I took a trip to a local grocery store this morning to get some coffee and bread. I was surprised to see a line formed outside of the front doors, similar to ones we’ve seen not so long ago.

“That’s weird,” I thought as I peeked into the seemingly empty store expecting it to be visibly busy, so I asked the security guard why people were being held back.

He told me that there were only two cashiers working and that the lines to pay were causing unacceptable congestion. I couldn’t tell if this was true from outside so I just shrugged my shoulders and plodded back into line.

My little detour managed to lose me a few spots so I ended up waiting for an additional 10 minutes, not because the line was long but because the tiny trickle of people leaving/entering was excruciatingly slow.

In all, roughly 5 people had left by the time I got inside the spacious store. Not exactly the deluge that I was given as a reason for being kept outside in the first place. But maybe the crowd was inside, away from view?

Nope.

As I circled the store there I counted no more than 30 people inside, and no one at the checkouts. There was only one entrance / exit so unless these “long lines” spontaneously de-materialized into thin air, where did all of the shoppers disappear to?

I got a sort-of answer to my question when I strolled up to pay for my purchases at the still-completely-empty checkout. (This is not an exaggeration, there were literally no people in line).

I told the cashier that people were being made to wait outside based on a claim that the store, or at least the cashiers, were crowded. Except … where were all the people?

She turned to me and with a heavy, sputtering Filipino accent said, “only have two cashiers working so need to limit lines. Too many people!”

“Yeah, I already heard that. But what lines?”

“Would you like bags, sir?” she replied, seemingly ignoring my question.

I leaned in and made an obvious show of looking around to try to spot these imaginary “lines” of people, then asked again, “what lines?”

She stared at me blankly for a moment, as if the question had overloaded her brain, and only managed to blurt out “bags?” a second time before turning away. Didn’t even wait for my response.

I decided to ask one more time. “I’m sorry, what lines are you talking about? Was it very busy earlier?”

She turned around and, once again seemingly ignoring the obvious revelation that she and store security had been shoveling bullshit, cocked her head to the side with noticeable annoyance (I guess at having to hold up the throngs of invisible people waiting behind me), and asked once again if I wanted bags.

I decided to drop the questions. I knew it wasn’t a language barrier; she’d already used the same words I had. This was possibly an example of cognitive dissonance on full display. Or maybe it was a form of genuine mental illness in which she was hallucinating long lines of people where there were none. Maybe this was what life is like in the government’s “new reality”.

This could almost be a humorous anecdote if it wasn’t so indicative of the general public’s unwillingness / inability to see the reality that’s quite literally right in front of them.

When the police or military brutalize them, kick in their house doors, or violently pull them out of their cars for staying out too late or not obeying the newest set of arbitrary government dictates, as is being done in Australia (be sure to read the last few paragraphs!), a virtuous example being promoted here in Canada, these same people will ostensibly deny that what they’re experiencing actually exists. And we can be certain that this won’t be the result of a philosophical inquisition into the nature of reality.

It’s hard to know when a line has been crossed when that line doesn’t even exist.

Everyone knows that Black Lives Matter. Duh.

But due to racism and slavery and etc. there’s a question that no one is willing to ask: just how much do Black Lives Matter?

Well, thanks to the investigative work of some local newspapers we can finally answer that question!

Gird your loins … the results will startle you.

Before I get into it I want to clarify that in a previous OFTA post I made it seem like individual lives shouldn’t matter, that only group-based averages that flip the numbers on their (correct) head were worth considering. Clearly, that was my confused white supremacy talking. It doesn’t fit in with the Black Lives Matter messaging and could be construed as cold, callous, and dismissive (not to mention racist!), so I’m changing the narrative — individual (Black) lives do matter!

The two sources I used for this include a very recent study by the CBC and a similar, albeit more limited, study by CTV.

Both make sure to highlight the fact that Black and Indigenous people are far more likely to be killed by police (when various mathematical transformations are applied), so we can be fairly certain that the numbers aren’t skewed to support some racist (i.e. white) narrative. The CTV study even quotes Norm Taylor, an expert on Indigenous policing, who describes the numbers as “staggering” and “shocking”, so you know it’s totally balanced and unbiased.

Are your loins sufficiently girded? Here are the numbers…

These numbers are pretty much the same whether the people killed were armed or unarmed but before you go off making ignorant assumptions, it’s important to be reminded that in both tables all lives are given equal weight within the total Canadian population which is, of course, unbelievably racist.

And in case you thought that challenging popular suppressed information was somehow noble or enlightening, here’s an asshole white supremacist with the caucasity to preach about his own non-status-quo “research” (i.e. hate), even going so far as to compare Black People’s experiences to his own (!):

What an ignorant fucking racist piece of shit, huh?

The important take-away from all this is that, obviously, Black Lives Matter anywhere from an estimated 4 to 6 times more than white lives, depending on the numbers used. This explains why when a Black Person is killed by cops it results in mass demonstrations and round-the-clock media coverage, and conversely when a white person is killed, well, who gives a fuck.

In the words of BLM Toronto co-founder Yusra Khogali:

“Plz Allah give me the strength not to cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today. Plz plz plz.”

After posting this irate retort to hateful whites who question the scientifically established primacy of Black People, understandable since clearly her Black opinion matters about 4 to 6 times more than theirs, this brave young woman also hijacked a Pride parade to remind everyone of the (now mathematically derived!) superiority of Black Lives. In a clever twist she was subsequently awarded a Leadership award by the mayor, thus demonstrating just how deep systemic racism runs.

Despite her understandable rage, she’s since somehow managed to tone down her approach to just calling white people “subhuman genetic defects” (do I smell another award?!), but it seems she’s finally getting her positive, inclusive, peaceful message across: Black Lives Matter … considerably more.

/sarcasm mode off

Why does this seem to be so regularly and easily glossed over?

White people are overwhelmingly killed by police throughout North America when compared to all other ethnic groups. The numbers, the individual people killed, are there in all the stark statistics. Then they’re deeply massaged by proportional calculations which I’m sure have their uses and provide useful information, but do these calculations outweigh the importance of individual human lives? Not to me.

And wouldn’t it be nice if this was at least part of the discussion?

My intention with this is not to diminish but to raise. Why is it so awful to suggest that all lives matter? By that I mean, literally, every one. Is it because it “misses the bigger picture“? (note the linked report which further confirms my points regarding “proportional” calculations)

I’ve looked at the bigger picture, as suggested, and my conclusion is that the story being told is not an honest one. It’s a distortion of the bigger picture, one that hides individual human lives behind equations. Or is that preferable?

It makes my blood boil to see anyone being brutalized by the state. I believe that the history of posts on this blog will back up this position in multiple ways. Should I care more, or less, about the victims because of the colour of their skin? Fuck that shit — the evidence doesn’t fit. I don’t think it ever has.

MannLab, 330 Dundas Street West
(previously the pink worm place)

Wizard Market, 346 Dundas Street West

The Toronto Star ran an article yesterday about going to the dentist while pandemicking.

I’d very recently gone myself with a chipped tooth so I can confirm everything that I read as being entirely accurate. I wasn’t asked “a lot” of questions but that’s an entirely subjective measure so I’ll leave it at that.

There wasn’t anything really exceptional about the write-up except for a brief line about halfway through:

Many dentists are now using a [pre-procedural] hydrogen peroxide-based rinse, which is thought to also help with viruses.

It wasn’t the insertion of a link to a name-brand mouth rinse product in this sentence that I found curious, even though it came across as a sort of stealth advertisement, it was the statement that hydrogen peroxide was in the rinse.

Ah, I thought, so that’s why the mouthwash tasted a little different. Dentist never bothered to tell me what was in it. I can’t say that I’m bothered by the chemical’s presence but it would still have been nice for the dentist to let me know what I was swishing with.

Whatevs.

But it got me wondering just how effective hydrogen peroxide is in dealing with viruses like Covid. So I did some research and it turns out it’s pretty efficacious. But there’s a catch.

According to information provided by the city, achieving the “high-level of disinfection” that actually kills bacteria and viruses requires that the chemical be kept in the mouth anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes depending on the variety used. I sure as hell didn’t swish for that long and I doubt most patients do.

Even “low-level disinfection” that kills “some” bacteria and viruses needs you to rinse for a minimum of 10 minutes, which I also wasn’t anywhere close to achieving.

As far I know, hydrogen peroxide is generally safe so it’s highly unlikely that rinsing with it will cause any problems. But at the same time, it seems that the way it’s being used also doesn’t offer many benefits in terms of virus protection.

I’ll readily admit that my familiarity with this topic is pretty shallow but it does seem that this particular portion of a dental visit is more wishful thinking than a proven solution, at least in the way that it’s being used presently.

It makes me wonder what other things are being done for our “protection” that, although they may be entirely benign, also don’t offer the stated benefits.

University of Toronto, St. George Campus

“Crisis actors” are people who have volunteered or been hired to play victims in emergency drills and training scenarios. This is a well-known and undisputed practice.

Somewhat less undisputed are the various theories floating around on the internet about crisis actors being employed by governments and large corporations to covertly produce knowingly fake “emergency” scenarios in order to promote an (often hidden) agenda.

Are crisis actors used to promote propagandist narratives? I’m not entirely convinced but given the types of things that governments openly get up to on a daily basis I certainly wouldn’t put it above them.

This is what’s running through my mind as I read articles on people protesting the imposition of face masks here in the city. They (the protesters), are invariably presented as idiots, “mostly white”, “Karens”, and other openly derisive and overtly racist terms to show the world just how despicable (and white), it is to question popular opinions and the wisdom of our benign and loving government.

Thing is, based on some of the things I’ve seen and heard I don’t entirely disagree.

Notwithstanding the unbelievable levels of blatant anti-white rhetoric being pumped out by nearly every facet of the establishment, the people being exemplified in these articles really do come across as a little dull. In fact, my own interactions with similar protests in the past has led me to the same conclusion.

When I’ve approached such people and told them that I agree with their cause, albeit for different reasons, I would’ve expected that they would be pleased to have both an ally and additional arguments to back their position. Instead, I’m often met with stone-faced ignorance, by which I mean that they quite literally turn their back and ignore me like I didn’t exist.

I can’t help wondering, are these people disinfo actors? Are they being put out there to demonstrate how stupid and ignorant one would look if one also questions the established wisdom of the authorities? Have I challenged their mission of painting dissidents as dangerous imbeciles in a way that they don’t know how to deal with?

As I said, knowing the well-established and proven public facts of how governments operate makes these suspicions perfectly reasonable. That they would engage in covert, soft censorship certainly isn’t beyond the pale for them.

Consider, for example, that the only anti-mask arguments being “advertised” like this have to do with the efficacy of face coverings, the size of the particles involved, and the illusory “rights and freedoms” of the protesters.

Why not, for example, question the general safety of masks given that the government itself provides exemptions for people with health issues?

Doesn’t that put borderline and undiagnosed individuals at dire risk of severe medical problems, especially during this hot and humid summer we’ve been having? Is it justifiable to knowingly put certain people in harm’s way — as admitted by the government in its own directives — in order to make others feel safe, especially when Covid numbers in the city are at a historic low? And if face masks are so risk-free then why have any exemptions at all, especially for people with underlying respiratory problems?

Perhaps the truth of the matter is somewhere in the middle: masks aren’t without risks but the government has deemed those risks (to individual human lives), acceptable. Similarly, the safety and efficacy of flu vaccines seem like highly germane and timely topics but you won’t hear anything even resembling a balanced discussion about them, just like the absurd and one-sided rhetoric being promulgated to support BLM. Why would individual human lives matter when there’s a false narrative based on twisted statistical aggregates, nonsensical comparisons, and “community effects” instead?

I’ve even been accused of “tricking” people and abusing their various mental conditions (only revealed after the fact), simply by having them conclude their own thought processes through a line of fairly simple and direct questioning.

“I have ADHD you asshole! You tricked me into saying that I’m okay with censorship and state murder just because I said that the government should kill anyone who disagrees! FUCK YOOOOUUUUUU!1!!!!!” This is an actual quote from an online discussion I was involved in, obviously not on the same topic but still indicative of the types of responses I’ve received.

After being accused of “weaponizing facts” and using “magical logic” for the umpteenth time I finally gave up. Their own opinions, as expressed by them, are as nothing to how they feel, and I certainly won’t convince them that what they say is what they actually mean. And heaven forbid I should engage in “bully tactics” like quoting them to demonstrate inconsistent or self-contradictory arguments.

Yes, questions are stupid (and racist, misogynistic, white supremacist, etc.), especially when someone’s own answers might lead them to conclusions that might make them feel uncomfortable. The horror. Just stab me already.