Posts by Moz
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Hard News: A cannabis moment in the Parliament, in reply to simon g,
Here in PA World (or even Shane Reti’s world) we might like to envisage an informed debate by reasonable people
I think the trick is, and what we're actually seeing, is to get the reasonable people to come up with a proposal that they all think is likely to work. Then reverse the Brexit-style game of chicken by essentially daring the looneys to come out and oppose the consensus bill. We all know that some of them will, but it's being carefully set up so that it will be very hard to not come across as a wrecker and an idiot. A bunch of very measured doctors and lawyers say (in their very best Geoffrey Palmer manner) "on balance we believe this proposal..." {snoring noises}... meanwhile the opposition is reduced to the wingnut end of talkback radio "today on XSFM we have a neo-nazi, a convicted pedophile and some opposing the cannibis bill"
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Hard News: Reassure Me: cannabis,…, in reply to Dennis Frank,
use public meetings in our biggest cities
That actively avoids the whole "representative sample" part of the process though. In multiple ways. But it does favour opinionated, older, whiter, richer people... who are already over-repersented in the political processes. It would be more reasonable to exclude them on the basis that their preferences are already amply present.
I like the citizen's jury process because it involves a degree to conscription so it's much more likely to give a spectrum of responses. By the same token, though, it's more expensive and requires more organisation (you really need to pay the jurors rather than just compensating them for their costs).
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Worth noting that the likely opposition to this proposal are not entirely committed to Te Tiriti either, so arguments of the form "but the treaty says..." are not likely to be especially persuasive. Or could be met with Maori Gratitude Day or worse. Or just "so we will require that every party running list candidates have at least one person on their list who claims Maori heritage". The potential for mischief is enormous.
I'd like to think Aotearoa can do the suffrage/marriage/nukes thing again and come up with a solution that the world is impressed by. Sadly I don't think that's a likely outcome. In the meantime, just stopping the public voting debacles might have to be enough.
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An article on The Conversation today is relevant: https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-people-with-autism-have-restricted-interests-and-repetitive-movements-94401
Their coverage is generally better than the mass media, which is what you'd expect from a pop-academic site.
The point about focus as a way of suppressing anxiety is interesting, but for me personally that's not so much what I do. Focus is normally interest-driven, I'm unusually good at blocking out irrelevant stuff (per the panic-du-jour, "to the exclusion of other people, mealtimes, and even to the point of (nearly) wetting myself"... just not with shoot-em-up games)
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... couldn’t cope with had him in constant fight or flight mode. Can you imagine living that way?
Yeah, it's called "do you know where your father is", a game the whole family can play.
But on the original topic, it often feels awesome to come home and go into the shedroom/sleepout I built, close the door and just lie on my bed in the quiet and dark. That feeling makes the pain and annoyances of owning a house worthwhile. It's the first time I've ever really had a proper bedroom. One with at least insulation against both heat and sound, and where random idiots can't easily come and bother me.
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I find your comments to the effect that "if you bill drafting geniuses can't find it..." blackly amusing because of the tremendous volume of deliberately opaque material covered by the phrase "ignorance of the law is no excuse". Legislation is bad enough, but case law? Ignorance is guaranteed whether that's a defence or not.
Oh, you mean "contempt" as legal jargon, not the normal usage. My mistake. Back to "the judge just made stuff up and if you don't kowtow you'll be charged with contempt".
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Hard News: The miserable archive, in reply to ,
“for the same level of contamination" ... That’s also bullshit. Methamphetamine is not the same as the bubling chemicals and gas, which are used to manufacture it.
I'm not sure whether that's a reading comprehension fail or a political answer - you've responded to something I didn't say with a tangentially related diatribe. But sure, verbal me and rant, be my guest.
"same level of contamination"... you can't get that by using different chemicals, that's not how contamination works.
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Hard News: The miserable archive, in reply to Bart Janssen,
a culture that is focused on punishing people ... Somehow we've allowed our core social services to lose their raison d'etre.
That's contested, though. The oligarchs have been vigorously pushing the idea that poor people are both worthless and must be punished. Many are Randians if not explicit eugenicists or social Darwinists. And a lot of people agree with them for various reasons.
There was an interesting survey in Oz recently, asking "should benefits be cut below $300/wk" with about 40% support and "what's the minimum income you'd need to survive" with the average being over $600/wk. I am not entirely sure whether those questions were adjacent but the answers are revealing. There's some vicious othering going on.
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Hard News: The miserable archive, in reply to Russell Brown,
Whether methamphetamine contamination in a dwelling is via use or manufacture the exposure risk is the same
That's technically true, but elides the crucial "for the same level of contamination".
When we were trying to buy a house we dismissed a couple because they'd clearly been long-term dens for indoor smokers. In one case the residue had been mostly painted over but the smell lingered.
Meth use works the same - if there's a small room been used for smoking for many, many sessions it could end up badly contaminated. But that would be very rare. It might have happened... once. So we're into "as a lawyer I make this statement knowing that it is strictly correct".
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Note the US has implemented the obvious version of this policy: it applies to everyone, not just the criminally poor.
In the USA people can (and do) lose their homes, anything they have that's worth anything, and often their freedom, merely because the police think that someone might have or have had drugs there. Their "war on drugs" works much the same as our "war on meth", with the collateral damage you'd expect. In many cases there's a "technically you're not convicted" outcome, but the Police raid still happened, as did the prosecution... those things aren't cost-free.
It's somewhat surprising that this scare never spread to more valuable members of society, especially given the problems the rental industry was having with labs in rental properties (there was a lot of fear, I'm not sure how widespread the actual problem was). But can you imagine how much fun it would be if some decent, upstanding member of society (Pullya Benefit, or even That Nice Man {tm} John Key) was tested and discovered to have possessions that were contaminated, and thus needed to be stripped of said possessions... I'm thinking any cash they had on them, but I'm sure more would be found once testing began.