Posts by Russell Brown
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Cracker: The Colorado Experiment, in reply to Danielle,
I think you misunderstand – the majority of my jobs have been in retail or cubicles. I know exactly how low-status and pointless they can be, which is why I categorise them as “bullshit”. I’m not insulting the people who hold them: I *am* those people, and I’m kinda awesome. ;)
The interesting thing is which US industry really doesn't do drug-testing: tech.
Apart from the fact that it would be absurd for companies like Apple and Microsoft to test, given what their founders have said about their own drug use, companies that have introduced testing (HP, iirc) have withdrawn it because they lost talent as a direct consequence.
This story on the relationship between California's med-pot sector and tech-company workers kind of says it all.
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Cracker: The Colorado Experiment, in reply to Steve Curtis,
Then there is the pundits who just want more ‘wholesome shops’. It screams middle class.
I'm fighting the urge to respond in kind here.
If by "more wholesome", you mean "at least the level of duty of care expected of alcohol outlets", then yeah, I think that. Being legally forbidden to serve obviously intoxicated people, for example, although my own expectations would be higher.
The hole-in-the-wall nature of some of the "legal highs" stores in New Zealand (especially the Naenae one) has been a revelation to me. I genuinely didn't anticipate that kind of retail environment being allowed under the new law. I think that coming out of a medical marijuana system (whatever you think of the medical claims for cannabis) has been a big lucky break for Colorado.
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Wowzers. Latest batch of pill tests from the Erowid-manage EcstasyData.org:
ONE of the EIGHT pills they tested had actual MDMA in it. And they couldn't even identify some of the shit.
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Up Front: Just Like Unicorns, in reply to Bart Janssen,
(seriously some of that stuff is just so wrong :)).
Links??
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Cracker: The Colorado Experiment, in reply to Danielle,
This will be a surprise to precisely no one, but fucking hell I hate capitalism sometimes. This is a thing in New Zealand now? Pissing in a cup so managerial wowsers can make sure they’re seen to be doing something?
I'm sure it will improve your mood no end to learn that it's been driven-relentlessly through fearmongering by a commercialised agency that you you own as a taxpaying citizen.
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Speaker: Facing the floods, in reply to Ed Muzik,
Correct. I don’t have any problem with a disclaimer. For those of you that don’t follow me on twitter, I am the Labour candidate in Ilam, going up against Gerry (who was pretty quiet yesterday)
I'll add that disclaimer. Should have thought of it in the first place.
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Okay, here’s what I think is going on.
National has been using Curia to poll on perceptions of Brownlee in Christchurch, which will be awful.
So they fly in Key to stand next to Brownlee and radiate chummy star power.
But they also need to shift some of the public ire from Brownlee, so briefings go out to the usual suspects putting the heat on Dalziel.
Dalziel, I am sure, would like some help and wants to collaborate on the crisis (why wouldn’t she?), but she’s not getting that for political reasons.
The whole thing is, in my humble opinion, a very, very cynical political game, at the expense of the people of Christchurch.
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Hard News: Sneaking it out of the shop:…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Roger Donaldson and Max Thomson were Playdate photographers, also.
And its chief sub was Tom McWilliams, who long ran the Listener subbery.
I only met Des Dubbelt the once, when I wrote the Planet story, but my goodness he was a gentleman.
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to Shulgin,
sure russell no problem…I’ll go away.
You don't have to go away, just ease up a bit.
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Cracker: The Colorado Experiment, in reply to Moz,
Being of the definitely not smoking persuasion, it’s the other methods stuff that I’m watching. “Gummie bears” could easily be made, say, green and leaf-shaped rather than bear-shaped, so that it’s at least obvious what’s inside. Trying to make them unattractive to children (especially if you call all those under 21 children) is going to be hard work, especially since they’d ideally also be attractive to adults.
Yes, as Damian said, "edibles" seem to be the part they're rethinking. What strikes me is how much more wholesome the cannabis retail environment is in Colorado than the synthetic cannabis retail environment is here, with its hole-in-the-wall shops. Could you even replicate that in New Zealand? Is the market the same? Is society the same? Was part of our mistake guaranteeing the chancers who already sold synthetic cannabinoids a continued living?