I partially agree with this, so wanted to share. The ethical issues I think do depend in particular what drugs you buy, and how they get to you. Somewhat contrary to expectations, drugs extracted from natural products tend to be more harmful, since the crop needs to be grown in a territory controlled by a drug cartel and then shipped across international borders (cocaine and heroin being the prime examples here). Synthetic drugs or compounds diverted from the mainstream chemical industry are relatively blameless, though again, depending how nasty your local distributors are.
LSD, for instance, is a semi-synthetic, and I believe most manufacturers grow the required fungus themselves. MDMA *used* to be based on wild safrole, with the concomitant environmental damage, but the relevant precursor is now obtained from the mainstream chemical industry. Meth also, is mainly manufactured from over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, though the people producing it often put *themselves* at considerable risk.
Also, if you're (quite legitimately) worried about violence in the local supply chains for your substance of choice, consider ordering on the dark web. You will often be buying from relatively high up the supply chain, or even from producers themselves. This also has the handy side-effect of meaning you tend to get cheaper and higher-quality stuff.
>>><<<
"During the 12 months before the study, a total of 1,539 complaints were lodged against police in the areas examined, amounting to 1.2 complaints per officer. By the end, the number of complaints had fallen to 133 for the year across all sites – 0.08 per officer." Guardian
>>><<<
I would say speculative investment in London property (by both foreigners and UK citizens) is an effect rather than a cause of a dysfunctional housing market. People know that population will keep increasing, that the supply of new homes will not be increased an adequate pace, and so they buy in the expectation that prices will go up.
Wouldn't it be radical if a UK government actually declared that the price of homes was too high and they were going to enact policies to *reduce* prices? But, of course, they don't, because there's now a massive vested interest of people who want to see the value of their 'investments' only ever go upwards.
Much easier just to blame foreigners and do nothing.
>>><<<
The under-acknowledged role of diplomats from developing countries in putting human rights on the international agenda
>>><<<
Robert Smalls was born into slavery and escaped (along with his family and many other slaves) by *stealing a Confederate warship*. He later served as a state legislator in Reconstruction-era North Carolina - authoring the first legislation in the US providing for universal public schooling - and a member of the federal Congress.
Yet, this year, the life story of yet another *white* hero of the US Civil War is being given then Hollywood treatment. Not to say Newton Knight wasn't a good guy, or worthy of being celebrated, but come on!
>>><<<
Holy shit, this is horrible. It is so deeply unfair and horrifying that women are primarily expected to take responsibility for contraception in the first place, and then they can suffer these sorts of consequences for *decades* without it ever being systematically studied.
"Researchers found that women taking the combined oral contraceptive were 23% more likely to be diagnosed with depression and those using progestin-only pills (also known as “the mini-pill”) were 34% more likely. Teens were at the greatest risk of depression, with an 80% increase when taking the combined pill, and that risk is two-fold with the progestin-only pill. In addition, other hormone-based methods commonly offered to women seeking an alternative to the pill – such as the hormonal IUS/coil, the patch and the ring – were shown to increase depression at a rate much higher than either kind of oral contraceptives."
>>><<<
Everything we think we know is a lie
>>><<<
Nice to see a piece on the fees protests in SA that has a bit of nuance.
"Vice chancellors need to say one thing and one thing only: “We support the call for free education and we are saying to students we will march with you”. That is the only thing they need to say. But they are not doing that. They are thinking this will just end by some miracle – that this will just go away. In fact they are protecting the state."
>>><<<
"“cycling segregation” is a product of city planners prioritising the demands of real estate developers... Rather than build bike lanes to connect marginalised communities with public transport, cycle paths are often used to encourage investment in gentrifying neighbourhoods." Guardian
>>><<<
This is horrible, but I think it's worth noting that she starts from an accurate premise - educated elites are indeed more likely to think of themselves as "citizens of the world" than less privileged people. If you're one of the less privileged people, I can see why that hurts. But what she does with that observation is a typical move in the politics of resentment, i.e. assuming that anything enjoyed by privileged people must be *bad* in virtue of that.
The revolutionary thing about the EU is that it allows a far greater number of ordinary Europeans to be citizens of the world in the concrete sense of being able to travel and work in a country other than that where you were born - a privilege that has hitherto *only* been accorded to elites. Privileges aren't best tackled by removing them, but by extending them to everyone.
>>><<<
One of my favourite quotes, applicable to many situations...
"[Wittgenstein] once greeted me with the question: ‘Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis? I replied: ‘I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.’ ‘Well,’ he asked, ‘what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?’"
>>><<<
"The space agency also distanced itself from astrology. “Astronomers and other scientists know that stars many light years away have no effect on the ordinary activities of humans on Earth,” Nasa said.
Russo still saw dark forces at the space agency. “Don’t be fooled to think that astrology isn’t real or valuable,” he wrote on Facebook. “The 1% have been using it in secret for centuries. There’s evidence of this everywhere. We have entered the Age of Aquarius. It’s time for all of mankind to become wise to the stars.”"
>>><<<
"In some cases British officials claim to have “misplaced” requests from the French to help children"
>>><<<
Amazing pictures of industrial-scale food processing
"Taylor Farms doesn’t grow vegetables — it processes them, taking produce from some 200 farms and and preparing products consumed by one in three Americans. This entire facility follows the lettuce-growing season, moving 1,400 tons of machinery from Salinas, Calif., to Yuma, Ariz., in November, then back again in April. Each move only interrupts processing — like the washing lines seen here — for 56 hours."
>>><<<
"British Columbia has already demonstrated that a [carbon] tax can help reduce emissions without damaging individuals or productivity. Though the tax led to an increase in energy prices, officials offset the harm by using the revenue to give tax credits to low-income and rural residents and by cutting other taxes." NY Times
>>><<<
No comments:
Post a Comment