TheFriar

Well, the process to make cocaine is…revolting. Gasoline, acid, etc. There’s no therapeutic amount of poison. Now, the coca leaf, on the other hand, sure. I’m surprised I made it out of my cocaine 20-teens. I wish it were 2080 so I could call them my cocaine 80s, but no such luck. I did all that damage to myself for nothin’

Cocaine usually depresses me. Until I do more cocaine.

Where I think kids are being negatively affected is the ubiquity of tech in general. Where, even when I was a kid in the 90s/early 2000s, I was let out of the house and would be gone all day. My parents couldn’t call me, they didn’t really know where I was. I had freedom and privacy.

Two things kids these days are sorely lacking. No privacy, from the time they’re babies. Their phones have daddyspy tech on them, their rooms are being monitored by smart devices, some of them even grow up under security cameras.

I read a study a while back about the effect of knowing there’s a possibility you’re being watched alters behavior on a subconscious level. And definitely on a conscious level. I cannot and do not want to imagine what it must be like to be constantly reachable your entire life, to be trackable, to be constantly monitored. That, I believe, is fucking up kids as they develop. These kids almost don’t understand how little privacy they had.

And even my parents were more overprotective than kids experienced in the 80s, 70s, 60s. But I still got a good hefty dose of privacy in my childhood. These poor kids today have no idea.

I get cocaine off mine

Yup. The amount of times I saw a comment that was downvoted to oblivion for containing a shred of nuance and that required the most minute sliver of time’s worth of critical thinking getting downvoted unjustly boggles the brain. Downvotes are literally contagious for probably 50%-60% of users. When a few downvoted roll in to something slightly nuanced, the already small likelihood that people could engage with the nuance drops to absolute zero and the downvotes just keep piling up. Says quite a lot.

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Or have you guys tried giving the pill alone? My cat has multiple pills every day, I always saw my dad give my dogs pills growing up, you put it on the back of their tongue and they can’t help but swallow it. A little neck massage and some coaxing with gentle head pets and holding their head back has always worked for me. My cat doesn’t even get up when she’s lying down and hears me open the pills. She perks her head up, almost like she looks forward to it. She’s a weirdo.

Jeez. I guess I was misremembering some data. You’re right

Don’t be fooled. TikTok is going strong and will continue to go strong. How long has Twitter or Facebook been “on the decline?” Sure, maybe they’ve both lost a lot of users, but these kind of cultural touchstone apps don’t ever seem to go away. TikTok will be around for a long time to come.

Well another problem is that they raise more money when there is a loathesome Republican in office. So, losing elections is actually very profitable for them.

The system itself is unquestionably broken. But there are more people suffering under harsh Republican rule. Yeah, plenty of people suffer under democratic rule too. Voting democrat won’t fix capitalism, it won’t fix electoralism, it won’t fix anything. But it will keep the incredibly harsh Republican policies that see women lose healthcare, or trans people lose healthcare, or making it legal to run over protestors out of reach—for the time being.

There are objectively worse, more harmful policies for marginalized groups under Republican rule. They shove through hyper conservative judges that strengthen their ability to make these laws. The democrats put judges on benches that will be middle of the road in an attempt to appeal to “fairness,” and yes, that is a problem in and of itself that needs to be addressed. But there is measurable damage done to an already incredibly fucked up system when republicans win.

We need to do more besides voting, no question. But not voting and then not dedicating your life to helping vulnerable people just isn’t nearly acceptable. Anything less than complete devotion to righteous action when railing against voting is completely unconscionable.

This is something I’ve thought a lot about in my life, and I’ve gone back and forth as I’ve gotten older. I believe in anarchism. I consider myself an anarchist. But—and although this is quite unpopular in anarchist circles—i agree with Chomsky. I don’t think voting is a betrayal of anarchism.

The problem with the American left is we don’t do anything. We aren’t a force to be reckoned with in any way. So not voting doesn’t help anyone but the person not voting, because all it does is put you on a higher road than even the democrats. You’re just washing your hands of the blame when all we leftists do is turn around and bitch about voting on the internet.

Praxis. It’s the only way. But in the meantime, there are far right, well, fascists trying to amass more and more power.

I get it. It’s frustrating. But we only have ourselves to blame if not voting is about all we are offering. It’s not helpful. It’s just doing nothing.

That’s like saying “as long as stabbing exists, stab wounds are here to stay.”