• 0 Posts
  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 11th, 2023

help-circle



  • The other answers mostly sum it up - it was initially made illegal primarily as a way to establish an “other” with which to frighten conservatives.

    There’s another thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet though that I’ve long thought is relevant - is part of the reason that marijuana specifically was for so long (and still is in some quarters) so condemned.

    Imagine you’re a corrupt politician, and you want to sell your constituents on the idea of going to war in the Middle East (so you can collect some bribes from defense contractors and oil companies) or instituting mandatory sentencing (so you can collect some bribes from prison contractors) or cutting taxes on the wealthy (so you can collect bribes from rich people and corporations) or any of the other, similar things that corrupt politicians want to do

    Who would you rather try selling that idea to? A bunch of pot smokers or a bunch of drinkers?

    I think part of the issue is that marijuana appeals to a part of the population that really is, to corrupt politicians and their cronies and patrons, “undesirable.” When they want to get the people all fired up in support of their latest bullshit, they want somebody with a beer in their hand, drunkenly shouting, “Yeah! Kick their asses!” Not somebody with a joint in their hand, muzzily saying, “Hold on a minute - you want to do what?”


  • Then every single person who takes any action would make a difference in the world and change the situation, which obviousy isn’t true.

    How did you not get my point?

    We’ll try it this way:

    Thirty people live in a town.

    Ten of them, with a leader, want some policy implemented

    Twenty of them oppose the policy.

    The ten with a leader organize and push for the policy

    The twenty who oppose it stand around with their thumbs up their asses, each of them telling themselves that they can’t accomplish anything by themselves.

    The policy gets implemented

    Or

    The ten with a leader organize and push for a policy.

    The twenty who oppose it each, individually, pull their thumbs out of their asses and stand up and say they oppose it.

    Each of those individuals, making their individual choices, finds themselves surrounded by nineteen other individuals who made the same individual choice.

    They easily outnumber the ten who want the policy and the policy fails.

    That’s exactly how and why individuals going ahead and making their individual choices instead of failing to do it because “I can’t make a difference by myself” can make a difference.

    All they have to do is stop waiting around for somebody to lead them, pull their thumbs out of their asses, and just go ahead and do it on their own, each one as an individual.



  • No - it’s not ethical.

    Very little evil is actually a direct result of evil people doing evil things. The vast majority of it comes to be through ordinary people doing banal things - things that, like building weapons, are questionable at best, but that they excuse because it’s “out of my control.”

    The thing is that it’s not out of their control. Yes - if one individual makes the decision to not take part, that’s not going to have much of an effect, but if every person who feels the same way makes that same choice, that absolutely WILL have an effect.

    And there’s only one way to make it so that every person who feels the same way makes that choice, and that’s for each one of them, individually, to look past that “it’s out of my control” bullshit excuse and go ahead and do it.

    Everything on any significant scale is out of individual control. Individuals just possess a very limited amount of control over affairs on a national, much less global, scale. But that’s really entirely beside the point. The point is how you choose to exercise the small amount of control you have. Will you use it for good, or for evil?







  • I hadn’t thought about it before, but on reflection, I do too. And I wouldn’t be surprised if most people do.

    Exaggerated a bit for effect, it would be more or less:

    There = thehr

    Their = thayr

    They’re = thay-r

    “There” is just simple and straightforward with a pure short ‘e’ sound and no particular stresses.

    “Their” has more of a long ‘a’ than a short ‘e’ sound, and a bit of stress on the vowel sound.

    “They’re” also has more of a long ‘a’ sound and it’s pronounced just a fraction longer than in “their”, and there’s a very slight pause between the vowel sound and the ‘r’.

    Huh… learn something new every day.





  • Like I said, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that they repeat the word “community” at least 30 times on that page.

    Oh, and this bit too, that I just noticed when I was counting "commumity"s:

    Communities are the lifeblood of the Internet. But on today’s Internet, they are not in charge of their own destiny. Instead, they are controlled by the large platforms that hold all the power online. It is time for a change.

    Community Points are the first step towards a different future for online communities.

    That’s definitely just a coincidence and has nothing at all to do with trying to compete against the fediverse, which they definitely don’t even pay any attention to.

    Yup.



  • It reminds me of watching a particularly nasty break-up play out, with emotions running high and lots of bile being spewed.

    I dunno - I never especially liked Reddit in the first place, so it’s just a thing I see others do. I moved there sort of grudgingly about ten years ago because there just weren’t any other visble alternatives, and I’ve been more or less actively looking for a replacemnet all along, so when the threadiverse took off, I was ready.

    But I suspect that for a lot of people, it’s essentially that they invested a lot into the relationship, and then suddenly their partner betrayed them, and now they’re pissed.