Random Thought of the Day

[Otherside]

So, what's a polite way of saying "Given the current weather and rail strikes this week, there is about as much chance of me being able to get to Timbuktu tomorrow as there is of me being able to get to the office in London tomorrow", in a way that is appropriate for work?

And no, "we're a team, lets make it happen." doesn't make trains run or clear snow, because for some reason this country grinds to a complete halt when there's a little bit of snow.

I'm really growing to hate that term. "We're a team."

[TuanJie]

I have some DMT that my sister sent me a few months ago, but I'm too afraid to try it. Lol. One of these days.

What an awesome sister you have! I pretty much gave up on even talking about psychedelics with mine. Even though they are the reason we reconnected and she's seen how much they've helped me, the primary response is always with fear. I'm tired of having to deal with others' fears before and after doing something which is scary enough for me as it is.

Some bizarre info: DMT is illegal over here, but it's still possible to legally purchase 5MeO.

[TuanJie]

Yeah, that's basically the same reason why I'm afraid to try it. I don't want to be thrown into psychosis.

@Doseone @Nyctophilia
I know the feeling. The irony of it all is what I had been avoiding my entire life because of mental health issues turned out to be the one thing that actually did help with that. It could have pushed me over the edge as well. There was no way of knowing for sure. It took me 1.5 years of studying and carefully weighing the risk/benefits before I decided to do it. The only reason I eventually took the plunge is because all else had failed and I was about to end my life. I'm looking forward to the time a person in such a position can walk into a clinic an get proper screening, support, and aftercare. Fortunately we're getting very close to that. Apart from that, the idea of looking for fun in this domain while dealing with mental health issues short circuits my brain.

[Otherside]

What an awesome sister you have! I pretty much gave up on even talking about psychedelics with mine. Even though they are the reason we reconnected and she's seen how much they've helped me, the primary response is always with fear. I'm tired of having to deal with others' fears before and after doing something which is scary enough for me as it is.

Some bizarre info: DMT is illegal over here, but it's still possible to legally purchase 5MeO.

To the horror of a certain type of British tourist, who somehow manages to go from "weed and is legal in the coffeeshops and some psychdelics are legal at a retreat in limited quantities for personal use" to "all drugs are legal and we can do what we want."

[Heelsbythebridge]

It'd be great if we can just sign up for medical euthanasia without having to jump through a bunch of hoops. There is a puritanical/religious backing to keep it from being more accessible... I'm sure there is some kind of belief Christians have where suicide is a sin.

[Otherside]

So rail strikes all this week (again.)

Alongside Royal Mail strikes. Alongside Border Force and baggage handlers at airport, Highway maintenance, nurses, civil servants, bus drivers...

Why are they striking? Well, inflation is at 10% and pay is not increasing to match that, we are being told there is no money whilst business reports record profits - in the case of medics, who were handed whooping 1% payrise after covid (but they had everyone clap in appreciation!). And the reality is inflation is supply-side, not due to nurses getting more than 1% in payrises. Rail workers are also striking over proposed changes to the working contracts or staff being cut from rail stations or trains to make them more automated, alongside cutting staff doing safety checks who spot something before a train crash happens, which sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Same time we have people wondering why this is a nurse shortage, why it is that a lot simply immigrate to countries that will pay them more, or why they leave nursing and get another job. Honestly? You'd have a lot more success retaining and recruiting staff if you paid them more.

In other news, diplommunity once again rearing its ugly head. This time, a Chinese diplomat dragging a Hong Kong Protestor into the embassy and assaulting him. And not much anyone can do about it because of Geneva diplommunity, beyond demanding that the immunity is lifted so the police can investigate, or be declared Persona Non Grata and be expelled. China appears to have just recalled them.

Of course, its a slippery slope diplommunity, it likely protects diplomats in authoritarian states like Russia, Iran or North Korea (who by all accounts, get an unusually free life in NK due to diplommunity).

But it does lead to abuses of it where not much can be done beyond expulsion, whether it is Libyan diplomats shooting people from the embassy window (though that guy later fled Libya during regime change and for some bizarre reason, tried to claim asylum in the UK...who just arrested him), or the wife of an American diplomat (sorry, signals expert a military base, though I personally suspect the wife was the actual "signals expert" here*) who ran into a motorcyclist with her car, then used diplommunity to flee, or this new incident with China.

*Spy.

[Nyctophilia]

I refuse to believe half the points in this video are serious discourse and not just trolling. I did notice some of the sports team discourse a while back though lol. 'A masculine cuckery.' Lol. But yeah that's pretty much how they would have to define it using their vocab. I was confused like 1. why are you making me defend sports fans lol? The universe is unbalanced and 2. 'surely you've already alienated enough people now you're coming after the masculine dominant hobby of sports?' I like how they see gaming as simultaneously childish and unmasculine but also if a woman is into it that's basically 'gay' and like dating a guy and also 'she's probably pegging you' ... Lol.... (Obviously a lot of this messaging is contradictory and nobody agrees but yeah.)

Also: "men who collect things creep me out." Lol.

When that one person asked one of these people to provide a list of approved leisure activities he just listed things like changing the oil in a car, upgrading ram in family computer, doing the laundry. These are chores dude not leisure activities. Yes I too have built PC's/upgraded PC parts. I don't actually find this enjoyable at all especially researching parts. I think some guys find this sort of thing enjoyable but I don't, and the inclusion of laundry is sus too who is doing that for fun? You can come and do mine lol.

Quoting shoe in the video: "Also why is it always coffee? Why is it always Starbucks Latte?"



This comment on the video lol:

I've never had any problem with people's attraction preferences but honestly I was very prejudice towards transgenders/gender fluid people until I found 100gecs and Dorian. I used to watch stuff like so and be like ahh this is so weird but now I love it, it's someone being who they want to be, not worrying about judgement, embarrassment etc etc. As a straight "wannabe" alpha male, I wish I could have the same level of confidence and it's made me gain a lot of respect for the LGBTQ community

I think it's because a lot of these accounts are trollish and working with memes. But both sides of the culture war are connected by a visceral fear of pumpkin spice girl(tm.) At some point there's going to be a creepypasta (technically that music video already is one,) in the same way slenderman (who wears a suit,) is a contemporary capitalistic horror creature a bit like the Gentlemen in the Buffy episode Hush (inspired by similar themes I think.) They are new age vampires.

There's an ascetic thread running through a lot of the arguments about fancy drinks, video games and watching sports alongside all the sexual conservatism. They frame their opposition to consumerism and certain forms of sexuality as masculinity (others have commented on how masculinity is a purity culture before though.) This is fairly odd as ascetic lifestyles have a kind of genderless/androgynous quality if anything and a lot of cultural and spiritual roles like this have been associated with third/fourth/fifth genders or women in many cultures. It also becomes quite incoherent/trollish when taken to extremes like Nick Fuentes apologising for having kissed a girl as a teenager and arguing that having sex with women is kind of 'gay.'

After a few meteoric attempts to appropriate its power, the declaration that in Christ there is no more male or female faded into innocuous metaphor, perhaps to await the coming of its proper moment.

In Indonesia:

Oroan? are loosely comparable to cisgender men, makkunrai to cisgender women, calalai to transgender men, and calabai to transgender women,[6] while bissu are loosely comparable to androgynous or intersex people and are revered shamans or community priests.

Bissu initiation is a long process that includes a potentially life-threatening ceremony where they have to prove themselves immune to a ceremonial knife called a keris, Professor Lathief said.

They are also required to remain celibate and wear conservative clothes. In practice, many bissu do partake in sexual activities (especially with oroan?) but this is not widely acknowledged and public recognition is seen as delegitimizing to the bissu's spiritual power

In pre-Islamic Bugis culture, bissu were seen as intermediaries between the people and the gods, according to Indonesian anthropologist Professor Halilintar Lathief. The bissu are closely associated with the female yet androgynous moon goddess, as her spiritual offspring.[12]

By the age of about twelve, if a child demonstrates a close connection with the spirit world, they are groomed to become a bissu. In the past, such a child would be apprenticed to the royal court. Nowadays, a child will become the apprentice of an individual bissu. After many years of training, an apprentice bissu will undergo a number of tests in order to become a bissu. This includes, among many other tests, lying on a bamboo raft in the middle of a lake for three days and three nights without eating, drinking, or moving.

Balkans:

In times when women had a prescribed role, burrnesha gave up their sexual, reproductive and social identities to acquire the same freedoms as men. They could dress as men, be head of the household, move freely in social situations, and take work traditionally open only to men.

The US:

After suffering a severe illness in 1776, the Friend claimed to have died and been reanimated as a genderless evangelist named the Public Universal Friend, and afterward shunned both birth name and gendered pronouns. In androgynous clothes, the Friend preached throughout the northeastern United States, attracting many followers who became the Society of Universal Friends.[5]

The Friend preached sexual abstinence and disfavored marriage, but did not see celibacy as mandatory and accepted marriage, especially as preferable to breaking abstinence outside of wedlock.[81] Most followers did marry, but the portion who did not was significantly above the national average of the time.[62] The preacher also held that women should "obey God rather than men",[80] and the most committed followers included roughly four dozen unmarried women known as the Faithful Sisterhood who took on leading roles of the sort which were often reserved to men.[82] The portion of households headed by women in the Society's settlements (20% ) was much higher than in surrounding areas.[83]

A lot of ascetics are genetically female, non-conforming women and lesbian women. There's an overrepresentation of homosexual people in general (ironically considering the Western masculine purity culture thing and calling everything 'gay.') In the West there are several radical feminists who started off as nuns or otherwise had some Christian background, some of them also later came out as lesbians (a lot of their work makes up the bulk of sex negative/transmisogynistic feminism.) I don't care for their ideology lol. I find Shulamith Firestone and Valerie Solanas interesting (they were both schizophrenic and not part of the ex-nun/christian crowd,) but only because Solanas's 'work' had role reversal and male feminisation themes in, and Shulamith Firestone talked about artificial wombs. So they inspired xenofeminism and cyberfeminism a bit I think (especially Firestone.)

I think elements of 'the right (tm)' do acknowledge masculine male homosexuals occasionally like Yukio Mishima, Jack Donovan and of course Bronze Age Pervert (lol OK, but the first two actually are/were homosexual.)

[Nyctophilia]

@Doseone @Nyctophilia
I know the feeling. The irony of it all is what I had been avoiding my entire life because of mental health issues turned out to be the one thing that actually did help with that. It could have pushed me over the edge as well. There was no way of knowing for sure. It took me 1.5 years of studying and carefully weighing the risk/benefits before I decided to do it. The only reason I eventually took the plunge is because all else had failed and I was about to end my life. I'm looking forward to the time a person in such a position can walk into a clinic an get proper screening, support, and aftercare. Fortunately we're getting very close to that. Apart from that, the idea of looking for fun in this domain while dealing with mental health issues short circuits my brain.

Yeah I know they were doing some research in the UK with DMT for treatment resistant depression and psilocybin. I watched a documentary about that a while ago.

[TuanJie]

To the horror of a certain type of British tourist, who somehow manages to go from "weed and is legal in the coffeeshops and some psychdelics are legal at a retreat in limited quantities for personal use" to "all drugs are legal and we can do what we want."

I guess most (drug) tourist also don't know weed is illegal here as well. It's officially being "tolerated" and has been for decades. Though not legal. Coffee shops are allowed to sell it, but aren't allowed to buy it. It doesn't make legal or economic sense. A trial with legally grown stuff has been postponed again, so organized crime can enjoy for a little while longer. Meanwhile a non profit has been sued for offering cannabis oil to people like myself (sleep issues and such). After loosing, they joined forces with an American company, which is now producing water with a legally allowed percentage of THC and other cannabinoids. The non profit has the ambition to make it available all over the EU, since apparently this is a bit of a loophole in European law.

Magic mushrooms are illegal here as well, after a knee jerk political response to an incident years ago. Only they messed up so it's legal to produce, sell and buy magic truffles which is the same thing in a different form. If we'd done this properly, we'd have an awesome industry now, but it looks like the US has beaten us to it. Welcome to the Netherlands.

[TuanJie]

Yeah I know they were doing some research in the UK with DMT for treatment resistant depression and psilocybin. I watched a documentary about that a while ago.

Magic medicine, by any chance? I remember that ended rather sadly. If I remember correctly after a year or so the participants were all pretty much very depressed again. Rosalind Watts, who was involved as a psychologist, later mentioned in a podcast she had "informed" some of them it's possible to do an ayahuasca retreat in The Netherlands because now they didn't have legal access to the one thing that had worked for them.

[TuanJie]

It'd be great if we can just sign up for medical euthanasia without having to jump through a bunch of hoops. There is a puritanical/religious backing to keep it from being more accessible... I'm sure there is some kind of belief Christians have where suicide is a sin.

That could be a factor. Euthanasia is not an easy topic though, regardless of religion. I bet it's a tough call on the doctors involved, especially so in the case of mental illness. Wouldn't want to be in their shoes. The procedures are also in place to prevent impulsive action. Isn't Canada quite progressive in this regard though?

[Heelsbythebridge]

That could be a factor. Euthanasia is not an easy topic though, regardless of religion. I bet it's a tough call on the doctors involved, especially so in the case of mental illness. Wouldn't want to be in their shoes. The procedures are also in place to prevent impulsive action. Isn't Canada quite progressive in this regard though?

Yes, human euthanasia is legal here. But there are a lot of hoops.

[Otherside]

I guess most (drug) tourist also don't know weed is illegal here as well. It's officially being "tolerated" and has been for decades. Though not legal. Coffee shops are allowed to sell it, but aren't allowed to buy it. It doesn't make legal or economic sense. A trial with legally grown stuff has been postponed again, so organized crime can enjoy for a little while longer. Meanwhile a non profit has been sued for offering cannabis oil to people like myself (sleep issues and such). After loosing, they joined forces with an American company, which is now producing water with a legally allowed percentage of THC and other cannabinoids. The non profit has the ambition to make it available all over the EU, since apparently this is a bit of a loophole in European law.

Magic mushrooms are illegal here as well, after a knee jerk political response to an incident years ago. Only they messed up so it's legal to produce, sell and buy magic truffles which is the same thing in a different form. If we'd done this properly, we'd have an awesome industry now, but it looks like the US has beaten us to it. Welcome to the Netherlands.

Yes, I did hear that. A loophole where the coffee shops can sell it, but they can't buy it, and are buying from the criminals. Every now and then we hear that Amsterdam is getting fed up with the weed tourists and plans to restrict sales to residents only. Whether they will or not though. Can't say I blame them for being fed up.

Is interesting you don't hear of weed tourism to the states, but I guess a 10Euro flight taking 2 hours to get to Amsterdam courtesy of Ryanair is why.

We're unlikely to ever make it legal in the UK. They don't actively prosecute small-time users mind. They've only really allowed for medical use after a few parents were caught smuggling in the oil bught in NL that they used order to treat the kids seizures.

[Nyctophilia]

Magic medicine, by any chance? I remember that ended rather sadly. If I remember correctly after a year or so the participants were all pretty much very depressed again. Rosalind Watts, who was involved as a psychologist, later mentioned in a podcast she had "informed" some of them it's possible to do an ayahuasca retreat in The Netherlands because now they didn't have legal access to the one thing that had worked for them.

The documentary was on the BBC called The Psychedelic Drug Trial but I also remember watching a Ted Talk before watching that some time ago and looking it up now that was with Rosalind Watts. I think she was in the documentary too. You used to be able to watch the BBC documentary on YouTube because a few people uploaded it but not sure if it's still possible. Tbh I'm surprised they allowed it because the UK is really strict with drugs and very traditionalist about it eg: David Nutt (also involved in the trial) a previous chief government advisor was asked to resign back in 2009 after saying ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

I think she did say that a lot of people found their symptoms improved on psilocybin, but I don't remember if it worked permanently for anyone. I think a lot of people improved for about 2 months and the effects were immediate and without side effects (so if it scales fairly well there's an advantage there for a lot of people over anti depressants.) But yeah they'd have to take more at some point and unfortunately after the trial is over that wouldn't be an option in the UK.

Just noticed this has been uploaded recently too:

[Otherside]

I feel like I am the only person on the planet who doesn't give a crap about this stupidly dragging on, Harry and Meghan royal family drama.

So they left the UK to start there own life because the tabloids are god awful (not news). Good for them. I do not think I would want the royal life either.

Mind you, it is a bit disturbing that there is a lot more coverage of this than there was about Prince Andrew. Yes, age of consent is 16 here. But trafficking is still a crime here. As is "I was pressured to sleep with him because Epstein would have had me killed had I refused." I mean, for someone who insists that he is innocent, he certainly behaves guilty.

- The car crash interview -> "She is lying 'because I don't sweat.'.
- Refusal to participate in any US investigation regarding the whole Epstein affair, won't even go to an interview.
- Cancelling holidays because be wouldn't be able to use his royal privilege, and would probably be arrested and extradited to the US, and for some stupid reason, the UK won't.
- Hiding from lawyers so that he can't be sued, because he didn't receive the court summons.