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2 yr. ago

  • To think that you could eliminate or hide everything that offends someone from life completely is also a childish outlook.

    "Everything". I never suggested such.

    Look, we were able to drop cigarette use by using simple strategies like not having them displayed "in your face" at shops, and cutting advertising.

    If we can't do the same for other drugs, then it's due to a lack of trying.

  • It need to all go.

    Sounds like we agree.

    I also don't want to see maple magats, huge diesel trucks idling with no one in them, indigenous people being arrested,killed and harassed for existing, churches...I hate fucking churches...every single one needs to go.

    Not sure what any of that has to do with drugs harming kids, but OK.

    Google maps also has all those places. They're promoting hatred and alcoholism.

    They are. We agree on that, too.

    You sound like a child.

    OK. We seem to be agreeing on the same things, so... I guess you sound like a child, too? 🤔

    I have concerns about drugs influencing our most vulnerable, and the external pressures that make it difficult for them to avoid it.

    As an alcoholic, one would think you'd agree that it's a problem.

    Not sure what your personal beef with me is, though. 🤷‍♂️

  • Enjoying a joint every now and then is far safer than toking every 30 minutes.

    The problem is, what Health Canada once labelled as "heavy use" is pretty much normal use these days. Daily use, or using multiple times a day, is very common.

    If people (and teens) were only consuming once in a while, I doubt we'd be in this mess.

    They consume often, partly because they've been told "it helps with XYZ", so they self-medicate, which leads to greater problems. But also because they believe it's "safe".

    Single cannabis use can also lead to acute impairment and puts stresses on the body. I've never heard of someone getting in a car and killing someone because they were impaired on having chocolate that afternoon. 😆

  • Prohibition

    I don't think prohibition is the way to go. But we (society) should treat these drugs like we treat cigarettes: keep them out of view (i.e. "behind the counter") and stop allowing them to be marketed at every street corner.

    I view it from the perspective of someone who might never want to get into drugs, or may have recently become sober: they see cannabis shops at every turn, they are being primed to fail, and that's not right.

    We were able to get sensible people to stop smoking once we stopped allowing cigarettes to be displayed and marketed everywhere. I feel we need to do the same for cannabis (and alcohol) because of the harm we are causing to the most vulnerable in our society (youth and the poor).

  • Ah ok, “they” meant cannabis magazines.

    Before legalization, there really weren't many other places promoting cannabis (maybe there was, but marketing back then was very different from now), so the promotion of their safety came from those sources (unfortunately).

    Worse yet, as the plans to legalize were getting closer, I remember a massive push on social media by people promoting cannabis as a cure-all for just about anything: mental health, cancer, anxiety, bowel problems, etc. They used the Trojan horse of “medicinal use” to bring it into everyone's life.

    I'm sure there was industry influence, because it was extremely rare to see people pointing out the harms of cannabis back then.

    The experts were on the side of legalization, so they weren’t really ignored. If by experts you mean people who study public health policy and narcotrafficking.

    Decriminalization is one thing, and experts were certainly in support of decriminalization.

    But legalization, as in "allow stores to sell these everywhere and to everyone", just like alcohol and cigarettes, became a fucking disaster, and now we are seeing the result of what the experts warned us about.

    What are these experts saying nowadays? What I see is a consensus that it has a pretty good move.

    Again, they still agree that decriminalization was the right move. But experts, doctors, law enforcement, educators... all see what a disaster this has become.

    We knew that normalizing cannabis and selling it everywhere would lead to more DUI, more hospitalizations, more poisoning of small children, lower academic performance in teens... just wait until the wave of long-term harm begins to surface. How will our healthcare system even handle that burden? Experts have warned us for decades, and still do.

  • Before legalization, pretty much every cannabis magazine and website was being cited as saying it was totally safe. Even mocked people for thinking otherwise.

    That changed public opinion, and experts were ignored. These risks were known many years ago, so why has the industry been allowed to keep selling stronger strains, marketing to young people, and making these drugs available everywhere?

    Now that the consequences are being seen, what are we going to do about it? This shit is being sold at every street corner, sometimes multiple cannabis shops at the same intersection. It's nuts.

  • "They're just taking innocent people who are trying to build their own American Dream," said Daniel Larios with the UFW Foundation. "This is not law enforcement. It's a campaign of fear against people whose only 'crime' is living and working in the U.S."

  • Based on the CBC report, there is so much to unpack here:

    "Halifax now has the third-worst congestion in Canada and the fifth-worst congestion in North America," Fillmore said. "People here are spending 83 hours a year stuck in traffic. That's the equivalent of 12 working days behind the wheel in gridlock."

    Mayor, people in cars aren't "stuck in traffic" they are the traffic. The idea that putting more people on roads (by not having them use other forms of transportation) will somehow fix traffic congestion is so terribly wrong.

    Coun. Sam Austin said he was disappointed in Fillmore's motion and said bike lanes do not cause traffic congestion. He said delaying the work on bike lanes would worsen traffic.

    Yup. And any work needed to expand car-centric infrastructure would absolutely worsen traffic, and then induce demand, which puts you back to square one without solving any problems.

    Originally planned to be completed in 2022, about 60 per cent of the 53 kilometres of network has been done so far with temporary or permanent measures.

    The bicycle network's original expected cost of about $25 million has more than tripled, now reaching about $93 million. The provincial and federal governments have contributed about $20.8 million, leaving about $66 million for the Halifax Regional Municipality to pay over the next few years.

    53km of network for $93 million???

    For context, Durham Region, which has a significantly larger population, has estimated that over 200km of cycling network would cost them around $81 million.

    Even so...

    Halifax spends more than $50 million each year to repave streets, with this year's capital budget totalling $314 million.

    And those costs will continue to rise if the focus is on car-centric infrastructure. You don't "get back" the money you put into road maintenance like you do with active transportation and public transportation.

  • Bookmarking "headscale"!

    I only recently started using Tailscale because it makes connecting to my local network through a Windows VM running in Boxes on Linux a hell of a lot easier than figuring out how to set up a networked bridge.

    This sounds like a great alternative, and it looks like it can even work on a Synology NAS.

  • In a quite unexpected turn of events, it is claimed that OpenAI’s ChatGPT “got absolutely wrecked on the beginner level” while playing Atari Chess.

    Who the hell thought this was "unexpected"?

    What's next? ChatGPT vs. Microwave to see which can make instant oatmeal the fastest? 😂

  • Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).

    That's brutal. This time of the year has festivals pretty much every weekend for the next few months, so can these be donated to those events, so that it doesn't go to waste?

  • I'm going to leave this here as my last reply, and I do hope that you take the time to read it: Children’s Independent Mobility: an international comparison and recommendations for action (PDF)

    And I quote the following findings and recommendations from the authors:

    " At age 7, a majority of Finnish children can already travel to places within walking distance or cycle to places alone; by age 8 a majority can cross main roads, travel home from school and go out after dark alone, by age 9 a majority can cycle on main roads alone, and by age 10 a majority can travel on local buses alone"

    "Withholding independent mobility at a young age may expose children to greater risk later in their childhood."

    Note the following responses below, starting at kids age 7. It's not a coincidence that the countries who give their kids more mobile independence, are also the ones who Unicef ranks as having the greatest well-being and achieve higher education levels:

    Then I hope you can take some time to read this post, which was written specifically about this child's death, and how authorities dealt with it.

    And I quote:

    But in fact what the parents did was something normal, rational, and common. “Ten-year-olds and 7-year-olds have been walking to and from school, unaccompanied by adults, for over 100 years,” says Pimentel.

    The implications of this prosecution “are very troubling for parents everywhere who can never provide a guarantee against their kids getting hit by a car, even if they were right there with them,” notes Diane Redleaf, author of They Took the Kids Last Night and Let Grow’s legal consultant.

    I will close by saying that while it may sound "insane" to let kids have responsibility and independence, the reality is, this is normal in most of the world.