327 karma · joined June 9, 2013
However, I have found a significant source of endorphins through community activities. I've been part of committees, co-chair of a technical special interest group, and have been invited to speak at major events. Perhaps amplified as someone who used to harbour a lot of social anxiety, I get a very nice rush of endorphins from these extracurricular activities. I definitely encourage other managers to volunteer for groups and events related to their specialty.
With shark finning, the product (fin) is worth less than the shark even by the most conservative estimate.
Are you speaking on the US or worldwide? A quick search doesn't produce any reliable statistics that indicate this. I have never once heard of anyone purchasing alcohol on the black market. Cigarettes, sure, but even then it's typically only very low-income folks purchasing cheap, illegal tobacco that is generally not of great quality. This is in stark contrast to marijuana where high-grade product can be purchased on the "street".
I suspect that once(if) pot goes legal the black-market will consist mostly of cheap, poor quality marijuana. This should take a nice chunk out of the profits that gangs see from marijuana distribution.
>It's also unbelievably damaging to environment
Citation needed. Are we talking about the fuel costs from picking up and delivering a package?
>customers like this aren't worth anything to us
It sounds like you have an attitude around retail that isn't very future-proof. I feel that, if your attitude persists, soon you will find that the customers do not think your business is worth anything to them.
>Immigrants don't commit crimes. Poor people commit crimes. I would rephrase this as "high crime rates are associated with low-income demographics, which those immigrating to Europe as part of the refugee crisis fall into". Also, one could safely argue that the poorer the community, the higher the crime.
"Low-income" neighbourhoods in Sweden have changed, they've become much poorer as a result of the refugee crisis, therefore crime has risen in areas that used to be "safe". Therefore those who used to live in those areas have experienced a major change in their surroundings and find themselves in less safe environments. Again, the world's poor are the ones bearing the weight of this change.
Full disclosure: My source is anecdotal, from friends that have families in the poorer neighbourhoods in Malmo who are struggling to relocate to safer areas.
I don't believe mecca is an ambiguously charged word, nor do I see any evidence to support this claim. It's probably the most commonly used metaphor for a gathering place of like-minded individuals, and was the perfect choice in this context.
Out of all of the places that people make pilgrimages to, Mecca is the most well known, and therefore commonly used to refer to a place that's popular for likeminded followers to visit. E.g:It's very common in Canada for marijuana enthusiasts to refer to Vancouver as the Mecca of pot in Canada. There's no negativity in that phrase at all.
apparently not... http://imgur.com/a/C5vTx
Those are the top 2 issues by far, with legacy web app issues as a semi-distant third. This is our fault for using legacy php 3/4 apps that still work, but firefox doesn't produce any issues and is reliable for this purpose.
Reading the comments my suspicion is that what shortcomings it does have affects the hacker news crowd a disproportionate amount more than usual, or affects the academic crowd disproportionately less
Not the Tragically Hip. But they always seemed happy with that.
Anecdotal evidence: John Smith, from a lower-income family, grows up a small rural community, 30 minutes outside a mill town with a population of 13k. He's around 13 years old, a computer nerd in the 90s and doesn't really fit in with the rest of the folks in his small school (grade K-8, Total pop 190 pupils). Alcohol has already introduced itself to John as it was common for kids of his age to consume stolen booze.
His next door neighbour's son visits, he's a few years older than John and introduces John to marijuana. John begins smoking it occasionally at the early age of 13. Through his newfound interest in marijuana, he starts visiting alternative websites, listening to the Doors, reading books by writers like Hunter S. Thompson, and eventual Aldous Huxley. John continues smoking weed, increasing to daily, as he finds it opens his mind to being more creative and understanding the content better.
At 15, John moves to a city 3 hours away that has a university. He looks into University courses and sneaks his way into the larger seminars after high school, on topics such as the existence of UFOs and quantum mechanics. He begins smoking pot with university students after seminars and has rich discussions with them. This leads to joining the local anime club and computer science club. Pot still remains the social lubricant for John and his social circle.
Flash forward: John has moved to the other side of his large country, is an IT manager at a world-class organization as well as a private contractor, lives a comfortable middle-class life with a long term partner. He visits home every year and helps family with their business. He still consumes marijuana daily.
True story.
Paypal decided, about 9 months in, to close their account in a similar fashion to the service here and deny them access to thousands in funds, touting an irrelevant bong sales ban in a state somewhere in the US (he was in Canada). It took years for him to get the seized funds back from Paypal.
I try to boycott them unless absolutely needed.