1,944 karma · joined August 12, 2019
But I haven't been able to find quaaludes anywhere, so maybe I am missing something ;)
Apple, the NBA, Google, and Blizzard are all trying to make money. Somehow shilling for Pepsi is widely accepted, but shilling for China is too far?
But they're also the most addictive substances we've got. After a week or so, you now have an addiction that needs tapering to not be dangerous. If you lose access to the drugs, you might die from withdrawal.
The withdrawal can make you feel literally insane. I don't know how to explain it other than it's extremely unpleasant and everything feels moody and irrational, and sometimes you don't even realize the extent to which you're being irrational until you take more drugs and feel "normal" again.
The potential for addiction is also high because these drugs feel the best out of all drugs. You're going to want to use it again. Imagine if alcohol never made you sick or dizzy, and you could have as much of it as you wanted, and you'd just keep feeling more relaxed until you pass out. Then you wake up feeling relaxed and don't have a hangover. That's what benzos feel like.
Also many doctors don't realize just how possible it is to have a seizure during withdrawal, and some doctors will refuse patients asking for benzos because they see them as drug-seekers.
Any time I see one of these threads about benzos, I try to share my experience, because they're just so misunderstood by the general public. And it's probably not great that there's so much talk about xanax in hiphop right now.
From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Shokin:
> Shokin claimed in May 2019 that he had been investigating Burisma Holdings.[28][29][30][31] However, Vitaliy Kasko, who had been Shokin's deputy overseeing international cooperation before resigning in February 2016 citing corruption in the office, provided documents to Bloomberg News indicating that under Shokin, the investigation into Burisma had been dormant.[32] Also, the investigation into Burisma only pertained to events happening before Hunter Biden joined the company.[33]
I believe that's true, and the cited sources seem to check out, and predate this whole scandal. It's worth noting that a lot of these Ukrainian politicians are pretty sketchy and they have a big problem with corruption, so there are other geopolitical interests at play with these Ukrainian political figures.
To be sure I'm not being duped by Wikipedia, I find Google News searches for articles about the key players in any controversy that were published before the MSM started caring give a way clearer picture of what's going on. It can help you figure out who's spinning what.
It's helpful to know that Shokin was widely condemned for being a corrupt prosecutor that, ironically, wasn't pursuing corruption cases against political allies. From March 2016: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/eu-hails-sackin... It's pretty clear that Shokin was a known corrupt actor, for real reasons, prompting domestic and European outrage in ways that Biden would have had great difficulty manufacturing.
In May 2019, there was also a controversy in Ukraine that Lutsenko (the new prosecutor) was acting improperly by manufacturing allegations against Biden: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-13/ukraine-p...
By July, Trump's pressure was working: https://www.unian.info/world/10630023-lutsenko-shokin-help-t...
I don't read Ukrainian, so some of the local reporting isn't clear to me, but the English reporting from Ukraine seems like they're telling the whole story as they know it.
Also, from US reporting: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/10/02/donald-trum...
> Joe Biden said he has never spoken to his son about the directorship. Hunter Biden told the New Yorker that his father simply said, "I hope you know what you are doing."
Joe knows his kid is a fuckup that's trying to cash in on the family name. I don't think he would stake his reputation on doing something corrupt for his kid and then brag about it. It's far more likely that was Joe is just bragging about his own amazing diplomacy skills. In reality, he was just doing what the administration told him to do, after the groundwork to remove Shokin had been being laid by EU and Ukranian interests way in advance.
It's pretty clear that Hunter Biden was never being investigated, but the likely-corrupt gas company did have a prior history of being investigated for corruption issues. It's also clear that Hunter Biden has skated by his whole life on being Joe Biden's kid, and his moral compass may be lacking. There is no evidence that Joe was actually involved in anything corrupt.
Additionally, there's a raging debate on the left about how what Hunter Biden did is completely unacceptable, but not illegal: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/hunter-bid...
The unfortunate truth is that Hunter's actions probably were legal, and that's a real problem, but you can't condemn Joe for his kid trying to cash in on the family name.
So yes, the video of Joe Biden isn't great, but it's because he was bragging about how great he is at negotiating in a Q&A section. And really, he was taking credit for other people's work to remove Shokin, even if he actually was the final tipping point in making Ukraine take action. Not one of his finer moments, but it's not the admission of corruption you think it is.
Here's the full video at the time you're referencing. If you watch more of it, he's actually pretty informed about this whole Ukraine/Russia business: https://youtu.be/Q0_AqpdwqK4?t=3100
The bit you're referring to is at the tail-end of the Q&A and he's obviously loosened up a bit before he starts telling his likely-exaggerated war story about getting Shokin fired.
It's easy to imagine an alternate reality where UBI is a thing and working is optional.
I think there's a legitimate case to be made that freeing people from labor should be societal goal.
I know that stuff happens everywhere, but it's so far out in the open in SF, you can't avoid it.
Part of it also has to do with the topology of the city. Homeless people don't want to live on hills, but rich people do, so that creates pools of homeless camps in flat areas.
I'm not sure why I'm being so heavily downvoted, the only difference between the dystopian future that I describe and the system we have currently, is that the government isn't collecting and processing data on such a wide scale. If they collect more data, we will have more crimes solved and more privacy forfeited. If you take that to its logical extreme, we have full surveillance, no privacy, and no crime. I'd rather live in a world where we have some crime, but privacy and no surveillance, but I think it's far more likely we'll head in the opposite direction.
And you could set up society so that you'd be useless without carrying your phone, as we're most of the way there already. Not streaming your complete data to the government would become a crime.
All public places could be recorded in a similar way.
If you combined it with satellite tracking of the whole planet, you could even identify people that have chosen to go off the grid for some period of time, so you could solve crimes that happened in the forest if you want.
That's pretty close to perfect surveillance.
I can't think of a crime that couldn't be solved this way, but it's not a society where I'd want to live.
It's definitely possible to eliminate all crime with total surveillance with a high degree of accuracy.
We probably shouldn't, especially not without being able to quickly update our laws, but it could be done. Imagine if anyone going over the speed limit was instantly charged a fine. We can do that today with complete accuracy, but we choose not to do enforcement that way.
I'd definitely watch the movie if someone made a dark film about Scrooge McDuck's younger years as a crime boss...
I don't understand why this is such a big deal for them. They could even charge more for it, or make it so tech support is excluded from those phones, or whatever they need to do make money.
They'd bring all the hackers back to their platform. Do you realize how much effort is spent on Android mods? Can you imagine if those people were busy making iPhones do more thing? Because that's what'd happen if they'd sell me a rooted phone.
It's also worth noting that DXM is being studied in research as an antidepressant. I'm aware of at least one company working on it in combination with wellbutrin: https://axsome.com/axs-pipeline/about-axs-05/
DXM has a pronounced antidepressant effect that lasts for days after a recreational dose. Users refer to it as an afterglow instead of a hangover. This effect is fairly well known but not currently commercialized. It's also a similar drug to ketamine, which is also being used as an antidepressant in medical settings now.
From my own anecdotal experience, I'd probably have killed myself in my early 20s without DXM to give some relief. Sometimes I'll still grab a bottle of it if I'm in a particularly dark place. It's sometimes a pleasant experience, sometimes an unpleasant one, but it always lifts depression for a few days.
From what I've been able to understand over the years from the literature, nobody's died on DXM alone without taking extreme doses (anything over 500mg is crazy IMO). Some people have died from taking products that contained other active ingredients. CCCs were common before people realized the antihistamine overdose is harmful. Tylenol is common in those products too and could be used by someone uninformed, though that's also true for most painkillers. Even in extreme cases of daily high dosages (which doesn't make sense because of tolerance, but people are crazy), organs don't seem to be harmed.
Obviously chugging cough syrup has a questionable reputation at best, but we'll be seeing more people become aware of it in the next few years as drugs get mixed with DXM and patented as anti-depressants.
There's also at least one company on Amazon selling 500mg+ bottles that look like they're "4 hour energy"-sized, with DXM as the only active ingredient, complete with headshop-aesthetic packaging: https://www.amazon.com/Cough-Suppressant-RoboCough-2-Pack/dp... Questionable for sure, but definitely less sketchy than the extractions and powders of years ago. I feel like I've seen less about DXM as cannabis has become more legal and as more odd chemicals, both legal and illegal, have become easier to order online.
edit: just to be clear, I haven't tried that product on amazon, I was just amazed to see that it exists and has such positive reviews.
If you google for "masculinity", "toxic masculinity" is the first thing that comes up. I'd never heard of "victorian masculinity" before, but that and "harmful masculinity" were the only other types I could easily find. Google also helpfully suggested "The culture of masculinity and its negative impacts on men" as a recent PBS Newshour segment that might interest me.
If you put the words next to each other for long enough, and you never see anything about "positive masculinity" or "altruistic masculinity" (which I just made up because I couldn't find any real examples), then you're going to create a culture that associates masculinity with toxicity. From my point of view, that's been happening for a few years.
The idea that brought masculinity into mainstream discussion was "there exists a type of masculinity that is toxic", but the way the public seems to have internalized it is "masculinity is toxic".
First, you are correct that MKP is not a cult and everything you're saying here checks out with the research I just did into MKP.
What I meant was that it is cult-like in appearance. It's an engineered experience for human bonding and introspection. The members are doing stuff that's out of the ordinary and trying to connect to some deeper spiritual thing. Sometimes people get naked. There's a big wooden phallus used as a talking stick. There's a bunch of oversharing. It's not a cult, but it's not exactly Rotary Club either.
As far as roping you in, of course it's designed for that. The group couldn't grow without getting you to come back. There's a good chance you're going to form bonds with the other people in the group if you do a bunch of emotional stuff with them on a retreat. That's a social situation that I'd much prefer to avoid.
I looked at your HN profile and I see that you're a life coach for freelancers, so you might be less sensitive to what's triggering me about MKP. Don't take this the wrong way, but your site gives me a similar feeling as the MKP stuff. I'm pretty sure I'm your target too, as a developer considering switching to freelance work. I wish I could give you something more useful than "feels scammy, stay away", but that's how it comes across to me. And you're blogging about "mastermind groups", which also give me the same feel. It's possible that I'm just hyper-sensitive, but I think you'll have an easier time getting through to developers if you aren't tripping the alarm that tells me "this is a cult" or "here comes a pitch for an ebook".
As a side note, I wonder if you get many calls from putting your number in your HN profile. That was definitely noticeable and didn't trigger my overactive skepticism at all (even though it's obvious self promotion, it feels authentic).
People have been making this sort of stuff since way before LSD was invented, but I can't help notice how incredibly similar the patterns are to psychedelic hallucinations. To see them described as "sacred geometries" makes a lot of sense for reasons I can't quite explain.
Calling it "New Warrior Training Adventure" comes across as super patronizing. "ManKind" isn't great either. The names alone are surely responsible for much of the pushback that you're seeing.
I did a bit of digging though, trying to keep an open mind, and I was surprised to find that MKP is indeed not a radical program to feminize men.
Their FAQ is pretty informative: https://mankindproject.org/frequently-asked-questions
Their YouTube channel gives a feel for it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcR01KkQCYfHbzHwBlI8eeg
Basically, it's a small nondenominational religion for woke men. The leaders are a Marine Corps officer, a therapist, and a PhD of "curriculum studies". It's not very surprising to see all the comments here about how profound it was, because it was designed to be a spiritual experience.
It looks like a cult and is certainly weird (nudity is optional), but the leaders aren't getting rich off of it, and you are allowed to leave. There are regular meetings, rituals, a set of shared values, and a drive to recruit more members. It seems like mostly dudes who want to better themselves and the world at large. A lot of it is classic self-help stuff. They advertise NWTA as "Get Ready for a 48 Hour Adventure that Can Transform Your World as a Man", for example.
I think people are right to be skeptical of these types of groups, as they're playing to an audience of disaffected men and trying to improve lives with groupthink and rituals. I'd place MKP somewhere between Scientology and Tony Robbins. Probably a powerful experience in person, but best to avoid it or you might get roped into an organization.