It decreases inhibition as well. IIRC, that's one reason it's hypothesised lead exposure contributed to the crime waves, and why blood lead levels are correlated to incarceration.
Yeah, I used to occasionally use tianeptine to self-medicate on days when I was really depressed (hard to get out of bed depressed). Worked well for that, because regular anti-depressants take about a month to start really working, and tianeptine took about 30 minutes, IIRC. I never found tianeptive very "enjoyable" or intoxicating though. I used to use MXE for a similar purpose; and also recreationally sometimes.
This was hard for me to follow. I think it's targeted toward people steeped in "peak oil" discourse.
His first assumption seems to be that economic growth is primarily caused by fossil fuel consumption (which probably is largely the case for the last couple hundred years or so).
He postulates, based on data trends, we are nearing worldwide "peak oil demand," which will cause worldwide economic stagnation for the foreseeable future. This thinking is kinda of the reverse of how I normally think of it (economic growth drives oil demand), but I suppose it's valid if fossil fuels are consistently too expensive to extract more of (lowering demand).
My takeaway: without growth, capitalism becomes a zero-sum game and cannot function "properly," so this peak-oil-demand will result in world-wide economic collapse or probably something slower (a crumbling?).
However, his analysis states as a fact that renewables aren't as "productive" as fossil fuels, so won't be able to cause future growth, or at least growth at the same pace as the last couple hundred years. I'm not sure I agree with that because I've seen charts that show the levelized cost of renewable electricity production to actually be significantly lower than that of fossil fuels.
Allred came across weak, because he has the same position as Ted Cruz/Republicans on some of their worst policies (immigration and Israel), but he has to slightly "moderate" them a little to avoid turning-off base Democratic voters. This is a problem with the Democratic party as a whole, and it's a losing strategy. Voters who strongly support Israel and being "tough on immigration" will be more swayed by the person that full-throatedly supports these position, and voters that disagree with these policies won't be swayed by inconsequential concessions to them.
I have. My bank did a chargeback like they would if it was a credit card. I was told it would've been a lot harder to get my money back if my PIN was used. But, I've only seen that option available for in-person purchaees.
For some of the ultra-wealthy (Theil, Altman, Andreessen, Eric Schmidt, OpenAI board, etc), a type of accelerationism seems to be in-vogue (e/acc publicly, and probably accelerationist thoughts like The Dark Enlightenment privately). I think some ultra-wealthy are just trying to hedge their bets (Zuckerberg, and news corporations come to mind), because if Trump does win he'll definitely try to use his power to harm companies he doesn't like. I think others, such as Musk, want to be Russian-style oligarchs. I guess all this is kinda related; accelerate into some sort of collapse or chaos, use their positions to maneuver into greater power and become oligarchs or create corporate-city-states, or whatever stupid shit they believe in.
I think finance workers are about as split between the parties as the rest of the population; probably more socially liberal. Small bussiness owners are some of the most ignorant and authoritarian people I've encountered.
I'm not one of the withhold-voting, or vote 3rd party people, but I think it's probably driven by deep moral disgust of both parties preventing people from being able to willingly vote for Hitler 1 over Hitler 2. As an extreme example (which probably is the case for some Americans, but not "significant electorally"), if I was a Palestinian-American, and had many family members killed by weapons supplied under Biden's orders, I probably wouldn't be able to bring myself to vote for his number-2, even if I thought it was the lesser-evil. People have different levels of emotional empathy, and different principles and philosophies. Refusing to participate in an unjust system is a valid stance.
And most major U.S. media outlets are highly biased toward Israel for some reason. I don't know if I've ever seen the U.S. media this biased on an issue; I have to resort to small outlets like The Intercept or foreign media like Al Jazeera (which are biased in their own way), to stay informed. The only things comparable I can think of is the Iraq-WMD thing, and their perpetual bias against labor rights/for capital.
I agree with your overall statement, but if by environmentally conscious food, you mean vegan, it can easily be cheaper than an omnivore diet. Don't use any of the meat or cheese substitutes or many highly processed foods, and it will likely be much cheaper (and healthier) than an omnivore diet.
On the other hand, industrial agriculture isn't very environmentally conscious; it basically turns fossil fuels into food (fossil fuel derived fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides; machinery, transportation, processing, and refrigeration powered by fossil fuels). Still more efficient than meat and dairy though, since the animals are fed the output from agriculture.
I think EVs are about on par with ICE on total cost of ownership now (but higher initial cost still).
AI image generators have been around for a fairly long time. I remember deepfake discussion from about a decade ago. Not saying the image in discussion is though. I remember Alex Jones making conspiracy theories that revolved around Bush and lossy video compression artifacts too.
Perhaps. I guess the companies could use their campus equity in a beneficial way. Not sure how beneficial this is to most companies though. With the companies I'm thinking of, I'd guess campus equity is pretty minor (compared to their "human resources"). I may be wrong though.
The RTO push is designed to keep the commercial real-estate market from crashing. I've never seen any good proof of this, but believe it. I don't exactly know why CEOs of big companies would really care that much about commercial real-estate. Perhaps their large shareholders (hedge fund managers?) also own commercial real-estate and are putting pressure on CEOs? Perhaps at that level it's just a big club, and all the wealthy just help eachother out, out of solidarity? Dunno.
I want my 2 hours back.