> Whonix when used via Qubes DispVMs is more effective than Tails in my opinion (better protection against IP leaking), unless your goal is mainly the amnesic aspect.
It's a matter of convenience.
Your setup is far more complicated for a non-technical activist or journalist Vs. Tails.
OK. Firstly, people in academia don’t even talk like this (“what’s your source!”). Secondly, you’re fighting anecdotes with anecdotes, which is fine, except you’re trying to pull the ladder up after you.
You’re coming across as an MDMA fanboy and the way that you’re approaching the conversation will have if anything a negative impact on “the cause”.
MDMA wasn’t ‘designed’ to do anything. It happens to do something. I’m surprised that you’re even phrasing it this way because MDMA fanboys tend to obsess over the lore of its discovery.
I have been present for bad MDMA trips. One of these people has C-PTSD (putting aside the controversy about its existence), and had a C-PTSD-related bad trip, which seems highly highly relevant to this topic.
I’ve done a bunch of MDMA. I’m certainly going to do a bunch more throughout the rest of my life. I’m not going to kid myself about it being perfect. I’m not going to kid myself about the fact that over a large enough population even “improbable” adverse reactions are meaningful. Nerds that do drugs are so often insufferable because they’ll try to intellectualise what’s essentially “God I love drugs and they’re great!”
I want to know if it's even remotely possible for a EV truck company like Rivian to unseat the F-150 as America's best selling truck within the next 5 years?
Those are all excellent points, but fail to address the addictive downsides OP mentioned.
The business model of the internet has always been surveillance and modern smartphones + tech companies have taken that to the extreme.
Brilliant engineers / behavioral scientists using supercomputers to manipulate humans at scale guarantees that the average individual (and teenagers etc) has absolutely no fighting chance.
The thing about addiction at this scale is that... no one things they're addicted because our entire world/society is addicted - so we all justify it and move on.
I went on a silent meditation retreat for 10+ days (with no technology, talking, or smartphones etc) and it was awesome for my mind, but then, turning my phone on after 10+ days of it being off brought back the dread 2x as more.
That's a myth.
You can't lick the skin of toads — more specifically that of the Sonoran Desert Toad aka. Bufo Alvarius as it's toxic.
That's a meme propagated by The Simpsons: https://youtu.be/uFn7VjYksBM?si=OecdfsmXyOTJJAeF.
You can however milk it's venom via glands and smoke it.
There's also insufficient evidence for the pineal gland as that is an unsubstantiated hypothesis proposed by Dr. Rick Strassman.
Plus, the Wikipedia page you linked to literally says:
> "...although the physiological significance of this biotransformation is not yet known."
Soo...