What people get wrong about vaping

Electronic cigarettes aren’t new. They have been around for over 10 years, but there is still a lot that isn’t properly understood. This is even more apparent following the “vape lung” craze of 2019, not to mention the Australian delusion and the movement to ban flavored vape juice.

Let me start by giving the finger to the dumbest ideas of them all, the bans. This really doesn’t make sense on any scale, or from any viewpoint. I understand how flavors can make e-cigs more attractive to teenagers, but at the same time we already have laws in place to stop teenagers from getting their hands on cigarettes and other nicotine products. The logical thing to do is to acknowledge that these laws need bumping or reinforcing and go from there. Banning flavored vape juice for this reason is like banning cider and alco-pops to keep kids from drinking. Prohibition didn’t make alcohol consumption safer — up to 10,000 people died from drinking denatured alcohol.

“But why?” you ask, “Why should anybody vape?” The answer might not be as simple as you think. There are reasons why you should vape, and there are reasons why you shouldn’t vape!

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Trust me, I’m an A.I.

An old friend and I had an interesting conversation a while ago. The discussion was quite wide but a few topics are particularly interesting.

We started talking about the surveillance state, and how feeding everything into any system in an attempt to get more contrast in reality equals more noise, more risk and less gain. He was of a differing opinion, wanting more surveillance in order to save lives. His view was that while increased collection and surveillance would lead to more data to sift through, we could always throw more people on it, or a powerful AI once we’re at that point.

Both of these are problematic for the same reason: there will always be people involved. Or maybe I should say there must always be people involved. Automating both judge, juror and executioner would be a disastrous idea that not many would be okay with.

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Debunked: Smartphones are killing mankind

Sarah McLachlan once said stupidity is when you can’t help it — ignorance is when you choose not to understand something, and I fully agree. While I’m really happy to see the world discover the wonders of Science™, the people that all of a sudden think they are experts never cease to amaze.

Today’s delicious treat of misinformation has got to do with radio waves. The YouTube channel Press For Truth published a video last year with the click-baity title Wireless warfare exposed – Declassified military doc proves smartphones are killing mankind, and it is an excellent example of how having a basic understanding of what you’re reading is essential.

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Debunking Anita Sarkeesian following Hank Green’s VidCon apology

A lot of people have been eagerly awaiting an update from Hank following the disaster that was the “Women Online” panel focused on the harassment and abuse women receive online. Through some sort of cosmic joke, Anita Sarkeesian ended up on the panel and it didn’t take long before she put on a marvelous display of hypocrisy by pointing at a member of the audience and proudly proclaiming that he was “human garbage”.

So why the controversy? The targeted member of the audience was none other than Sargon of Akkad, a famous YouTuber that dissects news and videos pointing out the errors and mistakes made. This criticism presented by Sargon and others is according to Anita plain harassment. I’m not sure if this was an intentional way to get a new victim card from the deck, or just a demonstration of her inability to control herself, but the outcome so far might be worse than the incident.

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Stockholm Terrorist Attack: What We Know

This is a summary of the information that has circulated about the terrorist attack in Stockholm on the 7th of April 2017. Keywords are marked in bold while speculations are written as italics. Links are provided in the footnotes where relevant. This post will be updated with new information when it is available. Please leave feedback, updates and corrections in the comments below. All times in CET.

April 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th | 11th | 12th | 13th | 23rd | 25rd | 28th | 29th

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Dear Special Snowflakes

This is an open letter to the special snowflakes at McMasters University. It is also aimed at PACBIC who released a crackpot statement about the event, demonstrating their lack of common sense and logical thinking. Before you activate your special victim superpowers the next time, a suggestion would be to listen and to actually understand the arguments first.

Watching the latest of Dr. Jordan Petersons talks, a few things became apparent. For starters, Dr. Peterson is a hero. I would even go as far as to say that he is the modern “Tank Man of Tiananmen Square” as he stand up against the tyranny of oppression, fueled by your illogical hate. And he is doing it without poisoning the debate; his arguments are on-topic, sensible and verifiable. When your crew of misfits try to cause disturbance, he keeps talking, maintaining a calm voice, and makes you appear as the infantile children you are.

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