If you've never read a Pulitzer Prize Winner, Confederacy of Dunces would be a personally-relatable disaster (to start with; it's great).
>Psychedelics are one of my favorite classes of drug.
Your initial description of usage was probably a bit wreckless, but I do maintain that most people would probably benefit from a single (or few) psilocybin experiences (preferably an initial high-dosage with a well-trained sitter).
Microdosing is a fantastic long-term strategy, before starting more-prescribed methodologies towards happiness. Probably not useful without an initial high-dosage, first (or much cloudier/ineffective).
Such is natural when what one gets out of it is subjective, and there haven't been "real" academic studies on it yet. But, there is some consensus that it does seem to do something above placebo, even if all it does is say, lift spirits a little, or slightly increase creativity or neuroplasticity, etc.
I certainly have been reckless with it, but it helped me a lot to cope with constant high stress without resorting to more immediately harmful things. It also gave me a lot of nice experiences, unique insight and other things like that. Before this dysfunction started, bad experiences were pretty rare rather than practically every time...
Cannot say the same for psilocybin. Far as I can tell, I majorly overdosed the first time, because I fainted, hit my head and had to go to the hospital for staples.
Around a week later I took the same dose again (the rest of what I had) to help process the trauma. (It did help. I of course avoided the situation that made me faint the first time)
I'd want to try psilocybin again sometime; it's quite a bit more expensive than LSD but it does have an interesting profile (for me: less stimulant-like)
Wow, yeah maybe cool off things for a while. You have some wild experiences. We have legal truffles in NL, come and visit, they are not so expensive here. But maybe trip with a guide for a while.
It's been years since then. At the end of the day it's FAFO.
That fainting episode wouldn't have been prevented with a guide unless they followed me into the bathroom, since for some reason the smell is what caused me to faint. (I found this out during the second time when going near the bathroom made me feel fainty -- I am glad I figured out what it was so that I could avoid it. It would've sucked to conclude that I can't have psilocybin at all, or something)
I will actually end up visiting the NL for other reasons eventually, so I might look into magic truffles :)
Thirty years ago, Apple made a translucent green ADB "keypad" which had a small LCD display (perhaps only two lines of text?) – marketed towards academics, it allowed students to learn touch-typing without the distractions of an entire computer.
Once you were happy with your touch-typed document, you then plugged the "keypad" directly into your Mac's ADB (keyboard/mouse) port... and the thing would sit there and manually re-type your composition into the computer's texteditor.
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Education needs such "reduced tech" to return to teaching. Think of this one as a "more advanced typewriter" – although I own a few of those, too, and they're fantastic for pure composition.
I don't use them, but that is surprising! I would program one of my theoretical phone's physical side buttons to handle PgDn/PgUp [†] – similar to my old Kindle's layout. Do phones still have side volume buttons (e.g.)?
[†] Thanks for the better styling, than my former Page_Up &c
I think this somewhat federation causes problems similar (by design!) to those that the Federal System within the United States encourages. The "finger pointing" allows for status quo to carry on as usual, while the overlapping & glacial judicial systems legislate glacially from their antiquated benches...
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Hopefully we can all take inspiration from the living memories of balkanization – smaller groups, hopefully with shared interests and common backgrounds, ought to be in charge of themselves; and themselves, only.
It's a give/take. Even Israel & Spain have fenced borders (the latter on African continent)[i.e. it's not just USA "being racist"].
Every jurisdiction needs to limit immigration more (which EU's dispersed jurisdictions make impossible, by statute) before any one country can tackle any of their other lacks/disputes. The current EU setup is the inverse of USA's, where the feds technically regulate most immigration issues (instead of EU's individual memberstates having most power), but not all.
Balkanisation refers to fences within one’s borders. It’s fragmentation that leads to less wealth, less security and eventually a loss of sovereignty to a powerful neighbor who notices.
I understand and encourage the "breaking up" aspect. Smaller, more home-rule societies.
Looking at it from the Slovene POV (which ultimately benefited from the dissolution of Yogoslavia, occurring within my/most lifetime), local industries/GDP benefitted greatly.
Slovenia joined EU rather fast (2003), so that might also have contributed to the prosperity. Joining EU is not exactly "breaking up", is more like "joining".
Currently, the rest of ex-Yugoslavia countries don't seem to do as well as Slovenia, and the main difference is date of joining the EU...
Slovenia has been doing way better than the rest of Yogoslavia for longer than it's been a country... it's one of the reasons they lead initial Days War. IIRC their GDP (regionally) was 6x the Yogoslavian average in 1990~
The problem with any Sycophancy is that eventually [even the most-egalitarian] leaders lose both perspective as well as control (of their entire organization... world).
Even if the leader wants to hear honest criticism – to receive capital `t` Truth, IMHO: rare – his echelons will sequester any challenge(s) to their status quo, often by excluding dissent(er)s.
Are these "favors" rank-blind (i.e. does its hushhush-nature more-equalize the men, just trying to secure places to live)? Obviously officers and enlisted have different housing, but might an E-6 kiss an E-5's ass only on account of wanting his soon-to-be-vacated housing?
My background is non-military (with one each, officer & enlisted, brother).
Nobody is entirely correct/wrong about the coming Future changes. Nobody knows what is reasonably believable, anymore...
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