asciilifeform: imho the powerz of dope are overblown. vodka will loosen inhibitions but nobody gets the basic idea of cracking a skull from it. ditto meth, stupid man will be 10x more vigorous in his idiocy, erdos - 10x theorems.
asciilifeform: so the gadget may well include this function.
asciilifeform: trinque: not necessarily - if the card is prepaid, as these were, you can normally call the # on the back of the card (and often there is even a www form) and determine the balance
asciilifeform: unless, of course, they have exception hardcoded for autoplunderator co.☟︎
asciilifeform: trinque: i'd imagine this would trigger the standard fraud freeze
asciilifeform: i imagine in 20 yrs we'll be payin' for 'Police Pre✓™ Experience" where if you have membership card, they probe yer rectum with velvet, instead of hedgehog, gloves...
asciilifeform: if you get the 'global' thing, iirc it comes with the other one.
asciilifeform: (cyanoacrylate - 'super' - glue - is quite possibly the single greatest advance in wound suturing ever to happen, works great on everything from paper cut to 7.62x39-through-the-liver)☟︎
asciilifeform: phf: better still, ordinary cyanoacrylate glue for 50 cents a tube, but 'medical' - for $20+.☟︎
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: oughta mention the royalty
asciilifeform: not convincing, naturally, any sailors, but ~others~, into tolerating the protestant bullshit instead of burning with hot irons.
asciilifeform: the 'sex is the devil's temptation' idiots have easy pickings in that climate.☟︎
asciilifeform: today's dope situation is quite analogous to, e.g., 18th c. english sailor's sex life - where the ~only kind of (straight!) sex you can have is, approx., with syphilitic whores, condomless
asciilifeform: ... or blow caustic smoke across them every day.
asciilifeform: (e.g., your teeth will look ~precisely~ like 'methhead teeth' if... you stop brushing them.)
asciilifeform: this is on account of the well-known sequelae being largely effects of impurities, and secondarily - of lack of sleep, vs meth per se.
asciilifeform: consider how ww2 folk did ~not~ suffer the clinical horrors of the modern users.
asciilifeform: i'm still quite unconvinced that empire is better off selling, e.g., the usual vodka, in shops, than meth.☟︎
asciilifeform: but my understanding is that there was NO 'market' in the usual sense of the word. you wanted some - you made some.
asciilifeform: meth was discovered by ru underground folk in the late '80s. on account of being quickly and easily made from materials commonly sold at the time.
asciilifeform: who takes it? and why? and why it and not some other dope.☟︎
asciilifeform: it always seems to figure in tales of american 'flyover.'
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: i am curious re the role meth plays.
asciilifeform: ~actual~ rural folk, who grow own food, make own tools, and don't need the mega-state for anything, were recognized as a thread and mostly bugsprayed eons ago.
asciilifeform: the sovietization, in the most comical sense of the word, is nearly total, complete with hruschev's corn.
asciilifeform: consider, in coastal usa you can still go to a few dozen kinds of shop, but in the flyoverlands you're stuck with универмаг^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlolmart
asciilifeform: american rural doesn't even have much to do with pastoral/village life etc.
asciilifeform: ice could only survive through graft...' << from orlol,
asciilifeform: '...there are many, many people whose stock in trade is their use of violence, in offense or defense. No matter what else happens, they will be employed, or self-employed... In Russia, there was a period of years during which the police was basically not functioning: they had no equipment, no budget, and their salaries were not sufficient for survival. Murders went unsolved, muggings and burglaries were not even investigated. The pol
