Hahahahaha oh lord now they’re lecturing us on the glories of nicotine.
Tucker: They hate nicotine. They love THC.. Why do they hate nicotine? Because nicotine frees your mind and thc makes you compliant and passive pic.twitter.com/M73aC2IeWy
The only thing that frees my mind is unconsciousness. I learned this through trial and error, so forgive me if I’m dubious of people who tell me that chemicals or supernatural intervention ‘free the mind.’ I mean, we’re going to have the *what is freedom?* discussion first, so it’s usually a non-starter.
my conspiracy theory is that indeed the powers that be have supported cannabis legalization because it can make people passive. a passive population is a good thing in our increasingly fraught world if one is a member of the elite. I detest the smell of that burning weed and the incessant advertising drumbeat thst cannabis solves all human ills.
Don’t know where the idea that coffin nails free your mind????
A star can sit there for millions or billions of years slowly fusing hydrogen into helium. When it runs out of hydrogen, the star contracts, gets hotter and brighter, and starts fusing helium into carbon. When it runs out of helium, it again contracts, gets hotter and brighter, and starts fusing carbon into neon.
The star continues in this way, fusing lighter elements into heavier ones. Each stage in the process produces less energy than the last, and goes by faster. The last stage fuses elements to produce iron, and takes about a day.
Iron is the endpoint. After iron, there is no more energy to be gotten from nuclear fusion. After that the star collapses and goes super-nova (i.e. it explodes).
The right-wing media machine reminds me of this. They are caught in a cycle where they have to tell more and more extreme–outlandish–stories in order to hold onto their audience. As the stories get more extreme, they get less actual return for them, so they have to spin the cycle faster and faster.
I don’t know what happens when they hit iron. Maybe Tucker Carlson’s head explodes.
twiliter, agree totally. I have heard that meditation makes your mind free; maybe so, but I never managed to make meditation work. I can’t sit still doing absolutely nothing that long. Besides, that isn’t the way I want my mind to be free.
My mind isn’t free, and won’t be. It is shaped by my family, my friends, my schools, any TV or movies I watched, any music I listened to…the list goes on. There is no free mind past the age of…I don’t know, maybe three?
I’ve got no issues with nicotine; I’m as addicted to caffeine and it’s not significantly different in its effects and drawbacks.
I’ve got an issue with people filling my air with nasty smoke (which is just the same with marijuana cigarettes). Smoke shit in your house, not in the public right of way.
BKiSA, I do see one significant difference. I drink coffee because it opens up my bronchial passages so I can breathe; definitely a plus, at least, if you like breathing. As an asthmatic, I see it as a necessity these days.
Smoking, on the other hand, takes my breath away. Someone smoking around me could literally kill me. But my cup of coffee isn’t going to kill some random person who happens to wander by.
Sure, smoke in your own house…but not if there are other people there. I grew up in a house full of smoke (only one smoker; it doesn’t take a lot of smokers to generate a lot of smoke). The various lung disorders in our family could be congenital…but when you grow up around smoke, how can you be sure?
Also vaping, it’s marketed as non-carcinogenic, but I’ve had the misfortune of getting a whiff of that acrid nico-berry stench a few too many times. I think the only way to ingest nicotine is to keep it to oneself. I can even smell it in traffic from several cars away, just like tobacco smoke. I also grew up among smokers, so much so that my eyes burned from it, and being trapped in a car with it was the worst. Needless to say I never succumbed to peer pressure and started smoking as a teenager simply because it was so disgusting.
But my cup of coffee isn’t going to kill some random person who happens to wander by.
Maybe you’re not doing it right…
Try to outlaw jumping from high bridges, or start a campaign pointing out the dangers of the bends.
Well, we almost got TFG with the whole “Don’t look at the sun during an eclipse!” thing. If he’d been a traditional, horror literature vampire, it would have been WHOOOF! game, set, and match. Unfortunately he was just one of those big, pastey orange leaches with yellow hair.
This promotion of tobacco smoking by today’s Right might be related to Ayn Rand’s fetishizing of the habit. Certainly her acolytes in the Ayn Rand Institute considered smoking as an act of solidarity with her, and I seem to recall that she pushed her early followers into picking up the habit, as she considered it a metaphor for the lonely spark of Objectivist intellect burning against the surrounding altruistic darkness.
IIRC from reading an early biography of her she also supported smoking because anyone who didn’t was nefariously denying tobacco companies their fair share of rightfully-earned capitalist profit.
At about age 20 I read a bunch of Rand’s writing and was somewhat impressed. However, I already knew smoking was horrible for ones health. Reading her idolization of smoking made me think, “If she is so badly wrong about this, what else is she wrong about”.
Fairly sure Sherlock would agree, though. Of course, Sherlock would also extoll the virtues of cocaine, so take that as you will.
Holmes wasn’t fully informed about the effects of smoking on the lungs.
Truly a three pipe problem, that.
The only thing that frees my mind is unconsciousness. I learned this through trial and error, so forgive me if I’m dubious of people who tell me that chemicals or supernatural intervention ‘free the mind.’ I mean, we’re going to have the *what is freedom?* discussion first, so it’s usually a non-starter.
my conspiracy theory is that indeed the powers that be have supported cannabis legalization because it can make people passive. a passive population is a good thing in our increasingly fraught world if one is a member of the elite. I detest the smell of that burning weed and the incessant advertising drumbeat thst cannabis solves all human ills.
Don’t know where the idea that coffin nails free your mind????
There is this thing that happens as stars age.
A star can sit there for millions or billions of years slowly fusing hydrogen into helium. When it runs out of hydrogen, the star contracts, gets hotter and brighter, and starts fusing helium into carbon. When it runs out of helium, it again contracts, gets hotter and brighter, and starts fusing carbon into neon.
The star continues in this way, fusing lighter elements into heavier ones. Each stage in the process produces less energy than the last, and goes by faster. The last stage fuses elements to produce iron, and takes about a day.
Iron is the endpoint. After iron, there is no more energy to be gotten from nuclear fusion. After that the star collapses and goes super-nova (i.e. it explodes).
The right-wing media machine reminds me of this. They are caught in a cycle where they have to tell more and more extreme–outlandish–stories in order to hold onto their audience. As the stories get more extreme, they get less actual return for them, so they have to spin the cycle faster and faster.
I don’t know what happens when they hit iron. Maybe Tucker Carlson’s head explodes.
twiliter, agree totally. I have heard that meditation makes your mind free; maybe so, but I never managed to make meditation work. I can’t sit still doing absolutely nothing that long. Besides, that isn’t the way I want my mind to be free.
My mind isn’t free, and won’t be. It is shaped by my family, my friends, my schools, any TV or movies I watched, any music I listened to…the list goes on. There is no free mind past the age of…I don’t know, maybe three?
Yeah, so long ago we were too young to remember. My mind is free of those memories for sure.
How can you free your mind from your brain? Or from awareness of reality of reality?
Wow, that’s pretty trippy Colin. ;)
I’ve got no issues with nicotine; I’m as addicted to caffeine and it’s not significantly different in its effects and drawbacks.
I’ve got an issue with people filling my air with nasty smoke (which is just the same with marijuana cigarettes). Smoke shit in your house, not in the public right of way.
BKiSA, I do see one significant difference. I drink coffee because it opens up my bronchial passages so I can breathe; definitely a plus, at least, if you like breathing. As an asthmatic, I see it as a necessity these days.
Smoking, on the other hand, takes my breath away. Someone smoking around me could literally kill me. But my cup of coffee isn’t going to kill some random person who happens to wander by.
Sure, smoke in your own house…but not if there are other people there. I grew up in a house full of smoke (only one smoker; it doesn’t take a lot of smokers to generate a lot of smoke). The various lung disorders in our family could be congenital…but when you grow up around smoke, how can you be sure?
The left: we dislike A.
The right: Oh really? Then suddenly we love A and fuck you for disliking it!
Also vaping, it’s marketed as non-carcinogenic, but I’ve had the misfortune of getting a whiff of that acrid nico-berry stench a few too many times. I think the only way to ingest nicotine is to keep it to oneself. I can even smell it in traffic from several cars away, just like tobacco smoke. I also grew up among smokers, so much so that my eyes burned from it, and being trapped in a car with it was the worst. Needless to say I never succumbed to peer pressure and started smoking as a teenager simply because it was so disgusting.
[…] a comment by Steven on Nicotine frees your […]
I think I’ll add that I have known a few smokers who are so conscientious about it that you wouldn’t know they smoked unless they told you.
@Holms,
The left should start weaponizing that. Try to outlaw jumping from high bridges, or start a campaign pointing out the dangers of the bends.
Maybe you’re not doing it right…
Well, we almost got TFG with the whole “Don’t look at the sun during an eclipse!” thing. If he’d been a traditional, horror literature vampire, it would have been WHOOOF! game, set, and match. Unfortunately he was just one of those big, pastey orange leaches with yellow hair.
This promotion of tobacco smoking by today’s Right might be related to Ayn Rand’s fetishizing of the habit. Certainly her acolytes in the Ayn Rand Institute considered smoking as an act of solidarity with her, and I seem to recall that she pushed her early followers into picking up the habit, as she considered it a metaphor for the lonely spark of Objectivist intellect burning against the surrounding altruistic darkness.
Ohhh that’s interesting. And hilarious.
IIRC from reading an early biography of her she also supported smoking because anyone who didn’t was nefariously denying tobacco companies their fair share of rightfully-earned capitalist profit.
So we have to buy every product on the market? I did not know that.
Re: Ayn Rand & smoking
At about age 20 I read a bunch of Rand’s writing and was somewhat impressed. However, I already knew smoking was horrible for ones health. Reading her idolization of smoking made me think, “If she is so badly wrong about this, what else is she wrong about”.