Posts by mark taslov
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Speaker: Cannabis: make it legal but…, in reply to SimonD,
none of that really strikes me as a strong argument for continuing to foster a black market – It’s not something I’ve looked into but are there any other localities where legalising cannabis has caused the price to drop to unprofitable levels?
Moreover the big profits thought of when one thinks of fields of weed are based around a high risk illegal industry, no risk no reward.
Which it will continue to be as long as selling is prohibited under this proposed model, no?
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Speaker: We shouldn’t have to look back…, in reply to TracyMac,
Really enjoying the whataboutism here, not
Something I feel I’m missing here; every commentator up to that point makes noises in concordance with the non-controversial premise that the biggest threat to our safety comes from men i.e the discussion is centered on men – So I can’t fathom the reasoning for jump starting the conversation to talking about women perps:
How many women commit sexual assaults against complete strangers?
and male victims:
How many non-femme men feel anxious walking along a quiet street at night?
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Speaker: We shouldn’t have to look back…, in reply to SHG,
men kill themselves more often than women.
Except in the PRC (26% of global suicides) and few other outlying countries.
It turns out that the humans with the greatest interest and ability at stalking and killing other humans are almost all male.
But we’re not allowed to have that conversation.
Something I feel I’m missing here is; isn’t that pretty much the *only* conversation we’ve had about gender and violence since pretty much forever; this lethality being *the* historical justification for everything from the make up of militaries worldwide for centuries to the segregation of modern sports?
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Speaker: Cannabis: make it legal but…, in reply to SimonD,
Surely looking at alcohol and tobacco would tell you that letting in big business is a recipe for disaster.
I’m with you on that – I just don’t understand why that necessitates extending the absolutist prohibition on selling for profit – especially with our tourist numbers – but I’m poor af and as you’ve noticed, a little bothered by the inherent ableism. In terms of the local market I thought this regional approach had some merit worth exploring (with an eye on developing an export market) – more so than some of the schemes I’ve heard the MoRD getting behind.
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Speaker: Cannabis: make it legal but…, in reply to SimonD,
Uruguay still has a black market to cater largely for tourists who are prohibited from purchasing cannabis, the productive capacity is failing to meet demand with people lined up outside pharmacies, they’re lagging behind pro-prohibition countries on medicinal cannabis, fights between criminal gangs, mostly associated with drugs, made up 59% of all homicides in the first quarter of 2018, roughly double the percentage in 2012 and of an estimated 147,000 Uruguayans between the ages of 18 and 65 who consume marijuana so far only about 35,000 have registered to use the legal marijuana system. Even with legal users sharing their pot, Uruguay’s cannabis control institute says that the regulated market only reaches about 50% of the country’s users.
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
Perhaps he would consider ‘smoking’ to be false spelling
I've no idea - it wasn't intended as a personal attack, part of a wider trend.
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This week in mythbusting the article:
TERF stands for ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’ and is used as a way of denigrating any woman who questions the current craze of people – overwhelmingly men – who say they were born into the wrong body."
This depiction plays on the stigmatisation of femininity and dienigration of trans women as class traitors moving against a societal current which rewards adherence to masculinity.
While it hinges on data showing that in popular history trans woman have been more visible, like many of the motifs these groups employ, it functionality is contingent on the ongoing erasurre of trans men, non-binary people etc.
Contrary to the journalist misrepresentation of ‘the current craze’ (see transtrender slur) the current demographic shift is moving in entirely the opposite direction.
Appointments to the Wellington Endocrine Service for Capital & Coast DHB from Jan 1990 to the end of 2016 show that in recent years the largest increase in referrals is for trans men (table 1). Up from 9 in 2012 to 41 in 2016 compared to trans women; up from 22 to 51 over the same period – corresponding with global trends where applicable.
The reasons for this are many but not altogether difficult to comprehend.
• Today, there is more easily-accessible information regarding transgender individuals. Hence, people (in general) are more informed and educated. That translates into an overall increase in acceptance.
• The fact that people are more and more accepting, means that more people are able to express themselves authentically, with a reduced risk of discrimination. (Although discrimination is still very prevalent.)
• In the past, more transgender people would remain “closeted” (i.e., would not transition) for fear of persecution. However, there is less and less of a need to do that now. Thus, there is an increased visibility of transgender individuals. So while it may appear that the numbers are increasing, the reality is that you’re actually getting a more realistic idea of the numbers (which actually aren’t that high).
To that last point I can personally attest having occupied the grey area for some time (largely due to living abroad with no access to gender affirmation processes) – to better contextualise this here’s a photo my wife took of me on our first date in March 2011. While I have been ‘out’ for years for the vast majority of my online engagement/ work etc, based on a 2010 thread I remained uncertain about some attitudes and had long since learned it’s better to be safe than sorry – there are no uniforms. Obviously as I latterly discovered the folk on this site are pretty damn supportive.
As for this increase in referrals for trans men – well unlike trans women (where in Aotearoa we’ve been so fortunate), for trans men there haven’t been so many visible role models, Chaz Bono being something of a ‘pioneer’ in that regard, coming out in 2009, reaching a wider audience with the 2011 film Becoming Chaz.
So I feel it’s somewhat disingenuous of the journalist to dismiss what is more of an awakening of sorts wrt the misinformation and erasure we’ve been fed and readily and unquestioningly consumed than so much of a ’current craze’.
Depends on your motivations I guess.
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Speaker: Cannabis: make it legal but…, in reply to SimonD,
Even the most socially anxious can manage a pot plant surely?
I recall a few years back I supported this type of approach, just to give some idea of what I understand this would entail. An annual supply for a mid to heavy smoker would equate to the harvest of roughly 4 mid sized plants. Firstly if people are growing indoors that’s going to involve a measurable upsurge in electricity usage – inefficient with such small quantities – meaning more money than necessary going to power companies and more strain on our infrastructure.
Given New Zealand’s favourable climate it makes little sense not to be harnessing the naturally conducive elements – however this brings with it issues such as storage of reasonably high quantities of cannabis which are prone to mould (in which case the affected produce must be discarded at the risk of putting an extra burden on the health system) in our damp homes – vigilance in flowering season is a must if dealing with unsexed seeds given the potential for fertilisation and the loss of an entire annual crop – note that this might be around eight plants in a two smoker household – which then also brings with it a higher risk of theft (either in storage or while growing) – and the repurposed policing of that – also accounting for the means people require to protect their crops – and potential abuse by those who are underage – ’whose gonna miss a couple of grams when mum and dad have 7 ounces?’.
Accounting for these potential risks based on the vast quantities many people will then have at their disposal also – as far as I’ve observed – negatively influences smoking habits and fuels abuse.
But the key issue with this proposed model – as much as I love the communist philosophy – is simply that there is no precedent – there is no tangible commodity that is managed in this way – and that our education system remains consumed with calcifying individualism and the entrenchment of power in such a way as to leave the door wide open for exploitation.
If on the other hand this strategy is implemented in concert with the overthrow of global capitalism then I’m all for it.
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
cis
I may be wrong about this, but I think it may have something to do with the Trump administration’s attempts to ban transgender people from serving in the US military, the Trump administration’s intention to define trans people out of existence by employing genetic testing to strip federal recognition of the gender identity of some 1.4 million Americans, the ongoing onslaught against trans people by the British media and closer to home the localisation of these campaigns by mainstream media, weighed up against the cis population’s ongoing patronage, and perceived tacit support for most of this. In a similarly emotive – but far from identical – manner to how we’ve seen the term ‘white’ being used in a negative way.
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
‘smocking’
The furor over that usage by liberals indicates to me how much of a malignant influence Trump has been both on the right and the left. He came to office mocking disabled people, two years later he has the anglosphere deriding his literacy issues – which was always on the cards.
The Flesch-Kincaid scale had him at forth to fifth grade during his campaign, now stuck on forth grade based on analysis of the first 30,000 words uttered while in office – the lowest of any US President on record.
Whether it was a typo, a troll, an autocorrect fail or an indication of the limitations of his literacy, suffice to say things aren’t getting any easier for folk with developmental reading disorders in this climate.
And it’s strange, because as we ridicule the literacy of individuals, what we’re also doing is shining a light onto the limitations of our own education systems and the meritocratic individualism they instill – i.e. those that are best served; flourish. Whereas those that are failed; deserve their lot in life.
Which in its way helps explain the global impasse we’ve strapped ourselves into.
nominating: elitism