It is true that some drugs are very dangerous and can ruin people’s lives. One of the most dangerous ones is alcohol, which is legal. One of the least dangerous ones is cannabis, which is still illegal in most places and at a federal level in the USA.

So maybe (just maybe) this is not about protecting people at all and never was?

Are all merchants who sell alcohol bastards?

“Virtue-signaling” is just another though-terminating cliché of the current culture wars. It implies that the action has no cost to the person and provides some social credit. These people are risking their lives, violence, prison time, etc. Everyone hates them. Nobody knows their names. They keep doing it. Your hypothesis doesn’t hold. If we all decided that we don’t give a shit about this civilization-ending event, might as well through some soup at a van Gogh painting. Why not? It won’t matter anyway.

Even if these people were horrible “virtue-signaling” vandals, it is a microscopic problem in comparison to the real one: clime change. And yet the media focus on the former. Why? You do the math.

Voting matters, but unfortunately it appears to be an incredibly sub-optimal solution for dealing with climate change for the following reasons:

• Just because you can vote, doesn’t mean that the option you need is even on the menu. It often isn’t.
• Through hard work you can get the option on the menu, but that doesn’t mean your politician won’t do “deals” after they are in power.
• Lobbyists get access to politicians 24/7 and have a lot of influence, you have one vote every 4 years;
• Even if politicians do what you want, it is unlikely that your country by itself will make a difference, this is a global problem.

Meanwhile we are all fucked. It is likely too late already for preventing severe climate change. Our only hope now is geoengineering. The USA and EU are already considering blocking the sun.

The people who (rightly) have a sense of urgency about this are taking more radical action. They are blocking roads and throwing soup at famous paintings. These are desperate acts that seem rational in the face of the horror that we should strive to avoid, but the majority opinion of our species seems to be that these people are “too radical” and that common folks just trying to get by should not be inconvenienced, and that these radical eco-terrorists should be thrown in a cage.

To be honest, I’m not sure that our species deserves to survive.

Social networks that end up being successful have a long initial growth phase. Interest waning after a couple of days is a terrible sign. Threads is already dead.

You are correct, and it is indeed good to make this clear. I meant to argue that it is a bit of an exaggeration to say the the EU has nothing to do with universal healthcare. Arguably, I have more rights to health care as a EU citizen visiting another member state than a US citizen who can’t afford health insurance. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a state without socialized healthcare such as the US would be able to join the EU without reforming its public health policies.

I’m an EU citizen and I strongly approve of GDPR. Out of curiosity: are you an EU citizen?

I do have a card in my wallet issued by the EU that gives me the right to receive healthcare in any EU member state I visit, and I struggle to think of a EU member state that does not have universal healthcare in one form or another.

Same. European here, I have lived in several different EU countries and everyone I know uses either WhatsApp or Signal.