Instigate

While I loved PropertyCity while I lived there, my early years in RuralTown showed that’s where the real Country really is. We had a herd of FarmAnimals and would always go down to the WaterBody on the weekends where the LargeMammals roamed free and wild!

It’s often advantageous to prevent catastrophe before it occurs rather than clean up the mess once it happens.

That’s a fair call. I just think all reasonable measures should be taken to limit the attractiveness of vapes to children, and that’s just one piece of the puzzle. It’s not a necessary piece, but I think it would have helped as part of a suite of measures to regulation. I think you’re right in that online glorification definitely had a role to play here as well.

If the government, 5-10 years ago when it would have been apropos to do so, looked into vaping and drew up specific regulations to have legal vaping, we wouldn’t have the issue we have today. Instead, because of almost a decade of inaction, we now have a new generation of nicotine addicts that they’re hurriedly trying to stop.

We needed regulated, plain-packaged and limited-flavour vapes available to legally buy at a reasonable price to quash out both smoking and prevent kids from getting addicted, but that horse has already bolted.

The cynic in me says they intentionally didn’t regulate vapes because the science wasn’t ready yet, and they didn’t want to accept any blame for legalising something that could end up to be pretty harmful in the long term. So, because they didn’t want to accept that risk then we now have a whole generation of vapers whose health issues we’ll be dealing with for 80+ years to come.

Spoken as an ex-smoker, current vaper as a smoking cessation method.

From the article:

Her ex-husband – and Tyler’s father – Jayson Boebert was famously arrested in 2004 for exposing his genitals in a bowling alley where minors were present. Rep. Boebert, who was 17 and not married to him at the time, was one of the witnesses in that case. He got four days in jail and two years probation for lewd exposure and public indecency.

Holy fucking shit mate, I’m a social worker who works with people experiencing violence and fuck you highlighted the issue far better than I ever could. Thank you for giving me the tools to better explain myself when I need to.

I never understood why Americans call a ‘#’ a ‘pound sign’ but then if you put words in front of it, it suddenly becomes a ‘hashtag’. Shouldn’t it be a ‘poundtag’? I mean the rest of the Anglosphere refers to a ‘#’ as a ‘hash’ so it makes sense to us, but why do Americans call it a hashtag? Seems weird to me.

This is absolutely what a ‘Smurf’ account is - someone who is very experienced or has a significant backing behind them accrued from other account(s) creating a newer account to pose as an inexperienced player in order to be matched with them. In World of Warcraft, a ‘Smurf’ is a character that you intentionally don’t let past a certain level and throw a tonne of gold and gear at so that when they come up against regular players that level they have an insane advantage.

Well, yes and no. Paying that fine once would just be a cost of doing business, but now that the precedent has been set if they continue to do it they’ll continue to get fined in that order. Those fines won’t need court cases, so they’ll need to be paid quickly and in full. Sure, the fine they received didn’t really hurt them but it will change their behaviour. It will also prevent others from engaging in the same behaviour.

I don’t think the EU wants to bankrupt companies like Apple - it’s not in the collective best interest. They need to guide behaviour by setting up punishments that are deterring but not destructive. I think €500m fits that pretty well - it’s akin to giving a child a timeout while their friends play or a smack on the back of the hand. It’s doing what it’s intended to do.

Then put the games onto high-storage solid-state cartridges like Nintendo does. There’s no reason to be limited by existing technology like Blu-Ray except for laziness. Hell, they could even just put an SD card reader in as the physical game tray and put games onto SD cards if they’re that lazy and don’t want to spend on R&D.

Removing the capacity to have physical copies of games at all is always a bad move that is disingenuously masked with a “but the world is going all digital!” all the while knowing that this gives them greater control over things we’re supposed to own.

Ahh okay, so it’s not confirmatory for the diagnosis but rather assessing the impact of living with Coeliac? That makes sense. I’m having a full endoscopy/colonoscopy later this year for a similar purpose. Fingers crossed everything comes up clear for you mate!

Out of curiosity, why are they doing a colonoscopy rather than a gastroscopy for Coeliac confirmation? The disease affects only the small intestine, and so an upper small intestinal biopsy is sufficient and doesn’t require uncomfortable fasting/dietary practice before the procedure, and is a cheaper, quicker and safer procedure.

My confirmation was blood test and then gastroscopy - after the biopsy it was confirmed.

If it’s public domain, then by definition anyone can upload it, for any purpose, and monetise it however they see fit. YouTube could ban anyone else from uploading Steamboat Willie and only have their own version to watch, or they could let literally millions of people upload versions. They can basically do whatever they want with it now.

I think it’s even better to compare the US with other federated nations - Canada, Australia, Russia, Brazil, India, Argentina etc. as they’re all constitutional nations of federated states with separations of power between the federation and the individual states.

I’d argue that a group of new-tech employees is a specifically atypical example of the general population. They’re very likely tertiary qualified (minority), they’d all be earning more than six figures (minority), they’re likely on the lower end of the age bracket, and I doubt they’re representative with regards to gender and cultural background as that’s a known issue in tech. I’m not sure that cohort is in any way representative of the general population.

I’m not trying to take a stand here; I have no dog in this fight. I’m just trying to elucidate why making such an assumption might not be wise. As I’ve said before; it may be true, but I (and you) have no idea if that’s actually the case, so assuming it serves no real value.

It’s an interesting question! My understanding is that it may affect opiates like heroin, but not opioids (fentanyl, oxycodone, novacaine etc) as opiates are naturally derived whereas opioids are synthetic.

This opinion piece from Chatham House says before 2023, Afghanistan was responsible for over 80% of global opium supply, so I’d say the impact on the heroin market will be significant to say the least.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/the-world-today/2023-08/why-talibans-opium-ban-will-probably-fail

In my armchair opinion, I think we’re likely to see opioids like fentanyl fill that gap. That scares me a lot given the relative strengths at identical concentrations of heroin and fentanyl vary so wildly.

That info is outdated; the Taliban have heavily cracked down on opium cultivation to the extent that their total crop yield saw a “95% decline from 6,200 tons produced in 2022 to 333 tons in 2023”.

https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/Afghanistan_opium_survey_2023.pdf

Sure, but the answer to a lack of an informed public is not reverting away from democracy; it’s trying to inform the voters. Very many people vote against their best interests on a regular basis in a political sphere, and we shouldn’t revoke their right to vote as a result. Democracy, as a principle, should still prevail.

I don’t think it’s fair to infantilise people you’ve never met in the way that you are. What evidence do you have that the people who signed on to this letter didn’t read it? What evidence do you have that they’re either naïve or easily manipulated? I think they’re unfair assumptions. They may be true, but I have no idea if that’s the case.

I mean, isn’t this just an attempt to instil democracy in their workplace? If the vast majority of employees want something, whether or not it is objectively in their best interest, shouldn’t leadership listen to them? Isn’t this just what unions do on the regular?

I have no dog in this fight, I don’t know who’s a good person and who’s bad, but I believe in democracy even when it doesn’t produce the best result. I wish all companies acted upon the wishes of their employees rather than their shareholders, customers or consumers; that would make for far more cohesive and productive workplaces.

I think a better solution is one year of global revenue (not profit) as it’s really hard to determine damages in cases like this. That way, it’s legitimately a death sentence regardless of the size or scale of the company. If you set the fines at an amount not linked to profit or revenue, all you’re doing is making it extremely hard for the little guy but less hard for the big corporations - the ones you really want to go after.