It is very limited though. I would consider Germany more on the decriminalized side.

You are allowed to own a small amount. You are allowed to grow up to three plants at home. It is illegal to buy, sell, or import.

There is rules for having cannabis social clubs similiar to Spain, but the rules around them are quite complex and a lot of it remains unclear, until the law will have been interpreted in court decisions.

Some German states have already announced that they will make life hell for anyone smoking weed in legal public spaces or operating a legal cannabis social club. Also the level of permittable THC for driving is still undecided.

Currently any level of blood THC is considered a DUI and can not only get you a fine, but also a suspension of your drivers licencse with an extensive “medical psychological check up” if you want to regain your licencse. That “check up” is run by private businesses who also sell courses on which answers are right and which are wrong. Basically anything beyond “this was the only time i swear, i was in a bad place and i should have never done it and i am so sorry, and i will never do it again” is a wrong answer.

Now we had an expert proposal for a higher level of permittable blood THC. The proposed level has yet to pass but it would effectively be fine for occasional users, but still a problem for regular users, as it is close to the baseline THC level that they have.

So all in all it is a great step forward, especially considering how the “debate” from the political right and fascists was run around 1970s war on drug prohibition and cultural deprevation talking points. However it still creates many aspects to watch out for and it should be noted, that the political right wants to do everything to reverse the laws, when they likely win the elections next year. The problem with that is also that the center right social democrats are still internally devided, with many of them still thinking of weed as the devils lettuce.

The US is systematically failling. Just going to an election every couple years to decide between two parties who are both reponsible for and defending this current status is not going to cut it.

Which is indicative, or rather painfully obvious shoving it into peoples faces, that the US political system is systemically broken and needs systemic reforms.

But instead of growing past “your team vs my team” people cheer on the further decline that makes them suffer.

If the US would just bring demise to itself i wouldn’t mind, but since it is causing pain and suffering all over the world it needs to be adressed.

I have the feeling that most online atheist groups are actually self-help groups for people traumatized by evangelical Christians.

I dunno. I wouldn’t go to someones funeral if i wouldn’t know them at all.

You know things are bad, when both sides of US politics rely on desinformation and populist narratives.

Biden is 81 years old and regularly showed in public appearances that he is mentally declining. Trump shows the same.

The fact that both sides of the two party system band together to claim that the age and mental state of their candidates should not be a clear reason to exclude both canidates is insane to look at from the outside. How can the US still delude itself into being anything but a nuclearly armed corrupt oligarchy, when these two candidates is the “best” the nation has to offer? How can you still delude yourself into believing that this is not the result of an oligarchy that will never allow a candidate to actually bring the economic change necessary to protect the poor people and make the rich people contribute fairly to society?

One party is rapeing you from the front and the other party is rapeing you from behind and you argue about which way around it is better instead of seeing to end getting fucked over.

It is multiple spills and some have been going on for decades.

Iran denies being involved in Hamas attack on Israel and had no interest in a further escalation, so it is unlikely that they pushed for it. Russia made deals with Israel, that Israel stays out of sanctions against Russia in return for Russia letting Israel attack Iranian proxies in Syria. Also Israeli drones are used by the russian military and have been shot down over Ukraine.

Iran is very much not happy with how Russia lets Israel bomb them in Syria. They most definetely dont trust Russia enough to take such a risk.

The one who have an interest in blaming October 7 on Iran are Israel and War Hawks in US politics, who want a war with Iran and justify unconditional support of Israel.

Which i would also say, if three men showed up at my door to inform me about the very unfortunate suicide of my husband and that they really strongly hope, that i am not also suicidal like him…

Being willing to kill someone as a “last option” and wanting to kill everyone who poses the slightest threat are not the same motivations.

Also thinking about it, how many people at a company the size of Boeing become a threat by being bothered with criminal practices violating safety and other law and ethic standards? How many do we not hear about because the “normal” coercion tactics work?

Having half your engineering department wind up dead because they raised concerns about issues with the production could backfire much more to begin with, but also it would make every engineer look for a different employer quickly. So trying to destroy someones reputation first, ousting him, creating a “him vs. us” mentality is preferential. It also makes it easier for the company to move on after killing him, if the need arises.

So both from a emotionally crippled, but not fully devoid point of view and from an completely psychopathic cold blooded strategy point of view it makes sense to not pull the trigger on everyone right away.

Unless you are forced to life in that area you are making a choice. And you are not forced to life there. It comes with trade offs. The trade offs are traded in the housing market. People fled the cities in the 80s to move into suburbs. Now people want to life in the city again.

And cost of living of course includes the coffee and toast. You see that in areas that are gentrified, forcing people who dont make the 100k a year to move away. Where before the coffee was 3$ it now is 15$. And someone is paying for that, otherwise the business would not work. So again people are making that choice. And the people with 100k make the choice actually forcing the hand of people who only make 30k and are literally forced out of their neighbourhood.

Of course then there is all the more compulsion to claim, that they had no choice but to gentrify and had no choice but to drive people out of their neighbourhoods. Because if the people with 100k weren’t forced to do so, then they would need to take responsibility for their role in that market. Of course the main responsibility remains with the landlords who are happy to drive rents up and people out. But then again i doubt there to be many six figure engineers who are devout to left parties (in case of the US, the Democrats are not a left party by any outside standard.)

But then why is it an acceptable choice for the commuting grocery store worker, but not for the engineer? There is a quality of living involved here that the engineer chooses to pay for, which the grocery store worker doesn’t have.

Thats what i mean with unrealised luxuries. They claim to live paycheck to paycheck because their understanding of what a “normal” standard of living ist, is very different, from what “normal” people actually have as a standard of living.

This is not to say, that theses conditions are a good society or dont need changing. But who can get such an engineering job definetely chooses to have a quality of life that he pays all his paycheck for. If it wouldn’t be a choice the grocery store workers wouldn’t exist.

So where is that place, where the cost of living fully eat up a 250k salary, or even a 100k salary? And by eating up i mean actually living paycheck to paycheck, not as given in the examples enjoying many small luxuries that add up, but are not realised as such.

I get the concept. But realistically that would mean three things:

In a region where people make 250k a year for them to live paycheck to paycheck the cost of living would need to be somewhere around 4-5x higher than in an area where people would make 50k a year.

That would further mean that in the areas where people make 250k a year noone would exist that could afford anything less than that. So the grocery store cashier and the gas station clerk and the postman would all need to make the same money as google software engineers. That is clearly not the case.

And thirdly that means that either the people who make that much money living paycheck to paycheck are economically illiterate and dont grasp such simple concepts… Or which is far more likely, the quality of life in high cost of living areas is in fact so much better, that it is worth paying the extra.

Either way someone who can make 250k a year is choosing to life paycheck to paycheck by choosing to pay such expenses. They definetely have the means to work somewhere where the difference between cost of living and paycheck allows for saving signficant amounts of money over time. Claiming those people would be victims of the system who were forced to live paycheck to paycheck is simply not true. It is still very much their own choice.

Excuse me what? Someone earning that much money is only living paycheck to paycheck because their lifestyle is that expensive. And then it actually is their own fault for buying the 15$ Latte with a 30$ Avocado toast every morning, driving to work in their leased 100k $ car, while their wive drives her own 100k $ car.

Everyone who speaks up, encourages others to speak up. You will not get the ones that only sit a t home only watching fox news, but if everyone who leaves the house is still met with opposition to their absurd claims, it will deterioate the effects of fox and co.

What we expect to be the normative view does influence our views. People want to hold the opinion that they think to be the majority opinion. That is why cults try to isolate their members from other people with other opinions.

By just giving up and letting their propaganda run unopposed we help them feed it to their followers.

If you dress terribly and the clothes cost 20$ you are an uncultured peasant. If you dress terribly and the clothes cost 20,000$ you are a sophisticated eccentric who redefines the boundaries of fashion.

You can only push so much nitrogen and phosphor into the biological cycle w.o. having grave side effects. Acidification, erosion of soil microbiomes, eutrophication of water bodies…

The current amount of fertilizers used are killing the environment and through this reducing crop yields.

The issue with our impact on the nitrogen cycle is that it is exceeding the planetary boundaries significantly. Same for Phosphor https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html

However if we look at the countries with the highest use of chemical fertilizers per Capita it is also countries with industrialized agriculture that focus on meat production or cash crops.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fertilizer-per-capita

We use about half of global agricultural lands for animal feed. So the nitrogen fertilizers are not needed to sustain nutrition. They are needed to sustain the meat overconsumption in wealthy countries.

That is what contraceptions is for and countries where contraception and abortions are readily available don’t have 80% lower birth rates than the US.