I understand from your comment that you’ve read too many sci-fi books to understand what a massive resource sink that would be with negligible benefit. It’s pretty basic physics.

We’ve already got cheap transportation, look how that’s turning out for the planet. But I’m sure burning God knows how much energy to launch more junk into space will save the world.

We’re already approaching a critical mass of private equity space trash in orbit, what’s a few more lowest-bidder megastructures? At least the ultra rich will get their life rafts while we burn.

… And we need 25k space tickets why? For a cool selfie?

Someone please make a Bluetooth equivalent for smart devices. My thermostat doesn’t need internet access but standardized wireless control is still a good feature

A lot of this hinges on partisan officials choosing (often) black box software and private verification companies. But that’s not even the main problem.

If your Ballot System contains source code, the source code is researched and code reviewed, and then complied by the company and the verification agency. Both checksums must match.

It all falls apart exactly here. With digital voting, all other security is as performative as the TSA. It doesn’t even matter if either party in this step is malicious or if the source is open/closed.

A code review can never make any guarantees. And if there is a bad actor, checksums are not bullet proof. Especially when we’re talking about state actors, who have access to supply chain attacks and unknowable cryptographic abilities.

And all of this uncertainty extends just as far with the hardware. Even if a voter knew what a machine should have in it, they’ll never get the access to verify it themselves.

Even checking a ballot print isn’t foolproof. In a secret ballot system there’s nothing tying a print to your actual tallied vote other than your faith in the process.

Stealing an election isn’t as easy as one might imagine.

Stealing an election doesn’t have to be easy, it has to be possible with a minimal circle of secrecy. And digital voting/tallying makes that possible.

As others have said in this thread, the most important thing is the ability for any voter to understand and personally audit the process. That’s just not possible without paper ballots and simple counting.

Depends which table

I don’t think it’s that crazy or draconian at all. You’re still free to engage in the safest way possible. You have confidence that it’s a safe location and your drug of choice isn’t cut with fentanyl. Why would there be a black market? Addicts generally don’t like buying from untrustworthy sources and passing out in alleyways.

There’s a strange pushback to accepting that humans are physical creatures that evolved for certain stimulus. Society functions by self restraint and a social contract that says, for example, my neighbor won’t go into a stimulant induced psychosis and assault me. Its not a poor reflection on his moral character, that’s just how a human reacts to the substance.

It’s kind of a childish libertarian view to demand full personal freedom at societies’ expense. Your freedom to use a drug anywhere at any time means that the rest of us have to distribute narcan at the library, regulate 45,000 liquor stores, hire more police to counter intoxicated driving, and expand EMS to handle completely preventable emergencies. All that to save you a weekly bus trip to the casino?

Changing the economic system has no impact on any of that, those are the set costs of addiction. Addiction doesn’t cease being a problem because you give up on preventing it. You’re undermining the money going to social services by avoiding simple deterrence-by-inconveince

Any safety and recovery programs are a lot easier to manage when you know exactly where your source is and who’s using. Safe injection sites already exist and have been shown to eliminate overdoses and increase access to social services without any honeypot effect or increased drug use. Adding safe and tested drug sales to the site is a pretty logical step.

Requiring transportation is a detail for implementation, you already need it to do anything in the USA. Unless you think every person has a right to get drugs delivered to their doorstep?

Deal 🤝

I’m of the opinion that unless it’s regulated in some way, people will be systemically/individually exploited. An addict can’t be trusted to keep doses safe, be sure they’re using in a safe place, or properly prioritize their personal wellness.

Just recognize it’s something that’s going to happen and take reasonable efforts to set limits without glamourizing it. Controlling ease of access is a simple way to do that (look at the bump in gambling problems since the 2018 SCOTUS ruling). You don’t have to kick in the doors of everyone with a personal grow or basement home brewing setup.

If these substances could be handled universally with education and social mores, total abstinence would have already worked. No amount of taboo can make crippling addiction sexy.

I don’t care about health benefits/dangers of any vice as much as I hate how ingrained vices are in our daily lives. I’m sick of beer ads, I hate online sports betting sponsoring every event (and rapidly turning a lot of friends into gamblers), my recently weed-legal state is already flooded with local ads and shitty shops.

I dream of a utopia where no vices are sold in a store or advertised. If you want to indulge you go to the equivalent of a Native American casino on steroids. It’s a massive temple to hedonism, zoning for it is very restricted. You can do any drug you want there, everything carefully dosed and tested. There’s complimentary trip-sitters and emergency services on call.

Things that aren’t an immediate threat to yourself/others (mushrooms, lsd, mj, low abv drinks, etc…) can be sold for private personal consumption off-prem with a reasonable limit per person. You can’t partake in public and can be asked for proof of purchase during transit.

There’s no perverse vice tax that leeches money from addicts who can’t afford it, the government’s best financial interest is to keep people clean and spending money elsewhere. If you need something to routinely “take the edge off” you get easy access to medical services (mental/physical/otherwise) and a prescription from a real doctor.

Any time I hear arguments for full legalization of anything in the USA I just have nightmares of inane Budweiser-style weed/cocaine/heroin commercials.

Fuck, which one of you idiots launched with the log level at debug…

I’m starting to think you’ve never been to college

“I’m too poor to not give money to a regressive university”

Bama has over 40k students enrolled and less than 200 bothered to even protest this shitbag giving a commencement speech. There wasn’t even a movement to skip attending the event at all.

I know college students at minor schools, I know people who work in admissions at major universities, I know grad students who are single parents. I know people who handle scholarships and grant funding.

Yeah college is an expensive bureaucracy and not having money makes it harder. But trust me when I say that anyone scraping by at a flagship university has a way out. This isn’t cold hearted bootstraps, the university system is probably the most supportive career institution in America (if you’re a student).

There are a plethora of ways to show you give a shit and resources to help you do it. The people still at Bama don’t give a shit.

They’re college students. They already moved to live in Tuscaloosa, have temp/seasonal jobs and all of their possessions fit in 2-3 suitcases. Millions of students accomplish this every year for much weaker reasons. Stop acting like it’s uprooting a family of 4.

Like I said, there are 13 other institutions that are also in state where you can get the same aid. And that doesn’t even matter for the 67% from out of state, they could save money on the switch.

You have a pretty limited view of higher ed if you think there’s no way to attend a university that doesn’t have these problems.

How many publicly funded universities are in Alabama?

And how many are within a reasonable distance of [insert town here]?

67% of Bama’s student body is from out of state. The in state students are no more than a 5 hour drive from anywhere else in the state. So again, 14.

We’re not talking about a cheap commuter school or an accessible community college. The in-state cost for a 4 year degree is 138k. There are plenty of schools with the same admission requirements for the same sticker price.

You can get a similar academic, athletic, and campus experiences at other places. If you don’t bother, then you care more about the crimson A branding than being associated with scumbags.

That’s not the case here at all? Do you know how the higher education system in the USA works?

I’m not judging every single person in Alabama. I’m judging the students that choose to enroll or remain at the University of Alabama when they regularly give shitty people platforms like this or host them at football games.

There are 60 colleges and universities in Alabama and 1000s more across the country. It’s not uprooting your life to change schools, and Bama isn’t exactly an academic powerhouse anyway. If you don’t find one that fits your goals and isn’t massively regressive that’s on you.

These aren’t high school kids tied to an underfunded school district. They’re young adults who explicitly chose to attend and not transfer to any other public university. You’re allowed to judge them however you want.