prosthetic knowledge
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The most dangerous drug isn’t meow meow. It isn’t even alcohol … by Charlie Brooker for The Guardian
Newspapers are the biggest threat to the nation’s mental wellbeing
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In summary: if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I don’t much care for mood-altering substances. But I’m not afraid of them either. With one exception.
It’s perhaps the biggest threat to the nation’s mental wellbeing, yet it’s freely available on every street – for pennies. The dealers claim it expands the mind and bolsters the intellect: users experience an initial rush of emotion (often euphoria or rage), followed by what they believe is a state of enhanced awareness. Tragically this “awareness” is a delusion. As they grow increasingly detached from reality, heavy users often exhibit impaired decision-making abilities, becoming paranoid, agitated and quick to anger. In extreme cases they’ve even been known to form mobs and attack people. Technically it’s called “a newspaper”, although it’s better known by one of its many “street names”, such as “The Currant Bun” or “The Mail” or “The Grauniad” (see me – Ed).
In its purest form, a newspaper consists of a collection of facts which, in controlled circumstances, can actively improve knowledge. Unfortunately, facts are expensive, so to save costs and drive up sales, unscrupulous dealers often “cut” the basic contents with cheaper material, such as wild opinion, bullshit, empty hysteria, reheated press releases, advertorial padding and photographs of Lady Gaga with her bum hanging out. The hapless user has little or no concept of the toxicity of the end product: they digest the contents in good faith, only to pay the price later when they find themselves raging incoherently in pubs, or – increasingly – on internet messageboards.
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#27club
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The Stealthy Anonymart via The Techium
Is there greater thrill than encountering a new species technology in the wild ? The blogs Threat Level/Gawker recently reported the appearance of an entirely new genre of technology: an anonymous marketplace, or anonymarket.
Out there on the internet is a place where you can buy and sell anything anonymously using untraceable money. What is mostly being bought and sold in this stealth market right now are recreational drugs — pot and acid, etc. There has always been black markets in every city of the world, but as underground and out of sight as they might be, you still needed to show up in person to trade. And there has long been outlaw areas of the internet where black markets thrive and you don’t need to reveal yourself, but paying without any trace has been a problem.
This new online stealthy anonymart, called Silk Road, solves these problems with two existing technologies. Silk Road uses established anonymizing Tor network to trade anonymously, and it employs the new Bitcoin peer-to-peer encrypted payment system to provide untraceable payments, which can in theory be converted to dollars or other national currencies.
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LIFE IS A COSMIC GIGGLE ON THE BREATH OF THE UNIVERSE | A Tour of Gordon Todd Skinner’s Subterranean LSD Palace - VICE via poortaste
Why the drugs (trade) works ….
VICE: I’ve read that Leonard was also working as a DEA informant. I find it amazing that two of the world’s most powerful drug dealers were both working for the DEA independently, unbeknownst to each other. Did Todd give you the impression that the DEA is closely involved with the distribution of Schedule I drugs?
Krystal: Yes, absolutely. He would say those exact words. At the top of the pyramid there is no division between drug distribution and drug enforcement. Fifty-four percent of the prison population are sentenced for drug-related offenses. The assets of those prisoners, and the money they draw through the court system, is absolutely enormous. Without chemists to produce drugs, the DEA cannot profit off busts. If they bust people at the lower echelons while retaining the production at the top, they can sustain the agency. Without these chemists, the entire organization would disintegrate.
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The Pleasure Seekers (book cover) via Montague Projects
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High Tea
In this strategic plate-spinning game, you play an independent British smuggler selling opium in China’s Pearl Delta. Buy cheap and sell high to make a profit, but make sure you also obtain enough tea to keep Britain happy. You have ten years before the opium wars begin - can you make your fortune? Based on historical events, this game also shines a light on a questionable episode in the history of the British Empire.
Basically a Flash-based historical management game based on selling opium for silver, using the silver to buy tea, to satisfy the British demand ….
I quite like it actually :)
Part of the promotion of the ‘High Society’ exhibition at the Wellcomme Collection, looking at the history of drug use:
With the illicit drug trade estimated by the UN at $320 billion (£200bn) a year and new drugs constantly appearing on the streets and the internet, it can seem as if we are in the grip of an unprecedented level of addiction. Yet the use of psychoactive drugs is nothing new, and indeed our most familiar ones - alcohol, coffee and tobacco - have all been illegal in the past.
From ancient Egyptian poppy tinctures to Victorian cocaine eye drops, Native American peyote rites to the salons of the French Romantics, mind-altering drugs have a rich history. ‘High Society’ will explore the paths by which these drugs were first discovered - from apothecaries’ workshops to state-of-the-art laboratories - and how they came to be simultaneously fetishised and demonised in today’s culture.
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Alcohol ‘more harmful than heroin’ says Prof David Nutt (via BBC News)
Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack, according to a study published in medical journal the Lancet.
The report is co-authored by Professor David Nutt, the former UK chief drugs adviser who was sacked by the government in October 2009.
It ranks 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.
Tobacco and cocaine are judged to be equally harmful, while ecstasy and LSD are among the least damaging.
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SCHWARZENEGGER DECRIMINALIZES CANNABIS (via paxmachina)
California’s lame duck governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed a bunch of bills into law on Thursday, including one decriminalizing possession of less than an ounce of weed, although you wouldn’t know it. There’s virtually no mainstream media coverage of Senate Bill 1449. The new law takes effect in 2011 and reduces the punishment from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction, that at the most, will cost $100 and as NORML points out, means “no court appearance, no court costs, and no criminal record.”
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100 Best (Free) Science Documentaries Online Subjects include Health, Drugs, Genetics, Evolution, Biology, Physics, Environment, Geology, Space, Technology, and Nature.
