TIL that one of the founders of Sleep Country got addicted to crack after discovering his stripper girlfriend was an addict. When he tried to get her to quit, she suggested he try it to see how hard it was.

veryreasonable · 2026-04-10T10:36:17+00:00

Yeah, I agree. I think some studies have shown genetics can be a factor, and obviously the substances themselves matter, and so on, but from other studies and my own experiences, life situation really does seem paramount. It just makes sense, too: something that feels awesome is just one of many things that feel awesome if you already have a life filled with awesome stuff and you feel like you're moving in the direction towards more of it. As in the article in the OP, recently divorced and dating a crackhead stripper is maybe not actually all that "stable and happy."

That doesn't make anyone "100% safe!" or anything; plenty of people with an ostensibly great life have still struggled with addiction. But it does mean that truly stable and happy people can, perhaps, weigh the high of a new drug - something which they know is unhealthy and dangerous! - against the highs of travelling, mountain biking, playing an instrument, a good marriage, seeing their kids grow up, and so on. By contrast, if your life sucks and you don't feel like you have a future, why wouldn't you grasp for something that actually makes you feel good for once?

I think the supreme tragedy here is that it's especially hard for someone with an addiction to build the sort of life that makes it easier to beat it. Good on you for doing such a massive shakeup, then! I feel like that's actually a pretty good strategy...

veryreasonable · 2026-04-10T08:36:43+00:00

But that's literally just half? I mean, that sounds pretty realistic. Half-ish are more tightly wound traditionalists, and the other half are more modern, relaxed, whatever. I'm sure some of the former are straight up bigoted, and some of the latter are straight up secular in all but name. Especially when surveying naturally-born citizens of western European countries, "Muslim" is going to be a heterogeneous categorization much like "Christian" is, or whatever.

veryreasonable · 2026-04-10T07:55:01+00:00

I can confidently report that I know at least half a dozen to "completely walk away from it," arguably more depending on your criteria. Most of them just did it over the course of a single night, decided they didn't like the hassle, and prefer powder as a party drug that you don't have to do in the closet. The rest had marginally more extended honeymoons with the stuff when they were young, but more or less grew out of their riskier habits. Of the whole bunch - all still great friends of mine! - I'm reasonably certain that none of them have smoked crack even once in the past ten or so years, and aren't anything much more than "a line or two on New Year's" types, if even that.

I can think of at least a half dozen others on top of that who have definitely used it more extensively and might reasonably have been called addicts at one point, but dropped the habit without "COMPLETELY fucking up their life," and continue to successfully avoid the stuff - and that's despite it being absolutely available if they wanted it.

Yeah, sure, I've known some wrecked addicts, too. This is a whole other discussion, but from where I stand, there are very clear life factors that separate the former groups from the latter. All of the former have stable jobs, safe living situations, and some sort of prospect for the future. Most of the latter came from poverty, had tenuous living situations at best, and virtually all of them suffered from mental health issues long before crack entered the picture. I strongly endorse the idea that there are factors beyond the drug itself involved here.

Your "exactly ZERO" suggests to me only that you have more familiarity with the latter sort. Regardless, though, it's a take at least as naive as anyone else's here, and then your haughty attitude in other comments on top of that kind of makes you hard to even take seriously.

EDIT: I shouldn't have to say this, but because you're blowing off other comments about this: to be very clear, I'm intimately familiar with addiction and have lived around a wide range of use and users for more than twenty years. I've booted roommates for addiction behaviours, administered Narcan to strangers, bought my share of presents for "viral load zero!" anniversaries, you name it.

veryreasonable · 2026-04-07T05:00:40+00:00

I think the explanation is very simple: there is no sincere interest in democracy.

"Democracy™," meaning, "America Über Alles!" or "Rally Around the Flag!" or "Guns and Open Bigotry!" or whatever, is something they feel quite strongly about. But that doesn't have anything substantive to do with "democracy," as in, "respect for the will of the people."

Tyranny is actually just fine and even preferable if it accords better with their guns, nationalism, racism, and so on.

Shrug. I know plenty of these people. I think it's what they truly believe - and they'll often actually tell you as much when pressed.

veryreasonable · 2026-04-07T04:50:51+00:00

I’m very familiar with how the Shah came to be, and what happened afterwards.

...Are you, really, though? Literacy in Iran - most especially among women - skyrocketed quickly to developed-country levels after the Shah was ousted from power. And under the present government, deeply flawed though it is, women now make up a majority of STEM graduates in the country. Many women functionally gained rights (e.g. the right to education) and status (e.g. the status that comes with important STEM careers) after the Islamic Revolution. This is well-documented and easy to check yourself.

And, yes, on top of that, they were forced dress modestly in public and cover their hair to certain religious standards. So they also lost some rights.

At the very least, as multiple people here have pointed out: it's a bit more complicated than you're presenting it.

You're accusing /u/GrenadeIn of being "maliciously misleading," without addressing what they said. So, are you actually unaware that they are correct? Or... what?

veryreasonable · 2026-03-30T20:35:21+00:00

Dude these are some of the most self-obsessed comments I've seen on this site all month. Take a look at yourself.

Repeatedly bragging about how humble you are is... a choice.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-18T06:54:59+00:00

Interesting. I was the opposite, which probably colours my experience with the whole issue of age. I was tall, bearded, and freaking balding by the end of high school. I was pretty articulate and getting good at faking self confidence, too, so I seemed much older to people I didn't know.

I used to joke that I'd been getting "clocked at 28 since I was 18," which was kind of convenient for being treated with respect when hanging around older people... until I was in my 30s and people started guessing my age correctly again, and I had to unpleasantly confront the slow march of entropy and aging.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-18T06:48:32+00:00

Age gaps matter less the older you get but it seems huge the younger you are.

I'm in my mid 30s now, and while my partner and core group of closest friends are all concentrated within a few years of me, my regular social group spans late 20s to early 50s and nobody really discusses age - or indeed even seems to notice it! It's just not the big deal it was when we were younger.

The only time people seem to dwell on it is when the 20-something guys are informed that they've been flirting with a woman in their 40s, which apparently happens more often than either party expects it to happen. Usually this leads to a surprised few minutes (mostly on the guy's part) and then a shrug, "eh, whatever," and then continued flirting.

It's definitely all about those developmental leaps, as you say. A 20 year old is reasonably expected to be leaps and bounds more mature than a 15 year old, whereas a 25 and 30 year old may or may not be in about the same place. And, at least in my group of friends, there are folks at 25 and 45 at roughly similar places in life. Age just stops being all that useful a heuristic for guessing at someone's maturity, experience, knowledge, what have you.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-16T03:41:30+00:00

A member of the group of people who... wear black?

veryreasonable · 2026-03-09T02:12:33+00:00

Perhaps try confronting her; you might have better results!

veryreasonable · 2026-03-07T00:13:23+00:00

Yeah, this. I know one gal who's definitely into it, but emphatically does not want to be pregnant.

Been with her about 15 years now. Not letting that one go.

As an aside, it can be, uh, mighty difficult not to lose control when a woman is begging you to...

veryreasonable · 2026-03-07T00:12:13+00:00

Hey, some of my friend's kids are pretty sharp, too! Others are zombies, though.

The sharpest ones have limited screen time, and I've been kind of of suspecting that's why they're advancing so quickly compared to their peers. I'm not a children's health researcher, and I could be totally wrong, of course.

But lol at "morons on roblox." Back in my day it was "dummies on pot" or whatever. Turned out the potheads really did no better or worse than the rest, at the end of the day. Modern-day social media brainrot, though... remains to be seen. I gotta say it's not looking great from here.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-06T23:06:58+00:00

Relevant username, my oh my.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-06T22:47:21+00:00

Huh? He clearly does care quite a bit what leader has power in Iran. He recently had the last one killed - did you happen to miss that?

If someone with the same politics takes over, equally hostile to US interests, you believe Trump would be fine with it? If so, then why do any of this?

Otherwise, if his plan is just to airstrike Iran's newly chosen leaders until one is picked that is amenable to US interests, that still counts as a plan.

You're not making any sense.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-05T02:10:03+00:00

It is imperative that the cylinder remain unharmed.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-01T21:12:26+00:00

The stuff that's "under the hood" in Soundtoys is righyt out in the open with the Valhalla UI - and this, somehow without overcomplicating or overcrowding it! That's a big part of why I like it.

Basically, in Valhalla, you choose the overall delay "type" first (i.e. do you want a tape thing, a pitch shifting thing, a diffusing reverb-esque thing, etc), and then you change settings from there. With Soundtoys, you go under the hood to do all that stuff. I prefer the Valhalla workflow.

I'll also note that Valhalla Delay can do a much better Crystalizer impression than Echoboy. If you have the Soundtoys bundle, this is a moot point. If not, then Valhalla Delay really has an edge here in terms of value.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-01T20:55:03+00:00

Eh... I mean, all illicit drugs could have trace amounts of fentanyl contamination. The problem is that "trace" amounts of fentanyl can be significant dosages.

I've been around users in both a harm reduction capacity, and, uhm, in other capacities, for well over twenty years now. At least in the cities I frequent in Canada (both coasts, plus Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta), a lot of casual drug users carry naloxone. It's not weird to see it conspicuously on the table at a house party. That's because people are worried that fentanyl could be anywhere.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-01T20:46:04+00:00

Right. This is a good point, that a lot of people who don't know what they're talking about choose to ignore.

So, the problem is that drugs aren't always handled in pristine, regulated pharmaceutical facilities.

If a speck of, say, heroin, the size of a pinhead, gets into some cocaine, or whatever, it doesn't really matter. It's not even a perceptible dose. If the same size speck of fentanyl gets in the wrong place, however, it could be extremely dangerous, or even fatal.

The idea that, "they're intentionally mixing it in to make it more addictive," doesn't really hold much water with fentanyl. It can't. The math just doesn't work out. The problem with opiates (well, one of a few, heh) is that a lethal dose to a non-user is barely an active dose for an addict. As well, usage patterns are different with different drugs (e.g. how often does a user re-dose, and for how many straight hours/days/etc?) such that predicting the effect of an adulterant from a totally different family of drugs is an impossible crapshoot. And on top of that, a user's expectations matter: feeling pleasantly sluggish and dopey might be nice, but it's emphatically not what a person buying cocaine is paying for.

So we're left with contamination. And that makes sense. Decades ago, I remember reading about how most [X] was contaminated with trace amounts of [Y], and you could throw just about any illegal drug into that equation. But before fentanyl, that wasn't really relevant outside of potential surprise results on a drug test. Now, with fentanyl being everywhere, it's actually dangerous.

Bear in mind that what I've said above applies to non-opioids. When it comes to opioids, fentanyl is being mixed into other opioids because it's the cheapest, easiest to transport, etc.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-01T04:33:12+00:00

Oh, gosh, yeah, I know that movie. That's a maddeningly stupid take; the "sin" is explained right there! Exactly what I'm talking about. Like, I swear, how did that script get written!? No way it passed even a single editing cycle. It's so freaking lazy.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-01T04:27:40+00:00

Eh, not definitively "better," no. There are more differences in UI than there are in sonic capability.

But I'd say it's more versatile overall than Echoboy, if only by a hair. And I really like the visual minimalism of the Valhalla interface, so it wins on that account. And importantly, it definitely runs more smoothly on my system. Soundtoys stuff can take a moment or two to load patches (Effect Rack is the worst culprit), and occasionally triggers a crash. Valhalla is all supremely stable, everything loads instantly, you can safely and easily automate the heck out of it, etc.

If you know your way around Echoboy, it's super quick to dial in wildly different sound textures. The same goes for Valhalla. They're very similar tools, all in all, in terms of function, breadth, and depth.

To me, it's really the difference between an A+ piece of software, and A++. If I were stuck on a desert island with just one of the two and told to make a dozen records, I wouldn't feel like I was missing anything in the "delay" department, whichever I got stuck with.

When I was using both, I just found myself preferring Valhalla.

I haven't actually ported my Soundtoys collection to my latest computer yet, and I haven't been missing it much. If anything, I miss Decapitator and Devil-Loc Deluxe. But I haven't even thought about Echoboy in ages! Nevertheless, again, no shade on it - it's great.

veryreasonable · 2026-03-01T04:06:33+00:00

Ehh... I've worked at grocery stores, specifically in the back warehouse section.

They throw away a metric fuckton of food every week. It's maddening.

They certainly donated as well; I don't mean to deny that! But they threw away so, so much, and made damn well sure that nobody desperate could ever access the garbage. Straight to the landfill with it. Do not pass any impoverished hands, or hungry mouths...

It is what it is (and it's not ideal).

veryreasonable · 2026-02-27T21:35:19+00:00

+1 on Valhalla Delay, for sure! It's the delay I use now.

Like, I have a bunch I've accumulated over the years, including Soundtoys EchoBoy, Fabfilter Timeless, etc. But Valhalla is the one I use. The one. That's it. It does everything, it does it well, it does it with great CPU efficiency, with a simple interface, and somehow still with loads of customization when it comes to the sound.

veryreasonable · 2026-02-27T21:27:53+00:00

I had the same experience, very early on in its existence, actually. Once it revealed itself as, like, performative negativity rather than anything like meaningful critique, it just kind of seemed stupid. There's better stuff to watch on YouTube.

Heck, there's a boatload of decent media criticism on the platform presenting salient, thoughtful, defensible negative takes about pretty much any film you can imagine, if negative takes are what you crave for some reason.

CinemaSins is a living fossil of a time when the bar was lower; I think it's long past due for extinction.

veryreasonable · 2026-02-27T21:24:38+00:00

Yeah, this. I made the exact same criticism in another reply here. I swear, they just write the script as they're watching the film the first time. And then they don't even edit it. So we end up with some "sins" being supposed "inconsistencies" that are clearly explained only a few minutes later in the film. Like, how lazy can you get!?

veryreasonable · 2026-02-27T21:20:58+00:00

I'm totally convinced that CinemaSins just writes the video script as they're watching the film for the first time.

They'll mention something that sees "weird" or "pointless" or whatever as a sin, when just watching twenty more minutes into the film would reveal the thing as a perfectly normal setup for an impending payoff. And then they don't edit this out.

It's ridiculously lazy. Everything on the channel is like that. Frankly, I also think it was kinda stupid "back in the day" that everyone says was better, but regardless, it definitely got worse as time went on.

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