Nearly every medication changes your cognition—even OTC antihistamines.

I don’t know what it’s like in your country, but in mine depending on the level of impact it will say on the packet, and is illegal to drive while under the influence of any medication that impacts your ability to drive safely or operate heavy machinery.

I didn’t intend to imply it is the case for everyone

People should make the decisions that are best for them—know thyself.

One last time, I don’t endorse this style of living for everyone, but it works for me

Nah, this is not okay.

I do not accept this as a reasonable way to determine what we allow as societies in terms of vehicular safety. Someone’s freedom to decide for themselves what they consider to be safe, stops at everyone else’s freedom to not be run over. I very much assert what’s safe should be determined with science and enforced with regulation/laws. Not by everyone personally deciding for themselves.

You might be surprised at the sheer number of people who operate vehicles while stoned safely.

Dosing aside (I’m not making claims on what level is safe). We have a very important saying in my industry: just because a safety event hasn’t happened yet, isn’t evidence that a practice is acceptably safe. (Paraphrased). This is literally what habitual drunk drivers who aren’t that drunk when they drive tell themselves “it’s fine”, because they haven’t had a crash and are very careful. Sure, but they’re increasing the likelihood of a crash nonetheless.

There may well be people out there who have driven high without incident, my response would be 1. Let’s quantify that first before allowing it, and 2. They do this without incident, so far.

I’m sure you’re very careful, and don’t drive too high. You may never have a serious accident. But on a societal level, that’s just not an acceptable way to determine what is acceptably safe. Who are you to say that you aren’t increasing the likelihood of harm to someone else?

Wanna decide everything for yourself? Go live in the middle of nowhere, away from everyone else, where your decisions won’t impact others.

Don’t drive high unless you can back up your claims with more than “trust me bro”.

Amen to that

Are there sufficient studies out there showing fewer accidents while under the influence of weed? Or negligible effect?

Else, I’m gonna have to press X to doubt, and really would rather wait on further studies before letting you think your self-reported performance is convincing.

Weed affects your cognition, I hope we can agree on this. How adversely for driving, according to dose, that I don’t know. Though I don’t think anyone should accept people telling you “nah, it’s fine, trust me bro. I only got into an accident when I was sober!”

Cars are deadly, and you ought to be sober while operating heavy machinery.

Stop doing it until studies are done (and, they will, given how widespread it’s use is legally now), but heck, pressing all sorts of X to doubt on this turning out to be true. It affects your attention. And cars are deadly, so.

You are morally obligated to err on the side of caution here.

Stop driving high, please.

Yikes. Hecking big yikes.

Apologies, I only took issue with downplaying being high and driving. Don’t get high and drive is all I’m saying here, and think your original comment seemed like you were saying it’s fine.

I’m totally with you on the elderly, you ought to need to renew you licence with a test when you get older. Because yeah, cars are deadly a f.

Ummm, if it can fuck with your perceptions when you’re high enough you shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a chunk of metal going a speed. Not enough data is no justification, even if it’s “not as bad”. I have, and I’m sure others also, personal experiences of being high as fuck and barely being able to experience the passage of time in a coherent way, feeling like your forgetting what happened 30 seconds earlier.

Field sobriety shenanigans aside, I really hope we’re not pretending like driving high is okay. Cars can kill, and you had better not be under the influence of anything that is a detriment to you driving safely.

Please, please, tell me you meant to write: “Drunk driving is a legitimate concern. High driving, despite the vilifying by police, simply doesn’t have even a modest fraction of the stats to back it up. And anecdotally is not remotely the same as alcohol. But you still shouldn’t drive under the influence of that either. Police should be required to administer scientifically accurate tests and acceptable blood contents be determined. Not field sobriety tests based on nothing.”

Because else, yikes.

I said it a bit in jest, though as explained, I think it’s still somewhat a true statement. I wouldn’t actually say this to people who don’t identify as left-leaning, because as you point out, it would be counter-productive.

3000€ seems like barely a drop in the bucket of campaigning costs, totally worth it lol. To the point that’s not even a disincentive.

I think it’s more shorthand for the fact people generally do want to take care of each other and make sure everyone has the opportunity for a happy life.

Though I suppose it is a little cheeky to say that means people are left leaning.

Reality has a left-wing bias

What I mean is a federal electoral commission that directly administers the entire election, not just sues people who do the wrong thing. We can plainly see how fragile the current arrangement is

In my view there is no argument to be made at all that the states should have any direct involvement in the running the federal election, it’s a federal election.

A federal electoral commission gives you: one consistent set of rules, consistent voting infrastructure, consistent chains of reporting, consistent invigilation and auditing. Ideally also: no politicians picking their own electorate boundaries, no voting machines (for real, please see 2020 and 2000 for how spectacularly those have caused issues, and probably other times, also), no need for as many lawsuits just to get the bare minimum in compliance.

The number of lawsuits is indicative of how badly it’s going.

One side is definitely making it harder to vote, I would definitely agree. I just feel not enough emphasis is given to voting as something that affects the entire political system, and should be the core #1 issue, including where I live in Australia (even if it’s massively in better shape here).

Again, I always feel like a bit of a clown telling someone else in another country how to run it, but US is fair game, given it’s world hegemon status.

Hope y’all can manage to get some sorely needed reform :/

This is very obviously easier said than done, but having mail be reliable seems like a much better way to safeguard this kind of voting, than trying to install massive security around these specialised boxes. Or even having staffed early voting centres would be better than an unattended box.

I’m just looking on (from Australia) and feeling like the way voting is managed in US federal elections is unnecessarily difficult and complicated.

Every state has its own rules, and administers its own vote for a federal election?? (I understand why historically, but this is a really dumb way to run things). Some states use electronic voting, and we have seen what a bad idea this is in terms of ability to claim voter fraud. Even if electronic voting were 100% secure, which it isn’t - it’s way more vulnerable to large scale attack, it’s simply easier to claim fraud when it’s inner-workings a black box. And early voting is done in specific unattended ballot drop boxes, which so, so obviously would become a target.

And this lack of coherent, federally managed elections, also means some states just literally provide way too few places to vote.

Y’all flying by the seat of your pants, and it’s scary, considering how much control over the world, and specifically my country, the US has.

Please advocate for voting reform, it should be the number one priority above all others, because without it, the political system in the US is going to keep being way too fragile. And again, this shit affects us all because of US imperialism.

Why not just use post boxes? Less of a concentrated target because there’ll be a whole bunch of other letters in there too. At least, I don’t believe my country uses special boxes just for votes

Journalists have ruined this word.

Another pet peeve I have of journalists in general: god-awful referencing. “A report by XYZ organisation shows…”

Gee THANKS, “a report”, that’ll help me find the source… It’s wild there aren’t minimum regulations on news referencing in most countries (at least, I’m not aware of any).

Thanks for being my 2¢ receptacle

The Commonwealth isn’t the countries with the British Monarch as head of state.

But yeah, the British Monarch is the head of state in Australia. Annoyingly

Yeah, if we can’t even manage to enshrine a bloody advisory body to parliament with no powers into the constitution, then good luck getting a republic with the conservative media grip over this country.

I’m actually astonished how left-leaning we are in general, given the situation. But yeah, the Voice to Parliament referendum gives me very little hope in people voting to become a republic.

Thanks for your response. I don’t have personal experience, but from what I hear, even with our flawed system, I don’t think it’s too hard to say that I’d much rather have a horrifically expensive health crisis happen to me here, no matter how wealthy I am.

Just judging by the horror stories, because while out-of-pockets are getting stupid, the Medicare safety net, and private health maximums are actually much, much lower than what you’ve quoted. And the obvious fact that having health insurance tied to your employer is some really awful power dynamics.

But, this is just my rough jist/feeling.

I just get triggered by Australians telling others on the internet that our system is good haha. Our system could be a hell of a lot more universal, if you ask this Aussie 😅

Appreciate the chats.

As a fellow Australian, no. No there is not merit to it. It’s a two tier system, rigged for wealthier people to have better health outcomes.

Have you been to the GP lately? Have you seen what crazy out of pocket costs there are at hospitals? It’s gotten way worse in recent years.

Are you aware of the insanely different wait times between the public and private systems? It’s not a feature to pay to skip the cue.

Are you aware that if it’s not done in a hospital, then not even private health insurance can cover the gap if Medicare doesn’t?

Private health is a fucking scourge. And it’s a fucking joke to say that pay-walling healthcare makes overall wait times lower.

If we just had ACTUAL universal healthcare, wait-times would be equitable, and then maybe the upper end of town would actually want to fund healthcare properly, instead of these brain-dead tax cuts.

We are sitting on a pile of money (mining) that private companies are paying very little tax on.

We could be Norway. Would have been if we managed to get mining super tax through.

There is no merit to this bullshit private hybrid system. It’s getting worse by the year.

Oh I’m not saying they’re not loud, or don’t exist (I can only speak directly on my perceptions in Australia though). Additionally, there are also a much larger group of people who I think are greedy, or mislead (in my opinion), but the straight up conspiracy theorist crazies?

I think it’s not a stretch to say that’s more mainstream in the USA, and I cannot pinpoint an obvious reason at a cursory look. Even if the education system is as bad as claimed, surely, the God fearing wouldn’t believe the democrats can control the wrath of said god.

But yeah, things sure are getting wild in the rest of the anglosphere too haha, so touche

This is absolutely baffling being from practically any other English speaking country.

I mean, we have our share of crazies, but they’re a tiny proportion.

It’s one thing to doubt the well established climate science (very frustrating), but it’s another thing to actually believe humans can precisely control the weather.

It’s extremely troubling knowing these people exist, and can vote in the most powerful country on earth.

😬

Something, something if you believe in things without evidence (religion) it’s not actually that surprising. And we (Australia) are much less religious than you. Though, this is certainly my bias talking.

As did I. Though if it was, I think he’s misunderstood what Dark Brandon even meant.