I do not take personal issue with vaping. Humans have been consuming nicotine for thousands of years, and even though it is unhealthy, I don’t think it’s ever going away. However, the article specifically covers the banning of single-use vapes; and I absolutely agree that these have to go. They are extremely attractive to children and adolescents, and they’re terrible for the environment. I think the best approach toward regulating vapes is to ban flavors and disposables.
I cannot understand why there is no law banning the sale of Vape mixture to kids in any shape or form. Prohibition does not work where there is a desire to use a product, and vapes are so easy to manufacture that it will never be effective.
There is in most countries. Unless you mean shortfills you are meant to add nic to? In the US those still firmly fall under the laws restricting sale of vapes. Don’t know about the UK or Europe, I know those products exist there though.
Otherwise you can’t legally sell bulk nicotine to underage people, obviously the other ingredients are used for such a wide variety of things they can’t really be restricted like that.
Disposables are very bad for the environment, but in retrospect, so are normal AA batteries, used once and tossed away, regulation on those should also be considered.
Banning flavors is not, hopefully, an option, as the components of the juice don’t have and inherent flavor, unlike tobacco plants.
Alkaline batteries are great for remotes and stuff like that, where they potentially last years, in those applications it seems very reasonable, my TV remote still has the included AA batts and I bought it 3 years ago. But they end up getting used in higher drain devices and it gets a bit absurd. Still, at least people aren’t rocking around with their boombox with 6 D cells that last 8hours.
As a long time e-cig user and enthusiast I agree. I thought we got away from that garbage a decade ago, but then it came back. I don’t get it, it’s expensive, it sucks, and it’s mind bogglingly awful for the environment.
I don’t even love the idea of pre built coils but I compromised for the convenience now that they are actually good. Feels a lot less bad to toss a little bit of steel and kanthal every few weeks.
I can’t really get behind banning flavors, but less attractive packaging and only allowing open refillable systems would be a huge step to slowing adolescent use, they pretty much all use disposables because they can be bought at gas stations and you have to go to a smoke shop to get the refillables. Not to mention dropping $60 on a mod+tank isn’t as easy to start as $10 for a disposable.
I think the flavors are a big part of why they can be effective as cessation aids you start to no longer associate tobacco with it which helps a lot. I no longer smell someone smoking and get cravings.
But they are taking about monitoring public facing social media - frankly I think it would be daft if they did not do this.
If a be teaching assistant starts publicly posting harmful harmful content there should indeed be systems on place to ensure this is identified and appropriate action taken.
If you post publicly you have to assume everybody, including your employer, might see it.
You definitely have a point with the public facing posts. However, I will disagree with you on two points.
“Harmful content” does not seem to apply here as the article implies that specifically posts criticizing government policies were flagged.
Even so, harmful content could just as well be classified through existing procedures such as members of the public filing complaints rather than simply “keeping score”.
It’s a bit different when your employer is the government as they should be held to a higher standard.
I agree, but I try to be pragmatic. Everyone is looking for the twitter killer that will destroy it in a blaze of glory, but I am fine with it slowly bleeding users and value as Threads and Mastodon (and Bluesky?) get better and gains more users.
The table in the ACLU report is kind of interesting. I mean, I was confused about the could be shared with law enforcement and the could be used to discipline my friends but then seeing the Could be used to identify trans/reproductive health makes those amounts completely understandable as well as the undocumented statement.
I always feel like I’m being watched 32%
How it could be used to discipline me or my friends 27%
What our school and companies they contract with do with the data (such as sell it, analyze it, etc.) 26%
How it limits what resources I feel I can access online 24%
Could be shared with law enforcement 22%
Could be used against me in the future by a college or an employer 21%
Could be used to identify students seeking reproductive health care (such as contraception or abortion care) 21%
Could be used to identify students seeking gender-affirming care (such as transgender students seeking hormones) 18%
Could be used against immigrant students, especially those who are undocumented 18%
How it limits what I say online 17%
Could be used to “out” LGBTQIA+ students 13%
I have no concerns regarding surveillance in my school 27%
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Source: YouGov. School Surveillance, fielded October 20-26, 2022. Commissioned by ACLU TABLE 1 Students’ Concerns About School Surveillance
Hell, I finished school over a decade ago now, but even as an adult, I feel like I'm being constantly watched. This kind of overreaching, omnipresent surveillance is genuinely not good for individuals and by extension, society at large. Human beings do not act naturally when they feel their every move is being watched. Anxiety, distrust, paranoia, depression, etc. can all manifest, and it scares me to know that this kind of "for your safety" surveillance has become so normalized.
It isn't normal. It is affecting the average person's mental health, even if they don't know it. It is affecting society at a very base level as a result. What a world...
Note: Found the one big thing I wanted in the ACLU stuff but I’m not reading through the Vice News report at this moment: As Vice News reported, “The few published studies looking into the impacts of [student surveillance] tools indicate that they may have the effect [of] breaking down trust relationships within schools and discouraging adolescents from reaching out for help.”83 Ironically, the same tools the EdTech Surveillance industry is promoting as a means for identifying students in need of help may actually be dis-couraging those students from reaching out to school officials and other adults for help when they need it.
It feels so good to see countries not tolerating the far right. As a French, they’re basically everywhere now, everyone on talks like the Far Right on TV, now. My country has gotten so complacent with it…
I hope Germany keeps doing this and more act accordingly.
I fear your optimism ist unwarranted. The far right is attracting more and more voters here.
The ones arrested are not the far right you see on TV. They are conspiracy nuts who want to return to the time Germany had an emperor. They planned a revolution and hoarded weapons.
Probably wanted to regain the old empire’s territory as well, especially the regions belonging to France now…
I follow US news a little. You seem to be much further along on your way to abolish democracy. But to be fair, the “winner takes it all” voting mechanism and resulting two party system really helps in dividing a country.
Also “hoarding weapons” seems to be an acceptable pasttime in the US.
I think intent plays a role here. If the goal is to incite a reaction or to hurt a population by publicly burning something that they care about, it’s probably not a great to do
One of those things where you know when you see it, but it’s hard to define explicitly.
If anything, it might help as a temporary measure to reduce tensions and inflammatory incidents
Hey at least we got the CEO of a Saudi oil company heading up the climate talks. I’m sure that he’s perfectly willing to set aside his own personal interests and take one for the team and reduce his profits by leaving Saudi oil in the ground, and encouraging (or even requiring???) everyone else to do the same, right? Right?
Some of us will survive and rebuild, but we’ll lose our history and destroy everything again in another 2000 years or so. We’ve probably done this 100 times already.
Presumably they’ve ruled out prisons in northern European countries perceived to be too humane; imagine the Sun/Daily Mail thundering about “hardworking taxpayers’ money spent to give criminal scum holidays in luxury Finnish prisons”, along with a photo of a cell that looks vastly better than the typical London rental opportunity. So I’m guessing they’ll be asking around, say, Turkey, Morocco and various former Soviet republics. Possibly the US as well, though that may involve leaving the ECHR.
The medical companies already sold the debt to debt servicing companies. It’s the debt collectors who are profiting, or (more likely) taking less of a loss on bad debt.
Also, they didn’t pay USD$15 million. They paid $150,000 to buy $15 million of debt at a penny on the dollar.
The organization that does this acknowledges that it’s a stopgap in the face of the human rights nightmare that is the USA’s healthcare system. It’s palliative care or harm reduction but not a long-term solution.
Watching those newborns suffocate to death on a table over the course of the day was something I’m never going to forget. If the IDF thinks they can move past this without a lot of scrutiny, I hope they’re dead wrong.
theguardian.com
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