I never said we can't legalize drugs, I just said organized disorganized violence is bad, and ought to be put down.
Funny Events of the "Woke" world
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
The 'segregated' playdate that led to a bomb threat
Moral revolutionaries targeted my Californian community
unherd.com
Are universities retreating from DEI?
Texas A&M University has found itself in the midst of a complex cultural and legal battle over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In June, Texas legislators restricted university DEI activities, banning DEI offices, training, diversity statements, and identity-based preferences...
unherd.com
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/09/08/a-cartoon-based-on-my-difficulties-in-getting-my-childrens-book-published/#
Pelosi, Defying Predictions, Says She Will Seek Re-election in 2024
Since she stepped down from leadership last year, many observers expected Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to head toward retirement. But she has kept people guessing about her future.
Oh for fuck's sake.Well, if Mcconnell is doing it, then the other fossils gotta as well, innit?Pelosi, Defying Predictions, Says She Will Seek Re-election in 2024
Since she stepped down from leadership last year, many observers expected Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to head toward retirement. But she has kept people guessing about her future.www.nytimes.com
Do they really look at the doddering embarrassment their peers have become, needing to be constantly rescued from freezes and rambling by their colleagues and aides, and think "Yeah, that's where I want to be in four years' time". Sling your hook, Pelosi, your days are done.
Just gotta ask... Do you think Harvard is woke?
Also, in other news, Harvard had to retract some studies. Can you guess what they were studying? Honesty.
Two separate studies faked data on honesty. You cannot make this stuff up
The best part is that the male author of one study (found fake a while ago) is still working, got to publish a book and now is having a show made about his work. The other author was found out recently and has been terminated. Oh, and is female
So woke....
Harm reduction doesn't mean legalizing drugs..
In fact, legalizing drugs would almost certainly make the problem hugely worse because it would drive up demand, and the only people who could meet that demand are the people already managing the supply, who are criminal gangs. This is not even addressing the fact that we're talking about extremely powerful and dangerous substances that have permanent effects on the human brain and nervous system.
What harm reduction means, rather than legalizing drugs, is minimizing the harm caused by addiction by treating it as a medical issue rather than a law enforcement issue. This might mean making it easier for addicts to obtain drugs that would normally be restricted, or putting less pressure on addicts to become abstinent, but the point is ultimately to get people into treatment, because a heroin addict who is taking pharmaceutical heroin on prescription is both much safer from the risk of overdosing, much safer from the risk of abuse or exploitation by whoever is supplying them and, most importantly from our perspective, is no longer contributing to the demand for illegal opioids.
An addict doesn't care how much the drug they need costs. Noone is going to lie there shitting themselves inside out because they've lost orifice control and think "gee, I wish I could stop going through withdrawl but it's just too gosh-darn expensive." Targeting the supply-side of the drug trade has never been effective because it does not ultimately change anything. As long as there is a profit to be made someone will be there to make it. The only long term solution is to take the profit away by getting the people driving it into treatment.
Unfortunately, this would also require the foundation of a robust and efficient public health system, which the US seems peculiarly and uniquely incapable of producing.
You're not terribly familiar with that whole nationwide social experiment the US attempted between 1920-1933, are you.
There would be a change over period in the 24 months or so it would take the relevant pharmaceutical conglomerates to expand their production facilities and for the creation of safe injecting rooms in metro areas, but I can say with some certainty that no one is going to want to buy their dope from violent criminals when they can buy it from a chemist.
We’re still selling alcohol and tobacco; and honestly at this point I cannot see it being more damaging to just go all in and put weed, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, speed (are they the same? I was never clear on that) and their colleagues on the books and maybe claw a few billion in taxes out of one of the single largest unregulated markets on Earth.
"Speed" is amphetamine. Ecstasy (MDMA) is similar to amphetamines in chemical structure, but it has rather different effects. It's much more a hallucinogen than a stimulant, and is vastly less addictive.
There are three neurotransmitters with relatively similar chemical structure: 5-HT (serotonin), dopamine, and noradrenaline (/norepinephrine). As a very simplistic rule in terms of drugs of abuse, 5-HT causes hallucinations, dopamine causes euphoria and addiction, and noradrenaline causes excitement, although noradrenaline also increases some dopamine activity.
Because the neurotransmitters (and thus the proteins in the body that interact with them) have similar chemical structures, a lot of drugs are not very good at selecting one specific neurotransmitter system, so they often tend to be a mix of effects on 2-3 of these systems, and modest differences in drug chemical structure may have significant differences in effect.
Alcohol is not very addictive to most people. There are a few people in the population who are unlucky enough to be born with a genetic sensitivity that makes them susceptible to alcohol addiction, but even then it's a relatively slow process. Conversely, alcohol consumption is deeply integrated into the culture and social life of many societies such that removing it would cause severe cultural disruption.
Nicotine is very addictive, but is also at the point where it would be difficult to make it illegal, if nothing else because there is a large and powerful tobacco industry that employs many people. However, tobacco use is also very much in decline as culture and public policy has increasingly turned against it. Governments have not made tobacco illegal, but they have generally been quite proactive in legislating against it. Nicotine also has the advantage of being relatively safe (at least in the short term) and doesn't come with the same risk of physical dependence as many other drugs.
Essentially, we all kind of recognize that these drugs are problems. They cause enormous social harm and have very nasty health consequences. The problem is that they aren't just legal, they've become culturally ingrained enough that you can't just remove them from society in one go. But harm reduction still doesn't mean we encourage these things. Particularly in the case of tobacco, the goal of public policy is very much to reduce and ultimately eliminate consumption, but legalization is kind of a one-way street. Once you've done it, it becomes very hard to go back.
More importantly though, not all drugs are the same. Opioids, for example, combine the psychological addictiveness of nicotine, the problems of physiological dependence of long term alcohol abuse (except that it takes an alcoholic several years to become dependent, whereas with opioids it typically takes a few weeks) and the ability to straight up kill you on an overdose. The latter two, in combination, are particularly horrifying because as people start to adapt and become physically dependent on a substance, they need more and more of it to get the same effect, which brings them closer and closer to overdosing. People can and do live long and healthy lives on opioids, for many people with chronic pain they're an important part of maintaining quality of life, but doing that safely requires a level of management that is inherently difficult and not something most people can do on their own, and that means you have to pay someone to do it. Getting a bit of extra government revenue probably sounds great, but if the cost is more people addicted to opioids who then require lifelong healthcare and management (or who will just overdose and die, thus removing themselves from the economy) that comes with a cost.
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Eh, we should just do it anyway, as a joke.
'Racist' 80 per cent discount to opera and ballet given to Indigenous
So called 'Mob Tix', which give up to 80 per cent discounts to Indigenous Australians for elite cultural events such as ballet and opera, have been slammed as 'racist'.
Look, the ole girl still got some insider trading in her to finish off before the cognition fully gives way yet.Well, if Mcconnell is doing it, then the other fossils gotta as well, innit?Pelosi, Defying Predictions, Says She Will Seek Re-election in 2024
Since she stepped down from leadership last year, many observers expected Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to head toward retirement. But she has kept people guessing about her future.
I haven't been watching or following along with James Stephanie Sterling's content or videos recently because the anti-capitialistic gimmick got old after a while. Today I learned that they split away from their long time editor at the beginning of the year and as it turns out Sterling's kind of a hypocritical scumbag.
Refusing to pay, manipulation, gaslighting, all those fun selfish and greedy capitialistic things they so much love to hate and shame people for. Funny how much Sterling loves capitalism when it comes to their own wallet and paying their own employees though isn't it?
Refusing to pay, manipulation, gaslighting, all those fun selfish and greedy capitialistic things they so much love to hate and shame people for. Funny how much Sterling loves capitalism when it comes to their own wallet and paying their own employees though isn't it?
Suffice it to say there are two sides to this story out there, and it's usually not a good idea to uncritically (heh) take one involved party's story on a financial dispute.
There's not really any way to know which way the balance lies here. I'll just say that both of them airing this laundry in public is unwise and not terribly dignified.
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Sterlings post reads a lot more like playing the victim than Justin's does Imo. And the two stories are such polar opposites that I just dont believe Sterlings post and I'll tell you why. Sterling is the public figure and therefore is the one that needs to save face, Justin doesn't and can tell things as they are more freely without as much fear of backlash. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle but like I said I can believe the things Justin said more as it reads more like behavior we've seen from Sterling in previous videos throughout their youtube career, so it's easier to picture Justin's post as a reality more-so than the other way around.
Like I said it's probably a bit more inbetween both of them though. It is what it is, but Sterling's shown they've lost their shit on many occasions and there's no evidence of that from Justin anywhere so judge for yourself I guess.
They've 'lost their shit', sure, but that's hardly evidence of unrelated claims like withholding pay. You've not got any previous behaviour at all to judge that on. And judging this on the tone of the posts is just a non-starter.
Sorry, but we got nothin'. But neither of them should have made this a public affair.
Unfortunately.