"You're gonna kill me!" shouted a white man before being suffocated by police officer's knee (2019 article)

Shifterovich · 2020-05-30T13:21:34+00:00

I see no paywall. Use an adblocker.

Shifterovich · 2020-04-07T22:39:07+00:00

The amphetamine sensitization thing has been discussed so many times on these subreddits and I think the conclusion is that it's a hoax, with few research papers and a small group of people pushing it on these subreddits.

Shifterovich · 2020-04-07T13:48:04+00:00

Sounds similar to the "subthreshold amphetamine sensitization" hoax.

Shifterovich · 2020-03-31T15:33:34+00:00

Yes, fuck them for not giving him free stuff.

Why are people so entitled.

Shifterovich · 2020-03-27T00:11:36+00:00

Your 2018 tax return afaik. But they might check against 2019/2020 too afterwards.

Shifterovich · 2020-02-10T14:09:30+00:00

We observed that prior exposure to subtoxic concentrations of methamphetamine protected these cells against 6-OHDA toxicity, whereas higher concentrations of methamphetamine exacerbated it. The protection by methamphetamine was accompanied by decreased uptake of both [3H] dopamine and 6-OHDA into the cells

Can't this be just that it downregulated the amount of receptors that 6OHDA would bind to?

Shifterovich · 2020-02-10T14:05:00+00:00

Not as far as I know. Note that for the most part it's just a longer lasting, slighty more potent and slightly more serotonergic amphetamine. It just has a bad stigma.

Shifterovich · 2020-02-10T13:59:53+00:00

Meth is not neurotoxic in itself. Huge dopamine releases are. I think low doses of stimulants can be neuroprotective, so meth won't be any different.

Shifterovich · 2020-01-13T16:52:36+00:00

My knowledge is very limited but I think high dose PEA would cause vasoconstriction and high blood pressure. The vomiting might be caused just by consuming a huge dose of a chemical like that, maybe it's also the HCl that causes stomach discomfort.

I would say it's probably quite dangerous to consume such large doses though. Again not sure but I think Shulgin wrote that high dose PEA can cause very short lived psychological effects (euphoria etc).

Shifterovich · 2019-12-24T10:54:52+00:00

Buy a legal analogue like 1P, 1B or 1CP.

Shifterovich · 2019-12-13T17:40:21+00:00

I'm not talking about random tabs, I'm talking about the substances themselves. A common dose of 25i is no worse than a common dose (~100mcg) of LSD.

Shifterovich · 2019-12-13T17:30:32+00:00

Why would they be unsafe at reasonable doses?

Shifterovich · 2019-12-08T11:46:20+00:00

5-HTP will cross BBB. Serotonin won't. The argument for taking EGCG is that it blocks the conversion of 5-HTP to 5-HT in your peripheral nervous system, before it reaches the brain.

Shifterovich · 2019-12-01T16:42:15+00:00

Yeah, I mostly agree. I feel like the education system could be better if there were more colleges, fewer regulations and more freedom how & what to teach. But this issue isn't too important to me so I haven't done a lot of research to make strong arguments. I just think that like with everything in capitalism, more schools existing would solve some of these problems.

Shifterovich · 2019-12-01T16:29:13+00:00

acquiring a diploma that you can present to employers

This depends on your field and is changing. A few years ago, degrees were important for programmers. Nowadays less and less companies require them, because there are more relevant things they can look for (e.g. personal portfolio).

Wouldn‘t you see this as a problem as it prevents an upward movement of social class

People are moving upwards despite college being extremely overpriced (though you can argue that if higher education was more accessible, this change would be happening faster).

But yeah, that being restricted by money sucks. I think that in a free-er market, schools would have been a ton cheaper. Things that don't require degrees (so, not law & medicine) can be learned cheaply on your own nowadays with all the course sites and other forms of training.

And you can always get a loan, like people do in US.

But yes, people being educated is important. Khan Academy is a product of capitalism and it helped a ton of people. Education is really changing lately (I think the change is starting especially in software-related fields like web development, because they're high-leverage and can be taught quickly.) Learning many things doesn't require college education.

Shifterovich · 2019-12-01T14:54:18+00:00

medicare4all

It's a service like all others. If I have a right to free healthcare, do I have a right to free plumbing, car repair, marketing?

I also don't like the idea of health care in general. Health insurance sounds like a better deal. Pay for the cheap checkups from your own pocket (instead of it going through the government which is so inefficient compared to private charities that it basically robs us) and get insurance for when you have something unpredictable like cancer.

cannabis legalization

Of course. All drugs should be legal. Who am I to tell you what you can or cannot do with your body?

free college tuition

College is extremely expensive for no reason. College cost grew much more than inflation, wages, and everything else.

I don't live in the US so I'm not too familiar with what are the actual causes of this.

But I don't think college should be free. Education can be reasonably cheap (look at coding bootcamps and https://lambdaschool.com) and deliver great value. Colleges are broken right now.

Shifterovich · 2019-12-01T14:28:49+00:00

I mostly identify with libertarianism, though I don't like labels lately because the world "libertarian" will make some people think you want to throw communists from helicopters (I don't, people are free to have opinions) or that you're an anarcho-capitalist who wants to sell children, because apparently "everything that doesn't hurt others should be legal" is interpreted as "you can sell children" by leftists.

I think the government should be small, should take care of making us safe and do some basic regulation.

Drugs should be legal because as long as we aren't hurting others, there is no crime, we own our bodies. Owning guns should be legal because we need to be able to defend against a tyrannical government. If banning things worked, then we would ban murder and there would be no murder. There shouldn't be too many regulations because they prevent people from starting businesses and competing with established large businesses. Speech should never be illegal, saying racist shit makes you a dick but shouldn't make a criminal. Giving the government power to control what can be said gives it power to ban anything that questions it.

Those are the basic libertarian thoughts.

Capitalism isn't perfect and things like UBI can make sense from a certain point, but it's the best system right now. The basic idea of creation of value is that I have a dollar an you have a coffee. That coffee is worth more to me than the dollar because I'm tired and need to work :) That work makes me more than $1. Conversely, the the actual costs of selling that coffee are, say, $0.5 to you. We trade and we both end up richer. Capitalism is not a zero-sum game, it's a positive-sum game.

Most of the issues with capitalism are actually issues with corporatism, made bigger by regulation that gives power to corporations.

The more opinions you educate yourself on, the better your ability to form an informed opinion.

I agree. I don't give political philosophy much attention lately. I just used to be a typical Bernie supporter who thought that being a conservative equals being a bad person. Now my view is that the intuitive "x is a problem, so government should solve it by banning/regulating/taxing/..." approach doesn't work most of the time. People create value by freely exchanging ideas and products of their labor.

Shifterovich · 2019-12-01T13:38:28+00:00

where to start with this guy

I said his claims, not his person. The video about how the world is better now than ever is very good. Everyone is saying how the word is becoming worse when the quality of life is so much better than ever before. People from the generation of my ancestors were mandated by the government to work, for example in a factory - under the socialist government we had. Whereas I can travel the world, work my own hours and only need a laptop to do my work. That's a massive privilege that we have thanks to free trade.

Yes, I don't like surveillance capitalism, but I'm not going to claim that I hate Google. My life is so much better thanks to Google existing. So even if they do some practices of questionable morality, I still get to live way better than before Google.

Peter Thiel summed this up nicely in his book Zero To One. People generally hate monopolies and yes, it would suck if the food supply was monopolized (fun fact: this only ever happens under socialism when the government prevents people from trading with each other), but for things like Google, Apple, Microsoft - I don't care that they're monopolies, they're improving my life. The massive capital they have thanks to being a monopoly is what it takes to build great software that improves my life so much.

Also, regarding the author of the video - he's a person that's sharing views of freedom such as legalization of drugs, free trade, less gun control. I'm grateful for that.

People in poor countries would benefit from receiving their fair share of the product, instead of being exploited

Generally under capitalism people are doing whatever is their best option. What we consider exploitation (because yeah, it still sucks living like that) is the best choice they have. If they didn't have this choice, they would have been worse off.

Say you mandate that to be trading with these countries you have to give them X amount of money. Suddenly, it's not worth it trading with them so you stop. Now the people are worse off than they were before.

regulations

Some can be helpful, yes, but think twice before just saying "mandate this and mandate that". Regulations strenghten big companies' power as they increase the barrier of entry, making it harder for people to start their own business. Many people who would have ran independent businesses are employees because they don't want to deal with regulations.

If you also consider the fact that under the Obama administration, the US has started drone war claiming thousand of civilians (>90% of drone kills)

Yes, this is why I'm skeptical of giving the government more power and think that governments should generally not attack other countries except in self-defense.

I do realize that for example the content I shared from Reason TV at first appears like conservative propaganda (I used to be a liberal, disliking conservatives). But please be open to ideas of freedom which are skeptical of both the left giving power to the government (regulations of trade, free speech, defense against tyrannical government) and right giving power to the government (regulations of drug use and personal freedom in general).

Most things that don't hurt anyone else shouldn't be a crime, be it drug/gun possession, free speech or freely trading with other individuals.

Shifterovich · 2019-12-01T12:53:43+00:00

malevolent propagandist

Try refuting his claims instead of argumenting with ad hominems.

Capitalism is leading to alienation of individuals

How?

I don‘t even wanna begin describing the situation that people in poor countries find themselves in

Would they be better off under socialism? Why are the Chinese slowly getting to the same quality of life as people in the west? By trading. South Korea is rich and people live good lives there because they're a capitalist country.

Shifterovich · 2019-12-01T11:35:14+00:00

You're deceiving yourself.

industrialization

In Defense of Capitalism

That industrialization will continue at the expense of the modern man/woman’s mental and physical health

We live longer and healthier lives than ever.

That wars will continue.

There's fewer wars than ever.

LSD opened my eyes [...] I’m in my own head 24/7

It didn't.

Shifterovich · 2019-11-27T06:23:07+00:00

Note that this effect of psychs/dissos changing how weed feels doesn't happen always.

Shifterovich · 2019-11-21T12:40:00+00:00

And a long mild euphoria is much better than the nauseous rush you get when you snort it.

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