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mimiterranova

Amazon Won't Test Job Seekers For Marijuana Use : NPR - 0 views

  • Amazon operates — and is rapidly expanding into — places where marijuana is legal. Steven Senne/AP Amazon will no longer test most job applicants for marijuana use in the latest sign of America's changing relationship with pot. Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the U.S., also says it now backs legalizing marijuana nationwide.
  • Marijuana users and advocates are cheering the news, but it may also bring relief to Amazon's hiring managers: The company operates — and is rapidly expanding into — places where marijuana is legal.
  • Even before New York legalized marijuana, New York City banned testing prospective employees for marijuana, with some exceptions. Based on that law, a New York man sued Amazon in March, saying the company illegally reversed a h
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  • Laws prohibiting marijuana "are responsible for more than half a million arrests in the United States every year," according to the Drug Policy Alliance, which also supports decriminalization. In a statement to NPR, the group applauded Amazon's announcement as "a huge step forward." "Drug testing has never provided an accurate indication of a person's ability to perform their job," the group said, "and yet this incredibly invasive practice has locked out millions of people who use drugs — both licit and illicit — from the workplace."
delgadool

Mexico Passes Bill to Legalize Cannabis - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Lawmakers in Mexico approved a bill Wednesday night to legalize recreational marijuana, a milestone for the country, which is in the throes of a drug war and could become the world’s largest cannabis market, leaving the United States between two pot-selling neighbors.
  • The 316-to-129 vote in Mexico’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, came more than two years after the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the country’s ban on recreational marijuana was unconstitutional and more than three years after the country legalized medicinal cannabis.
  • The measure, as of Wednesday night, would allow adults to smoke marijuana and, with a permit, grow a small number of cannabis plants at home. It would also grant licenses for producers — from small farmers to commercial growers — to cultivate and sell the crop.
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  • If enacted, Mexico would join Canada and Uruguay in a small but growing list of countries that have legalized marijuana in the Americas, adding further momentum to the legalization movement in the region. In the United States, Democrats in the Senate have also promised to scrap federal prohibition of the drug this year.
  • Critics say it is unlikely to make a serious dent in Mexico’s soaring rates of cartel-fueled violence, and argue that it is unwelcome in a country where nearly two-thirds of people oppose legalizing marijuana, according to recent polling.
  • Security experts agree that the law’s practical impact on violence will likely be minimal: With 15 American states having now legalized marijuana, they argue, the crop has become a relatively small part of the Mexican drug trafficking business, with cartels focusing on more profitable products like fentanyl and methamphetamines.
  • Legalization “is an important step toward building peace in a country like ours, where for at least a decade or more, we’ve been immersed in an absurd war,” said Lucía Riojas Martínez
  • “But this bill falls short of achieving that,” she added.
  • “Doing this right could give Mexico an economic surplus,” he said.
  • “It’s a law for the rich, and marijuana should be for everybody,” said Ivania Medina Rodríguez, 18, a local activist. “They’re going for business before rights.”
  • Some activists fear that the law will overly favor large corporations that could obtain what the bill terms an “integral license,” giving them access to the entire marijuana supply chain, from seed to sale, while leaving small-scale producers and vendors locked out of the lucrative market.
  • “We live in a country where corruption and extortion is the norm,” said Zara Snapp, co-founder of the RIA Institute, a Mexico-city based drug policy research and advocacy group.
Javier E

Frum On Pot - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast - 0 views

  • check this section out from the study he cites: Marijuana intoxication can cause distorted perceptions, impaired coordination, difficulty with thinking and problem solving, and problems with learning and memory. Research has shown that, in chronic users, marijuana's adverse impact on learning and memory can last for days or weeks after the acute effects of the drug wear off. As a result, someone who smokes marijuana every day may be functioning at a suboptimal intellectual level all of the time.
  • At what point could this not be said of alcohol as well? And yet alcohol is far more addictive, far more related to social problems and violence, and daily drinking of large amounts can be dreadful for the liver (see graph above).
  • There's also what the study does not analyze: the whole point of marijuana use is to disrupt settled ways of thinking and feeling, to offer a respite, like alcohol, from the deadliness of doing. But for  reasons we don't quite yet understand, marijuana, like other essentially harmless drugs in moderation, can prompt imaginative breakthroughs, creative serendipity, deeper personal understanding, and greater social empathy and connection.
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  • Some of our greatest music was written under the influence: would David stop that? Jazz might not exist without it. All of our recent presidents were stoners at some point - and the current president in his teens was an enthusiast even by Hawaii standards in the 1970s. Does David think that the man who wrote Dreams From My Father suffered from impaired memory? Does he believe that Michael Phelps who smoked pot and became the most decorated Olympian of all time didn't do one of those two things? Can we not discuss drugs rationally, rather than with this vast super-structure of boomer-era culture-war synapses attached to it?
  • Here's the "drug abuse" site's description of how dreadful canabis dependency can be: Long-term marijuana abusers trying to quit report withdrawal symptoms including: irritability, sleeplessness, decreased appetite, anxiety, and drug craving, all of which can make it difficult to remain abstinent. These symptoms begin within about 1 day following abstinence, peak at 2-3 days, and subside within 1 or 2 weeks following drug cessation. How many alcoholics would kill for a two-week readjustment period after using a drug for a lifetime?
  • In saying his core point is to protect the vulnerable and poor, he also fails inexplicably to note how enforcement of petty marijuana possession laws in urban centers needlessly ruins countless lives, and does so with a racial disparity that is simply staggering. The first thing you'd do to improve the prospects of the young black men David rightly cares about is to stop incarcerating the black pot-smokers at rates white kids and their parents would not tolerate for a milli-second.
delgadool

New York Reaches a Deal to Legalize Recreational Marijuana - The New York Times - 0 views

  • paving the way for a potential $4.2 billion industry that could create tens of thousands of jobs and become one of the largest markets in the country.
  • end years of racially disproportionate policing that saw Black and Hispanic people arrested on low-level marijuana charges far more frequently than white people.
  • The deal was crafted with an intense focus on making amends in communities impacted by the decades-long war on drugs.
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  • legalizing marijuana could generate about $350 million in yearly tax revenue once the program was fully implemented, which could take years.
  • “A percentage of revenue that is raised will get invested into the communities where the people who suffered mass incarceration come from and still live in many cases,”
  • Millions of dollars in tax revenue from cannabis sales would be reinvested in minority communities each year, and a sizable portion of business licenses would be reserved for minority business owners.
  • received an unexpected boost from Mr. Cuomo’s recent political scandals.
  • It turned out, however, that striking a deal to legalize cannabis became a higher priority for Mr. Cuomo, as several lawmakers and lobbyists surmised that the governor may have wanted to shift attention away from his compounding crises. Marijuana legalization was both a headline-grabbing issue and a policy measure popular with voters.
  • Forty percent of most tax revenues would be reinvested in communities disproportionately affected by the war on drugs; 40 percent would be steered to public education; and the remaining 20 percent would go toward drug treatment, prevention and education.
  • The legislation will seek to improve the state’s existing medical marijuana program, which for years has been criticized as too restrictive.
  • The cannabis market in New York is currently estimated to be $4.6 billion and is expected to grow to $5.8 billion by 2027, according to a recent study commissioned by the New York Medical Cannabis Industry Association.
Javier E

Bloomberg Backs Plan to Limit Arrests for Marijuana - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The New York Police Department, the mayor and the city’s top prosecutors on Monday endorsed a proposal to decriminalize the open possession of small amounts of marijuana, giving an unexpected lift to an effort by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to cut down on the number of people arrested as a result of police stops.
  • Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose Police Department made about 50,000 arrests last year for low-level marijuana possession, said the governor’s proposal “strikes the right balance” in part because it would still allow the police to arrest people who smoke marijuana in public.
  • The governor’s announcement was cheered by lawmakers from minority neighborhoods as well as by civil rights groups, who are increasingly looking to Albany and to Washington in an effort to rein in what they see as overly aggressive tactics on the part of the Bloomberg administration.
Javier E

A Marijuana Stash That Carried Little Risk - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • While scores of people are arrested on these charges every day in New York, the laws apparently don’t apply to middle-aged white guys. Or at least they aren’t enforced against us.
  • About 87 percent of the marijuana arrests in the Bloomberg era have been of blacks and Latinos, most of them men, and generally under the age of 25 — although surveys consistently show that whites are more likely to use it.
  • These drug busts were the No. 1 harvest of the city’s stop, question and frisk policing from 2009 through 2012, according to a report released Thursday by the New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman. Marijuana possession was the most common charge of those arrested during those stops. The few whites and Asians arrested on these charges were 50 percent more likely than blacks to have the case “adjourned in contemplation of dismissal,” the report showed.
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  • having a little bit of pot, like a joint, is not a crime as long as you don’t burn or openly display it. Having it in my backpack was a violation of law, meaning that it is an offense that is lower than a misdemeanor. Pot in the backpack is approximately the same as making an illegal turn in a car. Taking it out and waving it in the face of a police officer or lighting up a joint on the street would drive it up to the lowest-level misdemeanor.
  • How was it that all the black and Latino males were displaying or burning pot where it could be seen by the police? The answer is that many of them were asked during the stops to empty their pockets. What had been a concealed joint and the merest violation of the law was transformed into a misdemeanor by being “openly displayed.”
  • LAST year, the Bronx Defenders, which represents poor people in criminal court, tried to have suppression hearings in 54 cases involving marijuana possession. In such hearings, the police officer would have been required to testify about the circumstances under which the marijuana was found. If it was the result of an illegal search, the judge could have barred the use of the evidence. But not once did the hearings go forward: missing paperwork, officer’s day off, the drip, drip of wasted time. On average, each case required five court appearances, and stretched over eight months. Most of the charges were dropped or lowered to noncriminal violations. The process itself was the punishment, and it was inflicted almost exclusively on blacks and Latinos.
anonymous

White House Marijuana Policy Under Scrutiny After Staffers' Firing : NPR - 0 views

  • The White House says five employees were let go from their jobs related to past marijuana use, even though personnel policies were updated so that past pot use would not automatically bar people from working there.
  • the White House would grant waivers on a case-by-case basis to people who smoked marijuana on a "limited" basis and don't need a security clearance. The waiver requires employees to stop all pot use and agree to drug testing.
  • Psaki pointed to a recent NBC report on the new guidelines, which were negotiated because marijuana use is legal in some places in the United States but remains illegal under federal law.
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  • White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday on Twitter: "The bottom line is this: of the hundreds of people hired, only five people who had started working at the White House are no longer employed as a result of this policy."
  • "dozens of young White House staffers have been suspended, asked to resign, or placed in a remote work program due to past marijuana use," citing anonymous sources "familiar with the matter."
  • "In some cases, staffers were informally told by transition higher-ups ahead of formally joining the administration that they would likely overlook some past marijuana use, only to be asked later to resign,"
  • Psaki said, "While we will not get into individual cases, there were additional factors at play in many instances for the small number of individuals who were terminated."
maddieireland334

Dirt-Poor Town Hopes Marijuana Will Bring Boom Times - 0 views

  • Adelanto is a small town (population 31.000) in the deserts of inland Southern California where people are sent to prison
  • It's a fairly poor community, with a median household wage of $37,000, much lower than the state median of $60,000.
  • But when California citizens voted to loosen marijuana laws and allow for medical use, most of these communities resisted and passed ordinances to prohibit pot dispensaries in their neighborhoods.
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  • Home construction boomed in these places, fed by a bubble that put people in freshly built houses they really couldn't afford.
  • One plot was valued at $1.5 million before the zoning changed to allow cultivation, he said; now it's in escrow for $4 million.
  • Adelanto, which once flirted with bankruptcy, is now seeing a land rush and people willing to spend millions of dollars to secure property and permits to grow marijuana legally, considering a future where millions of Californians will legally be permitted to enjoy weed recreationally.
  • Elizabeth Brown, who's with Lee & Associates, said land that was going for 50 cents to 90 cents per square foot is now going for $12 to $14.
  • For a couple of years, solar energy plants were going to save everybody from the recession. Bolstered by money potentially available from the federal economic stimulus, dozens of solar projects were proposed for the desert last decade.
  • In this case, given the lack of competition, the city has to figure out how much it wants to milk from growers for its own coffers. The reporter notes that a tax plan similar to the one in nearby Desert Hot Springs (the other town to permit cultivation) could net Adelanto $6 million per year if all goes well, equal to nearly half of the city's entire annual budget.
  • The big unknown is whether other cities might change their minds and decide to allow pot growers in, something that is bound to happen if Adelanto succeeds and sloughs off its reputation as the poorest small town in the High Desert.
  • And as an interesting touch, it could end up driving out the local representation from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the manufacturers of the Predator drone, because their landlords can get more money from the marijuana growers.
Javier E

How to Legalize Pot - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • He did not favor making outlaws of people for enjoying a drug that is less injurious than alcohol or tobacco. But he worried that a robust commercial marketplace would inevitably lead to much more consumption.
  • Today the most interesting and important question is no longer whether marijuana will be legalized — eventually, bit by bit, it will be — but how.
  • He has not come to believe marijuana is harmless, but he suspects that the best hope of minimizing its harm may be a well-regulated market.
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  • Washington and Colorado have set out to invent a whole industry from scratch and, in theory, to avoid the shortcomings of other markets in legal vices — tobacco, alcohol, gambling — that lurched into being without much forethought, and have supplied, along with much pleasure, much misery.
  • the complexities of turning an illicit herb into a regulated, safe, consumer-friendly business. Among the things on the to-do list: certifying labs to test for potency and contamination. (Pot can contain, among other nasty things, pesticides, molds and salmonella.) Devising rules on labeling, so users know what they’re getting. Hiring inspectors, to make sure the sellers comply. Establishing limits on advertising, because you don’t want allowing to become promoting.
  • One practical challenge facing the legalization pioneers is how to keep the marijuana market from being swallowed by a few big profiteers — the pot equivalent of Big Tobacco, or even the actual tobacco industry — a powerful oligopoly with every incentive to turn us into a nation of stoners.
  • the likely best model is something resembling the wine industry — a fragmented market, many producers, none dominant. This could be done by limiting the size of licensed purveyors. It would help, too, to let individuals grow a few plants at home
  • there is evidence that pot dealers, like purveyors of alcohol, get the bulk of their profit from those who use the product to excess. “When you get a for-profit producer or distributor industry going, their incentives are to increase sales,
  • states can take a cut of what will be, according to estimates, a $35 billion to $45 billion industry and earmark some of these new tax revenues for good causes. It’s the same tactic used to win public approval of lotteries — and with the same danger: that some worthy government function comes to depend on creating more addicts. And how do you divvy up the revenues? How much goes to offset health consequences? How much goes to enforcement? How do you calibrate taxes so the price of pot is high enough to discourage excessive use, but not so high that a cheap black market arises?
  • no one has come up with a pot version of the breathalyzer to determine quickly whether a driver is impaired.
  • California demonstrates a different kind of unintended consequences. The state’s medical marijuana law is such a free-for-all that in Los Angeles there are now said to be more pot dispensaries than Starbucks outlets.
redavistinnell

Mexico Issues First Permits for Marijuana Under Court Ruling - ABC News - 0 views

  • Mexico Issues First Permits for Marijuana Under Court Ruling
  • The Mexican government granted the first permits allowing growing and possession of marijuana for personal use on Friday.
  • President Enrique Pena Nieto has repeatedly said he opposes legalization, as do a majority of Mexicans surveyed in recent polls.
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  • Boston Runaway Train: Operator May Have Tied Cord to Throttle, Source Says
  • The six-car train on Boston's Red Line left the Braintree Station without an operator just after 6 a.m. Thursday, according to Stephanie Pollack of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
  • "The investigation is ongoing but we do believe this was an isolated incident," Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said today during a news conference. "One that likely required an individual to make multiple mistakes for this to take place."
  • "We are confident that this was an isolated incident where a single individual appears to have made multiple errors."
  • The operator remains on administrative leave, said Pollack, adding that, “If the investigation finds that a prohibited act occurred, this is grounds for termination.”
  • "We are reminding our work force ... that they are not permitted to in any way keep that throttle ... from operating the way it is intended," Pollack added.
  • Pollack said the incident was an "unacceptable breach of responsibility to keep our riders safe. We failed our passengers. Something happened that should not have been able to happen.”
Javier E

Middle-Aged Adults Are Binge Drinking and Using Marijuana at Record Levels - The New Yo... - 0 views

  • Binge drinking among adults aged 35 to 50 occurred at record prevalence in 202
  • A new study found that nearly 30 percent of people in this age group reported binge drinking in 2022, continuing a consistent upward trend in the behavior. In 2012, 23 percent of such adults reported binge drinking.
  • Use of marijuana in this group also reached historic levels, with 28 percent reporting the behavior, up from 13 percent in 2012
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  • The survey also looked at behavior among adults 19 to 30 years old. For this group, use of marijuana in 2022 was significantly greater, at 44 percent, up from 28 percent in 2012.
  • But their self-reported binge drinking had fallen to 30.5 percent, down from 35.2 percent a decade earlier.
  • “Drug use trends evolve over decades and across development, from adolescent to adulthood,”
  • , a recent study found that alcohol-related deaths continued to increase among people 65 and older, with deaths among women in this age group rising at a faster rate than among men
proudsa

Feds Want Nebraska, Oklahoma To Quit Harshing Colorado's Mellow - 0 views

  • asked the Supreme Court to stay out of a controversial lawsuit the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma filed last year challenging the constitutionality of Colorado's legalization of marijuana.
  • "original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States."
  • When Nebraska and Oklahoma sued last December and asked the Supreme Court to intervene, they argued that "Colorado’s affirmative authorization of the manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana presents a substantial obstacle to Congress’s objectives under
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  • But Verrilli countered that the federal government retains authority to review on a "case-by-case basis" significant drug trafficking crimes.
rachelramirez

Jeff Sessions Wanted to 'Drop the Case' Against KKK Lynching, Attorney Testified - The ... - 0 views

  • Jeff Sessions Wanted to ‘Drop the Case’ Against KKK Lynching, Attorney Testified
  • they’re sure to include questions that were raised when he was nominated for a federal judgeship in 1986. His confirmation was derailed largely by the testimony of Thomas Figures, an assistant U.S. attorney in Alabama when Sessions was U.S. attorney.
  • Sessions and his supporters, then as now, defend his civil rights record based on several cases to which Figures was also assigned, including the conviction of Henry Hays for the 1981 murder by lynching of a Donald Figures.
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  • Sessions had once told him that “he believed the NAACP, the SCLC, Operation PUSH, and the National Council of Churches were all un-American organizations teaching anti-American values.”
  • He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in Alabama’s infamous Yellow Mama electric chair in 1997, the first white man executed for killing a black man in Alabama since 1913, which Sessions noted in his attorney general questionnaire.
  • Judge Braxton Kittrell presided but did not comment on Sessions’s role in the prosecution when he testified before the Senate in 1986.
  • The FBI investigated at the request of the district attorney but turned up no suspects. Encouraged by his brother, the attorney for Donald’s mother, Figures pushed for a second FBI investigation, and eventually a grand jury which returned indictments against Knowles and Hays, who were arrested in June 1983.
  • During the Donald case, Sessions allegedly told Figures and others he liked the Klan until he found out they smoked marijuana.
  • Session replied “something to the effect of, ‘I didn’t know that Klansmen used marijuana now,” Kowalski said, and that “he used to have respect for that organization but now he no longer does, knowing they use drugs.”
  • Sessions was denied confirmation thanks to the allegations of racism and abuse of power, making him the first Reagan appointee not approved by the Senate, and only the second nominee to the district court bench rejected in 49 years.
  • In 1992 a federal grand jury charged Figures for allegedly bribing a drug dealer not to testify against his client, a prosecution many viewed as retaliatory.
  • Senators on the Judiciary Committee will have only Figures’s 1986 testimony to go on when hearings begin next week. He died in January 2015, then serving as a municipal judge in Mobile.
Javier E

Drug 85 Times as Potent as Marijuana Caused a 'Zombielike' State in Brooklyn - The New ... - 0 views

  • For the first time, the researchers break down how much money can be made from a product like AMB-FUBINACA.
  • The way the market works is simple. Overseas labs create a new compound and often use hidden websites — also referred to as the dark web — to market and sell the product.
  • Online, according to the researchers, AMB-FUBINACA could be found in powder form, selling for $1.95 to $3.80 a gram, or $1,950 to $3,800 a kilogram. It is then mixed in with cheap herbal products, allowing users to smoke the drug.
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  • So 1 kilogram of AMB-FUBINACA could be portioned out over 15,625 doses, with a typical street price of $35. That means the dealer stands to make close to $500,000.
  • As soon as the drug shows up on the radar of authorities, the makers move on to the next compound.
  • And if the dangers of synthetic cannabinoids have researchers concerned, the risks of designer opioids are perhaps even greater.
  • Just last month, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration issued an alert for a new designer drug called Pink, which had been responsible for 46 deaths, including 31 in New York and 10 in North Carolina.
  • “Pink belongs to a family of deadly synthetic opioids far more potent than morphine,” according to the agency. “It is usually imported to the United States, mainly from illicit labs in China.”
  • while it is not in the interest of dealers to kill their clients, as these synthetic compounds become increasingly potent, the risks will continue to grow.
  • “No compound that has been made yet has the potential to kill thousands of people,” he said. “But that is a scenario that is becoming more and more close to reality.”
Javier E

L'Hôte: all by yourself - 0 views

  • "I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity." freddie7 AT gmail DOT com My brother is a tailor and dressmaker. Check him out. Blog Archive ▼  2011 (81) ▼  April (6) seriousness and honesty are only conditionally vir... all by yourself straight fire failing students drop classes reason for optimism today in unfortunate yet amazing errors, Freddie e... ►  March (30) winning is fast, humanitarianism is slow we don't have a worker shortage quote for the day "you see an old woman...." amen sympathy for the juice box set first principles an open letter to Juan Cole on Libya they should have done a miniseries about Benjamin ... next big thing anniversary note the more things change ad hominems left-wing non-interventionism sorry about comments system how perfect is your knowledge? here they come France and the UK Libya gentrification involves more than the gentry the profession that wants to destroy itself they're bringing back all the classics marijuana legalization is a human rights issue Bobby Sands was an MP damn you, DVD clearance fees links and such a man from somewhere today in insanity the incredible naivete of the incredibly savvy ►  February (33) marked bodies What does it mean for a movie to be experimental a... subversion and containment IOZ on Reason's absurdity Reihan and progressivism/neoliberalism/leftism California good people are everywhere what I want submitted without comment welcome to lottery ticket America another perfect opportunity what's before us by the way the Atlantic and the working class ►  January (12) archivedate collaps
  • Paradoxically, what I find more and more is that the Internet is a place for people to affirm and support each other. It's as if the understanding of the fundamental weakness of these electronic proxies to represent human connection causes people to push for it more and more. And this could be beautiful. But it can also be dangerous. Because of the depth of the loneliness, I blame no one for how they interact and connect with others online. I just worry. I worry about the urge towards conformity. I worry about Twitter. I worry that all of those retweets and all of those "right on"s contribute to a kind of coarse postmodernism, where what the truth becomes what is most agreed on. I worry that dissent is confused with a lack of etiquette. And I particularly worry about the echo chamber effect, and the way that small groups of people who are just like each other can come to think of themselves as representing the opinions of everyone. On the Internet, we all make the world in our own image.
  • The pressure, online, will always be to tack towards the crowd, and people will look endlessly towards their peers-- not intending to undermine the individual voice, but getting there, often, anyway. Don't get judgmental about it, but keep saying your piece. In the tenor of the single voice, you can find strength, and if you keep saying what you think is true, in spite of it all, you will find what is incorruptible in yourself.
Javier E

Goodbye, trolley problem. This is Silicon Valley's new ethics test. - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • In the 1980s, when finance fell off the moral bandwagon, business schools reacted by requiring students to take courses on Kant and other philosophers that had little to do with daily management worries. The field is becoming irrelevant now, when the dominant industry — technology — is decentralized and able to grow $40 billion companies in just 18 months.
  • Marijuana and other legal cannibinoids have sucked up nearly $1 billion in private investment dollars since 2012, raising the question: What kind of dopamine hits aren’t we comfortable with?
  • Addiction has become another ethical landmine where dopamine hits — and how one administers them — are the key to a company’s growth. E-cigarette maker Juul Labs, founded in 2017 and now the fastest growing start-up in history, with a valuation of $38 billion, is largely responsible for a grave new statistic: about 20 percent of teens have admitted to vaping in school.
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  • Juul is the logical extension of the Silicon Valley growth-hacking playbook: Design a flawless product, add a dopamine response, stir in some influencers and watch your product, game or app go viral.
  • Consider the outcry last week when TechCrunch reported that Facebook had been paying people (including teens) $20 a month to download an app that monitors a user’s mobile and web activity. Apple, long a privacy advocate and favored troll of Facebook, reacted swiftly by cutting off “Facebook Research” and the company’s internal apps. Tech Twitter, however, seemed largely perplexed: In the future, won’t we all sell our data rather than give it away for free?
  • If Silicon Valley was once converging on a moral cohesion of sorts — where progressive values and wokemanship acted as a loose ethical framework — it’s now becoming harder to avoid the varying ethical debates concerning privacy, addiction and growing geopolitical discord.
  • For the virtuous founders avoiding addictive products and invasive data-gathering, even they have to worry about who’s getting on their equity ownership table.
  • founders have to wonder whether that seemingly diverse venture capital fund is backed by regimes where women, minorities and dissidents are killed for expressing themselves.
  • of course, the morality of a company often depends on the morality of the people in charge
Javier E

Britain's 'New Puritans': Youth Drinking Falls Dramatically - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In 2002, according to the W.H.O. study, about 26 percent of European 15-year-olds drank alcohol at least once a week, but by 2014, that had dropped to 13 percent.
  • The surveys measured England, Scotland and Wales separately, but their results were similar, and taken together, the share of 15-year-olds who were regular drinkers there fell from about 46 percent to about 10 percent.
  • In 2002, 25 percent of people aged 8 to 12 said they had tried alcohol, but in 2016, just 4 percent had
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  • In 2001, it found, only 12 percent of English 16- and 17-year-olds considered themselves non-drinkers; in 2016, that was up to 35 percent.
  • “Alcohol doesn’t play as important a role in socializing as it did in the past,” Mr. Nicholls said. “Young people can now have an active social life without leaving their house.”
  • Alcohol has become more expensive in Britain over the last decade, driven in part by higher taxes, which may help dissuade young drinkers. Some young people guessed a reason for the decline is that their peers have become more likely to resort to drugs like marijuana and ecstasy, which are often more accessible to minors than alcohol.
  • “I suppose it was a combination of it being more cool and more enjoyable,” said James Samouel, a 19-year-old history student who grew up in south London, referring to marijuana use by peers. “A health thing as well — alcohol is so much worse for you.
  • But in fact, surveys show that drug use, while still common, has also become less prevalent among young people.
  • “It doesn’t seem that people are switching from drinking to drugs,” said Dr. Melissa Oldham, the lead author of the Sheffield University report. “It’s a move away from alcohol and drugs to other hobbies.”
kaylynfreeman

Oregon Becomes First U.S. State To Decriminalize Drug Possession | HuffPost - 0 views

  • Oregon became the first U.S. state to decriminalize possession of all illegal drugs after voters passed a ballot initiative in Tuesday’s election.
  • Oregonians can no longer be criminally charged for possessing small amounts of illegal drugs, including heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine. The punishment for these felony and misdemeanor drug possession offenses will now be a simple $100 fine. The initiative also redirects some taxes raised through sales of legal marijuana to finance a new voluntary treatment system for drug users.
  • his marks the nation’s most significant development toward ending the 50-year war on drugs launched by President Richard Nixon.
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  • Oregon’s initiative had broad support from groups like the NAACP Portland, local Black Lives Matter chapters, physicians groups and AFSCME, t
  • Supporters of drug decriminalization said they hope the passage of Oregon’s Measure 110 encourages other states to pass similar ballot initiatives or legislation that will ease the war on drugs.
  • The state legalized marijuana in 2014 and reduced many drug penalties from felonies to misdemeanors in 2017.
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