Yeah. It's weird that just saying "no" really is the best move. We just shouldn't count on it when teaching kids about substance abuse.
Just like with abstinence-only sex education, basing the entire strategy around just one method of preventing an unwanted outcome is dumb.
I liked my sister's answer when someone offered her cigarettes to try.
"If I don't like it, it will be a shitty experience. If I do like it, that's much worse. There's no way for me to smoke a cigarette and win."
I worked at a major destination-store focused on fishing and hunting products.
We had a hurricane hitting and the manager on duty made it clear that anyone going home to help out their families would be fired. Then when he got the call that water was rising near his house, he took off.
I've never hated a manager more than in that moment. When I was in management later, I made sure that I took all the shitty holiday shifts so my staff didn't have to work until 10pm on Christmas Eve and then be back in the building changing prices for the after-Christmas sale at 2am on the 26th.
Covid ended any hope I have. We couldn't get people to put on a fucking mask or get vaccinations when the disease was right in front of us killing millions of people.
There's absolutely no way we're gonna get people on board with fighting the climate disaster. Humanity will be lucky if it survives itself.
There's a shockingly large, beautiful one in my hometown of Pearland, Texas - the Sri Meenakshi Temple.
It was only the third Hindu temple built in America, and, at least when it was built, it was the only Meenakshi temple outside of India. It's still a venue for high-profile Hindu weddings.
When it was built, Pearland was a mostly-rural community with a population of about 10,000 (2020 census is around 120,000), and they built this phenomenal temple in the middle of nowhere on McLean road.
I brought a bunch of coca tea bags back from Bolivia with me years ago.
It's great for altitude sickness.
To the people pushing hlthis narrative that want to buy houses in a vacation destination cheap then rent them for $600/night.
Even worse - they knew full-well that it was a medical office by the point this happened. He was just poking around the expensive shit when he lost his gun.
And then he burned probably millions of dollars when he pushed the purge button.
If the city is also the utility provider it's stupidly easy.
If your business requires all its employees to be there to function, it's understaffed.
People go on vacation, get sick, quit, have car trouble, and die. Your business needs to account for that.
We talking real football or the one where you use your feet?
Worse than the settlements are the fenced roads going to the settlements.
They build a settlement 20 miles from you but the road crosses your land? Well now you've got to travel 40 miles to get to the other side of your field 100 yards away.
What's that? They built another settlement on the other side of your land, and then built a road between the 2 settlements? Now you're surrounded by roads with fences you can't cross.