4 ms·

This admin is focused on the message of stopping the inflow of drugs to the US. There are probably some true believers, and there are probably some reactionary

by datsci_est_2015 9mo ago

This admin is focused on the message of stopping the inflow of drugs to the US. There are probably some true believers, and there are probably some reactionary accelerationists. There’s also significant evidence of amateurism, misinformation, and incompetence. All of that coming together, I see this action coming out of meeting where - one party was convinced that this would solve the fentanyl epidemic - one party was hoping this would escalate military action in Mexico - one party was convinced that America had lost its masculine bravado and taking swift and unprecedented action like this would make their wife respect them again - one party was busy making “bets” on Kalshi

RiverCrochet 9mo ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3I6gFmlls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3I6gFmlls
delaminator 9mo ago
> reactionary they want to overthrow the Jacobites > accelerationists how's that going to work ?
- pjc50 9mo ago
  Reactionary accelerationists want a local war of some sort so they can grab war powers and then roll back all the US's post-WW2 social progress (and most of the New Deal too).
  - delaminator 9mo ago
    My understanding is accelerationists or liberals to go full hog so that they can go "see".
    - ben_w 9mo ago
      For my entire life, the US's idea of "liberals" is extremely small-c-conservative, Chesterton's fence style. The Republicans may wave the "Conservative" flag, but they're the only ones I see going full-hog on pretty much anything. That said, pre-Trump Republicans were milquetoast in comparison to what has happened over the last 13 months. Assuming US democracy doesn't collapse before the next transition of power, I wouldn't want to guess if the next Democrat government will continue this trend or be as full-hog in disregarding all checks-and-balances constraints on executive power to get stuff done.
      - delaminator 9mo ago
        Do you remember when the Democrat Party arrested Trump? Do you remember when they put J6 people in prison in solitary confinement for a year? Do you remember when they locked you in your house for a year? Do you remember when they fired people from the military for not having forced medical procedures? "yeah but I agreed with those"
        ben_w 9mo ago
        > Do you remember when the Democrat Party arrested Trump? No, because so far as I know the Democrat Party didn't arrest him. The State of Georgia arrested him, after a grand jury indicted him on charges of election racketeering, if that's what you have in mind? > Do you remember when they put J6 people in prison in solitary confinement for a year? Nope. Tried looking, I find stories about 4 months? But sure, let's say that's a distinction without a difference. How is this "go full hog"? It's not like solitary confinement is all that rare in the US prison system. If you want to treat solitary confinement as a wild and unacceptable punishment, please do campaign against it entirely, I'd like to see that change in your system. But it would be a change, which is kinda the point I'm making here: the Democrats *don't do change*. Not fast. > Do you remember when they locked you in your house for a year? Three problems with that: 1) Look at my profile to see why that's a dumb question in the first place 2) These clearly show state-level responses, not federal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_government_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_governmen... 3) Look at the dates on the previous link, which are both significantly shorter than a year, and also (except for CA) entirely contained within Trump's own first term. So, if you did want to blame just one single party executive, which would be weird, you'd have to blame the Republicans. > Do you remember when they fired people from the military for not having forced medical procedures? You know how the military are supposed to follow any lawful orders even when those orders will definitely result in their own deaths? Of all the pearls people clutch over the pandemic, the two which most confuse me are this particular one about the military, and which specific political tribe ended up being the one affiliated with hating masks. Slap some fake cameo pattern on it, call it "tactical", perhaps brand it "lung armour". Still, was obvious that eventually most people would hate them and it was just a matter of which party picked up the loudest mask haters, as per what happened in the Spanish Flu pandemic.
matthews3 9mo ago
> bets Investments on Kalshi!
morpheuskafka 9mo ago
> one party was busy making “bets” on Kalshi This would arguably be much more severe -- and quite likely already happening -- than the whole "congress trading stocks" thing because most of those (besides the sports ones) tie very directly to government actions in a way that the economy or a large company in generally doesn't as predictably.
- mikeyouse 9mo ago
  It's definitely already happening and should lead to a congressional inquiry if we had a functioning congress: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gn93292do https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gn93292do
- nemomarx 9mo ago
  Isn't the whole idea of prediction markets to let insiders bet on things so that you'll get insider info leaked?
  - datsci_est_2015 9mo ago
    Maybe this is fine until it incentivizes easily-achieved but adverse actions that would greatly harm the public. For a silly example, I would imagine the streaker from this year’s Super Bowl is either (a) a complete idiot, or (b) put a significant amount of money on a “prediction market” of there being a streaker at the Super Bowl - more than enough to cover his ticket, legal, and medical costs.
    - isleyaardvark 9mo ago
      That has already happened before: https://frontofficesports.com/offshore-sportsbook-voids-bets-linked-to-super-bowl-streaker/ https://frontofficesports.com/offshore-sportsbook-voids-bets...
- usefulcat 9mo ago
  Yes and no. AIUI there's generally a lot less liquidity available in prediction markets, which limits the profitability. Even if you have perfect clairvoyance, you still need someone to take the other side of the bet.
sowbug 9mo ago
If the US wanted to end the fentanyl and xylazine and nitazene epidemic, it would legalize the controlled manufacture, sale, and usage of the drugs being adulterated. This won't happen, because the 50-year-old War on Drugs is a load-bearing pillar of the US government.
- projektfu 9mo ago
  Xylazine and fentanyl are already legally distributed in the US. I believe Xylazine is still unscheduled. https://www.dechra-us.com/our-products/us/equine/horse/prescription/rompun-xylazine-injection-100-mg-ml https://www.dechra-us.com/our-products/us/equine/horse/presc...
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - sowbug 9mo ago
    Those are the adulterants, not the drugs being adulterated such as heroin, meth, and MDMA. For the most part, no customer wants fentanyl. The dealers like it because it's a cheap booster for cutting the drugs that their customers actually do want to buy. It just has this unfortunate side effect of making small overdoses lethal. That's why "ending the fentanyl crisis" is a curious goal. We had a perfectly good War on Drugs going on, but fentanyl is making the illicit drug industry too dangerous. You'd think that if we wanted to stop drugs, and we knew how to do that, we'd stop drugs. Instead we're stopping fentanyl, so we can get back to the regularly scheduled version of the War on Drugs that was always intended to last forever.
    - projektfu 9mo ago
      Fentanyl is the drug for effect, but it's being sold as a cheap alternative to heroin, or as counterfeit heroin. Unfortunately for users, the effect is short-lasting and it is about 30x as potent, so it is difficult to for them to dose properly. The traffickers like it because many more doses fit into a small space. I'm not sure I believe that making heroin legal and available for "recreational" use would solve the problem. People who propose it usually say that it's working in another country (such as Portugal), but then you look at that country and it's not really legal or available, it's just that they do not jail people for personal use anymore. I can agree with that, but it doesn't solve the trafficking problem. The only way to get rid of trafficking is to either allow people to easily buy it legally without onerous taxation, or to reduce demand to zero. If you do the former, you will still be stuck with lots of addicts, the associated crime and suffering, and probably many overdoses. Most likely, the number of addicts will increase, as they did with OxyContin, Actiq, etc. Worth mentioning that Actiq is fentanyl and it was in demand. Reducing demand is a multifaceted problem with complicated solutions, many of which are politically unpopular. Interestingly, some drugs can simply be taken off the market and the demand plummets. Quaalude is one example. Nobody stepped in to make an illicit version and the users probably just stopped using or switched to benzodiazepines and then hopefully stopped those. Unfortunately, it seems like we have a persistent demand for opioids.
dylan604 9mo ago
--one party was hoping we'd stop talking about Epstein
datsci_est_2015 9mo ago
Watching the dynamics of the vote count on this post throughout the day has been interesting.

RiverCrochet 9mo ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3I6gFmlls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3I6gFmlls

delaminator 9mo ago

> reactionary they want to overthrow the Jacobites > accelerationists how's that going to work ?

pjc50 9mo ago
Reactionary accelerationists want a local war of some sort so they can grab war powers and then roll back all the US's post-WW2 social progress (and most of the New Deal too).
- delaminator 9mo ago
  My understanding is accelerationists or liberals to go full hog so that they can go "see".
  - ben_w 9mo ago
    For my entire life, the US's idea of "liberals" is extremely small-c-conservative, Chesterton's fence style. The Republicans may wave the "Conservative" flag, but they're the only ones I see going full-hog on pretty much anything. That said, pre-Trump Republicans were milquetoast in comparison to what has happened over the last 13 months. Assuming US democracy doesn't collapse before the next transition of power, I wouldn't want to guess if the next Democrat government will continue this trend or be as full-hog in disregarding all checks-and-balances constraints on executive power to get stuff done.
    - delaminator 9mo ago
      Do you remember when the Democrat Party arrested Trump? Do you remember when they put J6 people in prison in solitary confinement for a year? Do you remember when they locked you in your house for a year? Do you remember when they fired people from the military for not having forced medical procedures? "yeah but I agreed with those"
      - ben_w 9mo ago
        > Do you remember when the Democrat Party arrested Trump? No, because so far as I know the Democrat Party didn't arrest him. The State of Georgia arrested him, after a grand jury indicted him on charges of election racketeering, if that's what you have in mind? > Do you remember when they put J6 people in prison in solitary confinement for a year? Nope. Tried looking, I find stories about 4 months? But sure, let's say that's a distinction without a difference. How is this "go full hog"? It's not like solitary confinement is all that rare in the US prison system. If you want to treat solitary confinement as a wild and unacceptable punishment, please do campaign against it entirely, I'd like to see that change in your system. But it would be a change, which is kinda the point I'm making here: the Democrats *don't do change*. Not fast. > Do you remember when they locked you in your house for a year? Three problems with that: 1) Look at my profile to see why that's a dumb question in the first place 2) These clearly show state-level responses, not federal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_government_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_governmen... 3) Look at the dates on the previous link, which are both significantly shorter than a year, and also (except for CA) entirely contained within Trump's own first term. So, if you did want to blame just one single party executive, which would be weird, you'd have to blame the Republicans. > Do you remember when they fired people from the military for not having forced medical procedures? You know how the military are supposed to follow any lawful orders even when those orders will definitely result in their own deaths? Of all the pearls people clutch over the pandemic, the two which most confuse me are this particular one about the military, and which specific political tribe ended up being the one affiliated with hating masks. Slap some fake cameo pattern on it, call it "tactical", perhaps brand it "lung armour". Still, was obvious that eventually most people would hate them and it was just a matter of which party picked up the loudest mask haters, as per what happened in the Spanish Flu pandemic.

matthews3 9mo ago

> bets Investments on Kalshi!

morpheuskafka 9mo ago

> one party was busy making “bets” on Kalshi This would arguably be much more severe -- and quite likely already happening -- than the whole "congress trading stocks" thing because most of those (besides the sports ones) tie very directly to government actions in a way that the economy or a large company in generally doesn't as predictably.

mikeyouse 9mo ago
It's definitely already happening and should lead to a congressional inquiry if we had a functioning congress: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gn93292do https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gn93292do
nemomarx 9mo ago
Isn't the whole idea of prediction markets to let insiders bet on things so that you'll get insider info leaked?
- datsci_est_2015 9mo ago
  Maybe this is fine until it incentivizes easily-achieved but adverse actions that would greatly harm the public. For a silly example, I would imagine the streaker from this year’s Super Bowl is either (a) a complete idiot, or (b) put a significant amount of money on a “prediction market” of there being a streaker at the Super Bowl - more than enough to cover his ticket, legal, and medical costs.
  - isleyaardvark 9mo ago
    That has already happened before: https://frontofficesports.com/offshore-sportsbook-voids-bets-linked-to-super-bowl-streaker/ https://frontofficesports.com/offshore-sportsbook-voids-bets...
usefulcat 9mo ago
Yes and no. AIUI there's generally a lot less liquidity available in prediction markets, which limits the profitability. Even if you have perfect clairvoyance, you still need someone to take the other side of the bet.

sowbug 9mo ago

If the US wanted to end the fentanyl and xylazine and nitazene epidemic, it would legalize the controlled manufacture, sale, and usage of the drugs being adulterated. This won't happen, because the 50-year-old War on Drugs is a load-bearing pillar of the US government.

projektfu 9mo ago
Xylazine and fentanyl are already legally distributed in the US. I believe Xylazine is still unscheduled. https://www.dechra-us.com/our-products/us/equine/horse/prescription/rompun-xylazine-injection-100-mg-ml https://www.dechra-us.com/our-products/us/equine/horse/presc...
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- sowbug 9mo ago
  Those are the adulterants, not the drugs being adulterated such as heroin, meth, and MDMA. For the most part, no customer wants fentanyl. The dealers like it because it's a cheap booster for cutting the drugs that their customers actually do want to buy. It just has this unfortunate side effect of making small overdoses lethal. That's why "ending the fentanyl crisis" is a curious goal. We had a perfectly good War on Drugs going on, but fentanyl is making the illicit drug industry too dangerous. You'd think that if we wanted to stop drugs, and we knew how to do that, we'd stop drugs. Instead we're stopping fentanyl, so we can get back to the regularly scheduled version of the War on Drugs that was always intended to last forever.
  - projektfu 9mo ago
    Fentanyl is the drug for effect, but it's being sold as a cheap alternative to heroin, or as counterfeit heroin. Unfortunately for users, the effect is short-lasting and it is about 30x as potent, so it is difficult to for them to dose properly. The traffickers like it because many more doses fit into a small space. I'm not sure I believe that making heroin legal and available for "recreational" use would solve the problem. People who propose it usually say that it's working in another country (such as Portugal), but then you look at that country and it's not really legal or available, it's just that they do not jail people for personal use anymore. I can agree with that, but it doesn't solve the trafficking problem. The only way to get rid of trafficking is to either allow people to easily buy it legally without onerous taxation, or to reduce demand to zero. If you do the former, you will still be stuck with lots of addicts, the associated crime and suffering, and probably many overdoses. Most likely, the number of addicts will increase, as they did with OxyContin, Actiq, etc. Worth mentioning that Actiq is fentanyl and it was in demand. Reducing demand is a multifaceted problem with complicated solutions, many of which are politically unpopular. Interestingly, some drugs can simply be taken off the market and the demand plummets. Quaalude is one example. Nobody stepped in to make an illicit version and the users probably just stopped using or switched to benzodiazepines and then hopefully stopped those. Unfortunately, it seems like we have a persistent demand for opioids.

dylan604 9mo ago

--one party was hoping we'd stop talking about Epstein

datsci_est_2015 9mo ago

Watching the dynamics of the vote count on this post throughout the day has been interesting.