Forty years… forty… years… I wonder if there was something *new *that our liberal democracy started forty years ago, where the focus shifted towards expanding economic growth at all costs.
Nah. If the climate crisis turns into societal collapse, and my future children want to avoid the pain of living through the apocalypse, they can kill themselves when things turn bleak. It’s the same choice we all have. There’s always a way off the ride. Every day any of us live is a day deemed better than the alternative.
That human life is worth living, but circumstances may not always be, so we reserve the right to choose our own exit from it, or that choosing to live is saying life is better than death?
Tell me where I said I’d teach a child suicide should be front of mind. All I mean is they should get to choose if they live - in response to someone pleading that we all stop having children.
I want to have a child. Why should I not, because the world could be in rough shape due to climate catastrophe? I’ll let them make that call and I hope they don’t have to.
In arguing that doctors shouldn’t pay tax on more of their capital gains when they retire because they often have no access to a pension, they’re ignoring that pension income is fucking taxed.
Such a strange thing to celebrate. This kind of service should really be run by the municipality. Like, my city has a dozen eco-stations for dropping off some chemicals, electronic waste and furniture or other household stuff that can be broken down for scrap. E-waste is always free.
A Canadian humanitarian organization says its primary water aid truck was bombed in Gaza and is calling on the federal government to mount a full investigation into what it believes was a “targeted” incident....
Everything I know about liquid containers I learned from the TSA. Any liquid could be a secret explosive, so Israel had to blow it up to be sure it was really water. Destroying the water was an unfortunate and necessary measure to ensure the safety of all Gazans.
I’ve smoked so much weed in the years since legalization. I was a regular smoker before, too, but my consumption habits spiked after - especially during the COVID years. As in heavy, chronic, daily use.
I started cutting down drastically late last year, and I’m quitting for good now. Cannabis hasn’t had a positive effect on my mental health.
Chronic and heavy use have definitions, for anyone who doesn’t know. Regularly consuming cannabis twice or more per week is considered Chronic use. Heavy use is anything more than two times per week or ten times per month. Almost all of my friends are heavy, chronic users.
It’s complex, and subjective, and maybe a bit sad, but here’s my best shot at describing my decision.
Cannabis enhances most forms of passive entertainment and makes menial tasks less dull, which is great, but that also makes it habit forming. It tends to affect you in one of two ways, depending on your body chemistry and the strain you’re using. You’re either going to be comfortably immobile, or pleasantly flighty, in either case it becomes difficult to focus on complex tasks or plan ahead and makes your problems feel distant.
This combination of effects, in my experience, creates a feedback loop. The habit of smoking to enjoy tasks you wouldn’t otherwise combined with a decrease in drive to perform complex tasks that are both harder to do and less likely to be thought of when stoned and a distance from your troubles, results in more time spent blissfully drifting through life.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I had clearly enjoyed it for years. But it became difficult to do much of anything. I was stuck in this loop that I didn’t even see. I lost friends during COVID (not to the disease, they’re still alive just not my friends) and I allowed my life to shrink so much… My circle of friends, my chosen activities and the locations I physically inhabited all became limited and static during and after. It was a slow process, and I can’t blame it all on cannabis, but smoking weed dulled the pain as I slowly became less and less of myself. When I smoke weed I am less apt to focus on my ills and if I can’t focus on them, I can’t change them.
Being stoned left me more apt to just chill out and let my life continue rolling along the same dissatisfying course. Imagine a snowball rolling downhill, but instead of picking up snow as it goes, it leaves it behind. Shrinking and shrinking, until it stops. Momentum no longer able to carry it along.
This diminishing of myself was leaving me more and more depressed. Months would pass where I only left my apartment to walk my dog or buy groceries. I lost interest in the activities I enjoyed. I lost interest in my partner. I lost interest in my self, because why would I be interested in someone who was nothing and did nothing. I was on the edge of losing myself, to myself. I spent more time imagining my own death than imagining a life I wanted to live.
I took a hard look at how I spent my days, and saw that one thing took the place of all of those others that I used to love. I was spending my days stoned and alone and unhappy. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think an addiction to weed pushed anything out of my life - I wasn’t seeking weed at anything’s expense and I never started until after working hours so I kept a semblance of a life - it just filled the holes all those people, places, activities and things I lost left behind and made it much harder to recognize the decline of my well-being.
So I cut down, and started calling my family more. Then I did some research. I looked at the physiological effects of cannabis - the way THC interacts with your endogenous cannabinoid receptors, which are in every part of your body from your brain and your eyes to your gut and your gonads, and it floods them with a molecule thousands of times more potent than they would otherwise have. It disrupts the neurological feedback system that your brain uses to reinforce synaptic routes. It overrides your guidance system, not through dopamine release causing seeking behavior like most drugs, but by effectively telling you to just relax by making everything you do feel equally as rewarding as anything else.
I was starting to feel better after just cutting down and reaching out, so I looked at what I got from THC and what I wanted from my life, and I decided to leave it behind entirely.
Even as a non-medical user, sleep is a hard adjustment. When I stopped using, I stopped sleeping through the night.
I do have to say that I feel less groggy when I wake up now, after an adjustment period, than I ever did while I smoked heavily. Though I think I’m just generally more alert - I’m still not sleeping well.
Pain is tough. I hope you find a solution that works for you. ❤️
Canada’s living standards alarmingly on track to be the lowest in 40 years: study (nationalpost.com)
Patriarchy According to The Barbie Movie (archive.org)
I’m kind of amazed that this is getting downvotes after 20 minutes, even though the video is 33 minutes. I guess you already saw this?
Thousands ordered to evacuate Fort McMurray as wildfire threatens (www.youtube.com)
Olivia Chow skips Toronto's Israeli flag raising event as 'it's a bit divisive' (nationalpost.com)
‘There’s a war going on in the Middle East and people are protesting every weekend,’ the Mayor of Toronto said in a statement
‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair (www.theguardian.com)
cross-posted from: lemmynsfw.com/post/11288860...
Trudeau dismisses plea from doctors to reconsider capital gains tax change (www.cbc.ca)
huggingface.co (sopuli.xyz)
At just 15 years old, this entrepreneur owns a scrapyard in one of N.L.'s busiest industrial parks (www.cbc.ca)
Israel-Palestine war: Canadian charity says aid truck bombed in Gaza in 'targeted' attack (www.cbc.ca)
A Canadian humanitarian organization says its primary water aid truck was bombed in Gaza and is calling on the federal government to mount a full investigation into what it believes was a “targeted” incident....
How much can homeowners expect to pay after capital gains tax increase? (www.youtube.com)
TL;DW...
Liberals accuse Conservatives of using AI for amendments to jobs bill as votes loom (www.cbc.ca)
'Tall order to ask the average Canadian': EVs are twice as hard to sell today (financialpost.com)
The best coffee for the planet might not be coffee at all (grist.org)
How a cannabis crash is weeding out the field, while it's a slow burn for others trying to survive (www.cbc.ca)
Canada unveils updated defence policy, plan to spend $73B over 20 years on renewing military capacity (www.ctvnews.ca)
Fuck ads at the gas pump
Idk if this is the right instance for this, but how fucking tired of these forced ads at gas pumps is everyone else?...
Life Hack (lemm.ee)