bah, like what the word would type

Advice I would give..

to any male person older than puberty and younger than within the last year of their life:

do not complain about being hungry, thirsty or tired, or feeling cold or hot. Ever. You can be hungry, thirsty, tired, cold or hot, for sure, and you can certainly feel that way, but complaining about it will not serve you.

Do be concerned about the women, children and elderly in your life and in your surroundings and if any of them feel hungry, thirsty, tired, cold or hot and see to their comfort as and when it is possible to do so.

to any YouTube creator:

do not at the beginning, at the end, or at any time, ask for subscriptions, likes, comments or Patreon. Constantly hearing from various creators that doing so 'will help the YouTube algorithm' or will help the creator themselves is useless, YouTube viewers already know this and will do it if they are so inclined.

Do thank the viewer for having watched your video at the tail end.

Anyhow, these are a few behaviour recommendations that I have thought about over the last few weeks and I thought I would put them down somewhere.

currency like a hammock

So Carney dropped the Digital Services Tax (DST) when the felon Cheeto Buffoon indicated trade talks would cease unless the DST was dropped. Though the pretty mouthpiece of the Frumpy said Canada 'caved in' to the demand; I don't see that Carney had a choice, in order for his trade team to continue engaging with the US trade team.

A few days later the felon posted a 35% tax, um, tariff,  on everything coming into the US from Canada; not indicating clearly if already cleared USMCA goods would be exempt. This is to take place on 1 August, unless a trade deal is done, and unless TACO happens again.

Once this announcement was made, my view on these matters flipped - previously I wanted Carney and his trade team to get the best deal possible with the USA under these difficult conditions. Now, I want us as a country to cut all trade with the US. I know this will be extremely difficult on thousands of Canadian  businesses, but we should accelerate not only trade deals with other countries (Mexico, Europe, UK, Asia, etc.) but get real contracts between Canadian businesses and those external country's businesses. Also, get going with the major projects within Canada to employ a lot of people that used to be in businesses with the USA.

The Orange Guy claimed again and again that they need nothing from Canada, so let's give them nothing. For things like electricity from Quebec and Ontario into the US, raise the prices in a predictable manner over the next few years until the prices are exorbitant. For lumber and critical minerals, treat preferably all of our non-US trade partners, and only sell to the US what remains at a high price. For the automotive industry, this is the trickiest one as the supply chain is so involved. Well, get Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and other foreign car companies with the exclusion of China, to have vehicles built in Canada for the Canadian market and gradually ween ourself off American manufacturers. Oil will be the most difficult one, as presently Alberta oil goes through the US to then eventually come back up again into Ontario. For this I see no other choice but to build an east-west pipeline.

And finally, we need to get immigration, housing, social services (education and health) on a plan to ramp up all of this; if we can grow our population in an accelerated way by way of pragmatic and smart planning, this is another way that our economy can grow that will make our market desirable to trade in by all of our non-US trade partners.

Do not forget your wrist watch at home

How many Spiderman movies are there? Three? Six?

How many octagons are there? More or less than Spiderman movies?

If I tied my shoes tightly enough, I am certain that they would be sufficiently tight.

That's about it.

Canada Day

Nothing more patriotic than a flag.

Nothing better than a nemesis to bring people together, though, with an exception of right-wing separatists out west.

That the felon Cheeto Buffoon should threaten us with a levity version of an extra state; American population meanwhile have his Big Beautiful Bill which will wreck Medicare and food stamps while giving tax cuts to the top income quintile.

In other news Israeli army keep shooting Palestinians who are simply queueing up, perhaps not orderly, but nonetheless, simply queueing up for delivery of desperately needed food and aid.

Oh well, we'll see what happens at next year's Canada Day.

Serendipity like a loose lozenge

Well, the days are getting shorter now. Not in terms of their actual length, but in terms of the number of daylight hours and minutes. Having passed the solstice just a few days ago we're already on our way to the shortest day; and, winter.

It isn't common to talk about winter near the end of June (in the northern hemisphere), but then, since no one is reading this, does it matter?

Hopefully June 26th will be at least as exciting as June 25th will have been.

Send forth the goop

Yesterday I went with my dad to visit with my mom who has end stage frontotemporal dementia, we arrived with her in the meal room, her lunch soon arrived, and we helped feed her as her coordination allowed for her to have the fork or spoon with food loaded arrive correctly at her mouth perhaps only one out of every five attempts.

The room had many elderly in various stages of inability, some who could feed themselves correctly, some who couldn't, with both staff and volunteers there to help those in need.

I could not help but get the feeling that this was just a place where people get fed, get cleaned up after they pee or poo, get wheeled in and out of their rooms and do various activities that people like my mom at end stage dementia can hardly be fully aware of what is going on, all with the ultimate purpose of doing what can be done before death.

I will need to eventually discuss this with my children, but as I am divorced and have no significant other, I am leaning towards, for myself, using Quebec's advance notification for MAID. I will just need to determine what is the specific condition where the trigger is pulled at the time that I am first diagnosed with dementia, presuming this happens at the end.

This isn't particularly Catholic or Christian of me to consider this, but as hurtful as it may sound, I see no value in continuing my existence if whoever I am now disappears leaving only my body to operate.

I do not know how much longer blogger.com will continue, but my plan is to write a bunch of future posts that I pre-post such that they come out piecemeal over the coming years. I will continue doing this right up to the end so that my blog will persist for who knows how long after I have passed.

top mop

There isn't much to be said about lozenges on a day like this.

So, Russia and Ukraine are at war due to Russia, Israel is committing a genocide against Palestine, Israel and Iran are at war, Haiti, Syria and Sudan are failed states with every day violence.

The G7 are in the midst of meeting here in Canada, and while the felon Cheeto Buffoon did arrive for the start of the conference, he left at the end of the first day to react to the escalating fight between Israel and Iran. His departure leaves a big hole in their conference, as he, when present, occupies way more space than he physically occupies.

I haven't made use of any kind of lozenge in many months.

The Quebec Liberal Party elected their leader this past weekend, his name is Pablo Rodriguez. Previously he had been a minister in Justin Trudeau's federal liberal party. He will have many different priorities as he tries to grow the membership, but what is top of mind to me at the moment is that the provincial government needs to provide new structural funding to public transit agencies across the province, but especially in Montreal for the operations bucket.

travel too far, or

a label maker, a pistol squat and trustworthiness walk into a bar.

an anchor hitch knot, a hypnotist and an Instagram post walk into a bar.

The trustworthy hypnotist used the label maker to create a label that describes what a pistol squat is and then posted this to Insta from the bar.

twist and crouch

I have been watching youtube channels that talk about male loneliness, and especially in younger men (of which I am not one). From it, one of the many things I have learned was about dating apps, how women on many dating apps get a match about one out of two positive swipes, while men get a match about one out of 40 positive swipes.

I created a free Bumble account to see how this would play out. I did get a match at about the rate of one out of 40 and met the woman this past Saturday. I did not find her particularly attractive, but we had chatted for many days and I wanted to meet her in person so as to practice the social interaction. 

Subsequently we both agreed we would not pursue a relationship. I then deleted my Bumble account. I found that most of the women I had been attracted to were 6-10 years younger than me and very or moderately pretty. Of the men they would see, I think it would take 1000 swipes for me before any of such women to select me, if even any would do so. I am not too bothered by this; I already managed to have had a marriage, have children, and have seen them more or less flourish. Being divorced and single now isn't great, but it isn't terrible either.

book took shook soup

So the meeting yesterday defined some criteria for projects, rather than specifying projects themselves. Each premier yesterday had to come with five projects that would be 'nation building'. At the end they all agreed on these criteria:

• Strengthen Canada’s autonomy, resilience, and security.
• Offer undeniable benefits to Canada and support economic growth.
• Have a high likelihood of successful execution.
• Are a high priority for Indigenous leaders.
• Have clean growth potential, such as the use of clean technologies and sustainable practices.

So in addition to what I posted yesterday about projects that I would like to see, another one I would add is to have the Government of Canada along with First Nations place a standing order for SMRs such that every remote indigenous community can have an SMR to replace their diesel power source. I would ask the Canadian government's nuclear approval team work faster to approve the SMRs and then open them up to foreign markets. In this way sales to other countries can help the manufacturing of these to become more streamlined to lower their costs. If we can mass produce SMRs we can be a leading supplier of them globally.

chicken without the horn

Terrible forest fires across the northern half of the prairie provinces. Makes me wonder how a methane pipeline to Churchill from Fort Mac would work - it would pass through exactly where all of these forest fires are.

There is a first ministers meeting happening in Saskatoon presently; each provincial and territorial leader is to present up to five nation building projects to propose. Then, PM Carney and all of the leaders will come to a decision as to which 2-5 of these will get selected to begin ASAP.

For me the important ones are to electricity intertie Quebec and Ontario, and, to accelerate the high speed rail project. Well, for Canadian Unity I would also propose the pipeline from northern Alberta to Hudson Bay so that we can ship LNG from there to Europe. As a Climate Change supporting person I am against any progress of fossil fuels, but at this time in Canada, I feel that Canadian unity trumps the need for addressing climate change in such a way that prevents a pipeline from being built.

I had ChatGPT help me with this next part - Hudson Bay ices over every winter to a 1 to 2m thickness which is difficult for ice breakers. So, if we use an ice breaker only during the shoulder seasons to allow for an expanded shipping period, during the four winter months tanks built at the Churchill LNG port can store a reduced flow of methane from Alberta, and then those tanks can be emptied into the LNG ships for shipment to Europe when the shipping season starts.

I also read about building a pipeline at around 58.75N latitude, not an easy project at all to make it both fireproof, and, to have it cross thousands of lakes, both small and big.