The incredible amount of sugar that we eat and give to our kids. There is already a clear trend of "hiding" sugar from the ingredients. The label "No sugars added" gives a really positive meaning. But most processed foods are still chock-full of sugar. I guess in 20 or 30 years sugar products will be labeled with scary labels like tobacco is today.
As for alcohol, I don't think so. People will still want to get wasted, even knowing that it is bad for the health.
In a better world we'd have a good substitute for alcohol that had similar effects but much less serious health concerns. This should be a major research target, but for stupid political reasons it isn't.
- when is it safe to use a given drug?
so we can get to the business of exploring:
- which drugs are best paired with which intentions, moods, environments, etc?
Which ones are you thinking of? Are any of them similar to alcohol in effects? (Light euphoria, increased socialisation, mild confidence boost, pleasant method of application?)
You are thinking about self administration of GHB, but people need to be really careful because 2 mL is a recipe for a fun night, whereas 7 mL will get you in ICU.
Bur vis-a-vis alcohol it has big advantages. No liver problems, no kidney problems, no clogging of arteries, no cardiomiopathy or inflammation...
But again people need to be paranoid before its use, in order to diligently respect the quantities.
The administration at a party would be a gig for companies, because you'd need the same level of professionality as say the security services for a VIP party.
In the Netherlands, the percentage of people that relapse after rehabilitating from GHB is the highest of all drugs, including alcohol.
Humans love alcohol-like feelings, so the comparison is vis-a-vis against alcohol.
Alcohol relapse statistics are on a much higer sample given how widespread it is, whereas for G the sample is much smaller.
Also among the people who don't relapse are also included in those who die or have their bodies so screwed up that have no alternative but quitting if they want to keep living. Alcohol does that to a whole lot of people who technically don't relapse....but don't breath anymore either.
G doesn't cause any liver, heart, kidney, cardiac, valvular, stomach, arterial, testicular damage, so of course people will come back for more.
If the only negative effects are psychological then it's a testimony to the amazing proprieties of the substance.
Also in science the standard practice is that if you can't measure it then there is no point talking about it or even discussing it.
We don't know what happens inside our brains, the mechanisms of addiction and so forth.. we can only evaluate the effects.
Some humans love the feeling of being in an inebriated state commonly brought on by the use of alcohol. The amount of people addicted to other drugs shows it is not just the drunkeness of alcohol people are after. However, the simple fact that alcohol is legal and readily available means that's the thing people use to achieve this inebriated state. Allow other substances to be legal and destigmatized the way alcohol has been, and you will see numbers change.
Alcohol is legal because people love to be inebiated more than they like being stoned or on a paranoid coke binge, or nodding off due to heroin
Majority rules , and so the preference with regards to the feeling of being inebriated + collective risk tolerance of society + the variability of alcoholic beverages + the low cost of the substance made it so that alcohol emerged .
Does that imply we can never compare smaller data sets with larger ones? GHB is becoming a huge issue in the Netherlands to the point that there aren't enough rehab spots. So I would assume the amount of data is not insignificant and can therefore be compared.
> Alcohol does that to a whole lot of people who technically don't relapse....but don't breath anymore either.
So does GHB.
> G doesn't cause any liver, heart, kidney, cardiac, valvular, stomach, arterial, testicular damage, so of course people will come back for more.
You retort to my argument was that the data set for GHB was much smaller. How does that not matter with your argument?
Also, GHB is associated with cognitive changes and potential brain damage. So you might come back for more, but you won't be the same person:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181008104628.h...
> Also in science the standard practice is that if you can't measure it then there is no point talking about it or even discussing it.
Which part can't you measure? You can measure relapse percentages. You can measure addiction rates. You can measure the length of an addiction. You can measure the physiological and metal impact of an addiction.
And it's not like nobody is doing that either.
No, the only way to die via GHB is to overdose on it. Alcohol instead sets you body on fire with inflammation and such inflammation attacks all tissues including vital ones which I mentioned and will repeat: heart, liver, kidneys, arteries, pancreas...
> You retort to my argument was that the data set for GHB was much smaller. How does that not matter with your argument?
Because we know that the cause for all that damage is inflammation, between alcohol and G only the former causes inflammation.
> Also, GHB is associated with cognitive changes and potential brain damage. So you might come back for more, but you won't be the same person:
Leave aside the brain, except for physical phenomenons such as blood, plaques, cancer....we really don't know what happens in there or why. We can't even predict our own thoughts 10 seconds from now..leave alone complex things such as cognition on a general scale and most importantly the ability to measure it.
Also let's assume we did know, say all that we know today is effectively what happens in the brain. Given that premise we also have to take for good the data that we have about the depression/anxiety epidemic, which is very widespread according to today's research.
Today research also tells us that prolonged anxiety/depression causes damage to the body, reduces cognition and IQ and trims years off a person's life.
Well, considering all the above...both alcohol and G seem a better alternative than becoming subject to the depression epidemic which causes both a reduction in quality of life, as well as a reduction in quantity of life. Alcohol is superior in terms of quality of life, unfortunately it also shortens quantity of life, but G has them both beaten because it prevents depression AND doesn't cause inflammation to tissues, so G is better for both quality and quantity of life.
Of course if you are a person who is naturally on cloud 9 all the time and essentially immune to the depression epidemic (meaning that you are essentially clueless about the world), then you are better off not taking anything.
But at that point you are also better off not leaving the house because leaving the house also has risks, and why would you take risks if you are essentially a buddha who is always on cloud 9 and perfectly happy and content the way things are and everything else is pushing on a string?
So even if we allowed for a perfect knowledge of our brains, if we take into consideration the median urban Western citizen who is always on the brink of depression then G is better than alcohol and all the other drugs used to solve depression, both prescribed (benzo, SSRIs...) and those used for self-medication purposes (alcohol, cocaine, MDMA, crack, weed..)
It's really not as safe as you make out, as the dose needed to OD isn't much more than a recreational dose. When you overdose on GHB you can become aggressive, lose consciousness, lose all short term memories; and worse case fall into a coma and even die. The margin of error is just too small!
If you take GHB for a long time you can build up a tolerance and become dependant one it. The withdrawal is terrible and depending on how dependant some os can result in post acute withdrawal syndrome, in which case you can't just stop taking it as the result could be fatal.
But it's the same thing with regular alcohol, isn't it? Half a bottle of liquor is a fun night, whereas three bottles surely will kill you. As long as it is diluted in practical quantities it doesn't seem like a big deal.
That said, they'll pry my saturday evening glass of scotch from my cold, dead hands.
Plus unlike G you are not involved in the preparation, a better comparison would be having a substance called super-duper-liquor that you'd have to dilute yourself with water in order to make sure that it's indeed 3 bottles of liquor needed to send you in ICU.
If you screw up the dilution of the super-duper-liquor you can end up in ICU after just a sip, and you'd not notice because it doesn't have a taste or a smell.
Plus let's face it, humans were never made to deal with liquid quantities in mL , we were made to deal in liters or even deca-liters, because that's the measuring unit of the most important liquid for humans: H2O
Few mL of water aren't good for anything.
We have that in Norway, hjemmebrent, we just call it 9 6 (96%), aka moonshine.
But we also can self-administer, in large part because you can see how strong a drink is, right on the package.
I think GP is suggesting that, absent the lobbying power of the alcohol industry, you might see commercial development of safer ways of dosing alternatives.
If you could go to the store and buy a sealed bottle with 0.5mg ghb that might be compelling for some folks?
While it's pretty hard to kill yourself with alcohol, but very easy using GHB. Even experienced users mess up with GHB, as it matters how much you are taking over time, and how much is being absorbed.
At bars you get pretty consistent pours, bartenders are watching for overconsumption and often for potential DUIs. And you don't, typically, have to worry about a bartender spiking a drink with something else.
All of that helps make alcohol consumption with strangers safer.
A lot of the drug safety education for alcohol boils down to knowing how much alcohol is in each drink, and that there's nothing else intoxicating in it.
A lot of drug saftey education for anything boils down to knowing how much of it is in each serving, and that there's nothing else surprising in it. Knowing your drugs are important whether that's ibuprofen, alcohol, MDMA, etc. Obviously, much more risky with recreational drugs with people looking to spike with other things for the pizzazz or cutting costs, or buying pharma drugs from less than reputible sources.
However, there were a rash of people getting sick/hurt from receiving alcohol from bars at resorts in Mexico. So edge cases are always going to be there.
Well yes, substances are like religions, and alcohol is like Christianity.
Nobody knows how or why it emerged, maybe one of the reason is that you could ballpark doses and unless you really screw up or have a deathwish you'd be able to survive and reproduce.
Same thing for Christianity, there is not a whole lot of stuff in there that prompts people to get in harms way.
Whatever the reason, it's now grandfathered in and it will be really hard to change this.
The fact that the alcohol lobby tries to fight alternatives, and also the fact that there is an alcohol lobby at all...is somehow embedded in society.
I honestly don't know why we are managing to get rid of cigarettes which were similarly grandfathered in and are much lower risk than alcohol
Being around a drunk person maybe also statistically unhealthy given the increased risk of falls, accidents, psychological damage?
I don't know, it's one of those things where I can't point which was the reason.
If I had to guess, maybe it was babies, kids and pregnant women. People don't get shitfaced around those categories but they had to endure passive smoke.
And the reduction in cigarette consumption is to be ascribed to that, plus society being less and less fond of stimulants due to risk averseness (this includes nictoine and also cocaine consumption which are both way down compared to the 70s-80s-90s)
The vast majority of people who drink aren't drunk, and not everyone who is drunk is unpleasant; everyone who smokes is putting out irritating smoke.
My partner is legally prescribed it for narcolepsy (Xyrem), and takes 4.5mL twice a night.
Plenty of homeless drunkards in the streets, alcoholism is rampant.
> G is not safe
Side effects of GHB overdose include death by central nervous system depression + consequent respiratory arrest.
Side effects of Tylenol overdose include an excruciatingly painful, multi-day death from multiple organ failure.
See the pattern?
Both drinking and GHB are capable of causing memory loss.
> The effects are quite different than alcohol
YMMV.
It has no hangover. Its long term effects are not understood (a boon vs alcohol where they're known and bad.) It's edible and drinkable. And it makes your patrons buy food. The bar of tomorrow will serve cannabis infused cocktails alongside alcohol. From the moment of federal deregulation it will only take a few years, like the arrival and commoditization of boozy seltzers. Today's cannabis manufacturers in legalized states are already building the infrastructure to hit the ground running.
Plus, there are people out there who don't experience euphoria from alcohol, it instead throws them into a depressive spiral.
I suspect it's that alcohol and socialization go well together, while cannabis doesn't so it's better to enjoy it at home than at a bar.
Given that THC seems to be hard to precisely dose, I am not sure that a bar could figure out how to make cocktails or edibles that give a sufficiently small amount to encourage patrons to buy multiple items.
Also, alcohol works in a few minutes, but THC takes a lot longer. I wonder if we would see an increase of over consumption because people are impatient to get their buzz.
Fwiw, I like THC is small quantities from time to time, but I consume at home and watch a movie. Being in a loud public space which high seems like a nightmare to me.
Either way, it will be interesting to see what the future holds.
It's certainly more processed than homemade weed brownies, but much more reliable and much quicker (minutes for effect vs hours).
I'm interested as to where you got the idea of "stupid political reasons" blocking research, he literally released a good substitute this year.
From the article you link to: "Nutt is also campaigning for a change in UK drug laws to allow for more research opportunities".
https://www.fda.gov/food/new-nutrition-facts-label/how-under...
It was never about sugar content, but how sweet something is.
Overly sweet things can be unpleasant to an adult palate, or one accustomed to a culture of less sweet things. In simpler times, sugar content was a somewhat reliable metric of sweetness (of course it can be balanced by acid, tannins, salt etc.), so you could select a product without needing to taste it first.
In simpler times, there were no labels to judge sugary content. The regulation in USA came in 2011. In simpler times, you bought the thing and did not cared about sugar at all. Later on, you engaged in culture war whether calories should be on labeling or whether such regulation is nanny statism.
Plus, I will go out and say that amount of people who would regularly check packages to learn how sweet it is and thus estimate taste before buying was super low. It is not a great proxy in the first place.
I still rely on it. Fruit juices touting how natural they are, but bulking out on sugar via apple or orange juice, is really common. You learn to watch out for it in various snacks for toddlers too.
I think its because they were purchasing the cheapest "juice" they could find, but my friends joked that they were trying to give people diabetes to increase business.
Alcohol advertising is already highly regulated compared to past decades. Smoking even more. Even professional magazines in the 60s and 70s used to have alcohol and cigarette ads every few pages. Not to mention that alcohol use was much less frowned upon at the workplace, especially in certain fields.
How committed are you to no sugar and how have you addressed all that? I’d love to try again with some better strategies.
In my case I have found it helpful to not quit sugar cold turkey, but gradually. First I stopped buying and using refined sugar at all (putting it in coffee, yogurt, etc.) This is quite easy. Then, avoid buying products whose ingredient list starts with sugar, like marmalade, "milk" chocolate, cereals and the like. This is a bit harder since it requires to pay attention to most products you buy, but still quite feasible. Then, once I was used to spot sugar at the beginning of the ingredient list, I began to read the whole list of ingredients, and avoid products that contained any sugar at all. For example: pre-cut carrots with lemon and ciboulette? whole wheat bread loafs? what on earth can be healthier than those things? Yet both of them contain sugar, in all the brands that I checked!
I started this "program" about three years ago and now I feel slightly healthier, nothing spectacular, but still. The thing is that now I notice immediately when something is too sugary. To the point of it being disgusting. For example, I have real trouble finishing a piece of cake in a birthday party (after fighting my urge to be a jerk about it and refuse it altogether).
I eat very low carb compared to most Americans. (Not keto just low carb)
Why are we treating all sugars as the same? They are not the same.
Some baked goods have sugar in order to feed yeast, rather than humans... Pizza dough, bagels, croissants. Yes these all come in dessert varieties, but it's not the default option.
Especially when you start getting to dumping on fresh fruit, it's like, no, please don't commit yourself to a bland beige life like that! Plants are masters of poisons and trickery, e.g. capsaicin (what makes peppers spicy) makes our mouths burn, but not the mouths of birds—who spread their seeds. Plants use fructose specifically because it's not dextrose and therefore it's hard for bacteria to digest: because they want us to eat this fruit and scatter the pit. Indeed they make the fruit sweet rather rapidly, “now now, it's ready now!”, to signal an optimal “it’s not poisonous! now you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours” moment to us.
Plants even look out for our longer-term health, those bright colors that we find so attractive are usually signaling to us these really important antioxidants that we need. As long as we don't freeze or puree the cell walls into oblivion, the resulting fiber traps some sugars and feeds it not to us but to our gut bacteria, who then don't starve and eat our GI linings...
“let's not eat foods that I know are healthy, to satisfy arbitrary rules I made up to keep myself healthy”... really?
So if zero tolerance is out, what remains?
• Set a low sugar target, “no more than 10% of my calories from sugars.”
• Prefer stuff with a shelf life. If it has an expiration date rather than a nutrition label, great!
• Don't worry about the natural sugar in yogurt, the lactose, unless you're lactose-intolerant. But don't buy the flavored versions as they are sugary enough to classify as desserts for breakfast. Instead do what the Dutch do—buy the plain stuff and cut the sour yourself with added whole grains and fresh fruit.
• “Don't even let it in your house” the other stuff. Guilty pleasures for me include chocolate and jam, I try to make sure that I don't have these in-stock...
• The grocer is a pilgrimage. What I mean is, it's tempting to zigzag your way through and see everything, and this is also why shopping takes forever! But pilgrims usually make a big walk around a structure before diving into the middle for a brief flirtation/unveiling of divinity. A good grocery run too walks around the aisles at the edges, fresh fruit and veg, fresh baked goods, meat and poultry, dairy... And it makes targeted trips into the middle only for things that it needs. You've got a list of the things you'll dip into the middle for, after all, and if your grocery trips are short then if you miss something, you can take another short grocery trip later in the week and still save time and money. Small batch sizes, lean manufacturing!
I quite seriously suspect that answer will be "24 hour electricity and grocery stores where you can buy food from anywhere in the world"
> Our widespread and normalised alcohol abuse
Until pandemic we've lived in a fairly teetotaling era. I suspect for the next decade we'll see an increase in casual drinking, becoming more similar to the 1950s. If you watch any films from that era very strong cocktails are basically a standard for just about any social occasion, any time of the day. The pandemic has instantly changed peoples views on alcohol and other drugs, what's coming the immediate future will likely continue this trend.
The immediate future generations will likely look back on ours as a bizarre blend of incredibly wasteful prudes. A generation of people who gluttonously destroyed the planet while at the same time being too timid to let themselves enjoy it. I think the reaction will be a large one of revulsion "you destroyed the planet and you didn't even let yourself have fun doing it? you lived at work for what?"
Uh, I think that's going to be the norm in the future if anything...
I truly hope the answer isn’t 24 hour electricity, given how cheap it is to produce. That would represent a major backslide in human capability. I’m not fully against other drawdown strategies, but surely we can leave the lights on.
And yes, we are simultaneously so destructive and so unhappy. What a terrible waste.
It's fairly well studied in the medical literature [0, 1] and reported on pretty regularly in popular media as well [2]
0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7763183/
1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
2. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/09/22/covid-...
Personally, I bought a nice 1.5 l bottle of scotch a week before lockdowns began, but never bought any hard liquor since I got my vaccine.
Just imagine the people that have to pee in bottles, being abused on daily basis by their boss, by their customers, and then they cant take drugs? for how long?
The facebook moderators, or the call center oberators..
As bad as it is, without some real changes, alcohol is almost mandatory.
ps: I don't drink, but most of my friends drink.
pps: what i think will sound absurd is the horrific ways of industrial animal farming.
I’m personally not religious, I drink and so on, but it has me thinking that maybe some of the things society tells us to value are greatly misguided.
Us painting all sorts of phantasies using crypto and meta-things will be very funny to look back upon. Give it 5 years. Oh the naïveté.
Adtech and addiction machines will be another two (partially related) areas that we’ll be shaking our heads at.
Mark my words:
1. Eating meat
2. Valorizing excess
3. Bonfires and fireworks
4. Anonymity
5. Air, noise, and light pollution
6. Having more than 2 kids
7. Proof of work
8. Buying new stuff all the time
9. Suits, ties and other western formalwear
10. Non-synthetic pornography
11. Academic papers
12. Golf
13. Body modification and tattoos
14. Lawns
15. Running unaudited code
16. Non-tailored medicine
17. Tribal politics
18. Daylight savings time
19. Circumcision
20. Burial
21. Men standing to pee
22. Treating 18-year-olds as full adults
23. Tipping
24. Advertizing
25. Imperial units
26. Coffee fetishization
27. Changing your name when marrying
28. Work-or-starve as the two primary options
29. Cosmetic products
30. Gender
31. Automotive fatalities
32. Demarcation between Movies and TV
Unless of course, you're hinting that humanity will go extinct.
I really do hope we move away from an economy that relies on advertising to produce consumer demand at an unhealthy scale, though.
If everybody is a "they" then pronouns become less useful. Maybe we'll go through a stage like that while we rebel against binary-only gendered thinking, but eventually we'll want useful pronouns again and we'll reinvent gender.
Continued unchecked growth coupled with increasing consumption is heading us towards an ecological catastrophe that quite seriously threatens the possibility of extinction, and at the very least looks like complete collapse of industrial civilization.
There is nothing worse you can do for the environment than bring another life into the world, especially if you live in the developed world.
2. Valorizing excess
Not sure what exactly you mean by this, but having more than you need and showing off is basic human behavior, and I don't see a reason that will change.
3. Bonfires and fireworks
Bonfires are fun and so are fireworks. They have some downsides, but not more than many other fun things we allow.
4. Anonymity
There will always be places where you can act anonymously or pseudo anonymously. See 4chan and bitcoin for example.
5. Air, noise, and light pollution
There will always be the next kind of not-yet-illegal pollution, and the person to profit from inflicting it upon the rest of us.
6. Having more than 2 kids
Most people will have 1-3 kids, some will have more. Nothing absurd about reproducing.
8. Buying new stuff all the time
See 1
12. Golf
Might be less popular, but why absurd?
13. Body modification and tattoos
Basic human desire to control your body and what you look like. If anything it will be more popular as technology improves.
15. Running unaudited code
With the halting problem on one hand (making automatic auditing impossible) and the high value of software on the other, I don't see any way around this anytime soon. Maybe some AI based solution.
16. Non-tailored medicine
One prediction I fully agree with! Especially many invasive examinations we consider standard today.
17. Tribal politics
Human nature...
20. Burial
Also human nature. Not the American style burial with the huge casket and embalming and whatnot. But some kind of burial will always be the norm.
21. Men standing to pee
???
23. Tipping 24. Advertizing
Human nature...
31. Automotive fatalities
Maybe on the road. But what about space fatalities?
Why do you say that? People have been doing it for hundreds of years and in the west it has become completely acceptable.
> 22. Treating 18-year-olds as full adults
In the US this isn't absurd even now!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi#Skeletal_details_and...
At least 2, 14, 19, 23 and 25.
Some people like to get fucked up, it’s irritating when I encounter opinions that shame it or otherwise imply that it needs to be stopped. Let those who want it have it.
I think the dynamics and beliefs are similar between the two: your primary exposure to alcohol could be having fun with it and friends, or it could be from growing up in an alcoholic family. You could grow up thinking guns are just a normal, if somewhat dangerous, tool (like a lawnmower), or most exposure could come from salacious gun news stories. It will all color how you feel about the topics.
(stats from memory, but I think order of magnitude correct). 30k gun deaths a year, of which 20k are suicide. Self-inflicted death from alcohol dwarfs 20k, and deaths to others from, e.g., drunk driving are comparable to gun homicides. Then you have the splashy things like school shootings, which I think are roughly comparable to driving a car through a Christmas parade while intoxicated.
If someone in your life is negatively affecting you consider changing who’s in your life.
We are only responsible for ourselves.
Parents can also abuse emotions, marijuana, etc. Haven’t seen anyone advocating to curb marijuana here yet.
You don't think a drug that's illegal in large parts of the world and for which legalization is a highly controversial topic is curbed?
Also, the parent comment clearly took children as an example of people who's live can be drastically worsened by someone else consuming alcohol. Drivers and and passerbys endangered by drunk drivers would be another good example.
Great idea! Now how do I get drunk people off of the roads?
Not when your actions have consequences, which they do. Violence following alcohol abuse, or loss of family members due to alcohol abuse, is a thing.
I know its the state/corpos wish that we are all interchangeable people-toner easy to pack into cartridges, easy to produce, easy to consume, but some of us cling to the old ways and others.
Sorry. Clingy, sticky, nasty, humans. The new man, you want to go towards will surely not have this flaws. What a marvellous ideal sociopath that will be.
And then heavily advertise it to those who don't. I'm not in favor of a return to prohibition, but it's strange how massive alcohol advertising is.
I’d still fight for both to exist regardless of my beliefs.
Not a sarcasm, last week there was a person fully seriously that alcohol is as addictive as heroin. I am not exaggerating and it did not seemed as wink wink trolling either.
On one hand, America has counties where you can't buy alcohol at all, laws banning 20-year-old adults from buying alcohol, planning laws keeping pubs away from where people live, and even had a national alcohol ban at one time.
On the other hand, apparently the age laws are widely flouted? And everyone knows it but turns a blind eye? And drink-driving is so common that even if you kill someone, it's barely punished?
In my experience, it perfectly describes Europe too. Maybe not drink-driving being common in all countries, but age laws being ignored is something I find normal.
If anything, in USA they make much much bigger deal over age laws then in Europe.
Personally, alcohol is related to some traumatic experiences so I don’t like feeling remotely drunk. I definitely had a problem when I quit.
They came with a warning that read: "Do NOT dissolve and leave on a cool cupboard for 21 days or it would turn it into wine".
It would be impossible to outlaw alcohol today. You can make alcohol out of anything.
Lawns. We spend an unnecessary amount of money, time, energy, chemicals and water on a plant that does not produce food nor any benefit other than it is visually pleasing. It is totally dumb.
* A place for my kids to play
* Friends and family gather there
* There are a few raised garden beds, so I get tomatoes, peas, peppers, and lettuce
* It isolates me from the wooded area near me. Mice and other pests generally stay over there and not in my house. * It isolates me from the wooded area near me. Mice and other pests generally stay over there and not in my house.
The original complaint should be amended to state something like, lawns in places where lawns can't be sustained by natural means. Lawns in places like arid regions are terrible. But a good portion of the USA has a climate capable of maintaining large lawns with little more than mowing.
In these places, you can't have large gravel expanses like you can in the south west, because grasses will naturally overtake it, leaving a nasty looking, patchy mess that can't be mowed without the risk of high-speed projectiles being shot from the mower deck.
So yeah, lawns aren't going anywhere, except in places where they are wholly artificial.
I don't think alcohol will ever be banned, man has been using alcohol for more than 10k years[0] and according to some theories[1] it was the consumption of alcohol and protein that favored brain development
(disclosure: I come from an Italian region that has the use and abuse of alcohol as one of cornerstones of society, so maybe I'm biased)
Future generations will look back at horror at how we chose temporary indulgence over what makes us most human: caring for each other, especially the helpless and vulnerable, and stewarding nature.
2. Plastic, at least single-use, forever chemicals, and similar chemicals. Soon we will see them like asbestos or marketing cigarettes to kids. Yes, they increase the GDP, but they kill.
I have a theory that at some stage VOCs (in furniture, carpets, laminated wood products, paints etc) that lead to sick building syndrome will be heavily clamped down on, but nowadays nobody bats an eyelid at new couches laden with formaldehyde or other substances.
A lot of that, at least in the US, is due to having houses built more tightly for insulation, which stopped the natural air exchange from drafts that would normally occur. Now the building codes have been revised to mandate that a certain rate of air changes occurs even in houses, usually done using a heat exchanger: https://bcapcodes.org/tools/code-builder/residential/ventila...
This. It's awful in the UK. Non-stop gambling adverts everywhere. They have to have a disclaimer on them and link to https://www.begambleaware.org/ but there's no rules it seems on how short or small the link needs to be. On some ads it literally flashes up for only 1 second at the end.
incarcerating people for little weed
Lightly abusing some red wine goes back some ways.
The social acceptability of reliance on caffeine has always struck me as a bit odd. The effects aren't as stark, but I regularly have conversations with friends and coworkers who talk about how miserable they are if they don't get their three cups of coffee in the morning. I also feel that I see a correlation between those who feel they have low energy after the work-day and heavy caffeine users.
At least in Australia (not known for drinking responsibly!), this was already starting to die off in my generation and the death is just accelerating amongst the next.
I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of Aussies born in 2050 didn't regularly drink at all.
https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-re...
NFTs? The just is still out.
Which the alcohol lobby is obviously fine with. I watched The Expanse this year, and it's something that stands out - the consumption of alcohol.
Our widespread and normalised alcohol abuse is one of the things crossing my mind, and I wonder if many ads related to vaping, smoking and alcohol will look like this for us in a few years.
Edit: To clarify, what I mean with normalising alcohol abuse is not getting a bit of a buzz with a few glasses of wine or beer in a social setting. It's how we've normalised getting completely hammered every weekend, and even celebrate people who can drink a lot.