Interesting Links for 10-07-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Meta-analytic relations between personality and cognitive ability

(tags:personality intelligence psychology )

2. Web3 is Going Just Great (in case you were wondering what was going on with it)

(tags:blockchain Doom fraud )

3. Westminster MPs know legalising drugs would save lives, but they're playing politics instead

(tags:drugs legalisation politics UK OhForFucksSake )

4. The Complete, Surprising 8 Year History Of The LEGO Poop Piece

(tags:Lego faeces )

5. '28 Days Later': The Oral History of Danny Boyle's Genre-Redefining Zombie Masterpiece

(tags:zombies movies history )

6. Tyres produce lots of pollution

(tags:cars pollution transport )

Comments

3 Drugs

[danieldwilliam]

As a young apparatchik I was sent off to do some research on drugs policy in the early 1990's. I reported back that we ought to legalise drugs. To which the response was "Yes, we ought, but the headlines in the Sun would be brutal, so we can't."

Re: 3 Drugs

[andrewducker]

That is, as far as I can tell, still very-much the case. And likely to remain the case until either the media, the voting system, or both are reformed.

Re: 3 Drugs

[dewline]

Seems like Canada is slowly moving along that path, regardless. Most of our right-wing media seems to have gotten the relevant message. *shrugs*

Not for me, unless my doctor strongly advises it.

Re: 3 Drugs

[channelpenguin]

Legalise and TAX. What's not to like about profit? Or spending that tax on care.

But eugenics by the back door wins. If you don't want druggie peasants. Or you want them to feel the full suffering of their poverty-stricken lives with no relief...

Re: 3 Drugs

[danieldwilliam]

I'm all in favour of the taxation bit. It's a big shift in the public finances. Increase in tax revenue in, decrease in police and justice expenditure out and probably a decrease in health care expenditure as it's becomes easier to manage and treat more or less functional addiction rather than the treating the acute costs of long-term desperate addiction.

I've never seen the current approach as a closet eugenic approach. I'm more inclined to the view that people rightly view widespread addiction as a bad thing for society and through a combination of what David Allen Green calls Magical Legal Thinking and a mistaken belief that if criminalising things often stops people doing things more criminalising things will always make them stop - which doesn't deal well with a combination of addiction and a business model that encourages irresponsible sales of addictive drugs.

But, arguing against myself, there is probably a strong element of US drug policy being designed in part as a way to target young black men for harassment and brutalisation whilst keeping J Edgar Hoover in a powerful job after Prohibition and then the US having the clout to insist everyone else followed their policy.

Re: 3 Drugs

[andrewducker]

Totally agree with paragraph one.

And I think that the "Help people away from addictive substances, but don't punish them for it" approach seems to work pretty well.

I totally agree that illegality makes it easier to punish people that people in power don't like, and that makes me very nervous about it.

Re: 3 Drugs

[ckd]

Sadly true. I wish more areas had the Merseyside approach to the Sun.

Re: 3 Drugs

[danieldwilliam]

Scousers Never Buy the Sun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uWw7kuiCss

Unto dust ye shall return

[hairyears]

(6) Comes as no surprise to anyone who has worked alongside a live motorway in summer.

The roadside dust is horrible and there's a lot of it.

Tyres produce lots of pollution

[anef]

Rubber from dandelions - who knew?