these are very bad numbers for a democratic candidate in michigan, and reflective of the 13% turnout:

EPIC-MRA[296][F]	July 24–31, 2026	600 (LV)	± 4.0%	43%	46%	—	11%
SoCal Strategies (R)[219][A]	July 28–30, 2026	640 (LV)	± 3.8%	41%	42%	—	17%
Mitchell Research & Communications[297]	July 28–29, 2026	672 (LV)	± 3.8%	45%	45%	—	10%
Glengariff Group[298][O]	July 22–24, 2026	600 (LV)	± 4.0%	39%	49%	1%	11%

the first number is for the scruffy homeless-looking abdul el sayed. the second number is for the more presentable looking mike rogers.

michigan has not elected a republican senator since the early 90s. the margin has been narrowing in recent years, but the republicans have not won this state in decades. that makes it a reliable democrat-electing state. in fact, debbie stabenow reliably got over 50% and carl levin often got over 60%.

so why are these numbers so low? why can this guy barely poll at 40% when numbers in the state have recently been reliably 50+ for the democrats?

the first thing to note is that the republicans are actually polling about what they usually do; republican senate candidates usually poll in the mid to high 40s. it's rare for them to poll lower than 45%. this same candidate got 48% in 2024, and lost to elissa slotkin, who is turning out to be a very good senator. he will almost certainly get around 48% again.

what's happened is that large amounts of usually democratic voters are saying "i don't like this guy" by telling pollsters that they're undecided, and it's not because he's left-wing. he's not leftwing at all. like most arabs, he's extremely right-wing and accurately described as a quasi-fascist.

that undecided likely does not mean "undecided between the republicans and democrats". that 10-15% undecided is the actual left of the democratic party, who is uncomfortable with supporting a right-wing democrat and may decide not to vote at all. that's what just happened in the primary - very low turnout allowed the right-wing fringe candidate to win. if that is repeated in the general, the republicans will win in michigan for the first time in over 30 years and this tactic of putting scruffy homeless-looking people on the bill to appeal to a 2% minority will expose itself as foolish.

mr el-sayed's task is that he needs to convince the party's left to vote for him, instead of stay home, while not alienating moderates too deeply. he's not likely to succeed.

if turnout goes down by 10% in the end, the results will look something like:

mike rogers - 53%

sayed - 42%

others - 5%

and that would be the worst outcome for democrats in michigan in decades, by far. it is very likely what is coming.

greta thunberg has been completely brainwashed by islam.

it's actually a helpful case study for the secular left. she happen to be retarded, and less able to protect herself from brainwashing than others, and look what they've done to her. it's absolutely frightening, and a clear warning of the dangers posed by the religious right in co-opting the political left. let her be the poster child for the dangers of islamic brainwashing.

we live in an idiocracy with a judiciary made up of fucking idiots. i've been constantly frustrated by the sheer stupidity of the judges i've had to deal with, their overwhelming incompetence when faced with simple tasks involving analyzing clear evidence, their inability to process simple logic, their inability to follow their own instructions and their frequent levels of deep corruption.

i've already decided that the courts are a waste of time. canadians need to find ways to get to just outcomes outside of the legal system, because the legal system is broken.

today's astonishing order features an adjudicator that didn't understand grade school math, and wanted an expert witness to explain to him how to read a graph. i did not foresee this, but i'm not sure it matters much. i'm an expert witness on grade school math, and i told them that, but an expert witness is only required to explain grade school math to people that failed it. 

i don't think any level of testimony would have helped this guy understand something that he clearly lacked the basic education to understand. little less than sending him back to adult high school to learn basic math would have been helpful. he did not understand how to read the graph and was not going to understand how to read it. but if that's the person who's holding the gavel, what do you do?

there is no longer an appeals process in canada, due to vavilov. bad rulings with errors that might have previously been corrected on appeal are no longer allowed to have appeals to them heard at all. in the absence of a working appeals process, errors of fact and law become established as precedent and repeated in future rulings. the result is the co-option of case law and the perpetuation of nonsense built up on top of itself via stare decisis.

the last time we saw this in western culture was during the dark ages, when volumes of nonsense were written on the back of the ignorance of aristotle. we are falling back into the backwards judeao-muslim-christian ideological frameworks that we emerged from during the enlightenment.

our utterly broken court system has repeatedly astonished me. the point of failure is the incompetent judiciary, installed through insufficiently rigorous hiring processes. too many people get hired because of how they look and when they're screened for qualifications it's to align with a market libertarian ideology that is inconsistent with the crux of canada's settled common law, which is about individual rights. we're seeing the entire legal edifice collapse, and it's being replaced by this horrible catholic civil law that nobody voted for and few people want. but people aren't aware of what's happening, which is a massive quiet counter-revolution in the guts of the legal system.

canadians need to put a focus on electing secular politicians before it's too late, if it isn't already. it's extremely important. we're on the brink of a collapse into totalitarianism, and we've lost the courts without realizing what was happening. fixing the courts will come as a corollary of a move back towards secular governance. 

i was really looking forward to being able to just bike home after the show, or after the bar closes, at 3:00 am or whatever. i was looking forward to the freedom of not having to worry about tunnel bus hours anymore.

if they stick to these extremely restricted hours, trump might end up being right - not many people are going to want to use the bridge between 8:00 and 20:00. what if somebody wants to bike over to the hockey game? i'd imagine that would be the highest traffic use of a pedestrian bridge between detroit and windsor, is canadians going to see the red wings.

they'd have to leave before 16:00 and wouldn't be able to come back until 8:00 am. that would be utterly useless.

the path should be open 24/7, or at least have expanded hours from 4:00 am to 11:00 pm or something. 8-20 or 8-16 is completely useless to anybody expect joggers, and that'll get old in a few weeks.

the path on the bridge is only open from 8:00-20:00 in the summer and from 8:00-16:00 in the winter. so, if i'm going over for a concert that starts at 21:00 or a party that starts at 00:00, i need to cross in the early evening, and the thing i was hoping it would solve - having to find something to do until 8:00 am - is left unresolved. i'll still have to sit in the diner until 7:30 am. 

fuck it.

i'd rather use the tunnel bus. bring the bus with the bike rack back.

i don't understand who in their right mind would think that occupying latvia, which is a russian colony by any understanding of it's history and which has absolutely no value to canada whatsoever, would have greater strategic value to canadian interests than maintaining peacekeeping forces in congo or sudan, where brutal genocidal conflicts involving expanding arabic colonialism are raging and threatening to trigger into a third world war. 

canada should pull it's forces out of europe and put them in africa, not pull it's forces out of africa and put them in europe.

but what's going on here is the continuation of carney's trump wannabe foreign policy, where he criticizes america first for the cameras, but legislates it at every possible opportunity.

putting canadian troops in latvia does not make the world safer or expand canadian interests. however, removing canadian troops from africa makes the world a more dangerous place and harms canadian interests, by generating further push factors for immigration, by further encouraging systemic overpopulation and by increasing the likelihood of the spread of dangerous diseases.

trying to create a debate between whether we have fires because of climate change or mismanagement is politically slimy and erecting a false dichotomy. it's an example of the moral depravity of modern liberalism. the point is that a consequence of climate change - and the fact that we have failed to stop it by continuing to burn carbon - is that we now have an obligation to dramatically increase the amount we are spending on managing the forests, and the governments in ontario and elsewhere have been slashing budgets in a dumb attempt to find "efficiencies" instead. this is a failure in policy that voters should hold them accountable for. trump's position is not coherent, but he's right, and i'd support his proposals.

i'm reminded of the catastrophe in walkerton, where slashes to water management by the provincial government led to outbreaks in disease you expect in third world countries. we rightfully held mike harris accountable for that. we need to hold doug ford accountable for this.

canadians are going to have to get used to the reality that our governments are going to have to spend dramatically higher sums on forest management because we have failed to meet our climate obligations. the actuaries warned us about this - they told us the math was clear, that the consequences would cost dramatically higher sums than the preventive measures. we didn't listen, we just kept burning fuel. we fought against attempt to force us to change. and now we have to pay up and face the music and, if we won't, the rest of the world should impose those costs on us for failing in our responsibilities to ourselves and our neighbours.

a bouncer with a sense of humour might direct him to menjo's as a more appropriate choice for his attire and hygiene.

and, this is the culture in detroit: it's techno. it's a little cyber punk. it's not islam. 

he's going to see low turnout, like he just did.

most of the night cubs i would go to in detroit would not let abdul el-sayed through the door, at least not until he washed his face first. he would be told he looks too scruffy, and basically comes off as a loser.  the bouncers would be concerned he's there to harass the girls.

call it a fluke, call it corruption, call it a failure on his opponent's behalf. but detroit is not new york. detroit isn't 70% immigrants. he's going to have a hard time attracting voters in michigan, outside of two or three core regions that are quite small.

i don't live in michigan, but i certainly wouldn't vote for a neo-populist crypto-fascist like this guy. there's no way. it doesn't mean i'd vote for the republicans. it's the kind of election where i'd vote for a left leaning third party or not at all, because i wouldn't see any benefit in voting for a right-wing democrat.

who was funding all the big money super pacs supporting this guy that popped up out of nowhere at the last minute?

we don't know.

but it seems to be foreign interference from draconian, authoritarian, right-wing arab governments.

we know that it didn't succeed in increasing votes for this candidate, but we don't know yet if the superpacs succeeding in suppressing the vote for the other candidate, or if she just flopped on her own.

the math is easy enough to understand. in any election anywhere, this right-wing progressive fringe is going to get a certain number of votes, and they tend to be true believers, so they tend to get out to vote. something like 6, 7, 8% sounds right. those voters are always there, and they always choose these loonies.

but you expect an electable candidate to get the vote out and just plow over the fringe. they should be able to get 10% of the vote out, even in a low turnout primary. she couldn't do that; she got something more like 5% out.

my analysis still holds, the arab vote in michigan is concentrated in some areas and can result in local representation, but is actually very small overall statewide and really less important than the chinese or indian votes, although this outcome is certainly annoying to me. the guy won with like 8% of the vote because the mainstream candidate had no enthusiasm and swaths of people didn't vote at all. if you can't get the vote out at all, the fringe wins, and that's what happened. but, usually, the result of that is that they then get smashed in the general.

what i'm suspicious about here, however, is the influence of foreign arab governments as that seems to be a growing problem for the democrats, and it's clear that he was the big money candidate. the big money candidate didn't win by getting voters out. did all the money succeed in suppressing the vote, or did the congresswoman just not succeed in building her support? or did something more sinister happen, and votes disappear?

regardless, it seems like stevens couldn't get the vote out enough. even if there was fraud, american elections often have fraud and strong candidates beat fringe candidates anyways. money or not, and fraud or not, the fact that she lost to a fringe candidate indicates she wasn't a strong candidate.

with this matchup, rural michigan is going to vote 99% for the republicans in november and that's probably enough for an easy win. further, this candidate will have difficulty generating a voting coalition in the urban centres of liberal white women and blacks, which he just very convincingly proved. if you can't get urban blacks to vote for you in michigan, the rural whites will win in a landslide.

turnout in the michigan senate primary was reported at around 13%. whatever the reasons were for this, it demonstrates a lack of enthusiasm for the electable democratic candidate, and the result is that the growing right-wing progressive fringe overran the party and the democrats now have a far right crypto fascist practically nazi candidate in michigan of all places that really has no chance at all against the republicans.

my suspicion is that trump's claims of electoral fraud might have some value. primaries often have low turnout, but 13% is a little hard to believe. this guy has a lot of money from foreign states backing him. he was really the monied candidate. it's opening a new and concerning era in american politics, where the democratic party is finding itself at the whim of foreign interference.

this guy is not electable. i would expect to see michigan elect a republican senator for the first time in quite a while.

the only part of the vacuum that seems to be missing is the power adapter. i have the charger. and the vacuum revs up, indicating it works, but it's not charged.

power adapters don't cost much, and i might even one. i tried plugging one from an old modem in and it fits but i don't know if it' enough.

i should be able to figure that out.

on second thought.

i bought that shop vac because i needed it to clean a filthy basement and it was on sale. it wasn't a high quality device. they gave me back cash for it rather than replace it, but now it's no longer on sale.

i want to get a new shop vac. do i want this shop vac? not at this price, not really. it was a steal at half price. it's a rip off at full price.

further, i already cleaned the laundry up. i just don't need the shop vac in the same way that i did, then. that's no longer how i'm going to be cleaning in here regularly. yes, i want a shop vac, but now i want a better one for cleaning up messes, not one on sale for cleaning up piles of rat shit. i can actually get a better shop vac than that one on amazon for two thirds of the price. 

what i need now is a device to clean the dirty floors up with. the lysol and wet wipes worked well, but it took all day, it wasn't very much fun and i seem to have gotten sick from it. i had previously purchased a $30 electric spin scrubber, and it seemed to lift a lot of the dirt off, but it came right back, and that's not enough. i need more than that in here. i find mops to be gross and question how well they work.

so, i used the $55 they gave me back for the exploded shop vac to buy a $130 spinwave corded steam cleaner (regular $199), which is both a steam mop and an electric scrubber and is what i actually need in here. that uses the money i received from the refund to help me do the cleaning i need to do now. i then bought a $60 stanley shop vac with the same power rating as the one that blew, but that is a little bigger, has a longer cord, has more accessories and comes with a few dozen disposable dust filters, which will reduce strain on the motor. this device will behave more like a normal inside vacuum, that i can use to clean up dirt and other debris.

i also need to replace my dustbuster because it was used in the laundry, after having been previously broken. it's been worn right down through simple use. it still works, but not well; it clogs up quickly. it's held together with tape. it has busted through holes in the bottom of it's discoloured plastic. the only part of it that works is the motor; it's not worth fixing, it's done. i'm looking at getting something i can charge via usb, rather than plug in directly like this one.

the floors are clean enough for right now but i want them to be spotless and i want them to stay spotless.

what about the shorted shop vac?

it's a 4.0 hp mastervac with an 18.9 L bucket. it's not their cheapest model, but it's their cheapest more expensive model. after looking at my options, replacing the motor looks like it might be hard. i might be better off looking for a similar model secondhand. i should make sure that there's not a short somewhere else and i can't salvage it, but the light sparks would suggest that the short circuit is pretty certain. i may find myself buying a second hand shop vac for cheap instead, and just letting it break as i clean up the garage. i will need some other option for in there. i'm not breaking either of the vacuums i just bought in there, or a new dustbuster, in there. these are going to last a while.

the other two vacuums i have are a pet lover eureka that i bought when i moved to windsor and may just be clogged but that i've had difficulty opening to clean and decided wasn't worth the time in the previous basement (i'll try again) and a buture vc50 that i found here and that i actually think works but that might need a new charger. either of these would be good general vacuums, but the latter is maybe more likely to actually get fixed. i'm going to have to fix or give up on that pet lover pretty soon. it was a very good general vacuum, but it wouldn't get the floors clean in here the way i need them cleaned.

there we have it.

- the mastervac may be difficult to find parts for, except to buy a similar used one, and i may buy something else to start and look for something used in the long run. it will go in the garage and stay in there. 

- i have a better replacement shop vac coming for less. it will stay inside and be a general inside vacuum to clean debris off the floors. it may not be so good for carpets.

- i have an expensive $250 steam mopper coming at 40% off and the refund, for a total of 57% off, which will clean the floors (tiles mostly and some hardwood) up well and be pulled out for periodic use. it's a great tool to have.

- the versatile electric scrubber i bought for $30 will be better used as a tool to clean in harder to get to areas, baseboards, doors, etc. it's pretty good for what it is, but it's not enough for these floors.

- i have a usb dust buster coming to replace the very used dirt devil, which does have other parts, too. i never really used it as a general vacuum. the parts are still available to use for the next dust buster. i haven't usually had a dust buster but i'm going to in here, after shifting to the shop vac as a general vacuum. a little device in the kitchen is a good idea. 

- i'm pretty sure that i can fix this buture stick vac i found here, which is itself apparently worth $200. i think i just need to charge it. i would use this mostly for the carpets in here.

- i bought the pet lover vac cheap second hand, list price: $350. i'm not sure if i can disassemble it to clean it or if it just doesn't come apart. the device was engineered for dog and cat hair, which was great for me, because i drop a lot of hair. it never clogged. if i can fix it, great. if i can't, i might have to let it go.

i had to make quite a few calls, but they gave me a refund for the shop vac. this is better, for me, because i can use the refund cash to buy most of a new one (i had initially bought it on sale so i got the price i paid back and it won't cover the full price of a new one) and then probably find a new motor for the old one, now. otherwise, i'd have had to give them back the old one and buy a third one at full price. if it costs me another $50 to replace this one and buy a new one, i've got them both working at a sale price for both. and i'd have had to leave the house, putting myself at threat of getting drugged again.

i'm somewhat confused by this. 

i learned in grade school that the correct spellings in canada are british spellings. i consequently tend to use british spellings because that's what i was taught, to the point that my grade school teachers would have actually marked large red xes over american spelling.

i'm not sure if this changed at some point or if the truth is that the vast majority of canadians failed the second grade but got pushed through. i suspect the latter.

https://globalnews.ca/news/12008151/british-spelling-federal-government/

the upside about buying things from big companies is that they often make mistakes. so, some dummy delivery driver left $250 worth of groceries on my front porch and drove off without calling. i'm making it a habit to make complaints about this when it happens because it needs to stop. i have legitimately had $1000 worth of items stolen over the last year; it's all been replaced, but why do they do that? why not just call? it takes a second. you're not gaining $100 worth of productivity by having to replace a $100 delivery, in avoiding the 30 seconds it takes to call. you're throwing away $99 to save $1 on labour. and you're expected to tip these people, too. i'm usually home and waiting, i had just fallen asleep in front of the chromebook waiting for the call, and woke up 40 minutes later to the realization that there was no call, the groceries were just left unattended. if he had called like the instructions said, i would have got the groceries in person. now, these groceries seemed ok. but my position is that leaving the items there without calling is not being productive, it's being lazy, and it's a mistake i should clamp down on. so, i told them i threw the groceries in the trash because they were left on the porch.

i should have done that. in fact, i beat the neighbourhood cat to the booty by seconds flat. it meowed out me, expecting me to share. no ma'am.

if they leave something and it actually gets stolen - this has actually happened several times - i expect them to replace it. if they leave goods like books or cleaning supplies and i get them before the thieves, i'll complain but take the item in. if they leave food outside for the crackheads and animals to molest and expect me to eat it, i might, or i might not, but i don't want to pay for it and shouldn't - i'm getting a refund.

so i have an extra $250 this month. which is good because i need a new vacuum.

i scrubbed the floors down hard last night, just over the part of the apartment i'll actually walk through, to stop myself from tracking this layer of filth around. is some amount of this mildew? it might be. i think i learned scrubbing it down - i used a whole bottle of lysol - that it's likely a complex mix of things. i had recently scrubbed some of these regions, so it's frustrating to have to do it again, but it seems to have taken and the air quality seems to be better, although i did wake up with a sore throat. i also scrubbed most of the dirt off the counters in the kitchen, which is important. there's a small layer of white dust in a few places this morning but it's not like it was. i put a fan in blowing straight into the stairwell to the side entrance, which is under a flight of stairs going up to the top floor, which seems to be where the secondhand smoke is coming from. i think that made a difference, but i'll need to get in there soon to seal holes and clean better. i'll do another dust buster run this morning. this dust buster also needs to be replaced, but it's working well for now. i have two additional broken vacuums to try to fix - my old pet valu which blew a few years ago and some rechargeable thing i found here. i will do this soon, one way or another.

but i'm taking a broad shift in approach. i will get another shop vac - i haven't tested it yet but i'm calling canadian tire now because it's clear the thing shorted and that's a defect that should be replaced - but i will have in unit and in garage vacuums for now on. the laundry has been thoroughly sealed and is totally clean, now. but i'm not moving cleaning devices between the inside space and the garage again, or at least not for a while. i will either fix this device or get something else to use strictly for the garage, and get something to use solely for inside, as well.

if i can get canadian tire to replace this, great. otherwise, i'll likely buy another one of the same model and leave it inside, and try to fix the broken one and leave it in the garage. the pet valu was a very good vacuum, too, with a power head for the couple of carpeted regions in here, and i hope i can fix it as well.

i should then be able to get back to what i was doing, which is

- finish up in the laundry

- do a general clean in the bathroom, kitchen, bedroom

- shower

- cataloging books and cds, and working on the coffee table book, to get it in order for the first three rooms, including a video update for the laundry and a re-read of the things posted here since april 1st.

as i finish in each room (laundry, bathroom, kitchen, side entrance, listening, library, garage, studio, bedroom), i'll need to more thoroughly clean in it. i was intending on doing this anyways.

i won't need to go outside again for any length of time for quite a while. the best thing i think i can do is lock myself in for another winter.

so, i've got some work to do. let's do it. this place'll be done soon, and it'll be glorious when it is. i hope to get back to work soon.

i have orders for two further lawsuits coming soon. my cdb, trillium, gst and odsp went up by inflation in july. and i'm locked into the pohb at $400/month for another year, too. great.

the anti-india bias at the un is connected to india practicing polytheism and tied to a muslim supremacist ideology. it is secondary only to the anti-semitic bias in terms of concerns that need to be addressed in much needed un reforms.

canada should not be attempting to shield or protect far right sikh or muslim terrorists wanted by the indian government in any way at all.

conversely, canada should be working with the indian government to arrest extreme right religious terrorists that are wanted by them, and hand them over to the indians for prosecution in the indian courts.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/un-experts-urge-canada-to-protect-sikh-activist

this is a long weekend in canada, so it's not surprising that the loser stalker is here and smoking, although i can't smell the smoke directly. what i can smell is a strong layer of herbs and incense that is almost certainly being burned to cover the smell of the drugs, which i believe are meth or crack-cocaine. again. 

it's the same pathetic loser doing the same disgusting drugs and it's making me sick in the same way - exhaustion, sore throat and brutal diarrhea. it is having little to no effect on my hormones. they may be intending to alter my hormones, but i can't file evidence if there isn't any because it didn't work. the minimal and easily removable hair growth suggests minimal to fleeting changes in hormones that i may barely pick up at all. this seems to be intentional - they want to change my appearance and they understand their behaviour is prohibited by canadian law so they're trying to avoid detection. it's very tricky, and it just makes me sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist trying to correctly hold them accountable for it. i need to be careful, because the legal industry is full of wretchedly dishonest pieces of shit and the judges are frequently plucked from their ranks, by panels made of their own. but i'm pretty sure they got in here on sunday morning.

they need to just fuck off and go kill themselves. i have no patience, no interest, no tolerance. i just want to shoot them n the face and put their kids in foster homes. i'd support bunker busting them if they were in the rockies, but they live amongst us and are extremely difficult to deal with. we're going to need to rewrite laws and adjust legal approaches to prevent these people from harming us, but they try to operate undetected and they have tremendous amounts of wealth that they use to manipulate the media and attempt to confuse people. they frequently pose as minorities and victims, despite being the single most powerful lobby group on the planet. we have to realize and understand that they're here and comprehend what they're doing before we can address and reverse it and that might very well be the hardest part of this. they're going to target the trans, the queers and the liberal white women, who are going to need to build an alliance to protect themselves from attack.

i mostly lost yesterday after making a bowl of soup on saturday. i cleaned a little and did a bunch of reading about how to fix the vacuum and about how to get rid of the dust. the multimeter is here but i haven't used it yet and want to clean as much as i can without it. the shop vac was mostly for the laundry, which has been cleaned and fixed, and the garage, which is still to go. i shouldn't have been running a dirty shop vac in the apartment anyways. so once it's cleaned and i get a response from canadian tire (i'll call them after i do the mulitmeter testing and have data) i'll figure out what i'm doing to fix or replace that device. for now, i need to clean first without it. the smoke and ash was actually so thick on sunday morning - some time after i had disassembled the vacuum - that i had to throw out a glass of water sitting on the table, which was full of black soot. the fire alarm works, at least. the layer of filth is sitting on everything and is worst in the kitchen and the two entrances and least bad (almost not at all) in the bedroom and laundry, indicating the ceiling blockers are working. i'm going to get as much more up as i can as fast as i can.

what i'm going to do is the following.

(1) it's much cooler here now than it was. i'm going to take advantage of that by making it hot and humid inside and only opening the window a crack. it will be more humid in here than out there and that should push the dirty air out and flush the cold air in. i think it's working, but i need to watch out for loser neighbours smoking pot. 

(2) this will make it worse at first, and in fact i may have noticed it on the ground because the shower pulled it out of the air. the humidity will make the dust heavier and gravity will act as an air filter. but i want to get it out of the air and out of my lungs first and foremost, and out of my smell buds second. the stench of herbs and incense is disgusting, and as bad as the stench of the drugs themselves.

(3) i do have nicer, fruity or citrusy smells to replace these pungent gross hippie/nigger smells with but i want to get as much as i can out of the air first.

(4) once the soot from the gross herbs and drugs and incense (same thing. whatever. yuck.) being burned  is on the ground, or unfortunately on things, including walls, i can vacuum it up with a dust buster and wipe it down with disposable wipes and lysol. then i can try to correct the gross hippie smells with nicer clean smells.

(5) whether i can fix the shop vac or not, i'm going to buy a newer vac for inside and keep it inside. i need to create a separation between the dust and dirt left here, and the new dust and dirt created by the gross tenants, and dust and dirt i create myself, which i can better tolerate and deal with. the burning of drugs, incense and herbs is really not something i can tolerate or should be expected to tolerate, but canada is a failed state that is collapsing into a backwards, conservative society and i'm not going to reverse it by complaining. i need to adjust by protecting myself from the barbarians at the gates as best i can.

for now, i'm looking at getting the humidity up to 60%, letting it fall to 50%, repeat. i'll need to clean in between, until it's done.

america wanted a president with no ideology besides might makes right and it got one. it's not all bad. america should be taking notes on what nihilism means. it's a worthwhile experiment, on some level.

the clearest conclusion we can come to is a blatant explanation of why why don coyote has been married three times and would be looking for #4 if he wasn't on the brink of death.

donald will have has magical thinking. the iranians will submit. he's the dom. except he's not, he's the biggest beta male i've ever seen, and everybody just takes advantage of him and fucks him in the ass, and he asks for more.

yeah, the dust and dirt and ash is thicker in the garage, and a layer of it has settled almost everywhere n here, including areas i wouldn't really vacuum. i'm starting to change my analysis from the ash being caused by the vacuum to the ash breaking the vacuum. and i'm starting to realize it smells like cigarettes. 

it's second hand smoke from upstairs. 

that's utterly disgusting. 

i'll have to just keep cleaning and keep getting that aluminum up. and i hope that canadian tire replaces the vac.

i expected the stalker to come in here when i was sealing up the hole. it's why i did the work outside before i bought groceries. it's possible they tracked their dirty boots in here and it's a part of the problem. it's also possible that some of it is dust from mixing concrete.

but this filth is dark black, it's thick and it's ashy. it looks like it was created from burning something.

i suppose it might have also been partly caused by the wildfires.

whatever the cause, the solution is to get the shop vac in the garage and then to reclean everything. and this needs to be the priority. i guess it will give me the chance to reclean some spaces i recently cleaned and finish setting them up.

i've lost the day unfortunately. 

i noticed last night that my shop vac appears to have developed a short in it and exploded, which is slowing down the cleaning and requiring me to reclean everything. i'm going to try to get it replaced as defective. right now, i have a layer of black ash all over my floors, walls and stuff. 

the motor doesn't look damaged. it may have sucked up some cleaning supplies, but it's a dry/wet vac. i tried to clean it but it looks like it was too late. it was running loud and smelly, then generating smoke, generating bright green light, throttling, dying and then dead. i've never seen a motor act like that, but the idea that it had a short circuit does seem to explain it.

the switch and fuses are totally clean and brand new. there's no obvious blown component, which is why it looks like a short in the motor. it's only a few months old. in fact, the fuse even gave me a mild shock, which i believe is evidence it's working and there's a short in the motor. there must be a burnt out connection somewhere inside the motor.

i have a multimeter on order, which is something i should have but don't. it should prove the fuse is not blown. but if i'm wrong i'll try to swap it out.

i actually think there's enough evidence to decide i should throw out the motor but i'll wait for the multimeter.

my understanding is that the only likely causes of this are factory defect and exposure to chemicals or moisture. i was cleaning up dirt off the crumbling old concrete floor in the garage when it started smoking. the concrete strangely dried dark black, like asphalt. and now there's black filth all over the floor.

if i can fix this i will and then leave it in the garage. i'll get a new device for the inside areas.

i had also bought a floor scrubbing device so i guess it's time to use it. 

i will need to do some further serious cleaning in here before i do anything else.

i'm finishing up in the laundry. i'm going to pause but i'm probably done.

i put cardboard boxes up on the ceiling in the main part of the room with a mix of duct, packing and weatherproofing tape. i used a lot of duct tape, it turns out, because the wall is concrete and the joists are wood. i crammed insulation in the corners where i know the holes are and blocked a number of holes in the walls from the laundry to inside the walls of the house. this completely seals up the main room.

i did not seal anything in the water closet, and i left the corridor into the furnace open, for now.

i did this because i realized there are still smaller rodents running around in there. i didn't see anything and i've heard very little. even the evidence of droppings is very small. but it's enough. i think they're just staying out of there because it's not appealing to them anymore. there's no food. it's bright and clean. i legit kicked them out.

i want to block the entrances i think they're most likely to use but i also understand that cardboard and duct tape is not going to keep a rat out. bright light and no access to food will. so, i want to keep an eye on it further. i don't want them hiding food from the upstairs kitchen downstairs;  my laundry is not their burrow. i don't want them running into the laundry from the upstairs bathroom. i don't want them coming in from the backyard.

i will seal the furnace room itself but i think i want to keep access between the furnace and the laundry open and i want to observe a lit bit more before i seal up the water closet, if i do. 

the laundry should essentially be spotless, now. if it isn't, where is the filth coming from?

i am probably going to avoid the aluminum in the laundry because it'll be better applied elsewhere. i'm probably going to skip the bathroom, too. it's not a good idea to do this in the bathroom. i mean, it is if it's done properly, but if i make any mistake at all it could be a mess. it's not worth the risk of finding a rotting hole in the aluminum in a year or two.

it's a better idea to put the aluminum up in the kitchen.

so, i'm gong to need to finish up in there, do a secondary general clean, take another shower and then move back into the bedroom to focus on doing the cataloging and the coffee table book for a few days, before getting back to room 3 again, the kitchen. i'll post a video update for the laundry as well.

the big kitchen  update  is still to come and is the next big thing to do.

there will be people that will try to justify the attack by hamas, or question the reporting around it. there are people that deny the holocaust. 

you should let them explain themselves, understand their words and never speak to them ever again.

the legitimate purpose of the fully justified military operation launched by israel after the barbaric terrorist attack by hamas was to permanently remove hamas from power. virtually any response by israel would have been justified. the complete annihilation of gaza was not even yet a proportionate response to a massacre that far outside of the boundaries of civilization. 

hamas had to be removed from the planet in response. anything less would have been insufficient.

the removal of hamas from power is the definition of victory. the rest of it is mostly trivial. 

israel suspended the rule of law in response to these attacks, and it was justified in doing so, but this must come to an end. normal governance must return to israel asap.

it's over.

it's the best outcome possible.

the question as to what sources of light in the sky are valuable and what are pollution is turned on it's head by the fallacy of naturalism. the light that comes to us from stars is in many cases billions or trillions of years old. it provides us with absolutely no useful information about the current existence of the universe, as those stars are long dead, and whatever exists in the space those stars were once in has no connection to what is there now, in whatever dubious way you're defining space at all. you could never go to those stars. the light they throw into our atmosphere has no utility to anyone or anything and should in truth be rightfully thought of as pollution; if we could clean all the starlight out of the sky, it would allow us to see our direct neighbourhood more clearly. all that the light from these long dead galaxies is really doing is blocking the closest planets out.

but it's not like the mirror eats the light or something. it's not a black hole. that light is still there. you can put a telescope on the moon, or in orbit, you just can't look into the sky from your bedroom. but that's an utterly middle class concern. who gives a fuck.

i might take a position that astronomy isn't going to be very valuable to humans in the near future, until we colonize the area around us. we should be focusing on blocking out the distant past from the night sky and honing in on the areas directly around us, for now. there's not much that we can learn right now, and we have enough data to sort through to last us for centuries anyways.

the applications of the mirrors are more valuable than bourgeois concerns about light pollution, which are in truth backwards anyways. the stars are the ones polluting the sky; let's clean it up by getting rid of the stars.

i'm overwhelmingly in favour of this as it has tremendous potential applications. i don't know where this anti-science streak in society came from all of a sudden, but stupid hippie bullshit should never be listened to, ever. naturalism is exposing itself as the single greatest threat to human progress in our midst. these people that are opposed to ai, to automation, to technology, etc are opposed to human progress. they must be educated and defeated.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/reflect-orbital-approval-fcc-9.7287535

cancelling oil exports - or mineral exports - to the united states would eliminate a tremendous amount of wealth in canada. making ourselves poorer seems like a dumb way to stick it to the man.

it's a better environmental argument to leave it n the ground, and arguably worth supporting on that basis, than it is an economic argument to shoot ourselves in the face. it is abundantly clear that it will not change american behaviour, it will just destroy wealth in canada.

it makes more sense to try to recover losses by levying export taxes on americans. retaliatory import taxes and export blocking are both dumb tactics.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-trump-oil-tariffs-negotiations-9.7289518

i have spent a fair amount of time with this and the topic has two notable points of scientific interest, namely (1) it's the only thing you can quote (stephen) jay gould on directly without being pretentious (but don't do it too much) and (2) it's one of a small number of legitimate contributions to science made by richard dawkins, even if he often heavily cites eo wilson. there is something called the dawkins-gould debate about punctuated equilibrium or gradualism, about the nature of natural selection, defining debates about how to interpret the fossil record.

my hegelian synthesis (this argument is really a false dichotomy. gould was a gradualist, too. his supporters misrepresented him.) argues that the error is really in the cladistics model rather than a debate over evolutionary theory. due to linnaeus, and ultimately due to aristotle, who attributed a crude evolutionary theory to the "chaldeans", we've been using the wrong mathematical model to imagine evolution for centuries and centuries. we use something called directed graphs to model evolution - trees. we refer to the tree of life. this is inherently hierarchical and intuitively erects theocratic conclusions that aren't actually supported by the data. in the dna era, the solution to the underlying gould-dawkins debate has increasingly been identified as hybridization, which the models previously rejected as theocratically deviant, but which more and more data has increasingly identified as repeatedly arising naturally in areas where ecological niches overlap. contemporary environmentalists may be surprised to learn that polar bears are on a path towards genetic introgression back into the grizzly population and that it's being increasingly realized that this is a general demonstration of actual natural selection in real life, due to climate change, which happens often. this evolution is normal. the ideal of nature in a fixed state is not science, it's conservative religious ideology.

another example is the interbreeding of coyotes and wolves in eastern canada, which would create a large shift in the fossil record. coyotes all of a sudden are going to increase in size. it's the wolf dna and we know it.

so, the premise of all of these different species in the human fossil record is dubious. every researcher wanted their own species. every minimal change was presented as a novel variation. the question of whether they could fuck or not requires more rigour, and we can assume that they did if they could, and probably tried even if they couldn't.

a better mathematical model for evolution is a complicated graph with crossings that captures hybridization events (often due to climate change), which actually appear to be an extremely common evolutionary mechanism.

the footprints themselves may not hold up to scrutiny but it's not the more important point. the more important point is that the hierarchical spencerian tree model is ignorant and backwards and it's theological implications are consequently wrong. evolution is stochastic, statistical, chaotic. natural selection cannot be assumed, it must be proven that the shifts in population genetics are not genetic drift, which is a null hypothesis. the graph theory is more complex, but it's also a rich and profound theory.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/article/ancient-footprints-offer-rare-glimpse-into-lives-of-extinct-human-relatives/

aimlessly trying to bomb iran into submission is not a reprise of dubya's 00s iraq policy, it's a reprise of the clinton-gore iraq strategy during the 90s. trump is constantly clinton redux. he is aggressively avoiding regime change, when it would be the better strategy in iran (and was the worse strategy in iraq). he's tryng to force an oil for food type program but the iranians won't accept it.

i don't support this policy. it's not going to make the region safer. it's not going to have a pragmatic outcome. the americans will fail to force iran into submission, and somebody else will step in and push through regime change in the end. it's putting off the inevitable at a great waste of time and money. the result will be the same. and the process of regime change in iran is necessary and the outcome will be justice for the people of iran. this is a fascist regime that poses a threat to global stability, regional order and global peace and an ideology that needs to be eradicated. aimlessly attempting to bomb them into submission and failing will cost more money and kill more people than is necessary to get the job done. it's the most inefficient, ineffective approach to the same ultimately necessary solution of regime change in the end, because trump fears the  outcome of an iranian socialist movement on the ground and won't sign off on it.

but, despite realizing that this won't help much, that doesn't mean i have much sympathy for iran right now. they need to get their shit in order and take this decision away from people in washington. this is their future. this is their state to burn down. the decision should be theirs, but they need to make it.

as an openly identifying socialist, my politics are far closer to john fetterman's than they are to aoc's or mamdani's, who both strike me as well to the right of centre. this free groceries for rich kids scheme is about the most bourgeois thing i've ever heard. i would reject it as stupid because i'm a socialist. there's nothing socialist about it at all, it's just a handout for rich kids, and it would get paid for by a hike in union dues. it's a redistribution of wealth from middle age working class union members to upper middle class children of corporate executives. that's not socialism. that's the literal opposite of socialism.

the problem is that, in the united states, all politics is just code for race politics. nothing else matters. you can't be brown and conservative at the same time in the united states, despite the actual reality that the overwhelming majority of brown people are in fact extremely conservative. so everything else has to align around the delusions of archaic race politics that have little to no relevance a quarter of the way into the 21st century.

fetterman's a liberal, which is placing him in conflict with the shift to the far right that is taking place in the democratic party, as it tries to abandon any remnant of it's historical white voting base and fully embrace a religious and brown voting coalition. the new democrats are going to be extremely religious and extremely conservative (and extremely brown), but they're going to call themselves left-wing anyways, and i'm going to be diametrically deadset against them. so, he's being called a conservative, because the country doesn't know how to use language to describe what's happening. but the truth is the opposite.

the democrats have actually historically been the country's conservative party. the republicans have historically been the country's liberal party. the language in the media is orwellian, but the alliances are actually correcting themselves.

i think that john fetterman is actually to the left of his party and that the democrats are in the process of shifting to the extreme right, which is something he is resisting. if i were fetterman, i would probably feel more comfortable sitting as an independent and calling myself a liberal, and making an attempt to explain how liberals are discernibly to the left of progressives, who are really conservatives in disguise. as an adamant openly socialist leftist, i consider these progressives to be a bigger problem than republicans are, as the progressives are actual conservatives, and the republicans generally aren't really conservatives at all. it's the self-styled progressives that want to radically turn the clocks back to the 60s. republicans are broadly status quo. that makes the progressives dramatically worse. we're in the era of orwell, where everything is upside down and backwards, and everything means the opposite of what it claims to mean.

the bricks are in. i think i tried to avoid stating this too clearly. 

so, when i was cleaning in the garage area, i noticed that there was a gaping hole under the steps big enough to crawl into. like, you could crawl in from outside, if you knew the hole was there. i also found some used needles in the crawl space, indicating somebody had actually crawled inside. that might be why it frequently smelled like an ash tray in there. 

i immediately nailed the hole shut and noticed somebody had kicked it in the next day.

the landlord indicated he was going to fix it, but he didn't, it was just waiting and waiting. i wasn't able to move anything in there and set anything up in there until the space was sealed up. i finally just went around back and got some bricks out of the backyard and sealed it up with quikrete. i wanted to test it to make sure it worked before i did a second round, and it did. so, i bought some more quikrete and some more bricks last night and finished it up.

the issue is that somebody knocked a window out to run a furnace vent and just closed it up with drywall. so there was a piece of drywall facing the rain and snow and it decayed through. somebody knew it and was sneaking in there to do drugs.

it's fixed now and the leak that was there seems to be fixed as well, so i should be able to finally start moving things into the garage. i just want to wait for it to dry outside before i do a final patch run over it.

i redid a lot of the concrete steps while i was at it as there were big gaps where moisture, rodents or bugs could get in. i'm going to redo a lot of the walls in the garage as well, just to make sure there aren't any further leaks. it will look a lot cleaner with a fresh coat of concrete.

i also bought some roof sealant that i'm going to lather all around the outside to keep the water out. this is in addition to the downspout extender i put in, that has made a huge difference.

so, once i'm confident that the garage is clean and dry, i have a carpet i can put down in the corner. i also have a bicycle rack that i can lock my bicycles to, tables, lamps, tools, a heater and even a stereo. it has to be dry and sealed first. i'm almost there.

i also really sealed up the laundry the other day using cardboard boxes and that really cancelled the smell in there, which is great. it was a mix of garbage, mildew and food i'd find unappealing, as a white european. blocking the holes neutralized it entirely.

so i'm making major progress.

about a year and a half ago, the mayor of windsor acted like a dirty fascist in overriding the clear democratic will of city council to maintain tunnel bus service, out of an apparent anti-union political ideology. this ideological decision actually reduced operating revenues, leading to higher deficits, and had a clearly negative effect on windsor's struggling downtown core. the mayor apparently wants more church organized social activities and more family-oriented event funding. he's attacking the city's economy because he's an ideological conservative. he's also continued to destroy the library, and received nothing of any value for it while watching multiple physical library locations get sold off to dubious market investors, then collapse into disuse and disrepair. on top of that, he's wasted millions of tax dollars on repeatedly renovating recently renovated city halls, foolishly built a hockey rink on top of a green space downtown, spent a million dollars on a decommissioned rail car and continues to throw millions of dollars a year down the drain on an environmentally irresponsible christmas lights display intended to appeal to white christian supremacist identity politics.

there's an election this year and i want to see somebody run against these things and get rid of this shithead. cancelling the tunnel bus was stupid - it cost the city money and it hurt the local bars. the city should bring back the tunnel bus. the library has faced years of instability that needs to come to an end. the city should buy back the old library on ouellette. i'm tired of seeing the city waste money on family oriented programming that is stupid and lame. the rail car is a dumb waste of money. and the christmas lights are a waste of electricity and a waste of tax dollars to a celebrate a holiday that is largely culturally irrelevant in this society, which is overwhelmingly secular.

he's also refusing to implement overdue zoning changes and not taking federal money for subsidized housing, which is inflating property values and increasing rents.

the mismanagement at city hall is overwhelming. the city needs to unite to get rid of this guy. he's fucking terrible.

the charges against netanyahu are frivolous and absurd and the americans are right to try to shut this court down, which is behaving irresponsibly in carrying out politicized activities that are blatantly anti-semitic and without any remote evidentiary basis. the icc is looking and acting like a nazi tribunal and should be treated like one. if it walks like a nazi and quacks like a nazi, it's a nazi. europe has a civilizationial existential crisis on it' hand, as it increasingly collapses into fascism, and is increasingly requiring a serious protest movement to struggle against these rising forces of nazism and right-wing extremism that masquerade as a soft left, but are the exact opposite of it in practice.

netanyahu has legitimate corruption charges to face in israel.

the icc warrant against him is not justified by facts and should not be respected by governments anywhere. the credibility of the body is rather now in disrepute for behaving with political motivations aligned with the far right.

if canada were to act on these threats, it should be judged accordingly and held accountable for it. our international standing is currently incredibly low and falling. our institutions have low reputability. our government is extremely corrupt.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-flight-canadian-airspace-9.7288211

i'm going to do the things i need to do outside before i order more food. the stalkers seem to have come in here the last time i was outside working. i don't think they can get in except when i'm sitting outside, and they're driven enough by their delusions of faith and belief to do it. the basic problem with zealotry and self-righteousness is that you think you're right and you're just factually not. the wisdom in mill is cliched and annoying (mill and orwell. who do i think i am, christopher hitchens?), but worth acknowledging all the more for it. the basic point is correct - the issue on the table is that you might be fucking wrong, and you have to get that through your fucking head.

the pathetic losers aren't going to stop but i can keep them out by locking down. and i'm planning around next year at this point, unfortunately.

the upside is that the apartment will be finished sooner than later. i have the materials i need to finish everything up and when i get done the outside in the next few days i should be able to rapidly get to finishing up in the garage, and then it's done.

i need to get a fair amount of groceries. i've been eating small amounts all summer and am pushing down to 135 for the next meal, which is powdered chicken soup with grilled chicken breast. i am done the canned soup, but still have canned tomatoes for spaghetti. i have a pile of powdered soup mixes to sub in for quinoa and other things and will be catching up on the fruit as soon as i get through that. the diet i put myself on in may dragged that process out by a few months but it's almost there.

then, there are a small number of organizational things to do before i sit down and finish the cataloging and get to finishing the coffee table book.

so i'm making progress, this is just a crazy amount of work to do, and it's taking a long time to do it.

i got a little disoriented again over the weekend again. i have not been well lately. i'm still having difficulty with food; it goes in and goes back out. the stalkers seem to be here this weekend again as well. so, i had to stop to do some laundry and shower a little early, and it triggered me into the general clean a few days early.

the general clean applies to the

- bathroom

- kitchen

- bedroom

i had piles of books and cds in the bedroom i was cataloging first before i put other things away, but the general clean mean i put that aside and put things away first. so, the bedroom just took a big step towards being done. 

the next thing to do is seal up the laundry. i was focusing more on sealing holes in the wall than the aluminum, yesterday, and got a good chunk of it done. i stopped to scrub the rugs with the carpet cleaner as well and i d think it's working. the laundry has been largely clear of rodents since the spring, but my neighbours are hopeless tenants. the doors are constantly open. the kids leave food and garbage everywhere. etc. there's like a daycare upstairs. i think the rodents came back, but they don't bother coming downstairs because it;s so great upstairs. there's signs they're back, but no droppings down here yet.  i had better block access to the basement as best as i can. 

i just need to plug holes. generally. everywhere. the laundry is open, so there's a lot to do. i got about 65% dome yesterday.

i want to get a bit more done, get in the shower, change my sheets and focus on the cataloging until it's done. that will will segue back into the coffee table book, and finishing up in the kitchen. 

this bridge wasn't built to generate revenue. it's not about profit. the bridge was a needed upgrade in infrastructure and it will make it much easier for canada to keep drugs and guns out of the country. that's what this was about. the other bridge and the tunnel were built in the early part of the 20th century. they're ancient and should be torn down. canada needed a reliable port of entry coming from michigan that it can control access to and that it can not worry about for the next 100 years. 

the bridge is invaluable to canada.

and i live here. i'm happy to see detroit continue to transform into a nature reserve. i have no opposition to throwing more money at detroit. not at all.

that said, while trump may not have gained anything substantive and it might be optics, there's still a lesson to learn from this process. it seems like the agreement that showed up in writing was not the same thing that was agreed to verbally. that seems to be the process that donald trump uses, unfortunately: he tricks you into agreeing to something, then changes the terms in the contract. he calls that "the art of the deal". it sounds like nogoodnick thieving and scheming, to me. he's a dirty fucking scoundrel. he's a lying, no good piece of shit. he's somebody that you wouldn't do business with at all, if you weren't forced to.

nobody should agree to anything with donald trump ever, unless it's presented in writing first. that would certainly apply to any kind of free trade deal.

participants should predict that attempts to isolate parties are exactly that; the trump administration will key on you, single you out, separate you from your peers and try to take advantage of you, if it thinks you're weak. agreements made verbally with isolated parties will not be upheld in writing, but key changes will be made in the details of the contracts.

this is a historic break from america's post world war two role as the policeman of the world to america's new role as the pirate gang leader of the world. america is making new friends in it's new role and losing old friends in it. canada needs to watch what it signs with this new america. 

 

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/gordie-howe-international-bridge-deal-canada

but canada does not have a "grocery competition problem". people talking like that don't know what they're talking about, and should be aggressively called out for it.

what canada has is a poor climate, a bad geography and an increasing problem with overpopulation due to foolish immigration policies, given the minimal population that can be directly supported by the land types we have.

these losers keep succeeding in shutting things down. that's what they want.

stop cancelling queer events when religious bigots demand it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/berlin-pride-parade-car-crowd-christopher-street-day-9.7284516

when you hear people blame things on a lack of competition, it's generally a clear indication that they don't really know what they're talking about.

the reasons that food prices are high in canada are complex. much of it has to do with geography, and the reality that canada imports much of it's food nowadays. a weak dollar makes items like coffee more expensive. some larger amount of local greenhouse production could potentially reduce prices by reducing transportation costs, and these would be smaller companies, but that's not a competitive process and it would be misleading to suggest that any benefits are resulting from competition. the decreased costs would be mostly due to using less oil. this is a substantive shift in production that is slowly underway and could actually benefit from government subsidies to help it compete, not an increase in competition. much of canada's food production network is designed to eliminate competition because it's harmful.

this is a go nowhere strategy. the absolute last thing the grocery industry needs is more competition. that's just going to make everything more expensive, as the costs of competing get added to the overhead. competition = inflation.

somebody somewhere that is making decisions went to school in the 70s, apparently, and has an extremely out of date concept of capitalism. there was this whole big data revolution in the 90s and 00s that uprooted all of this. they were able to actually get the data for the first time in the history of economics and they realized the homo economicus was just wrong: no, competition, does not decrease prices, it raises prices because it increases costs.

so, the entire concept is rooted in a basic point of ignorance and reflects priorities being set by somebody very out of touch with reality. some secretary or staffer needs to quietly get to shutting this down, because it will do nothing but waste money and embarrass the government. it's ideologically incoherent.

competition is an expensive cost that companies seek to avoid. when companies are forced to compete, it will always lead to higher prices, as consumers will always pay for the costs of competition through higher prices.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-grocery-competition-carney-food-strategy-funding-food-hubs-food-terminal-9.7282701

the next candidate for mayor of new york should run on a platform of publicly funded facial hair removal for all, to get rid of all of the unwashed, dirty bums at city hall.

there's going to need to be ground troops in yemen and these barbarian houthis are going to need to be entirely eradicated. like, wiped out. no prisoners. just erase them.

biden utterly failed in his responsibility to global security on this file. he irresponsibly ignored a pressing problem that now has to be dealt with through overwhelming force.

you might think you have a clever analysis, with this talk of friends. 

the old men will spit in your face.

there are no friends in this world. you're a fool. 

i don't assign much value to friendship in capitalism. it's kind of an impossibility. everybody's just trying to take advantage of you. you can pretend people care about you for as long as it takes to knife you in the back, but you're just opening yourself up to exploitation.

if you have anything of any value, you cannot have real friends in this society. i've tried. it's impossible. i prefer not to delude myself.

but, i'm not the hegemon; i'm an aloof artist. i can't run the world by myself. and i don't want to to.

i'm going to finish what i was doing, which was waiting for items to get here, cataloging asimov books and adding textbooks to the list of books (not just fiction). i was trying to fill holes in the fiction list tht should be closed. i was supposed to get done this fairly quick, then shift to the general clean, but it's taken quite a while (and i slept a good chunk of this week). so, i'm going to push into the general clean next week, which will be an end of month clean and that should hopefully get me finishing up most of the remnant big stuff. i really am almost done. the space is in order, at least - i can clean, i can use it. the cataloging will be something i need to keep doing until it's done, but not done continually until it's done.

bc may find itself with a bit of a rude surprise if it tries to outright block the americans from accessing minerals. that might be the excuse they're looking for.

export taxes are a better idea.

why would they block it?

why wouldn't they tax it?

i am in support of export taxes. i'm opposed to import taxes.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/b-c-premier-calls-for-blocking-critical-mineral-exports-to-u-s-over-lumber-tariffs

i just slept all night. again. that's three solid days of constantly triggering into brutal migraines.

i'm finally more awake, now.

i think.

the american labour laws are terrible. it's not just the prison labour, it's the farm and other labour under the table. the real reason that the americans can't fix their borders is that they don't want to, it keeps labour cheap. and trump was known to rip migrant workers off; he's not ignorant about this.

like everything else, this is nonsense, except that it provides advocates in the united states with an opportunity to get rid of prison labour.

i missed this a few weeks ago.

it means israel won. the war's over.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/07/07/hamas-dissolves-its-governing-bodies-in-gaza-as-stalemate-with-israel-continues_6755221_4.html

the united states should have invaded yemen several years ago.

it's an embarrassment to the united states that the houthis still exist.

my diet used to regularly come way down in the summer, before i started doing all of that bicycling, and burning it all off.

i actually lost more like 2.5 days to this migraine, and that's dramatically worse than normal.

it's often only a few hours; i'm just waking up now from a migraine that started on monday night and i still don't feel like it's done yet.

i think it's being catalyzed by the diet i put myself on, but that's not a reason to go off the diet. i've eaten a little bit of toast earlier than scheduled but i'm still trying to hit 137 for the next meal.

this shouldn't be challenging for me. i have spent most of my life in the high 120s, or low 130s. i understand i might be pushing it and may want to adjust to smaller, more frequent meals.

i'm trying to get through some canned soup that is outside my  normal meal plan. the one thing i have left to catch up on is a lot of fruit. it may make sense to shift to small and more frequent fruit bowls while i continue the weight loss. but i am getting there - i'm in the 130s, now. and i'm *not* just starving myself, that's why it's taking so long.

the quality of live music has cratered since the pandemic.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/canada-nightlife-decline-9.6993902

am i going to be going to detroit in august or even at the end of july?

there's a couple of reasons why it might not happen any time soon, and it doesn't have anything to do with smelly canadian nationalism. gross.

i have lots of things to do down here. they might have got me when i was less busy, but now i'm busy. they kind of missed their chance.

however, there's also the cold reality that we're in a shitty 80s phase again and that, due to that reality, i might not be able to find many things i'd want to do.

i'm a 90s kid, but i like the 70s, and i liked the 10s. i did not like the 00s, the 80s, the 60s or, it's increasingly clear, the 20s. it's just how it works out.

something that happens in the even numbered decades is that the culture gets overwhelmingly bourgeois. the music in the even numbered decades tends to suck. more interesting music gets driven underground.

i was probably going to need to start from scratch anyways because a lot of the places i used to go to got shut down since the pandemic. there's been a campaign to get rid of all of the fun places in detroit and replace them with upper class boringsvilles. more than a few places got hit, and i'll have to see what's left.

so, it's kind of a perfect storm of shittiness anyways and at this point it might be better to wait until next year, if for no reason than that things look a little slow right now anyways.

i'll find some things. but i'm too busy working at home right now.

the world would be better off if every piece of shit crackhead, junkie and pothead in it got a bullet right between their worthless fucking eyes.

so, i lost a day to the migraine. i'm feeling better. these losers need to go die somewhere, and i may have to help them expire if they keep it up. their lives are absolutely worthless, anyways. they'd be better off fucking dead.

i was taking too long to catalog the cds and now i'm taking too long to catalog the books. i had dumped a bunch into the librarything catalog as i was waiting for some mail on monday, and i had stopped to clean a little before i passed out. it's what, wednesday the 22nd? i've got some stuff on the way. i'm going to want to do a good end of the month clean for the end of the july, so i'm going to try to get done what i'm doing, first.

i wanted to finish cleaning in the bedroom, laundry, bathroom and kitchen then just tidy as i got back to what i was doing, but i've instead been cataloging books for days. i did a quick clean in the kitchen last night before i passed out and i'm going to want to clean better in there before i buy groceries next week. now, i actually want to do the laundry first, the bathroom, the hall and then the bedroom last, as i've got laundry to do in there.

this cataloging step is time consuming and i'm probably going to put it down to get the insulation up in the laundry but it's also one of the last major things i need to do in here. the insulation is working in the bedroom, even if i got hit with something last night, i think maybe from in the kitchen. 

so, i'm going to spend a few more days cataloging books and cds and then get back to cleaning.

canadian workers have failed to fight for the environment. in return, they can be sure that i will fail to fight for them.

no solidarity for canadian nationalism.

i can tell you, though, that if i get the opportunity, i'm going to smash somebody's skull in.

i don't have a lot of patience for drug addicts.

i think they should be fed to farm animals.