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Little Things That Irk You VII: Seething Pains

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    I started smoking around 15 years ago.

    But when I say 'smoking', it was one a day and not even daily. Once or twice I've chain-smoked two whole cigarettes, and I think the most I've had in a single day is three. A 20-pack would last me at least a month, sometimes two. I've never found 10-packs here in Japan otherwise I would've bought those.

    Then I got a new colleague who smokes so I'd occasionally join him. It was so infrequent that I just bought him a 20-pack and would bum cigs off him when we went for staff dinners or whatever. But the last time I did that was around October and I lost interest.

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      At work it seems like the majority have managed to shift to vaping but there's still a couple who are regular vapers having never originally been smokers. They were complaining the other day about a news report stating that vapers were 70% more likely to suffer a stroke.

      Duh. It's a supportive measure to quit smoking, keep doing it and...

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        After near twenty-four hours of solid work, other than a break at around midnight to make dinner, I can't sleep. It's 5am and I wanted to be up nice and early tomorrow. I might try four hours now and then another four in the afternoon or something. That never works though, I always end up sleeping through into night-time again.

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          Have you tried valerian, Dave? Stinks like sweaty socks covered in the wazz of ten dead old dockers but it really zonks, it's cumulative, you feel like Garfield.

          It's legal, as well. It's just some kind of mildly soporific root. But by god it mings of sweaty sock...

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            I'll look into it. Chamomile is proving useless.

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              Originally posted by Superman Falls View Post
              At work it seems like the majority have managed to shift to vaping but there's still a couple who are regular vapers having never originally been smokers. They were complaining the other day about a news report stating that vapers were 70% more likely to suffer a stroke.

              Duh. It's a supportive measure to quit smoking, keep doing it and...
              Vaping actually isn’t a cessation product. They even have to state that on the advertising. It’s an alternative. Some people really get into the hobbyist side of making their own coils (the heating elements) and mixing their own juices etc.

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                If that's the case then it's even more daft, the government and NHS are sleeping on that problem

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                  High speed rail project 2 could soar to 100b

                  Time to pull the plug and get the governments cash back for breach of contract on all this, the hammer needs to fall big time.

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                    We can't even get normal rail right! Someone is getting very rich from all this.

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                      Err, nope

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                        I can see where they are coming from. This morning, I read an article on Nintendo Life that had a headline about Mother 3 not being translated to English due to potential controversy. I read the article to find out more and found out that Mother 3 wasn't translated to English due to potential controversy. And nothing else. And yeah, that is a news story of zero consequence but its example is all too common. While there are still some great journalists, they are lost in an internet sea of headlines with nothing behind them. Misinformation and even satire is spread with as much weight as real news. Randos with a dumbass opinion on YouTube are being taken as news sources.

                        It's not that journalism should be saved to keep things the way they were. It's that something needs to change to restore the balance in what has happened to journalism in the last decade or so. I don't know what that thing is but I can see where they are coming from here.

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                          Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                          I don't know what that thing is but I can see where they are coming from here.
                          I think the only solution is to start teaching, now, the next generation of kids, that if advertising is involved in any way in a publication, you can't fully trust it.

                          Whether it's IGN giving bad reviews to Links and good reviews to PGA Tour while there's a huge PGA banner on their homepage, or something more serious in a genuine newspaper, it's still the same.

                          I would love to see a rise of more news services (and services in general) where users pay to use them, perhaps monthly, and that's it. That's their sole revenue stream. Maybe the users can pay more, to get more, but that's it. Then, the service's only motivation is retaining its users, which is still open to abuse, but at least it's abuse for what is perceived to be your benefit.

                          However, "the market" has shown that people don't value this kind of objectivity. They'd rather read entertaining lies, as long as they're "free".
                          Last edited by Asura; 12-02-2019, 12:01.

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                            Yep, media literacy is crucial but I don't think its enough. Media literacy is like recommending flak jackets while you're being shot at - important and they'll do a great job but what would also be awesome is to at least try to stop people shooting at you. As you say, people like to read entertaining lies and too many people buy into them. And we bombarded with so much information that no one person can fact-check everything they see or hear. It's impossible. So I feel it is wrong to put all the responsibility on those listening to the lies - media literacy tools are important but something needs to be done to address the problem at the same time.

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                              That's part of why I can't get on board with the idea. The closure of many local publications narrows the field for aspiring journalists to get into the field that way but the bias of news sources is partially a different factor to the business of running them. Whilst they use the veil of democracy to promote the idea of subsidising local journalism, the reality is most local newspapers, outlets etc are rags primarily used to advertise local garden centres and plumbers. What it's arguing for is for public money to be used to prop up a dying field. The way people digest news has irreversibly changed. There's a case for supporting local journalism but it has to be in a very proactive, future focused way that looks to where things are going as funded or not local press and even most mid-level press above it is unavoidably going to be gone in the coming decade or so.

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                                Just ban it all. And religion. And football. World peace restored.

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