Sagan, you look high.

Wish we could smoke with you now and talk about K2-18b.
- I hope it's in my weiner
- K2-18b is a nothing burger. The scientist who made the announcement has done similar before, he seems to really want to be THE person who discovers life on another planet so he skews facts and ignores other facts just for the small chance of being right. Watch this: https://youtu.be/HYjYvKoQVeM
  
  :(
- hell yea

When I show up to an in-person interview high, in hopes they'll think that's my regular behavior:
- I mean… if you are always high then that isn’t wrong is it?
  
  The one and only time I ever had a boss/supervisor ask me if I was high on the job, was the one day I showed up sober. And then when I said I wasn't he was like "that sucks; I am." 🤣

To make an apple pie you gotta first create the universe. Def a stoner thought lol
- Don't forget "from scratch" lol
  
  "Scratch" his itch for some of that killer skunk weed, the devil's lettuce!
- Apple Pie

Sensitivity and fellowship, yet my (former) friend who is a big stoner has gone all-in on conspiracy theories and is championing the Reform party in the UK because Labour are apparently race traitors. Guess weed can't do all the lifting.
- If you are as smart and educated as Carl Sagan, I’m sure weed isn’t doing the heavy lifting.
  
  Yeah for people like Sagan, the "serenity" he's referring to is probably more about quieting his mind.
- Maybe weed isn’t relevant in that case, let’s not forget that in the US, weed was promoted by liberals and opposed by the MAGA crowd.
- Can't win em all. Also, weed in the UK is rubbish /s
- Yeah that quote is very naive and privileged.

Although I don't agree with illegalization of cannabis, I do have to point out that thc content has gotten dangerously high from like a decade ago. Before, it was like 4%, now it's nearing 19%. So I don't feel comfortable recommending people to start recreationally smoking marijuana. It leads to serious mental issues and addiction in some cases. What triggers those "some cases" I don't know but I don't really want to try and find out.
- you know you can just smoke/vape 5x less material, right? i'm personally not a fan of the "high THC-A % at all costs" commercial grows and there is a wonderful variety of 3% or less CBD hemp or type 2s with 4%
  
  you know you can just smoke/vape 5x less material, right?
  this is very true and something i practice myself, using as little as possible
  and yet... that's not how most people use the drug. meth is similar! did you know that if you were to microdose meth you could theoretically use it as an ADHD medication? and yet where are all the microdosers? why does my city have a rampant meth problem?
  thankfully cannabis is not nearly as destructive as meth but the parent comment is right: cannabis is becoming more and more problematic in people's lives due to the high THC content and the cultural rubber banding effect. we've gotta reckon with the fact that this miracle drug is still a drug that messes with our NT systems quite a bit
- And this rising potency is a direct consequence of cannabis being illegal. Producers are breeding stronger and stronger strains with higher THC content and lower CBD to get the most bang for their buck. This is true for all illicit drugs, as they tend towards becoming more potent when they need to be smuggled (e.g. why fentanyl is often added to heroin, as it delivers more potency per gram).
  If you legalise and regulate it, suddenly that pressure is taken away. Cannabis is produced in consistent and known strengths, distributed in packaging that clearly states the potency so people can make informed choices about what they take.
  
  And this rising potency is a direct consequence of cannabis being illegal. Producers are breeding stronger and stronger strains with higher THC content and lower CBD to get the most bang for their buck.
  this isnt exactly true. (my instinct is to say it's completely false but i could be wrong!) in many states, it's medical marijuana that is >20% THC and the cheap public stuff is unregulated below that amount. so you have people getting a bogus medical card, buying up 30% strands, and smoking an ounce a week and going into psychosis. source: stoner drug counselor
  historically, yes! that was definitely a motivator. but the current system perpetuates it deeply
- A consequence of its prohibition. History keeps on repeating itself, yet we never learn.
  
  The street market and mainstream market both rely on structure and tactics.
  Look at shitty foods. They don't need to be shitty... It wasn't prohibition that made food unhealthy. But they made them that way.
  Look at our news, it doesn't have to be filled with shitty entertainment tactics and drama, but it is and it's unhealthy to our society.
  Addiction and emotion is marketed regardless of mainstream or street.
- I'm glad stoners are so eco-conscious that they're not wasting plastic on packaging.
- I've been a huge pothead for decades and I honestly haven't noticed an increase in content while smoking regular weed. I think that's the branded stuff that sends you out of orbit.
  But if it has changed, that just means I smoke less to get to the high I like by smoking the equivalent of one joint during the day. It's so much less smoke for my lungs this way, I'm not complaining. Lol
  
  When I was a stoner I just reached a point where it didn't effect me the same way.
  Like I would smoke more but it would just be the same level high ...but I felt like I needed it any time I did anything. Maybe I didn't increase my bowl size much but the frequency increased.
  Looking back it was such a a waste of my time and money. I was trying to chase this medicinal effect I was reading about but I never found it.
  I still use it, but I don't use it during the day like before.
- I biased against meth, but also afraid of it as well. Doesn't mean I'm going to go out of my way to try it and assess whether it's really as bad as they say. I also won't try out any poison, random pills I find, or anything I have to inject.
  Fear is a healthy thing sometimes, mate.
  
  "I call people 'afraid' when they point out the current dangerous path of a drug that drives a 45 USD billion industry."
- I keep hearing that it's supposed to be much stronger these days, but my experience is just the opposite.
  I was a heavy weed smoker in my young years, smoking standard generic pressbud, and it got me nicely stoned. I even had a couple of years where I was growing my own, so I'm very experienced with fresh homegrown weed, which was beautiful. Tasted great, with a very satisfying intense high. Then I quit smoking for a few decades.
  I recently started smoking again in my retirement, and was looking forward to trying this stronger weed I was hearing about. I've tried legal weed from various states, and none of it gets me nearly as stoned as the cheap pressbud of my youth.
  This is just anecdotal, but that's been my experience.
  
  I also have anecdotal stories of my friend's life being ruined by weed addiction. We can all have some anecdotal evidence but more scientific evidence is coming out saying that there are higher levels of thc and if younger children smoke weed it will fuck them up. I do agree that using marijuana cautiously and medicinally can help but I can't possibly recommend smoking for fun.
- Really nice thing for us green dragon enthusiasts though.

Boston City Hall is truly a legendarily gaudy building.
- I was thinking what this magnificent brutalist building is

Kinda blows my mind that capitalists so desperately want marijuana to be illegal. It’s basically the closest real-world analogue to Brave New World’s Soma.
You want the populace to be complacent? You need to let em blaze it.
- There's already plenty out there to keep a population complacent. Also, the prison industrial complex and all that surrounds it is big business.
- This is why I really fear it. Then again it helped me find god. Which i then realized structurally does create the complacent worker through pacifying rather than inciting any real change. So I am back to thinking it is a crutch.
- Weed leads to more open mindedness. Why bother using it as an opiate of the masses when you have actual opiates. Push those instead while throwing anyone who has touched weed into the private slave system for superprofits.

Space Kermit was pretty far out there, man.

Did Sagan say that in writing? I know he wrote a few things about his experiences with pot, but those were informal, anecdotal writings, and this sounds much more formal, almost like a public statement meant for publication, or a speech.
- Here is a summary with a link to the PDF: https://bigthink.com/health/carl-sagan-on-smoking-marijuana/

Boston city hall

If there is one thing weed is really good at, it is making people okay with being lazy and with their current situation. LSD on the otherhand, can really make you rethink everything.
- what's wrong with being content and finding peace? The productivity drive has been driven into you by capitalism and leads to mass discontentment and suffering. One must detach from endless striving to achieve true enlightenment and happiness, and weed can do that and chill people out and cure them of their "protestant work ethic" which is a cultural disease.
  Inherent in this type of "weed makes you lazy" rhetoric is that it makes other people lazy. You want everyone else working endlessly and tirelessly implicitly here, that they must face endless burden for your benefit. It's a form of social control where you are attempting to force your values onto others instead of respecting their right to chose what they do with their own body and life.
  
  https://www.vice.com/en/article/smoking-weed-more-emphathetic-study/ Fwiw.
  My partner has an Rx for his myriad of autoimmune stuff. It really helps him when he isn't feeling well.
  
  Or its really bad for organizing and actually fighting capitalism because you are sedated and are okay with the exploitation since you can cope with weed after a long day of work. Revolution takes effort and trust me people on weed are not motivated to do shit and are not very social either. Weed is not the solution to fighting capitalism, it helps the capitalist by making people complaicent and actionless. The only real benefit would be a union strike, where you actually should do nothing. But to organize something like that takes effort and time and motivation.

Yeah, that's one of the things that I disagree about with the world's most senior space cadet.
- TBF, just imagine what a place the world would be if the world leader's idea of quality downtime would be a fat bong, Cartoon Channel and pizza.
  
  Cartoon Channel
  And here I am studying Kanji instead while high off my ass. Lol
  Either my fellow stoners need to broaden their horizons or we have terrible stereotypes about weed smokers. 😅
- To each his own, and though I have never consumed any kind of drugs nor think I ever will (nor can't understand the need of drugs beyond medical field, pretty much contrary of what it is stated in the quote of this post), I concede keeping it illegal while at the same time alcohol and nicotine are both completely legal is one of the reasons I still think our so-called "civilization" is extremely idiotic, mediocre and pathetic. Either make all of them legal but regulate their consumption or make it so it never bothers anyone else or anything else in any way, or make all of them illegal - but the disparity of current legislation about all of them around the world is just nonsense.
  
  Are they completely legal though? They're age-restricted everywhere I can think of, and you can't drive or operate heavy machinery under their influence. So they're, like, legal but with a couple of caveats?
- How come?
- I must ask why; the prohibition of it doesn't make any sense to me at all. It's all but proven fact that it's not any more harmful than either smoking cigarettes, or drinking alcohol.
  Both of which are completely legal to consume all day, every day.
  Weed simply doesn't deserve the status it is given, it was placed on schedule 1 as a gigantic middle finger from the ruling class, against the working class. They did it to punish those they saw as their lessers, and so they could have the police rough up anyone because they owned a small amount of the substance. But the cigarettes and alcohol they've enjoyed for decades and many of them have profited from? Those are fine. This new thing (at the time) that they aren't profiting off of? Let's make it illegal, so we can force everyone to use the things we do profit from.
  That's basically the backstory here.
  Why you, or anyone would oppose lifting that prohibition is confusing at best, racist/classest at worst.
  I'm genuinely curious how you have come to have the position you do. If you don't like it, nobody is going to force you to use the stuff, same with alcohol and cigarettes. So why do you care?

If you need marijuana to “produce insight” then that is a problem for you. It is best that we keep dangerous drugs off the street through any means.
- dangerous? lmao
  you have the worldview of a victorian era spinster
  
  Slowing a response system clearly isn't socially advantageous in any society where people are going to be operating any method of transportation like cars, bikes etc etc. I wouldn't have a major opposition to it if people didn't habitually attempt to leave the house while still high. Not to mention the consumption of it exposing others to chemicals through air pollution.
- ah yes the myriad dangers of eating too many cookies and falling asleep watching nature documentaries
  this scourge must end!
  
  You're laughing but I'm a victim of cannabis!
  I used to live with someone who smoke it on a regular basis. One day I went to bed, and my room-mate stayed on the garden, smoking his joint. When I woke up, the sandwich I prepared for my breakfast was... gone.
  Are you getting the full picture? An addict stole the sustenance of a poor victim, due to his illegal psychoactive substance usage! Cannabis is danger! Cannabis is steal! Don't cannabis! ~~Or if you do, prepare the munchies beforehand.~~
  [To be fair with him, on the same day he prepared me a way better sandwich as apology. And it isn't like I went to the uni hungry, at morning I just whipped up some egg farofa and problem solved.]
  
  The actual damage that it does do through impaired driving causes actual damage through killing innocent people as well as contributes to laziness.
- If you need coffee to have energy in the morning that is a problem for you.
  And yes, coffee is a drug and it can be dangerous as well.
  As Amaerica showed during the Prohibition and as we see today with opioids, humans will always want to alter their consciouness, no matter the cost. Legalizing drugs along with treating addiction as a disease and not a crime, would be a net positive.
  
  Legalizing it encourages its consumption. There were high rates of people going to the ER with marijuana induced psychosis after legalizing in California (something where people probably would have been brought to the ER either way)
- Stop being a junkie sympathizer
- Bait used to be believable
  
  Oh, everything that doesn’t conform to my world view is just “bait”