Physical vs psychological addictiveness is mostly a sham. Shades of grey. Any psychoactive substance can and will be addictive to someone, depending on their intentions.
Sorry, but I call bullshit. I'm a smoker; I hate it. I want to quit and have tried many times... I'll be trying again very soon in fact. It's HARD.
I'm also an LSD user. I could choose to never take it again, and while I'd certainly be "sad" that an important and valuable part of my life was gone, I'd have no "cravings" for it as I do with cigarettes.
I AM addicted to cigarettes but I don't enjoy them. I AM NOT addicted to LSD despite enjoying it immensely.
The problem is that physical addictions start off as psychological ones for the most part. There are no drugs that will get you hooked after one use (no, not even meth or heroin). However if you take those, enjoy them thoroughly and then take them again, you'll find a physical dependence beginning to build up. This is how it was for me (and a billion or so others) with cigarettes.
There are some drugs that have no potential to be physically addictive - LSD being a prime example. You could take LSD daily for a year and at the end of it, you'd be able to stop without a second thought.
That said, taking it daily like that wouldn't really work either. The brain builds up a tolerance to LSD that takes a week or so dissipate. If you take LSD just once, the same amount within a week will have drastically lower effects (often none at all). Given the lethal dosage of LSD is somewhere around 80 to 100 times the amount one normally takes for a trip; only the truly idiotic (and extremely rich) could ever really OD on it.
I used to take LSD between once and twice a month in my younger days. That was what I would consider extremely heavy usage. These days, it's around 2 to 4 times a year. I've never in my life experienced a "need" for it as I do with cigarettes and I've seen others with alcohol or cocaine.
The legalization model that doesn't allow commercial promotion of drugs, and that treats addiction as a medical disease (not a criminal one) is the appropriate one for modern society in my opinion.
On this, I believe we agree. However I'd also include in the model a case where the recreational drugs are only produced by companies licensed to do so (no home growing of marijuana or production of LSD); they are taxed sufficiently that the government receives money that can be used to help those who do abuse them (as with alcohol); and a legal age assigned to use (keeping it the same as alcohol would make sense simply for ease of enforcement; and the reasons for the alcohol age limit generally also apply directly to other recreational drugs).
I wholeheartedly agree with your post. I'd just like to add two things:
If the legal framework for manufacture of designer drugs required a proven lack of physical addictiveness, it wouldn't help the heroin addicts but it also wouldn't make things any worse for the rest of us. Perhaps this is already a part of the FDA guidelines for new drugs.
Sadly and stupidly, the potential for addiction is barely considered by regulating authorities like the FDA. If it were, LSD would be legal and Morphine probably wouldn't be used for pain relief except in the terminally ill.
Legalising drugs is no cure-all and will have its own issues. We need to decide for ourselves if these are preferable to the issues we're currently handling.
It's definitely something that needs serious consideration - what a lot of people don't realise however is that a lot of this serious consideration has already been done; presented to various governments and then simply ignored or thrown out. There's a lot of emotion tied up in drug legislation, especially with the idea that any drug with limited proven medical use should automatically be illegal (the powers that be seem to ignore alcohol in this point of view though). It's as if the very "concept" of a recreational drug (besides alcohol) is so abhorrent to them that they'll ignore any and all evidence passed to them. They also seem to discard the evidence pointing towards some currently illegal street drugs being useful for psychological issues (MDMA and LSD both have good proven track records in this regard).
I was on acid at the most recent work Christmas party... that was an "interesting" experience.
What you haven't worked for twenty years or so?
Heh, it may be less popular these days, but believe me, there's still plenty of people out there who enjoy LSD from time to time.
I generally take it 2 to 4 times a year these days. Much less than in my younger days where it was generally between 12 and 24 times a year; but I do have a wife and child now, so I need to spend more time in "reality" than "stepping outside of reality".
I've spent time in socialist countries and it was miserable. And the closer a country gets to socialism, the more miserable and poor people end up being, the more their liberties end up being restricted, and the more corrupt government becomes.
While "very" socialist countries have, on the whole, been fairy miserable and corrupt places, I'd really like to know your reasoning behind the second half of your statement.
It seems to me that many of (but not all) the countries with the happiest citizens, lowest abject poverty, and best standards of living are those that are highly socialised democracies. They are still for the most part capitalist, but the government retains significant control (through fairness regulation) to discourage a lot of the evil that can spring from the dog-eat-dog style of unbridled capitalism.
you think that if you just try hard enough, you can create an ideal society through government intervention
While I'm not the person you're responding to, I find this a very unfair statement. It's not an "all or nothing" approach and noone beyond the most hardline of socialists believes you can through government intervention ALONE create an ideal society. But it IS a fair statement to say that the purpose of a government should be to regulate and benefit the society as a whole. They are created by the people and therefore should be FOR the people. This is, in essence, a socialistic statement. By a government being "for the people", it has to consider the well-being of all the people; and this will mean disadvantaging some a little in order to advantage others enough to bring them up to a certain standard. It's not about achieving full wealth equality; it's about removing the situation where there are those in society experiencing the abject poverty that leads to many of societies ills (beyond simply things like crime; I personally don't like living in a city where I walk past homeless people each day and have them beg cigarettes from me... I expect my tax money to be used to HELP these people).
In such a system, you may be concerned that many would abuse the privilege and simply allow the government to take care of them to the minimum standard; then remain unemployed and happily living out their days care-free. There are those who do this, but they're actually far fewer than you might suspect. I grew up in a country that would've done that for me - I could've remained unemployed forever after leaving school and still paid my rent, had my medical issues taken care of, eaten enough food to keep me going, and still had a few dollars left over for cigarettes, alcohol and other "luxury" items (although admittedly, really not much). But I wanted more from life that the minimum. I wanted to be able to drive a nice car; I wanted to be able to have a big screen TV; I wanted to travel the world; I wanted to buy a new computer more often than once every five to ten years; and above all of these material things, I wanted to feel useful and productive instead of being looked down on. So, I started working - as did the vast majority of people I knew.
Now, where I grew up wasn't perfect, and sadly from the looks of things it's getting less perfect as times goes on; but what I've described should be considered the absolute minimum of "socialist leanings" in any civilised society.
and I believe that drugs are even more likely to be abused than alcohol
Do you believe that alcohol is less dangerous than all other (currently illegal) drugs out there? Even for drugs beyond marijuana there's plenty of evidence to the contrary...
Also please keep in mind that given the legalisation of a range of drugs, people may "experiment" with multiple but then find that they settle on one or two of a lesser danger for longer term use. The health risks of taking MDMA at nightclubs every second weekend for example is (if well managed) significantly lower than the health risks of drinking large quantities of alcohol at nightclubs every second weekend (as many younger people do).
These days, I only drink alcohol in social settings with family (e.g. a glass of wine or beer with a meal). I haven't been drunk in an extremely long time. Alcohol is quite simply not my substance of choice. I've tried a very wide range of drugs; including (but not limited to), Marijuana, Cocaine, Speed, Meth, MDMA, LSD, and many more. I found that MDMA is something I enjoy perhaps once every few years or so; LSD is something I enjoy for the mind-expanding qualities that it provides and I use around 3 to 4 times a year; and the rest are all very uninteresting to me (as with alcohol). Cocaine I might do again if it were legal and significantly cheaper (it feels good; but not for long; and doesn't even begin to compare to MDMA for "good feelings"), but only in the right circumstances and definitely not often.
(for a user the Silk Road is heaven.. till they OD)
As someone who has used Silk Road on several occasions now; I think my chances of ODing on anything I've bought there is pretty slim. In fact, the total quantity of LSD I've bought there (which is the only drug I've ever bought there) is well under lethal dosage. And given my most recent purchase wasn't so long ago, I've got at least 12 months before I'll want to buy some more.
Of course, I have friends who prefer other substances (which I don't enjoy and so don't use) who certain do buy substances of sufficient quantity to OD, however not being total morons, tend to use their substances responsibly and so don't tend to have any problems.
Not all users of illegal drugs are idiots - they're just the most noticeable ones since those of us who aren't idiots (the vast majority) don't ever end up in the news or otherwise getting in to trouble.
All that said, I'm with the other posters who are of the opinion that this isn't going to have any effect on Silk Road at all. The only way that's getting busted is if the cops just happen across the people running it while investigating something else, are given a tip by someone the people running it were stupid enough to trust, or so on (or a hole in the TOR Hidden Services system is discovered; but that is looking fairly unlikely at this stage).
I pretty sure if I was drunk at work I would get fired.
I was on acid at the most recent work Christmas party... that was an "interesting" experience.
Not that I'd ever want to try to actually WRITE code while tripping (just staring at a screen is disturbing enough for the most part), but I will say that I've had a few good ideas while tripping that I then implemented the next day after my head was in a more stable state.
If Vladimir (or Vlad, as everyone calls him) was suffering from extreme intoxication at the time of his immigration and chose the unique "Volodymyr" Latin rendering of his name (which, incidentally, would sound nothing like his actual name), then that's Vlad's problem. If you find "Volodymyr" to be typical, I'd have to say that you live among a very unique group of Russian expatriots, as I have personally never had the opportunity to run across this variant despite my proximity to Brighton Beach and large group of Russian expatriot friends.
Actually, 5 seconds after a Google search for "Volodymyr", you'll find it's the standard rendering of a Ukrainian name - closely related to Vladimir (same root name) but not the same (as with "Waldemar" in German)
I admit, the GP did say "Russian" when he should've said "Ukrainian", but that doesn't invalidate his point.
I would be interested to know if the tiles have different scores for non-English versions like Welsh or Hawaiian for that matter.
Haven't seen a Welsh or Hawaiian version; but yes - international versions do have different scores for the letters as well as a different count of letters (and sometimes of course, even totally different letters) to accommodate the differences in the language.
For example, Z is worth nowhere near as much in German scrabble, as Z appears fairly frequently in German.
After typing my reply, I wanted to double check the values, and came across this in my Google results.
The most recent time I had to interview for people, I was looking for a mid-level developer role; good with Python; embedded experience considered a bonus. A total of nine people applied for the job. Three were clearly far too inexperienced, two had totally unrealistic salary expectations for the job (we actually pay pretty well, but these guys were asking for nearly DOUBLE my pay, and I'm the supervisor of my department), so that left four to interview.
Out of those four, two were overqualified and two were a good fit. I interviewed all four and confirmed they knew what they said they knew (they all appeared to; so no liars, which was good) as well as did my best to get a feel for their personality and expectations for the job. I, in combination with HR, then had to make a decision.
If we took one of the overqualified people (who were in fact brilliant), they would have been bored/frustrated with the work; would not have taken well to me being their boss; would be more likely to leave when a better position came along; and would have cost us more in salary. So, despite being brilliant, they would have been the wrong choice.
We ended up hiring one of the two "good fit" people (based purely on his personality, since from a technical skill level both were equally capable of the job from what I could see). He's been with us for about half a year now and is (by all accounts from our last employee appraisal meeting) extremely happy with the job and we're extremely happy with the work he's doing.
Had it been necessary to choose between underqualified and overqualified, I would of course have chosen overqualified. But I'm also sure that that person would not be as happy in the job as the guy we got and in the long run it would've turned out bad for everyone involved.
So you'd rather focus on an irrelevant distinction than talk about the underlying issues. Gotcha.
While I will freely admit that I was ignorant of the distinction until reading this thread (I really know very little about guns), these "irrelevant distinctions" can really make a difference.
Not so long ago, a silly tourist took too many magic mushrooms in Amsterdam and against the standard advice, also combined it with other substances (alcohol and marijuana most likely). Because of this, there was huge pressure on the government to ban magic mushrooms. Now, this is something they really didn't want to do, since it would make a lot of people unhappy, and they're well aware that the actual risks are negligible. So, what they did was rely on one of these "irrelevant distinctions" and specifically banned magic mushrooms. All other forms of naturally occurring psilocybin containing fungus continue to be sold to this day. The psilocybin truffles sold under the brand name "Atlantis" are generally far more potent than any of the mushroom varieties were.
Officially speaking, the government remains mute on this point, insisting that they carried out the ban as requested; but it's more than clear that it was quite deliberately managed to avoid the disruption that would've been caused by outlawing all psilocybin containing fungi.
Any references to Nazism in Germany is strictly prohibited, and often prosecuted. Also, any art form (games, movies, plays, etc.) can't make overt reference to Swastikas or Nazis either. I really hope you don't need a citation for this, as the reasons for it are well understood if you've ever opened a WWII history book. However, censorship is censorship.
Well, living in Germany and having watched "Iron Sky" at the cinema is probably a pretty good counter-citation...
It's illegal to espouse Nazi-ism as an ideology; but simply referencing it is NOT prohibited and does NOT lead to prosecution. Hell, even doing it quite directly, but as a joke is okay in the right scenarios as long as it's clearly a joke (I have a work colleague that often jokes about driving tanks in to Paris every time our French daughter-company pisses him off).
But wait, they don't have freedom of speech or the right to bear arms in Germany so how can this be?
Article 5 of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) would disagree with you on freedom of speech (specifically: freedom of expression). It states:
(1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing, and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
(2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honor.
(3) Art and scholarship, research, and teaching shall be free. The freedom of teaching shall not release any person from allegiance to the constitution.
There are of course limits to this as indicated by the second statement; but I've yet to see a country where this is not the case. Even in the much flaunted "free" USA, Wikipedia informs me:
In the United States freedom of expression is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. There are several common law exceptions including obscenity, defamation, incitement, incitement to riot or imminent lawless action, fighting words, fraud, speech covered by government granted monopoly (copyright), and speech integral to criminal conduct. There are federal criminal law statutory prohibitions covering all the common law exceptions other than defamation, of which there is civil law liability, as well as making false statements (lying) in "matters within the jurisdiction" of the federal government, speech related to information decreed to be related to national security such as military and classified information, false advertising, perjury, privileged communications, trade secrets, copyright, and patents. Most states and localities have many identical restrictions, as well as harassment, and time, place and manner restrictions.
er... 10000 km is "somewhat over a quarter of the way to the moon"? if you really think that the moon is only about 4 earth diameters away from the earth, your mental model of solar system needs a serious recalibration!:)
Heh... actually, it was a severe brain-fart moment... my brain said "a fortieth" and my fingers came out with "a quarter" somehow.
So yeh, mea culpa. But thanks for setting the record straight in case anyone was to read that silly mistake and end up believing it.
My meteorology instructor said, "Take a basketball, and assume the Earth is that size. The bumps are higher than Everest and the valleys are deeper than the Challenger Deep, but it will do. Dunk it in a bucket and pull it back out. See that sheen of water on the surface? That's the breathable atmosphere." That's always stuck with me.
I'm glad you said "breathable atmosphere" rather than just "atmosphere". Something that most people don't seem to get is that it's very very hard to define the "limit" of our atmosphere (or indeed that of most planets that have one).
The exosphere (by no means "breathable", but still measurably part of our atmosphere) extends to 10000km away from the surface, which is only slightly less than the diameter of the Earth itself (12750km) and somewhat over a quarter of the way to the moon. The mesosphere goes up to 85km from the surface, which is probably the best measurement of "noticeable atmosphere" since that's where meteors generally burn up and you start needing to pay more attention to the air when parking your spaceship.
The breathable atmosphere is probably best defined as up to around 8km, a little shy of the full height of the troposphere (9km). After this height, humans begin having serious trouble with getting and using oxygen in their bodies (short term, it's survivable, but extremely unpleasant... long term, it's going to be fatal without supplementary O2 supplies). Scaling the Earth down to a basketball (75cm) gives us about half a millimetre of breathable atmosphere... this is probably a bit more than the sheen of water on your ball, which I'd estimate to only be half that at a quarter of a millimetre. The mesosphere for reference would be 5mm, still tiny, but much more noticeable.
The problem is, provided that he really is an aspie, that he can't be taught these things. Social interaction for instance is highly dependent on being able to "read" peoples facial expressions at a glance. If he is some kind of autistic, he's simply unable to do that. With training and skill he might be able to do it by thinking and reasoning about it, but he will never do it on the fly, which is effectively the same thing as not being able to, because it's too slow.
That's not entirely true. I was diagnosed with Asperger's as an adult (I'm too old to have been diagnosed as a child (the diagnosis existed in my childhood, but was almost never used)... they just called me "sociopathic"). I spent most of my childhood assuming that other people were like me and just "better" at learning facial expressions/body language/etc than I was. I thought I was "slow", despite getting high marks in every academic endeavour.
Nowadays, unless I'm tired or under the influence of depressant drugs (such as alcohol), you'd be unlikely to figure out that what's going on in my head is significantly different to other people. I fake it EXTREMELY well for the most part and can read and diagnose a facial expression in a matter of milliseconds with a success rate of around 85% (or higher with people I've had multiple interactions with... somewhat lower for people of non-Caucasian appearance though simply due to a lack of suitable practice).
One of my friends is a man on the other end of the scale - highly empathetic, "party" type of guy who is always the centre of attention. He backs up my opinion that for the most part I seem normal (of course, he's seen me tired many times and so is well aware of how I am when I stop trying).
Many of my co-workers don't know I have Asperger's. I don't deliberately avoid telling people, I just don't bother mentioning it unless it comes up in conversation or I need to explain myself for some reason. This is mostly out of a desire not to waste my time explaining it over and over a thousand times a day (which is why I bother faking "normalcy" to begin with).
so what in the world do you mean; that there need to be more laws concerning low-risk substances?
Sorry... you totally misunderstood me. By "some sense coming to law-makers regarding psychedelics", I meant steps towards legalising them. I completely agree they're extremely low-risk substances.
That said, I still wouldn't drive on them and wouldn't feel safe on the road with you driving on them regardless of how confident you feel you're doing it correctly.
I've had hundreds of trips, always been in control of myself and never had a situation where I felt I wasn't able to correctly judge the true state of the world around me based on my sensory input... however I also am well aware that I might end up focusing on things that aren't important or missing things that are. My mind is far too actively wandering to consider it safe to pilot a vehicle!
Look, these idiots are still classifying pot as a Schedule 1 drug. It's in the same category as cocaine, heroin and LSD. None of the Schedule 1 drugs have any beneficial use and yet marijuana clearly does for migraine headaches, glaucoma, and nausea from radiation treatment for cancer patients.
While I fully support changing the schedule (actually much further: I support complete legalisation) of pot; I take issue with your statement lumping LSD in with cocaine and heroin (or even lumping together cocaine and heroin).
Further to that, most drugs have possible legitimate medical uses. Cocaine is an excellent local painkiller (think: toothache); heroin is a good general painkiller (think: cancer); and LSD had very good success in dealing with some mental conditions, most notably addiction. While most problems have "better" drugs available, it doesn't mean these drugs don't work (and in the case of LSD, I'm not aware of anything that has better success rates against alcoholism).
Maybe you puritans should just not use it instead of trying to prevent me from using what for me is a working anti-depressant.
Ummm... actually, I never said anything about it being bad to legalise it or wanting to punish users or anything like that - just that it has really negative effects on me.
For reference, I'm strongly in favour of legalisation of all substances that have limited to no harmful effects on the user; and then awareness campaigns and education in place to encourage people to use it responsibly if they do choose to use it at all (similar to alcohol (which I absolutely acknowledge shouldn't have been legal to begin with were it not already grandfathered in and cause too many problems to ban)). To me, this class of "limited to no harm" drugs most definitely includes marijuana.
My preferred substances are illegal pretty much everywhere. I can get psilocybin truffles legally with a quick trip over the border in to the Netherlands; but I find they give me a small stomach upset along with the trip and also the trip itself doesn't last as long as I'd like. I far prefer LSD, which to the best of my knowledge is illegal pretty much everywhere (there may be no defined laws in some of the more lawless parts of the world; but I'd rather not go live there...)
I'm sure as you well know.. different people are affected in different manners by THC consumption.
This is something more people need to pay attention to. I myself for example after only one or two puffs will feel seasick, dry mouth, confused, and ready to vomit (if I have one or two more, I will vomit). After that, I pretty much want to curl up, sleep and get rid of the nastiness going on in my brain. Obviously, I gave up trying it after four or five times of the same effects (friends tried to tell me that it's like that for everyone the first time, but gets more fun on subsequent uses - for me, it didn't).
Other people I know however can sit and smoke joint after joint and then still be quite functional (definitely "altered", but functional nevertheless).
There's no way I'd get behind the wheel of a vehicle in the state I am in after only one or two puffs of that stuff; but I'd have no problem sitting in a car my brother is driving after he's just finished a whole joint.
Anyway... wake me up when some sense comes to law-makers on far more interesting substances like the psychedelics.
I guess you didn't get the memo that General D. Vader will be taking Petraus' spot.
While it adds nothing to the topic, I have to use this opportunity to mention that there's an office in my building with a nameplate outside it "D. Maul". Turns out to be an excessively tall scary looking woman with what amounts to a slightly outgrown crew-cut.
What I want to see is children encouraged to question everything and be taught to think critically, not have a doctrine pounded into their heads literally from birth to the point where even as adults they can't shake it and think for themselves.
Interestingly, my step-father is a minister in the Anglican church. He's also a physicist/teacher. He taught me to think critically, question everything and use logic to deduce the best course of action that is based on the most likely situation given the variables.
These days, we tend to have rather large arguments over religion... In my view, it's the way he raised me that lead me to atheism as the only viable and realistic situation our universe could have. In his view, logic and critical thinking point towards the absolute necessity for a creator. And again in my view, he's weighting the variables incorrectly (the "feeling" of "Jesus being in his life" is something he gives a lot of weight to; whereas since I understand brain chemistry better than he does, I give significantly less weight to)
My wife is a "weak" Christian and our daughter has been baptised in the church; however I will be raising her to question everything just as I was. I fully expect she'll drop the mystical beliefs sometime in her teen years (as most kids drop the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and so on), if not earlier.
If she does grow up to be Christian, I'll be a little disappointed, but I'll enjoy our arguments as I do with my step-father. (I don't argue these things with my wife - she's not really the critical thinking type and so just assumes I'm being mean instead of trying to have a fun argument)
Because religion isn't dangerous. Crazy people that use religion as an excuse for their actions are dangerous.
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg
I don't disagree that crazy people use religion to justify their actions; but this quote is pretty accurate in my experience. Additionally, it's worth noting that without the vast majority of "moderate" religious folk, the crazies wouldn't have as much justification for their actions. They may or may not still do those actions, but when religion gets involved, they are able to point to "millions of other believers". Both Christianity and Islam have good examples of this in recent history.
Further to that, further divisions are made, inspiring hate where none is deserved. How many Christians hate all Muslims these days because of the actions of a few extremists? If these extremists were not identified as muslim, but just "some batshit crazy people", the hatred of perfectly innocent Muslims would be significant lower.
So, it's not just the religion itself that causes problems, but indeed even the perception of the religion as dividing people in to "groups" that have no sensible reason to exist.
Christians SHOULD be people that everybody on earth is happy to see because we are supposed to strive to be humble, helpful, loving, charitable and self controlled.
That'd be nice, but as you said, it doesn't happen. Even more so, why do you need Christianity to do that? Why wrap it all up in mysticism and multiple thousand year old fairy-tales? Why not be humble, helpful, loving, charitable and self-controlled WITHOUT religion?
The Bible is playbook to being a better person (New Testament)
The New Testament does not stand alone. It often references the Old Testament, both indirectly and directly. Furthermore, God is said to be omnipotent and omnipresent - including throughout time. You absolutely can't take the New Testament as true without accepting the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament is quite simply a dickish kind of deity. Petty, cruel and quick to anger. Why anyone would choose to worship such a being is beyond me; even given the stretch that people are crazy enough to believe the stories.
If however you simply take the entire Bible to be a set of stories with morals and ideas to live by without believing any of the mysticism then: a) You're not religious; any more than I am for learning life lessons from Grimm's Fairy Tales as a child; b) You need to find better morals and ideas, since those espoused in the Bible may have been suitable one and a half millennia ago, but don't hold up so well for our world today.
True, but the figures are pretty low. Generally speaking, giving birth is a pretty safe activity.
It is however, judging from watching my wife give birth, a pretty horrendous experience to go through. Thankfully, the brain is amazingly good at forgetting pain in general, so after a little while, she still said she'd like to have a second kid one day.
Many many years ago, the Amiga IRC client "AmIRC" used to do a similar thing if you had a known pirated key. Everything sent to the IRC channel would come out as "/me is a lame software pirate", however would appear normal to the user themselves (so they were usually unaware until someone told them).
It was actually fairly well accepted as a clever and cute anti-piracy mechanism; but unlike the app in TFA, it never screwed up (as far as I heard about).
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Physical vs psychological addictiveness is mostly a sham. Shades of grey. Any psychoactive substance can and will be addictive to someone, depending on their intentions.
Sorry, but I call bullshit. I'm a smoker; I hate it. I want to quit and have tried many times... I'll be trying again very soon in fact. It's HARD.
I'm also an LSD user. I could choose to never take it again, and while I'd certainly be "sad" that an important and valuable part of my life was gone, I'd have no "cravings" for it as I do with cigarettes.
I AM addicted to cigarettes but I don't enjoy them. I AM NOT addicted to LSD despite enjoying it immensely.
The problem is that physical addictions start off as psychological ones for the most part. There are no drugs that will get you hooked after one use (no, not even meth or heroin). However if you take those, enjoy them thoroughly and then take them again, you'll find a physical dependence beginning to build up. This is how it was for me (and a billion or so others) with cigarettes.
There are some drugs that have no potential to be physically addictive - LSD being a prime example. You could take LSD daily for a year and at the end of it, you'd be able to stop without a second thought.
That said, taking it daily like that wouldn't really work either. The brain builds up a tolerance to LSD that takes a week or so dissipate. If you take LSD just once, the same amount within a week will have drastically lower effects (often none at all). Given the lethal dosage of LSD is somewhere around 80 to 100 times the amount one normally takes for a trip; only the truly idiotic (and extremely rich) could ever really OD on it.
I used to take LSD between once and twice a month in my younger days. That was what I would consider extremely heavy usage. These days, it's around 2 to 4 times a year. I've never in my life experienced a "need" for it as I do with cigarettes and I've seen others with alcohol or cocaine.
The legalization model that doesn't allow commercial promotion of drugs, and that treats addiction as a medical disease (not a criminal one) is the appropriate one for modern society in my opinion.
On this, I believe we agree. However I'd also include in the model a case where the recreational drugs are only produced by companies licensed to do so (no home growing of marijuana or production of LSD); they are taxed sufficiently that the government receives money that can be used to help those who do abuse them (as with alcohol); and a legal age assigned to use (keeping it the same as alcohol would make sense simply for ease of enforcement; and the reasons for the alcohol age limit generally also apply directly to other recreational drugs).
I wholeheartedly agree with your post. I'd just like to add two things:
If the legal framework for manufacture of designer drugs required a proven lack of physical addictiveness, it wouldn't help the heroin addicts but it also wouldn't make things any worse for the rest of us. Perhaps this is already a part of the FDA guidelines for new drugs.
Sadly and stupidly, the potential for addiction is barely considered by regulating authorities like the FDA. If it were, LSD would be legal and Morphine probably wouldn't be used for pain relief except in the terminally ill.
Legalising drugs is no cure-all and will have its own issues. We need to decide for ourselves if these are preferable to the issues we're currently handling.
It's definitely something that needs serious consideration - what a lot of people don't realise however is that a lot of this serious consideration has already been done; presented to various governments and then simply ignored or thrown out. There's a lot of emotion tied up in drug legislation, especially with the idea that any drug with limited proven medical use should automatically be illegal (the powers that be seem to ignore alcohol in this point of view though). It's as if the very "concept" of a recreational drug (besides alcohol) is so abhorrent to them that they'll ignore any and all evidence passed to them. They also seem to discard the evidence pointing towards some currently illegal street drugs being useful for psychological issues (MDMA and LSD both have good proven track records in this regard).
I was on acid at the most recent work Christmas party... that was an "interesting" experience.
What you haven't worked for twenty years or so?
Heh, it may be less popular these days, but believe me, there's still plenty of people out there who enjoy LSD from time to time.
I generally take it 2 to 4 times a year these days. Much less than in my younger days where it was generally between 12 and 24 times a year; but I do have a wife and child now, so I need to spend more time in "reality" than "stepping outside of reality".
I've spent time in socialist countries and it was miserable. And the closer a country gets to socialism, the more miserable and poor people end up being, the more their liberties end up being restricted, and the more corrupt government becomes.
While "very" socialist countries have, on the whole, been fairy miserable and corrupt places, I'd really like to know your reasoning behind the second half of your statement.
It seems to me that many of (but not all) the countries with the happiest citizens, lowest abject poverty, and best standards of living are those that are highly socialised democracies. They are still for the most part capitalist, but the government retains significant control (through fairness regulation) to discourage a lot of the evil that can spring from the dog-eat-dog style of unbridled capitalism.
you think that if you just try hard enough, you can create an ideal society through government intervention
While I'm not the person you're responding to, I find this a very unfair statement. It's not an "all or nothing" approach and noone beyond the most hardline of socialists believes you can through government intervention ALONE create an ideal society. But it IS a fair statement to say that the purpose of a government should be to regulate and benefit the society as a whole. They are created by the people and therefore should be FOR the people. This is, in essence, a socialistic statement. By a government being "for the people", it has to consider the well-being of all the people; and this will mean disadvantaging some a little in order to advantage others enough to bring them up to a certain standard. It's not about achieving full wealth equality; it's about removing the situation where there are those in society experiencing the abject poverty that leads to many of societies ills (beyond simply things like crime; I personally don't like living in a city where I walk past homeless people each day and have them beg cigarettes from me... I expect my tax money to be used to HELP these people).
In such a system, you may be concerned that many would abuse the privilege and simply allow the government to take care of them to the minimum standard; then remain unemployed and happily living out their days care-free. There are those who do this, but they're actually far fewer than you might suspect. I grew up in a country that would've done that for me - I could've remained unemployed forever after leaving school and still paid my rent, had my medical issues taken care of, eaten enough food to keep me going, and still had a few dollars left over for cigarettes, alcohol and other "luxury" items (although admittedly, really not much). But I wanted more from life that the minimum. I wanted to be able to drive a nice car; I wanted to be able to have a big screen TV; I wanted to travel the world; I wanted to buy a new computer more often than once every five to ten years; and above all of these material things, I wanted to feel useful and productive instead of being looked down on. So, I started working - as did the vast majority of people I knew.
Now, where I grew up wasn't perfect, and sadly from the looks of things it's getting less perfect as times goes on; but what I've described should be considered the absolute minimum of "socialist leanings" in any civilised society.
and I believe that drugs are even more likely to be abused than alcohol
Do you believe that alcohol is less dangerous than all other (currently illegal) drugs out there? Even for drugs beyond marijuana there's plenty of evidence to the contrary...
Also please keep in mind that given the legalisation of a range of drugs, people may "experiment" with multiple but then find that they settle on one or two of a lesser danger for longer term use. The health risks of taking MDMA at nightclubs every second weekend for example is (if well managed) significantly lower than the health risks of drinking large quantities of alcohol at nightclubs every second weekend (as many younger people do).
These days, I only drink alcohol in social settings with family (e.g. a glass of wine or beer with a meal). I haven't been drunk in an extremely long time. Alcohol is quite simply not my substance of choice. I've tried a very wide range of drugs; including (but not limited to), Marijuana, Cocaine, Speed, Meth, MDMA, LSD, and many more. I found that MDMA is something I enjoy perhaps once every few years or so; LSD is something I enjoy for the mind-expanding qualities that it provides and I use around 3 to 4 times a year; and the rest are all very uninteresting to me (as with alcohol). Cocaine I might do again if it were legal and significantly cheaper (it feels good; but not for long; and doesn't even begin to compare to MDMA for "good feelings"), but only in the right circumstances and definitely not often.
(for a user the Silk Road is heaven.. till they OD)
As someone who has used Silk Road on several occasions now; I think my chances of ODing on anything I've bought there is pretty slim. In fact, the total quantity of LSD I've bought there (which is the only drug I've ever bought there) is well under lethal dosage. And given my most recent purchase wasn't so long ago, I've got at least 12 months before I'll want to buy some more.
Of course, I have friends who prefer other substances (which I don't enjoy and so don't use) who certain do buy substances of sufficient quantity to OD, however not being total morons, tend to use their substances responsibly and so don't tend to have any problems.
Not all users of illegal drugs are idiots - they're just the most noticeable ones since those of us who aren't idiots (the vast majority) don't ever end up in the news or otherwise getting in to trouble.
All that said, I'm with the other posters who are of the opinion that this isn't going to have any effect on Silk Road at all. The only way that's getting busted is if the cops just happen across the people running it while investigating something else, are given a tip by someone the people running it were stupid enough to trust, or so on (or a hole in the TOR Hidden Services system is discovered; but that is looking fairly unlikely at this stage).
I pretty sure if I was drunk at work I would get fired.
I was on acid at the most recent work Christmas party... that was an "interesting" experience.
Not that I'd ever want to try to actually WRITE code while tripping (just staring at a screen is disturbing enough for the most part), but I will say that I've had a few good ideas while tripping that I then implemented the next day after my head was in a more stable state.
If Vladimir (or Vlad, as everyone calls him) was suffering from extreme intoxication at the time of his immigration and chose the unique "Volodymyr" Latin rendering of his name (which, incidentally, would sound nothing like his actual name), then that's Vlad's problem. If you find "Volodymyr" to be typical, I'd have to say that you live among a very unique group of Russian expatriots, as I have personally never had the opportunity to run across this variant despite my proximity to Brighton Beach and large group of Russian expatriot friends.
Actually, 5 seconds after a Google search for "Volodymyr", you'll find it's the standard rendering of a Ukrainian name - closely related to Vladimir (same root name) but not the same (as with "Waldemar" in German)
I admit, the GP did say "Russian" when he should've said "Ukrainian", but that doesn't invalidate his point.
I would be interested to know if the tiles have different scores for non-English versions like Welsh or Hawaiian for that matter.
Haven't seen a Welsh or Hawaiian version; but yes - international versions do have different scores for the letters as well as a different count of letters (and sometimes of course, even totally different letters) to accommodate the differences in the language.
For example, Z is worth nowhere near as much in German scrabble, as Z appears fairly frequently in German.
After typing my reply, I wanted to double check the values, and came across this in my Google results.
How can more experience ever be a bad thing?
The most recent time I had to interview for people, I was looking for a mid-level developer role; good with Python; embedded experience considered a bonus. A total of nine people applied for the job. Three were clearly far too inexperienced, two had totally unrealistic salary expectations for the job (we actually pay pretty well, but these guys were asking for nearly DOUBLE my pay, and I'm the supervisor of my department), so that left four to interview.
Out of those four, two were overqualified and two were a good fit. I interviewed all four and confirmed they knew what they said they knew (they all appeared to; so no liars, which was good) as well as did my best to get a feel for their personality and expectations for the job. I, in combination with HR, then had to make a decision.
If we took one of the overqualified people (who were in fact brilliant), they would have been bored/frustrated with the work; would not have taken well to me being their boss; would be more likely to leave when a better position came along; and would have cost us more in salary. So, despite being brilliant, they would have been the wrong choice.
We ended up hiring one of the two "good fit" people (based purely on his personality, since from a technical skill level both were equally capable of the job from what I could see). He's been with us for about half a year now and is (by all accounts from our last employee appraisal meeting) extremely happy with the job and we're extremely happy with the work he's doing.
Had it been necessary to choose between underqualified and overqualified, I would of course have chosen overqualified. But I'm also sure that that person would not be as happy in the job as the guy we got and in the long run it would've turned out bad for everyone involved.
So you'd rather focus on an irrelevant distinction than talk about the underlying issues. Gotcha.
While I will freely admit that I was ignorant of the distinction until reading this thread (I really know very little about guns), these "irrelevant distinctions" can really make a difference.
Not so long ago, a silly tourist took too many magic mushrooms in Amsterdam and against the standard advice, also combined it with other substances (alcohol and marijuana most likely). Because of this, there was huge pressure on the government to ban magic mushrooms.
Now, this is something they really didn't want to do, since it would make a lot of people unhappy, and they're well aware that the actual risks are negligible. So, what they did was rely on one of these "irrelevant distinctions" and specifically banned magic mushrooms. All other forms of naturally occurring psilocybin containing fungus continue to be sold to this day. The psilocybin truffles sold under the brand name "Atlantis" are generally far more potent than any of the mushroom varieties were.
Officially speaking, the government remains mute on this point, insisting that they carried out the ban as requested; but it's more than clear that it was quite deliberately managed to avoid the disruption that would've been caused by outlawing all psilocybin containing fungi.
Any references to Nazism in Germany is strictly prohibited, and often prosecuted. Also, any art form (games, movies, plays, etc.) can't make overt reference to Swastikas or Nazis either. I really hope you don't need a citation for this, as the reasons for it are well understood if you've ever opened a WWII history book. However, censorship is censorship.
Well, living in Germany and having watched "Iron Sky" at the cinema is probably a pretty good counter-citation...
It's illegal to espouse Nazi-ism as an ideology; but simply referencing it is NOT prohibited and does NOT lead to prosecution. Hell, even doing it quite directly, but as a joke is okay in the right scenarios as long as it's clearly a joke (I have a work colleague that often jokes about driving tanks in to Paris every time our French daughter-company pisses him off).
But wait, they don't have freedom of speech or the right to bear arms in Germany so how can this be?
Article 5 of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) would disagree with you on freedom of speech (specifically: freedom of expression). It states:
(1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing, and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
(2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honor.
(3) Art and scholarship, research, and teaching shall be free. The freedom of teaching shall not release any person from allegiance to the constitution.
There are of course limits to this as indicated by the second statement; but I've yet to see a country where this is not the case. Even in the much flaunted "free" USA, Wikipedia informs me:
In the United States freedom of expression is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. There are several common law exceptions including obscenity, defamation, incitement, incitement to riot or imminent lawless action, fighting words, fraud, speech covered by government granted monopoly (copyright), and speech integral to criminal conduct. There are federal criminal law statutory prohibitions covering all the common law exceptions other than defamation, of which there is civil law liability, as well as making false statements (lying) in "matters within the jurisdiction" of the federal government, speech related to information decreed to be related to national security such as military and classified information, false advertising, perjury, privileged communications, trade secrets, copyright, and patents. Most states and localities have many identical restrictions, as well as harassment, and time, place and manner restrictions.
Overall, it seems similar.
er... 10000 km is "somewhat over a quarter of the way to the moon"? if you really think that the moon is only about 4 earth diameters away from the earth, your mental model of solar system needs a serious recalibration! :)
Heh... actually, it was a severe brain-fart moment... my brain said "a fortieth" and my fingers came out with "a quarter" somehow.
So yeh, mea culpa. But thanks for setting the record straight in case anyone was to read that silly mistake and end up believing it.
My meteorology instructor said, "Take a basketball, and assume the Earth is that size. The bumps are higher than Everest and the valleys are deeper than the Challenger Deep, but it will do. Dunk it in a bucket and pull it back out. See that sheen of water on the surface? That's the breathable atmosphere." That's always stuck with me.
I'm glad you said "breathable atmosphere" rather than just "atmosphere". Something that most people don't seem to get is that it's very very hard to define the "limit" of our atmosphere (or indeed that of most planets that have one).
The exosphere (by no means "breathable", but still measurably part of our atmosphere) extends to 10000km away from the surface, which is only slightly less than the diameter of the Earth itself (12750km) and somewhat over a quarter of the way to the moon. The mesosphere goes up to 85km from the surface, which is probably the best measurement of "noticeable atmosphere" since that's where meteors generally burn up and you start needing to pay more attention to the air when parking your spaceship.
The breathable atmosphere is probably best defined as up to around 8km, a little shy of the full height of the troposphere (9km). After this height, humans begin having serious trouble with getting and using oxygen in their bodies (short term, it's survivable, but extremely unpleasant... long term, it's going to be fatal without supplementary O2 supplies). Scaling the Earth down to a basketball (75cm) gives us about half a millimetre of breathable atmosphere... this is probably a bit more than the sheen of water on your ball, which I'd estimate to only be half that at a quarter of a millimetre. The mesosphere for reference would be 5mm, still tiny, but much more noticeable.
But nevertheless, still very cool imagery.
The problem is, provided that he really is an aspie, that he can't be taught these things. Social interaction for instance is highly dependent on being able to "read" peoples facial expressions at a glance. If he is some kind of autistic, he's simply unable to do that. With training and skill he might be able to do it by thinking and reasoning about it, but he will never do it on the fly, which is effectively the same thing as not being able to, because it's too slow.
That's not entirely true. I was diagnosed with Asperger's as an adult (I'm too old to have been diagnosed as a child (the diagnosis existed in my childhood, but was almost never used)... they just called me "sociopathic"). I spent most of my childhood assuming that other people were like me and just "better" at learning facial expressions/body language/etc than I was. I thought I was "slow", despite getting high marks in every academic endeavour.
Nowadays, unless I'm tired or under the influence of depressant drugs (such as alcohol), you'd be unlikely to figure out that what's going on in my head is significantly different to other people. I fake it EXTREMELY well for the most part and can read and diagnose a facial expression in a matter of milliseconds with a success rate of around 85% (or higher with people I've had multiple interactions with... somewhat lower for people of non-Caucasian appearance though simply due to a lack of suitable practice).
One of my friends is a man on the other end of the scale - highly empathetic, "party" type of guy who is always the centre of attention. He backs up my opinion that for the most part I seem normal (of course, he's seen me tired many times and so is well aware of how I am when I stop trying).
Many of my co-workers don't know I have Asperger's. I don't deliberately avoid telling people, I just don't bother mentioning it unless it comes up in conversation or I need to explain myself for some reason. This is mostly out of a desire not to waste my time explaining it over and over a thousand times a day (which is why I bother faking "normalcy" to begin with).
so what in the world do you mean; that there need to be more laws concerning low-risk substances?
Sorry... you totally misunderstood me. By "some sense coming to law-makers regarding psychedelics", I meant steps towards legalising them. I completely agree they're extremely low-risk substances.
That said, I still wouldn't drive on them and wouldn't feel safe on the road with you driving on them regardless of how confident you feel you're doing it correctly.
I've had hundreds of trips, always been in control of myself and never had a situation where I felt I wasn't able to correctly judge the true state of the world around me based on my sensory input... however I also am well aware that I might end up focusing on things that aren't important or missing things that are. My mind is far too actively wandering to consider it safe to pilot a vehicle!
Look, these idiots are still classifying pot as a Schedule 1 drug. It's in the same category as cocaine, heroin and LSD. None of the Schedule 1 drugs have any beneficial use and yet marijuana clearly does for migraine headaches, glaucoma, and nausea from radiation treatment for cancer patients.
While I fully support changing the schedule (actually much further: I support complete legalisation) of pot; I take issue with your statement lumping LSD in with cocaine and heroin (or even lumping together cocaine and heroin).
Further to that, most drugs have possible legitimate medical uses. Cocaine is an excellent local painkiller (think: toothache); heroin is a good general painkiller (think: cancer); and LSD had very good success in dealing with some mental conditions, most notably addiction. While most problems have "better" drugs available, it doesn't mean these drugs don't work (and in the case of LSD, I'm not aware of anything that has better success rates against alcoholism).
Maybe you puritans should just not use it instead of trying to prevent me from using what for me is a working anti-depressant.
Ummm... actually, I never said anything about it being bad to legalise it or wanting to punish users or anything like that - just that it has really negative effects on me.
For reference, I'm strongly in favour of legalisation of all substances that have limited to no harmful effects on the user; and then awareness campaigns and education in place to encourage people to use it responsibly if they do choose to use it at all (similar to alcohol (which I absolutely acknowledge shouldn't have been legal to begin with were it not already grandfathered in and cause too many problems to ban)). To me, this class of "limited to no harm" drugs most definitely includes marijuana.
My preferred substances are illegal pretty much everywhere. I can get psilocybin truffles legally with a quick trip over the border in to the Netherlands; but I find they give me a small stomach upset along with the trip and also the trip itself doesn't last as long as I'd like. I far prefer LSD, which to the best of my knowledge is illegal pretty much everywhere (there may be no defined laws in some of the more lawless parts of the world; but I'd rather not go live there...)
I'm sure as you well know.. different people are affected in different manners by THC consumption.
This is something more people need to pay attention to. I myself for example after only one or two puffs will feel seasick, dry mouth, confused, and ready to vomit (if I have one or two more, I will vomit). After that, I pretty much want to curl up, sleep and get rid of the nastiness going on in my brain. Obviously, I gave up trying it after four or five times of the same effects (friends tried to tell me that it's like that for everyone the first time, but gets more fun on subsequent uses - for me, it didn't).
Other people I know however can sit and smoke joint after joint and then still be quite functional (definitely "altered", but functional nevertheless).
There's no way I'd get behind the wheel of a vehicle in the state I am in after only one or two puffs of that stuff; but I'd have no problem sitting in a car my brother is driving after he's just finished a whole joint.
Anyway... wake me up when some sense comes to law-makers on far more interesting substances like the psychedelics.
I guess you didn't get the memo that General D. Vader will be taking Petraus' spot.
While it adds nothing to the topic, I have to use this opportunity to mention that there's an office in my building with a nameplate outside it "D. Maul". Turns out to be an excessively tall scary looking woman with what amounts to a slightly outgrown crew-cut.
What I want to see is children encouraged to question everything and be taught to think critically, not have a doctrine pounded into their heads literally from birth to the point where even as adults they can't shake it and think for themselves.
Interestingly, my step-father is a minister in the Anglican church. He's also a physicist/teacher. He taught me to think critically, question everything and use logic to deduce the best course of action that is based on the most likely situation given the variables.
These days, we tend to have rather large arguments over religion... In my view, it's the way he raised me that lead me to atheism as the only viable and realistic situation our universe could have. In his view, logic and critical thinking point towards the absolute necessity for a creator. And again in my view, he's weighting the variables incorrectly (the "feeling" of "Jesus being in his life" is something he gives a lot of weight to; whereas since I understand brain chemistry better than he does, I give significantly less weight to)
My wife is a "weak" Christian and our daughter has been baptised in the church; however I will be raising her to question everything just as I was. I fully expect she'll drop the mystical beliefs sometime in her teen years (as most kids drop the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and so on), if not earlier.
If she does grow up to be Christian, I'll be a little disappointed, but I'll enjoy our arguments as I do with my step-father. (I don't argue these things with my wife - she's not really the critical thinking type and so just assumes I'm being mean instead of trying to have a fun argument)
Because religion isn't dangerous. Crazy people that use religion as an excuse for their actions are dangerous.
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg
I don't disagree that crazy people use religion to justify their actions; but this quote is pretty accurate in my experience. Additionally, it's worth noting that without the vast majority of "moderate" religious folk, the crazies wouldn't have as much justification for their actions. They may or may not still do those actions, but when religion gets involved, they are able to point to "millions of other believers". Both Christianity and Islam have good examples of this in recent history.
Further to that, further divisions are made, inspiring hate where none is deserved. How many Christians hate all Muslims these days because of the actions of a few extremists? If these extremists were not identified as muslim, but just "some batshit crazy people", the hatred of perfectly innocent Muslims would be significant lower.
So, it's not just the religion itself that causes problems, but indeed even the perception of the religion as dividing people in to "groups" that have no sensible reason to exist.
Christians SHOULD be people that everybody on earth is happy to see because we are supposed to strive to be humble, helpful, loving, charitable and self controlled.
That'd be nice, but as you said, it doesn't happen. Even more so, why do you need Christianity to do that? Why wrap it all up in mysticism and multiple thousand year old fairy-tales? Why not be humble, helpful, loving, charitable and self-controlled WITHOUT religion?
The Bible is playbook to being a better person (New Testament)
The New Testament does not stand alone. It often references the Old Testament, both indirectly and directly. Furthermore, God is said to be omnipotent and omnipresent - including throughout time. You absolutely can't take the New Testament as true without accepting the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament is quite simply a dickish kind of deity. Petty, cruel and quick to anger. Why anyone would choose to worship such a being is beyond me; even given the stretch that people are crazy enough to believe the stories.
If however you simply take the entire Bible to be a set of stories with morals and ideas to live by without believing any of the mysticism then:
a) You're not religious; any more than I am for learning life lessons from Grimm's Fairy Tales as a child;
b) You need to find better morals and ideas, since those espoused in the Bible may have been suitable one and a half millennia ago, but don't hold up so well for our world today.
People still die in childbirth.
True, but the figures are pretty low. Generally speaking, giving birth is a pretty safe activity.
It is however, judging from watching my wife give birth, a pretty horrendous experience to go through. Thankfully, the brain is amazingly good at forgetting pain in general, so after a little while, she still said she'd like to have a second kid one day.
Many many years ago, the Amiga IRC client "AmIRC" used to do a similar thing if you had a known pirated key. Everything sent to the IRC channel would come out as "/me is a lame software pirate", however would appear normal to the user themselves (so they were usually unaware until someone told them).
It was actually fairly well accepted as a clever and cute anti-piracy mechanism; but unlike the app in TFA, it never screwed up (as far as I heard about).