IDK, ketamine is kinda similar to alcohol; more psychedelic. As someone who has always struggled with depression and has done ketamine, it does seem like it would be a good fast-acting, but short half-life anti-depressant (the afterglow lasts well after the buzz). Never knew anyone who abused it habitually, long term. Heard it messes up your bladder.

Ever since I switched to GrapheneOS, Vanadium has been working well. Never had a problem with Firefox + ublock, or Librewolf (except with a corporate intranet webapp that specifically required users to use Chrome).

Yeah, idk what the other guy was talking about. But, I’ve ridden with someone that apparently got dependent on that automatic braking feature. He “used” something like 5 times during a 1.5 hour trip.

Oligarchs replace most government functions with private entities that they have equity in and funnel tax dollars into their own companies. It looks like they’re trying to cause a depression too, so they can buy everything up for cheap (farms, homes, etc). I think they’re stupid, but not stupid enough to not realize an economic depression coupled with gutting social safety nets will lead to massive crime waves and riots; so I’m guessing they’re planning on a police state and work camps for people they arrest (think that’s what they’re going to do with many of the immigrants too).

I’ve heard it postulated they are realigning with Russia and other dictators because we’d lose our normal allies if we became such a society. And they probably have very lucrative deals with Russia as well.

I sucks we don’t have a good, inspiring opposition party or something to lead or rally around. Without that, anger will just manifest as unorganized, unproductive riots and violence. “Conservatives” are still pretty brainwashed too; believing whatever they’re told by media. They will support the government gunning down and enslaving “criminals,” at this point in time. I’d hope that changes when things get hard, but media will work hard to redirect the blame.

Hmm, I guess theoretically. I bet towns or businesses close to eachother over a state border do something to equalize prices. Or I guess the businesses in the lower taxed state would just raise their prices because they can and still get business.

Yeah, that was definitely the rationale. Satoshi added the message, “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks,” to the first Bitcoin block. In the early days, most of the community were Tea Party, Ron Paul, Paul Ryan, “abolish the Fed” types. There was a lot of anti-Fed propaganda floating around at that time. There was a big overlap with gold-bugs and Bitcoiners, and Bitcoin’s “mining” decay curve was inspired by gold’s.

You still pay taxes in those states, just not income. Most people will pay more taxes in those states compared to places like California (not the rich, of course). Texas chose a system of sales taxes (state and local), which act like flat-taxes, which put more burden on lower income people.

General strike with clear, specific demands would work. Easier said than done, especially since most workers in the US aren’t already organized; but it would probably work. It would probably even work if all current major unions striked (a lot of union members are “conservative” though, so if it was seen as political rather than practical, it could break solidarity).

For me. I think everything is physical, and there’s always a cause and effect. There is no magical non-physical consciousness. A combination of your genetics, experiences, and environment determine the “choices” you make/actions you take. Free will is an illusion, IMO.

Communism is a stateless, classless society, and more like a utopian end-goal to strive for. But, yeah, parties that label themselves communist tend to be of the authoritarian type. Failure of certain strategies and implementations doesn’t mean an entire ideology is bad. Democracy failed with Rome, and wasn’t implemented on a large scale again for ~1800 years; and I think most people consider democracy a pretty good system now.

Lol. This comment sent me down a rabbit hole. I still don’t know if it’s logically correct from a non-physicalist POV, but I did come to the conclusion that I lean toward eliminative materialism and illusionism. Now I don’t have to think about consciousness anymore because it’s just a trick our brains play on us (consciousness always seemed poorly defined to me anyways).

I guess when AI appears to be sufficiently human or animal-like in its cognitive abilities and emotions, I’ll start worrying about its suffering.

Also if they can’t afford that, surely they have state medical insurance

Ha! No, depending on the state, there are tons of barriers, means-testing, work requirements, mandated classes they might not be able to attend (due to childcare/lack of transportation), etc.

Even after the ACA, ER visits are still all the healthcare many people get.

I was wondering this is well. Took me a while to find this discussion: https://woem.men/notes/9ozhpn3l2n5v0b6c

He claims he only created an account to “investigate” if they were talking about him.

Another worrying thing I accidentally stumbled on a while back was he was in the streamer “Destiny” chat. Hmm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgF92Wi8J7o (said he used to listen to Jordan Peterson in 2015 too).

Yeah, IDK what to think about him now. I still like his consumer advocacy though, I guess.