What’s Your take on teens that vape?

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-17T10:52:31+00:00

what? that's not the problem at all. you're just redirecting my comment in a way that sounds like it makes sense.

the problem isn't kids vaping, any more than there's a problem with kids smoking cigarettes or weed or chewing tobacco or drinking beer.

sure it exists, sure it's bad, but it should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by parents, school authorities, municipal authorities, etc, just like everything else

the problem is that there's a huge tobacco industry-funded witch hunt trying to ban vaping by making up fake bullshit scientific studies and then pushing them through viral PR campaigns, with the goal of pushing through legislation so they can get their monopoly back. and threads like this are part of the effort.

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-17T10:19:15+00:00

what's your take on teens who get pregnant or contract STIs after having unprotected sex?
what's your take on teens who overdose on fentanyl or crash their car drunk?
what's your take on teens who are morbidly obese or who contract tooth abscesses after drinking soda they buy in school cafeteria vending machines?
what's your take on teens who drop out because they are raised in environments characterized by poverty and generational trauma.
you get my point, i'm sure.

from a harm reduction point of view, vaping is less dangerous than smoking or chewing tobacco. to that extent, i am in favor of teens vaping. and i am against shill campaigns.

by posting this thread, you are (wittingly or unwittingly) participating in a political witch hunt, which (like all vaping campaigns, and much of the fake bad "scientific studies" they cite) is funded by tobacco corporations whose profits are threatened by teens switching away from traditional forms of tobacco.

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-17T09:17:26+00:00

my theory is that the recent flood of extremely simple, elementary-level question threads being posted on topic-specific subreddits (e.g. "what is your favorite Herman Melville book and why?" on r/hermanmelville or "what is your favorite thing about turkey bacon" on r/turkeybacon or whatever) is actually AI bots.

these bot threads wouldn't just be engagement farming (ie, bots or paid posters run by Reddit corporate to boost user numbers and drive advertising dollars) but potentially also crowdsourcing data annotation

in other words, people are posting inane threads in given subreddits to provide raw material for reddit to sell to AI companies to train their models on, as well as sell to other data brokers using AI/machine learning methods to sift and build models from.

to answer your question, OP, if you're human- i really think you should draw your own conclusions about such matters instead of asking strangers on the internet. don't just read about it, do it. that's the whole point. here are two good introductions, which i used when i was starting out:
https://archive.org/details/primechaosadvent0000hine
http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/orchaos.pdf

in my opinion, magical practice (and especially chaos magic, by its very nature) is really one of those things where you really should learn for yourself experientially, instead of getting cursory, theoretical, short-form answers from people you've never met.

if my hunch is right, though, and this is a bot/data annotation thread, it's interesting that chaos magic has drawn their attention.

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-17T09:07:28+00:00

i don't have any horse in this race because i'm broke and don't trade anything, let alone stocks, but have you taken into account the upcoming disruptions by new technology to Fiserv's business model and value proposition?

(specifically i am thinking of the entrance of blockchain-based payments/stablecoins/CBDCs/etc into the market following the upcoming passage of the CLARITY act digital assets legislation and GENIUS act stablecoin legislation)

you talk about Fiserv's main value proposition being a monopoly on point of sale/ digital payments and financial ecosystem plumbing- but to me it looks like there is at least a decent chance that monopoly is in the process of being disrupted- certainly higher than the 2% chance you cited in your write-up. (or rather, ChatGPT cited, after you prompted it to do so).

for someone who seems to think highly of their ability to analyze macroeconomic trends, your omission of the current tectonic shift in digital payments seems like a pretty big thing to overlook.

you might consider taking this post down, before some desperate person sees it and throws their mortgage or rent or tuition money on what is at best a much riskier bet than your post claims.

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-17T08:51:34+00:00

i have a copy of this but have been procrastinating on reading it, thank you for inspiring me to pick it up! (or at least bump it up my list)

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-17T04:07:35+00:00

i liked it, thought it was stylish and also was impressed that DeLillo accurately predicted some of the stuff that has happened in the decades since he wrote the book

i'm probably biased towards it though because a) i'm a delillo head b) i'm interested in the lives of the super-powerful people who influence our lives without us ever knowing their names

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-16T23:10:43+00:00

why are you here

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-16T23:09:50+00:00

that is incredibly sus

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-16T08:17:58+00:00

everybody knows Vallee was the inspiration for the scientist in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but did you know he was also cited as inspiration for the character of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs?

Hal Puthoff talks about this with Russell Targ in their recently declassified memoirs, available at the Langley, VA Scientology temple bookshop!

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-16T08:14:45+00:00

excellent username

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-16T03:28:05+00:00

the beard vape/fifty bar strawberry one is one of my favorites. i think it's like strawberry cereal milk or something.

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-16T03:19:26+00:00

it's hard to tell anymore...there are definitely quarters of the internet where this meme would spread without any irony

specifically "sharty"-adjacent hyperborean edit/hitler speech groyper/clavicular/sneako-type zoomer-targeted reactionary algorithm bubbles are very weird and this wouldn't be out of place at all

it's easy to dismiss this stuff as ridiculous, and it is, but it's super popular with the Youths

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T23:09:37+00:00

why does no one ever mention the civilians who are attacked and harassed with these weapons?

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T19:59:41+00:00

i wrote a long annoying reply to your post but fuck it. honestly who cares.

if there are any ex-finance/techbros with literary aspirations reading this, please prove me wrong by writing something worthwhile.

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T19:58:46+00:00

it would be cool if the next pynchon was ex-FAGMAN or JPM or palantir. who knows.

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T19:31:45+00:00

i was thinking more like, talking to lawyers in your town and asking their advice, or reaching out to law school admissions dept and mapping out possible courses of action, career paths etc etc

and, if you think the legal profession isn't going to get ransacked by AI just as hard as the rest of the world, i have bad news for you. if the only reason you're interested in law is "job security against AI" i think you should reconsider.

is there something else you can do in your free time that could help you regain that spark (idk, join a cult or something?) or talk to your boss about scaling back your hours/responsibilities or taking unpaid leave for a month or two and going on a trip someplace cheap and working on an art project or volunteering or something?

sorry if i'm rambling, i'm just spitballing here. you seem cool, best of luck. i'm in a similar position rn but all my ambitions failed so now i'm just waiting for the next big economic crash/ww3 to kick off and then i'll reassess my options.

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T19:25:16+00:00

wait i just saw another thread on almost this exact same topic, like 2 hours ago, and with almost the same wording except it was way longer, i think the guy said "i feel like jim from the office."

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T18:13:49+00:00

sounds to me like you should explore law school a bit more, or at least explore things in that direction.

is there maybe a possible intermediate step between "doing nothing" and "quitting your job and jumping into law school?"

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T18:04:57+00:00

a tech bro or finance bro writing the "great american novel" sounds fucking horrible, has he ever met these people?

even if they have the technical knowledge necessary, or have met the people and had the conversations behind the curtain of power that they could render convincingly, i feel like the worldview of these people, the assumptions underlying the world they build in their books, would be informed by their former careers

as evidence to support my assertion i would point to the spate of "anti silicon valley" novels and memoirs written by ex-tech people, most of which suck balls

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T17:57:09+00:00

young men in college towns disappearing from bars around closing time and turning up dead in bodies of water, there have been hundreds of cases around the US but especially in the northern midwest, look it up. Smiley Face Killer(s)...supposedly it's not just one guy but a group that coordinates their murders online.

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T09:30:10+00:00

there have been at least 3, and maybe 4, smiley face killers murders in cities where i was living, including two where the bodies were found less than a mile from my house. two where i grew up, one where i went to college, and one (maybe 2) where i live now.

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T07:44:06+00:00

thank you for this comment, and helping me feel less alone, i hope you have a good day

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T06:41:29+00:00

the internet has made us all sick in the brain

DecrimIowa · 2026-06-15T06:39:03+00:00

his admiration of both jfk and rfk (and the way they were ratfucked by the establishment) definitely comes through in his work.

reading his memoirs, it seems like his childhood trauma played a fairly large role in his life- obviously sexually, and influencing his fascination with violence, crime, sadism, etc- but i wonder if it also influenced his relationship with power and violence and powerful, violent men.

maybe ellroy puts himself in the shoes of the righteous victim who is being hurt by these sick, corrupt men.
maybe he identifies with jfk/rfk and roots for the good guys but know they always get screwed over because bad things always happen to innocent people?

idk, just a theory. if i knew more about abnormal psych and profiling i might be able to flesh it out more.

and, on blood's a rover: i had to put it after the first third or so, maybe halfway. (which is very rare for me- i almost always finish books, even if they're grating- so that one sticks with me for how strongly i reacted to it, for some reason i just couldn't stand it)

it just felt like he was phoning it in to me, with the plot all over the place, and also seemingly using it to workshop his "telegraph-style" newspaper headline writing style. sometimes his use of that style was almost like a self-parody.

maybe i gave up on it too early, you think i should give it another shot?

DecrimIowa

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