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Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

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Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#171

Post by cluckindan »

soraminazuki wrote: post #170
LorenPechtel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The drug warriors are neither humane nor sensible. Opioids are actually not all that dangerous, but the range between high and dead is not all that great. When you know what you're getting (chronic pain patients) the problem rate is low. But with the street you get varying purity. And the drug war has caused the manufacturers to move to more concentrated products to make smuggling easier. And fentanyl has a very…

> No. The drug warriors are neither humane nor sensible. I never once advocated for the war on drugs approach, and I made that crystal clear in my comment. Proper policy != war on drugs. It means making sure that drugs get properly certified and its distribution controlled. It means focusing on treatment rather than aggressively punishing those who get addicted. It means addressing the underlying social issues that p…

I mostly agree with your viewpoints, but why would you leave some drugs unregulated and could you provide some examples of such drugs?

Opioids are only dangerous due to variance in purity (overdoses) and availability (withdrawal-motivated crime).

Of course addiction and dependence can be exploited for profit, but how is opioid dependence different in that respect from alcohol dependence, gambling addiction, sex addiction or even TikTok?

We already know what causes compulsive behaviors linked to addictions and also how to undo them. Amphetamines, cocaine, opioids, gambling and sex have a common denominator, namely overexpression of Delta-FosB protein in the orbitofrontal cortex. Those changes can be eradicated overnight with histone deacetylase inhibitors, but this treatment is not generally available.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#172

Post by jillesvangurp »

crackrook wrote: post #153
jillesvangurp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most places that focus on treatment rather than punishment see drops in all the relevant stats for deaths, crime, health issues, etc. related to drugs usage. And even drops in drug abuse itself. The one thing that has never really worked and continues to create endless amounts of misery is the war on drugs and all the collateral damage it causes. It never worked. Not even a little bit.

I totally believe that treatment should be the focus for drug users; the only focus, even. What I'm having trouble believing is that convenient access to drugs would not result in net-harms that are worse than those inflicted by (imperfect attempts at) holding people accountable for selling these chemicals to the vulnerable, irrespective of whether or not those people are pharmaceutical companies or cartels. I would…

Drug trade is so lucrative that most drugs are now readily available to those that want them. If you have the cash, getting what you want is very easy and convenient. It's proven extremely hard to make it inconvenient.

So, I think you are over estimating the effects of decriminalizing drug usage. And you are underestimating the effects of getting it out in the open where it can be monitored and be made subject to legislation. And of course there have been plenty of countries that have experimented with this and have gotten good results. And there have of course been plenty of countries that have gotten decent results with decriminalizing drug usage.

The legalization of weed in the US is a good recent example. Before legalization lots of people would get in trouble for smoking or selling weed. And these days the same activity is fine. Do lots more people smoke weed now? Probably to some extent. But it's mostly the same people that were interested in doing that sort of thing anyway. I come from a country where weed smoking and sales were decriminalized decades ago. The system kind of works. Dutch drug usage stats aren't very different from surrounding countries.

I've lived in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Finland that have a complicated relationship with alcohol. And of course technically, alcohol should be considered a drug. I've seen more alcohol abuse there than in countries where it's perfectly normal to have a drink. You have alcoholics everywhere. But it seems people not getting exposed to a normal set of behaviors around alcohol have a lot of people that overcompensate when it's suddenly made available cheaply. You see this when you meet Scandinavians on vacation elsewhere in Europe.

I currently live in a city (Berlin) where it is considered normal to have a beer on the street, in parks, or public transport. Not just normal. But completely socially acceptable. Nobody frowns at you. Nobody tells you off. And mostly people just stick to a sensible amount. Beer consumption is actually dropping in Germany. People are switching to non alcoholic beverages. That's happening in a lot of places.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#173

Post by lupusreal »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #142
lupusreal wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think Adderall should be available OTC to everybody. It's an open secret that rich kids with no legitimate mental issues buy prescriptions for adderall to boost their school and job performance. The popular talk of "ADHD brains" for which Adderall works differently is pseudoscience tacitly endorsed by the medical community to make people feel okay about using these drugs. They don't just boost the school perform…

I wouldn’t say it is relatively harmless like caffeine. You hardly notice an effect from caffeine. You take adderall you are noticeably stimming on the other hand. You feel quite high and it is in no way subtle.

Caffeine isn't an amphetamine so there are differences, but caffeine hardly having a noticeable effect isn't one of them. Dose is everything. If you stick to coffee or cola that limits you, but pick up a bottle of OTC caffeine pills and you can really start to get wired and hurt yourself.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#174

Post by neurostimulant »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #147
soraminazuki wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a choice between legalization of all drugs or violence and corruption. Sure, the way the US cracked down on drugs did more harm than good. But that doesn't mean there should be no regulation for drugs whatsoever. Take the opioid epidemic for example. It claimed the lives of hundreds of people per day. Do you think "humane and sensible" people were responsible for that?

No. The drug warriors are neither humane nor sensible. Opioids are actually not all that dangerous, but the range between high and dead is not all that great. When you know what you're getting (chronic pain patients) the problem rate is low. But with the street you get varying purity. And the drug war has caused the manufacturers to move to more concentrated products to make smuggling easier. And fentanyl has a very…

You can slowly quit alcohol and tobacco addiction with your own willpower alone, but not opioid addiction. Imagine if it were an saas where signing up for a subscription is super easy but quitting on your own is almost impossible, of course regulators would step in.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#175

Post by cluckindan »

neurostimulant wrote: post #174
LorenPechtel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The drug warriors are neither humane nor sensible. Opioids are actually not all that dangerous, but the range between high and dead is not all that great. When you know what you're getting (chronic pain patients) the problem rate is low. But with the street you get varying purity. And the drug war has caused the manufacturers to move to more concentrated products to make smuggling easier. And fentanyl has a very…

You can slowly quit alcohol and tobacco addiction with your own willpower alone, but not opioid addiction. Imagine if it were an saas where signing up for a subscription is super easy but quitting on your own is almost impossible, of course regulators would step in.

It doesn’t need to be entirely willpower. Opioid dependency can be dealt with by doing what they would do in rehab: slowly taper down the daily dose over many weeks.

Of course, that only works if you have access to a standardized, regulated supply of opioids. You can’t do it with street drugs of unknown purity.

Going cold turkey off potent opioids is a recipe for relapse, or at worst, death.

Still, the likelihood of dying from withdrawal is much, much lower than with benzos or alcohol: both of those can cause seizures in withdrawal.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#176

Post by potato3732842 »

whatever1 wrote: post #158
potato3732842 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They could set a 1000% tax on the coffee produced. No they couldn't. That'd just mint another cartel run black market that they don't control and that cartel would tax the black market coffee at substantially less. You can kind of think of the current drugs situation as a "so big the number doesn't matter, it's a non stater" percent tax.

That new cartel would invite a war against it. These disputes are not resolved through capitalistic means. You cannot just price out the big guys.

How is that any different than the current situation where the current cartel is fighting with the government?

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#177

Post by krisoft »

immibis wrote: post #81
krisoft wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just imagine being a techie working for the cartel. In case you do not receive the ping, would you want to tell this to your violence prone boss: “Hey boss! Sooo. According to my calculations the significant investment you made in my idea should have pinged back by now. Maybe it is there, just there is something wrong with the SIM, or the antenna, or the network. Or maybe it is a few miles left or right on the coas…

Don't ask me how a criminal operation holds together without either someone defecting and getting everyone killed, or someone killing someone else because they thought they were defecting. Presuming that it does, in fact, somehow maintain cohesion, I think they're all aware the submarine stuff is risky. They're earning however many tens of millions of dollars per successful shipment and it's way higher than what it a…

> I think they're all aware the submarine stuff is risky.

Yeah, but that only works if you get feedback back. The problem is not that the submersible sometimes breaks down. The problem is if you only have a gsm modem on it which only sends data back at the end of the run you won’t be able to tell what went wrong, therefore you can’t improve on it.

“Boss, a big wave broke the snorkel and the craft stalled 36% of the way there. Richardo is welding a stronger snorkle on the next one as we speak.” Is what you want to tell your boss. This is the reason why they have telemetry.

The problem with launching the craft into the dark with just a gps sifnal is that it is too binary of a signal. You get one bit of information out of it: made it / didn’t made it. With that your ship can be 99% perfect and still only see the “did not make it” signal because of the last 1% of things not working.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#178

Post by philipallstar »

jrflowers wrote: post #165
philipallstar wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FARC was left-wing death squads; AUC far right counter-death squads.

What is a counter-death squad? A ragtag band of obstetricians? Unless there’s a type of killing that doesn’t involve death, looks like the AUC was a far right wing death squad. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapirip%C3%A1n_massacre

A death squad to attack the other death squads.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#179

Post by LorenPechtel »

neurostimulant wrote: post #174
LorenPechtel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The drug warriors are neither humane nor sensible. Opioids are actually not all that dangerous, but the range between high and dead is not all that great. When you know what you're getting (chronic pain patients) the problem rate is low. But with the street you get varying purity. And the drug war has caused the manufacturers to move to more concentrated products to make smuggling easier. And fentanyl has a very…

You can slowly quit alcohol and tobacco addiction with your own willpower alone, but not opioid addiction. Imagine if it were an saas where signing up for a subscription is super easy but quitting on your own is almost impossible, of course regulators would step in.

The thing is cold turkey doesn't work. The reactions are bad and can be deadly.

But if you have access to accurately known doses that can be stepped down in small amounts you avoid all the bad things.

Remember, there's a big problem with inadequate pain control. Drug doesn't work exactly as the doctor expects, they assume drug seeking--and now you have people driven to the street to make life bearable. You're not going to "cure" an "addict" that actually needs the pain control.

Cut out all the nonsense, with addiction a valid reason there would be no drug seeking and doctors would be able to work with the patients much better.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#180

Post by kjkjadksj »

lupusreal wrote: post #173
kjkjadksj wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t say it is relatively harmless like caffeine. You hardly notice an effect from caffeine. You take adderall you are noticeably stimming on the other hand. You feel quite high and it is in no way subtle.

Caffeine isn't an amphetamine so there are differences, but caffeine hardly having a noticeable effect isn't one of them. Dose is everything. If you stick to coffee or cola that limits you, but pick up a bottle of OTC caffeine pills and you can really start to get wired and hurt yourself.

You get nausea before anything. I’ve done 10 cups before in one sitting in college. Just makes the stomach hurt. Very little action in the head other than a growing headache. Completely different than adderall which gives a very noticeable high.
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