outcomes of the pandemic has been the shift to near universal closing times in the evening.
i want a return to normalcy. i'm tired of things being closed at 22:00.
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
this is actually a fairly small plane. the media made it sound like he bought a 747.
he probably doesn't need 12 passengers, 5 would be more than enough, but what's the actual difference in cost, and is it really that substantive?
i'm not a fiscal conservative. i'd rather see money spent on useful things than useless things, but i have no opposition to government spending money on things that are being used. this doesn't strike me as wasteful.
i wouldn't consider the premise of the premier's office having access to round the clock air travel to be controversial if i thought it was necessary. the costs are minor, in context. however, it's not clear to me why the premier of ontario needs a private jet as anywhere he can go on a private jet, he can go on a public one.
ontario is very big and there are a lot of places that you can't get to in commercial aircraft or even by road, you need a small plane or a helicopter. it would make sense to me for ontario to have it's own small aircraft to ensure the premier can get across the province.
but the jet would probably have difficulty landing in a lot of these places anyways. it doesn't seem to have been well thought through.
the combination of fresh dill, frank's hot sauce and jalapeno brine is extremely good in lentil soup.
i have been buying jarred things recently. it's a little unusual. but it gave me the idea of using the brine to get the last bit of caesar out of the bottle for the soup, and the jalapeno-brine-caesar mix is ridiculously good, paired with the dill and the hot sauce. it's the perfect combination of sour, tangy and spicy.
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
i finally got a start on cleaning up the front entrance today which, as mentioned previously, is big enough for several bicycles and a work area. the place is huge, but it's cheap for a reason. i'm a lot more awake/alert and feeling a lot better. i hope that this low productivity phase is ending.
tonight, i'm going to see if i can order or find some key items for the front area.
Monday, April 20, 2026
that was an awful weekend.
i waited until saturday to go out to start cleaning up but it never got started. i took a nap on friday evening and woke up to a vicious stench that almost instantly triggered me into a migraine and it still hasn't lifted yet. i've been sweating and passing out. i seem to have breathed something toxic in and have been trying but struggling to clear it out. i slept all weekend. i've barely eaten. i feel terrible.
i ate too much tylenol on sunday morning so i stopped sunday night and it just hit me over the head with a sledgehammer. i've been out cold for 13 hours.
it looks like i'm going to sleep most of the day.
i wanted to get some cleaning done this weekend, but all i did was sleep.
Sunday, April 19, 2026
in fact, what defines the drugs in donald trump's order is that they are likely to make people physically sick in the form of headaches, lethargy and other decreases in quality of life and they are all extremely dangerous for this kind of research because they are all habit forming and can all cause severe brain damage.
but, this is exactly what you would expect in a true idiocracy: lobotomies for public health as a "cure" for "depression".
Saturday, April 18, 2026
what happens when you give losers drugs is that they get high.
then they say they're "happy". because they're high.
the bigger losers they are, the more likely they are to get addicted to drugs. this helps nobody, but has the potential to create a myriad of social problems.
the drug industry doesn't care. it just wants profit.
people suffer from "depression" because they make bad decisions. it's not a legitimate clinical condition; "depression" is just capitalist psychobabble for being a pathetic loser.
they need to make better choices.
and getting addicted to drugs is about the worst choice they can make, as nothing will make them more pathetic or bigger losers than becoming worthless addicts.
when trump claimed the strait of hormuz was open, the irgc almost immediately clarified that it actually wasn't. it does not appear as though the strait was ever open at all.
what trump says at this point is completely worthless and the media should stop listening to him without independent verification.
apparently, the democrats are opposed to criticism of the pope. this aligns them strictly with the extreme far right, and is not acceptable from a moderate or left-wing perspective.
any and all opposition of the catholic church is of the utmost necessity from the position of even the most moderate left. there is no remote excuse for any support of a death cult like the catholic church, which is just about the most evil source of organized crime on the planet.
i think this nails it.
but gen x is also very similar to the parents of the boomer generation in many of the ways discussed here, who grew up during one or two major wars, and faced near death after being forced to fight in one or both of them. there's a reason for that: a lot of us were raised by our grandparents, not by our parents.
i was a latch key kid and the first person i saw in the evening was more often than not my maternal grandmother, who would show up to check on me when my mom disappeared on cocaine binges. my dad would pick me up twice a week due to a court order for him to and drop me off somewhere like at a soccer field or a karate club, then go watch the game in a bar and pick me up to drive me home a few hours later, until he was able to move me into his basement to evade paying child support.
but i actually spent a lot of time with nana that i didn't actually spend with either of my parents.
ok.
i'm being told the top floor is sealed up. that won't be good for the rats, because that's their entry point, but that's what they said. i'll see if i can verify that. i hope it's very short term, otherwise there's going to be a brutal infestation.
despite that, i can hear people upstairs, and can smell their drug use. it's beginning to feel similar to what happened in the last basement, where it was obvious there were people upstairs doing drugs, but the landlords repeatedly denied it.
the cops are retards and the courts are broken. it's a waste of time.
i'm tentatively planning to get out of here asap. i don't like these people. i'm not their friend and don't want to hang out with them and i don't understand why they keep following me around.
i think that these people are disgusting losers and i don't want to acknowledge that they even exist.
i have repeatedly warned them to stay away from me or to suffer the consequences for it and it's relatively clear that they aren't listening and that's going to be what happens.
Friday, April 17, 2026
baghdad is basically built on top of babylon (after it was renamed a few times in between by greeks and persians), which is very old, but the city has been destroyed and rebuilt a dozen times.
the most recent city was rebuilt after the year 1300.
this is a newer city than rome, constantinople, london, paris or even berlin.
you'll often hear people from the middle east say stupid things like that their culture is 7000 years old.
that's wrong - it's ignorant and it's false.
there were no arabs anywhere outside of the desert until about the year 700 and the society they built on the top of the roman-persian wars and the devastation of the plague was wiped out by the mongols and the turks.
the current civilization in the middle east is barely 100 years old. it cannot be traced back before the first word war.
the area has a history of repeated collapse because their religion is horrifically destructive. i don't know if it's cultural or genetic, but religion constantly destroys everything in the region, and the current period will be no different.
the reality is that no society or culture in the region has lasted more than 200 years since the fall of the sumerians. it's been constant war over god ever since, and they've been constantly targeted by outsiders and wiped out because they've constantly been arrogant shitheads to everybody else, which is no less true now than ever.
if the americans got up and left, they'd be killing each other again in five minutes.
the gcc has a few years of oil left and a dwindling customer base at that. it's already a desert, but it's becoming uninhabitable. if living in that region hasn't already been like living in hell for the last 1300 years, it's going to be a hell on earth soon enough.
if there was a god, it would wipe these people out. that they haven't been wiped out yet is proof that there is no god.
but it is fitting and appropriate that the gcc will suffer some of the most powerful effects of climate change, to the point that the region is uninhabitable. they are going to starve to death, and die of dehydration, and the world will not help them - the world should not help them.
when they're out of oil, the americans will pull out and let them kill each other, or bomb a few of them back into the sand they recently came from.
they have no future. their civilizational collapse and complete destruction is imminent - they've got 25 years, max, before they completely collapse. it will be a good day in the history of the world when they're gone.
the article describes indonesia as a democracy.
that's hilarious.
indonesia is one the most brutally repressive theocracies in the world, with no concept of human rights, and an economy built on literal child slavery.
it's a society that god would smite from the face of the earth with a nuclear blast, if god wasn't a foolish figment of our primitive imagination.
further, they're sitting on an important trade route.
there will be a war there at some point in the not distant future, and i will be on the side that seeks to destroy them.
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