Brian Klass is a political scientist who recently put out his own philosophy of chaos theory. I think it’s a pretty useful tool to look at contemporary movements and really refutes the “it couldn’t possibly happen here” message.

Pre-2011 there was a paper published on why middle eastern dictatorships were so stable. The next year almost all of them fell. Klass argues that the author wasn’t wrong, they just were working with the rules and tools we knew at the time, but didn’t know the rules had changed with the invention of social media.

In his perspective, the idea of a “fluke” is not a fluke at all, it’s a data point showing that things are changing and changing fast. Things just feel like flukes when our assumptions of the way things work become outdated.

More like “I already am, but now I won’t have to pretend as much”

I think this might be to make sure the defacto castration of the courts is now written into law

When I say “not my president”, it’s not me refusing to acknowledge Trump’s authority/ being a sovereign citizen. It’s me saying he is acting in a deliberately antagonist way. He sees us as the enemy. He isn’t leading, in fact he’s doing the opposite.

Here’s what’s supposed to be normal: even if you don’t vote for someone in office, you are still their responsibility. JB Pritzker still has a responsibility to protect Republicans in Illinois. Greg Abbott still has the responsibility to protect democrats in Texas.

Hey! Vsauce, Michael here. Did you know I can kick your ass? But what does it mean to kick? And what is an ass? Turns out, kicking means fucking and ass means your mom.

Technoserfdom

Are you trying to tell me that the screenshot of some post from some rando who writes super assertively is WRONG!?

20 if I showered, 3 if I didn’t

USA, self employed so 0 hours PTO but also don’t have to deal with an HR department to take time off.

My first thoughts of Al-Sharaa was that he was serious about reform from the Assad regime. I realized I haven’t followed up much on how things are going though, so if y’all wanna correct me go for it.

Excuse you, Tom Lehrer is far from a neocon.

I may also be biased because I grew up in Seattle so I learned English by watching Frasier. I got bullied a lot.

I’m imagining the world worst roommate saying this to get out of dishes for the tenth time

It does make you dumber, and so does alcohol. As we all know, the only drug that makes you smarter is huffing glue pantsless on a unicycle.

Saw a dude like that in Portland once. He had it all figured out.

Weed is addictive and has physical withdrawal symptoms.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7146100/

We need to treat weed like we do alcohol. It’s not the devil but it isn’t a saint either.

It’s sad to see a lot of the misinformation here that says there are no downsides to weed. In fact, weed has a ton of downsides that need to be considered in how marijuana is handled in a society.

If you are a visual/ audio learner, here’s a well researched video on the downsides of weed, from a source that acknowledges their staffs personal biases lean towards legalization.

Kurzgesagt, "We Have to Talk About Weed

Basically, we need to recognize that due to having criminalized weed for so long, we are only now getting the research into the negative effects of weed, but as it’s coming out we are seeing how weed is not all sunshine and rainbows.

THC potency has increased dramatically since the 60s, and that has led to increased risks of paranoia, psychosis, and panic attacks. It also increases the risk of Cannabinoid Hypermesis Syndrome, where ingesting weed will make you vomit, nauseous, and have horrible abdominal pain.

My roommate just got this and she is not having fun. Her doctor told her this may be a 6 month T-break, but it’s also possible this is permanent, and best to avoid weed altogether.

I also am sad to see “weed is not addictive” being thrown around. Cannabis Use Disorder (weed addiction) is very real and a quick look up says 10% of users become addicted. Personally I consider myself stuck on a habit since I can control my use to keeping it after 8pm, but I still have trouble not getting high daily. I have a friend who is now 100 days sober, but when he had a relapse last year, it ruined his life.

That’s not to say it’s bad, I have another friend who needs weed to help him get through the day with his PTSD. We just need to recognize one person’s medicine is another person’s poison.

Most all of the major issues with weed tend to show up with people who began smoking in adolescence. I think a reason I’m somewhat I’m control and my other friend is not is that I started smoking at 22 in college, and he started at 16. I imagine if I waited until I was 25 I’d have no problem making it a weekend thing.

That said

My experience and the pain many have dealing with the health issues associated to weed are no where near comparable to the damage that criminalized weed has had on marginalized communities as weed has historically been used to target and oppress minorities by our US government. I also agree to the points that having a black market is FAR worse than having legal weed that needs regulation.

Personally I’m pro-legalization, but I think we need to be careful at how we are messaging weed to the youths and handling the negative consequences, as the myths of weed just being an innocent plant are super harmful.

Idk if you’re a nerd, but Brian Klass is a contemporary political scientist who actually challenges this, and yet still affirms a determinist lense. His latest book is on his chaos theory that I think can be helpful navigating our current world.

Here’s his big think interview if you’re interested!

One way to think of this is that we can’t predict the future with what we know of the past because the “rules” are constantly changing. One example is an academic paper that was written that said middle eastern dictatorships were especially stable in comparison to others, but then a year later the Arab Spring occurs. His take is that the author wasn’t wrong- based on all the information of the past it made sense that these dictatorships were not going away anytime soon, but what happened was the world changed making those assumptions moot.

So the idea that European democracies are inherently stable isn’t necessarily a given, and as our world is drastically changing, our tools to gauge the health of a democracy are becoming less and less relevant.

Man, how low do you think Trump III’s approval rating will be?

Jesse Wells has a line that gets me every time:

“Time is not a mirror/ it’s some distorted view/ of the way you thought you was/ and what you thought they thought of you”

A) mental health would absolutely improve so I’d have more energy for

B) producing more shows and putting on more events. Personally I don’t want to retire because I want to create a career where if I did retire I’d just do what I was doing anyway. I’m kinda doing that now but I have more BS and stress to deal with.

At the end of the day it all comes down to the role of the dice.