Nailed it. This is also the same mechanism of action for almost any addiction.
1) Consume external drug
2) Receptors downregulate (thanks to homeostasis)
3) Need more of said drug or withdrawals kick in (analogous to needing to take external insulin so body can get rid of excess glucose)
4) Rinse & repeat
From a United States perspective: What we have is a duopoly of Big Pharma and Big Ag that gets people hooked on sugar and then uses medicine-as-a-service to hook them on insulin forever. There is no money in preventative medicine.
There are other countries in the world that have already taken steps to get junk foods and sugary drinks out of the hands of children [0]. What excuses does the United States have?
Hit the nail on the head. Boomers grew up in an age without the internet, where government propaganda was spoonfed to them straight through their brand new living room television sets and doorstep newspapers.
Just imagine: the only bastion of information was your local library. Granted, information in libraries is curated and of substantially higher quality than the unfiltered garbage that you can encounter on the internet... but who was really going to libraries that often back in the day? Information was sparse, and that was exploited to manipulate people to an uncanny degree.
There has been a rise in homelessness and people becoming disillusioned by the tethers of society, to the point that people are voluntarily retreating into cities and wildernesses to live freely off the land.
Homelessness (particularly voluntary) is an existential threat to capitalism because it reduces the productivity of the working class. This in turn diminishes the gains of the proletariat, who need workers and purchasers of their goods and services (such as houses).
The title story seems like a scary way for the system to force people into becoming productive members of society. In the system's eyes, these people are useless, unwanted wastes of space, so they are going to force them into treatment so they can "lead normal lives," a euphemism for turning them into productive cogs in the proletariat's capitalist machine.
Taking this as an opportunity to plug the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT). Pay no attention to the tongue-in-cheek name, it has nothing to do with mass suicide or genocide, and merely advocates for us to stop breeding.
> Phasing out the human species by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense.
Even Wikipedia engages in strategic censorship on behalf of the three letter agencies.
Case in point: this article[0] was removed from Wikipedia without good reasoning. It would seem that the name of the article itself was inflammatory enough to the powers that be.
For people unfamiliar with it, Course Hero promotes some seriously unethical practices. They enable students to commit academic dishonesty by uploading course materials such as assignments and tests. Course Hero then locks those materials behind a paywall, where you can either pay money to access the materials or upload your own course materials for credits to access other ones.
Agreed. The Earthsea Cycle is one of the greatest and most influential fantasy sagas of all time, right up there next to LotR.
It pioneered the wizarding school trope, later popularized by Harry Potter, as well as a magic system incorporating “true names” of things, a concept used in many other fantasies such as Eragon.
A Wizard of Earthsea is my all time favorite book.
1) Consume external drug
2) Receptors downregulate (thanks to homeostasis)
3) Need more of said drug or withdrawals kick in (analogous to needing to take external insulin so body can get rid of excess glucose)
4) Rinse & repeat
From a United States perspective: What we have is a duopoly of Big Pharma and Big Ag that gets people hooked on sugar and then uses medicine-as-a-service to hook them on insulin forever. There is no money in preventative medicine.
There are other countries in the world that have already taken steps to get junk foods and sugary drinks out of the hands of children [0]. What excuses does the United States have?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/aug/06/mexico-oaxaca-s...