Odd gods

This beautiful Zen temple is in Takaoka, about a 25 minute local train ride from Toyama.  Here are the basic details:

Zuiryuji Temple (瑞龍寺, Zuiryūji) is a Soto Zen Buddhist temple in Takaoka, recognized by the Japanese government as a national treasure. The temple was completed circa 1659 to mourn the death of the retired local lord, Maeda Toshinaga. His mausoleum is situated approximately one kilometer to the east from the temple.

Zuiryuji has a symmetric layout with corridors connecting its buildings in a manner typical of Soto Zen monasteries. The temple is comprised of various buildings, including its imposing Sanmon Gate that meets visitors on their way through the temple's inner grounds. 

As you can see, it was a very snowy day on this visit, and that can interfere with the clarity of photos...

One of the most interesting aspects of the complex is that they are very proud of their old statue of a toilet deity: 

A rather unique deity worshiped at the temple is Ususama Myo-o, a guardian of Buddhism. A large statue of Ususama Myo-o stands in the Hatto Hall, while a smaller one stands at the entrance to the public washroom. Ususama Myo-o is regarded as the guardian of the washroom and is accredited powers to purify and prevent diseases. 

The statue above is a replica of the real, old statue, which is in another part of the complex, and while you can photograph the replica, not so the original.  (Which, by the way, is not as brightly coloured as the replica.)  

I have now read a delightful and detailed explanation of toilet gods in Japan at a podcast website, and it turns out there was a Shinto, home-grown toilet god, as well as one imported via Buddhism:

You might hear it go by: Kawaya-gami/厠神, Benjo-gami /便所神 or Toire no kamisama/トイレの神様..

There was also the belief that the Benjo gami didn’t like to be seen, so before you entered the outhouse you’d have to cough once to let it know you were there before opening the door so it could hide. Where would it hide? I’ll let you use your imagination on that one.

The god was also thought to be blind. I wonder if that has something to do with where it was hiding? Seriously. These jokes write themselves. I read also sometimes the god wasn’t only blind but also had a red spear. Not sure at all what’s up with that. But a courtesy cough before entering, so the god can hide sounds like the polite thing to do. Oh, one more, another site said the god had no hands.  

As for the Buddhist import:

Ususama Myouu wasn’t born out of Japanese history, he originated in India and is recognized in several sects of Buddhism: Tendai, Shingon, Zen, and Nichiren. In Tendai he is one of the great five gods or Myou. In Nichiren he is worshipped as both a toilet god and the fire god. In Indian mythology the god is called Agni, the god of fire. Fire purifies. Toilets are considered places that are unclean and thus need to be purified. So there ya go.

Ususama Myoou is one of the great guardian kings, their names all ending in Myoou. Myoou are super cool, fierce, dramatic, scary. Compared to the other Myoou, Ususama has more varied appearances. Sometimes having six arms, holding various implements, rings, beads, a sword. Tools you’d probably not want to see and contemplate while sitting on the pot. But then again, the Kawaya-gami had that red spear.

You can identify Ususama Myoou because he stands with one foot raised high off the ground, almost as if he doesn’t want to step in something. Ringed in fire, his hair often looks like fire and is blowing upward. He’s got a very angry expression on his face.  

Back to my visit to the statue of Ususama Myoou in the temple:   while in the room with the real statue, I was a little surprised to see a Japanese man, perhaps in his 50's or 60's, saying a prayer to it.   

Now, the Japanese make prayers at Shinto shrines (and Buddhist temples) of all kinds, and I find it one of the more charming things about the country.   Much has been written about whether this should count as spirituality, or mere superstition.  (After all, it's said that most Japanese will say they don't believe in God, and are "non-religious", but see no contradiction in continuing to offer prayers and buy "good luck" charms and carry out other good fortune seeking rituals at their shrines and temples.)   

So, while it is clear that the Japanese don't worry much about the objective reality of the figure they are praying to (or, in the case of Shinto, how a place became "holy" in the first place), it was still a bit surprising to see a deity as unusual as that one, which appears to have a near comical "what have I stepped in?" pose, receiving devotion.  

This is typical across so many Asian countries though:  in Vietnam, you see prayers being offered to deified old rulers or heroes - some of dubious historicity - with their altars in Buddhist temples; no one has an interest in the historicity of (say) Amitabha Buddha despite him being the key figure of Pure Land Buddhism; and of course there's the whole matter of Hindu gods, none of which (unless you are an Indian PM who thinks Ganesha was the result of advanced ancient Indian surgical techniques) seems real.   

Even within Catholicism, a lot of devotion to saints has also had next to no reliable history behind it.

So, if I don't have a problem with, and in a way find it charming that, (say) half of the world's religious people pray to mythological figures, why does it bother me when Christians (like the St Mary's rebels discussed in my last post) fully endorse a "non-realist" version of Jesus or God?   

I think - and this is a tentative view - is that Christian non-realism feels like it has a different character to the non-realism of the Asian religions, probably because it undoubtedly started with a strong sense of historicity being at its core, whereas it feels like it was never at the core of the others?

I don't really understand how thoroughly mythological religions create their gods - it has always amused me a little to think that somewhere, someone invented the idea and appearance of their specific household god in ancient Rome, not to mention the more elaborate major gods;  but it just seems it must have been a very different process from interpreting the cosmic significance of a living person and their apparent sayings in a way that was very concrete, which I think you can say is the most plausible way Christianity got going.

Anyway, I've been thinking about this for decades now, and I am still not precisely sure where it leads me...   

Fading rebels

For no particular reason this afternoon, I thought about the "rebel" liberal Catholic church regime at St Mary's in South Brisbane that led to a couple of priests being chucked out of the church, and the supporting parishioners and former priests heading off down the road to conduct very, very socially aware services in the Trades and Labor Council building.   I wrote about them a few times around the time of the crisis, and hadn't looked up for some time whether they still existed, and indeed, if former priest Peter Kennedy was still alive.   

To my surprise, it turns out that Philippa Martyr, who I used to like disturbing when she joined in threads in the old era Catallaxy blog, wrote about them a year ago  in her weekly column in The Catholic Weekly (evidently, a very conservative Catholic publication, seeing it hosts Philippa.)    She was inspired to write about them because the Guardian had a (rather sympathetic) piece about them.

 Turns out Peter Kennedy is about 88 now, and retired.  The other former priest, Terry Fitzpatrick, is 67 or so, and still active in the community, but the whole theme of the Guardian article was that their alternative spiritual community (or whatever you might call it) has clearly not attracted new membership, and the average age of those attending now is apparently above 60.   Certainly, it is hard to see from photos in the article, or when viewing their online liturgies, any participant without grey hair and wrinkles.

Of course, all churches (except perhaps the pop music performance based mega churches) have ageing average attendees, but with St Mary's rebels, it's gone exactly as I expected - a rebellion that fizzled out, as making belief in God completely optional in a group devoted to vaguely following the liturgies of a Church that, at a minimum, did believe there was something real to worship beyond the material universe, kind of doesn't make a lot of sense.  

Update:   I've changed the way I worded the last paragraph.  This is a topic (the significance of "realism" in religion or spiritual practice) that still comes to mind a lot after learning more about Buddhism and Asian folk religions in all of their varieties.   More about one example of that in my next post!

 

A good point from the NYT

Michelle Goldberg is thinking the same things I am, about the current weird state of Washington:

I never imagined I’d miss being lied to by George W. Bush and his henchmen.

When the Bush administration wanted to go to war with Iraq, it undertook a full-court press to propagandize the American people. Administration officials leaked false information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a deceptive presentation at the United Nations. In Congress, many Democrats, succumbing either to relentless public pressure or their own hawkish instincts, joined with Republicans to authorize an invasion.

This mendacious campaign was shameful and despicable, and helped create today’s national atmosphere of corrosive cynicism and nihilistic paranoia. But it was, in retrospect, a tacit acknowledgment that public opinion mattered, that a president couldn’t start a war without convincing Americans it was necessary. It was a manipulation of democratic deliberation rather than a negation of it. 

Whereas now:

Most reporting indicates that the White House is planning for a campaign far more intense and sustained than last year’s bombing of Iran or the abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But we don’t know if Trump and his team are after regime change, and if they are, what they think comes next. This is how an autocracy goes to war, without even a pretense that the consent of the governed matters. 

Information for the future

I always like reading about research into really, really long term data storage methods, and have posted about it before.  It's nice to see it's still a pursuit, and that Superman's crystal storage methods may be real:

In the digital age, the need for data storage is ballooning. But current magnetic tapes and hard drives are ill-suited for long-term data storage because they degrade in about ten years. This “impressive” glass-based alternative could “in principle, act as near-permanent archival storage for backup of critical data,” says Mark Bathe, a biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The Microsoft team used a high-energy laser to imprint deformations into a 3D chunk of borosilicate glass, the kind used in ovenware. Each deformation encodes data that can be read out using a microscope.

A 12-centimetre wide, 2-millimetre-thick square of the glass can store 4.8 terabytes of data, the equivalent of around 2 million printed books, the authors demonstrate in their paper published in Nature on 18 February1.

Writing and reading the data is considerably more convoluted than opening a file on a hard drive, but the information is much more secure. Tests suggest that the data would survive for 10,000 years at a temperature of 290 ºC and potentially for tens or hundreds of times longer at room temperature, says Richard Black, a computer scientist who led the initiative known as Project Silica at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK.

Although the glass method requires specialist hardware to write and read data, the paper demonstrates that glass storage has gone beyond a materials experiment and is now a “deployable archival system”, says Long Qian, a computational synthetic biologist at Peking University in Beijing.

“By showing a complete system … they have shown how this technology can truly revolutionize the data-centre industry,” says Peter Kazansky, a researcher in optoelectronics at the University of Southampton, UK, and a previous collaborator with Microsoft on glass storage.  

Trip photo blogging...

Nagano, in and around the Zenkoji temple grounds...

Some notes about Nagano:

 

*  It has lots and lots of foreign tourists milling around in winter, obviously for the skiing and snow sports.  The train station is always packed.   Very different from the town we were in before that - Toyama (about which I am yet to write) - where I barely can recall seeing a foreign tourist (or at least, a Caucasian one.)

 

*   The biggest tourist attraction in the town itself would have to be the Zenkoji temple, which is on large, beautiful grounds, and has a very attractive street leading up to it.

 

*   The history of this temple is pretty interesting, and includes a mystery statue which is supposed to still exist, but as it seems no one has seen it for about 1,400 years (give or take), who knows!?: 

The history of Zenkoji temple started in 642, when Yoshimitsu Honda enshrined a Buddhist Image at the present site.
The main image was created in India and introduced into Japan with Buddhism via Paekche in Korean Peninsula in 552. It is called “The Image of Sangoku Denrai” in Japanese.
The image has been believed to lead all the people to the Buddhist Pure Land regardless of their status, gender or creed. It has been earnestly worshipped by many people from those in power at the time to the common people.
The main image was completely hidden from the people in 654, and since then no one has ever been allowed to see it.
The temple name “Zenkoji” literally means “Yoshimitsu’ s temple”. It is read as “Zenkoji” by another way of reading of the Chinese characters. 

 The Wikipedia explanation goes into more detail: 

Zenkō-ji was founded before Buddhism in Japan split into several different sects. It currently belongs to both the Tendai and Jōdoshū schools of Mahayana Buddhism, and is co-managed by twenty-five priests from the former school, and fourteen from the latter. The temple enshrines images of the Amida Buddha. According to legend, the image, having caused dispute between two clans, was dumped into a canal. It was later rescued by Honda Yoshimitsu. The temple was thus named "Zenkō," according to the Chinese transliteration of Yoshimitsu's name.

The main Buddhist image is a hibutsu (secret Buddha), a hidden Buddha statue, not shown to the public. This hibutsu is rumored to be the first Buddha statue to ever be brought to Japan. The commandments of the temple require the absolute secrecy of the statue, prohibiting it to be shown to anyone, including the chief priest of the temple. However, a replica of the statue (Maedachi Honzon) has been created which can be shown publicly once every six years in spring, in a ceremony called Gokaichō.

I'm finding it hard to track down a photo of the replica hibutsu, actually.

 

But, I would love to know more about where it is supposed to be locked away.

 

*   The main hall (rebuilt after a fire, like so many old Japanese temples, in 1707) has a pilgrimage gimmick, I think you could call it - a dark tunnel you grope your way through under the main altar.  

 

After paying your respects before the altar, take the stairs down to the underground passage located under the main hall. Once inside, you are in complete darkness, only able to move forward by touching the wall beside you. Somewhere along the path, you’ll find the “Key of Enlightenment,” a metal latch fixed directly below the temple’s hidden Buddha statue. Touching the latch is believed to create a direct connection with the hidden Buddha statue of Zenkoji and bring good fortune.

I think I successfully touched it - although I did not fully understand the significance that I am now (possibly) enlightened.  

It reminded me of the other famous temple "gimmick" - crawling through "Buddha's nostril" (not literally!) at the awesome Todaji Temple in Nara.   (If you had to see the ultimate Japanese temple, that would be the one I recommend.)    

*  Bear in mind - visiting the temple in winter involves removing your shoes, and your feet will quickly turn to blocks of ice and encourage you not to linger too long inside the temple, and tunnel.

*  There is a museum with lots of interesting Buddhist artwork, but again, no shoes, no photos - makes a winter visit a bit of an ordeal!

So, all of the photos here are around the temple complex. 

If you enlarge the sign, you will see the bell is from 1667 - and although it doesn't say where it was made, there is a good chance it came from Takaoka City, near Toyama, which we had been in the day before.

 

That city is home to another, smaller but very beautiful Zen temple with its own idiosyncratic figures, and I will have to post about that... 

Isn't it weird that no one seems to know what's going on with respect to Iran?

In other times, wouldn't the US media be highlighting a lot more grave concern about the opaque intentions of their government?   

The BBC says:

Iran has said it has reached an understanding with the US on the main "guiding principles" to resolve their dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Why aren't there (some? any ? more?) commentators saying "wait a minute. I thought the Trump strikes on their nuclear facility was supposed to have shut it down?"

Why can't I be bothered talking about Australian politics now?

When I look back at previous years of this blog, I'm sometimes surprised at how much I was thinking about Australian politics, especially at the Federal level.   

But as should be clear from the greatly reduced frequency with which I comment on it now, I have been finding it somewhat boring since the replacement of the awful Morrison government with a bland, but basically competent, Labor government.   

Sure, it was fun watching the Liberals think that the charmless version of Mr Potato Head Peter Dutton could win over voters, as well as his getting badly burnt by being associated too much with the poisonous Trumpian politics of the USA.  But it has also felt dull watching the deeply unappealing Susan Ley try to straddle to internal chasms within the Right side of politics here and paint a new picture of how Liberals really were for everyone.

As for all the talk of One Nation polling so well - we all know that they have no organisation skills of any depth, are based on the (alleged) straight talking appeal of one ill educated but resilient woman, and just attracts the disgruntled old "Australia isn't what it used to be, with all these foreigners on the streets" vote.  Just wait to see they perform in an election campaign before counting the eggs in the basket - I expect it won't go well.

 I've been saying for years and years that the fundamental issue on which the Coalition needs reform - to show it is in fact a credible and unified party that believes in real things and hasn't become culture warred into believing nonsense - is climate change.   The tensions that such a key issue to various aspects of policy keep causing just keep resurfacing, to be pushed down again with unconvincing "no, no, we really do believe it - or most of us do, and those that don't, well, we're a broad church, aren't we, and that's a good thing, right?" excuse making just keeps coming back to ruin their overall credibility.   

Turnbull had a chance to bring it to a head, but didn't.  I wonder if he regrets that now?   

Angus Taylor is, of course, exactly the way to keep this lack of credibility going.   

So, it looks likely to continue being kind of boring.

A very reliable actor

Robert Duval has died, and while I wouldn't say that his presence in a film or show would always make me want to see it, it was always clear that he was an extremely reliable, quality actor.   We seem to have fewer of that type of actor around these days - or is that just generic, semi-nostalgic, early geriatric, views forming in my head?  😐    

What a photo...

As I have mentioned over the years, there's a gap below a balcony at our house that possums from time to time use as a nest during the day, and it's particularly charming when it's occupied by a mother and young offspring.  Hence, I can sometimes be sitting on the sofa watching TV, look up out the window and see a furry tail, and know that we have a lodger.

Or, as has been happening recently, I might hear a plop and look out to see a young possum has fallen off the perch, so to speak, and is on the ground; sometimes clawing at the glass window, sometimes in the nearby bush.  When the baby looked too little, we went out and picked up it and put it back up with its mother, which tended to gaze down from above but not often make a move to recover said offspring.  (I suspect they have a big fear factor about being in the open in daylight.).   And even if no one is sitting near that window when the fall happens, our dog has a few times alerted us (by going nuts at clawing and barking at the glass to try together to the furry thing that probably resembles a rat to her part Jack Russell brain) that the baby possum is on the ground again.

Which is all by preamble to posting this recent photo, taken by my daughter, of the young possum in the bush, before it's Mum actually did come down and carry it back up.  (It is, in fact, now big enough to scramble up the bricks itself.)

What a pretty creature, hey?

My daughter sent it to friends, and apparently some said "ooh it's  so clear it looks likes AI", which annoyed her.  "AI is making taking a good photo pointless, if people can't tell if it's real anyway" she grumbled.

So yeah, I guess a clumsy possum has helped, in a very small way, to encourage the "anti AI slop" views of at least two humans. 

I hope this is an adequate palate cleanser to the previous post.  

The "Masterpieces" That Left Me Cold: Why I’m Done Pretending

We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in a theater (or on your couch), the credits roll, and you’re left wondering if you accidentally watched a different movie than the critics did. At the Opinion Dominion, we don't give out participation trophies for "ambition." If the engine doesn't start, the car doesn't move—no matter how pretty the paint job is.

Today, I’m putting two "untouchables" on the chopping block.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

The world called it a "symphony of motion." I called it an exhausting, two-hour desert trek that forgot to pack a script.

I’m told the "visual storytelling" is the point. I’m told the practical effects are the hero. But at some point, I need a reason to care about the people inside the vibrating metal boxes. Without a narrative pulse, Fury Road is just high-budget noise. It’s a technical achievement, sure, but as a movie? I’m still waiting for the plot to kick in.

2. The Truman Show (1998)

This is usually the part where someone says, "But the philosophy! The allegory for the media!" I get it. The idea of The Truman Show is fascinating. But the execution? It’s a tonal mess that collapses the moment you ask a single logical question. We are expected to believe a global corporation spent thirty years and billions of dollars on a simulation that could be ruined by a falling light or a localized rain shower?

Jim Carrey is doing his best, but the movie is so busy being "profound" that it forgets to be believable. It feels like a high-concept "Twilight Zone" episode stretched thin until it breaks. I didn't feel enlightened; I felt preached at by a movie that wasn't as smart as it thought it was.

3. Uncut Gems (2019)

Critics praised this movie for being "stressful" and "anxiety-inducing." Since when did a panic attack become a substitute for a good story? Watching Adam Sandler’s Howard Ratner make the same catastrophic mistake for two hours isn't "visceral filmmaking"—it’s repetitive and irritating.

There is no character arc here; there is just a man shouting over electronic music until the movie finally, mercifully, ends. If I wanted to feel stressed and annoyed by someone else's bad financial decisions, I’d just check my Twitter feed for free.

 

---

The Bottom Line: A "great concept" is just a sketch. A "technical marvel" is just a demo. If the soul isn't there, I’m not buying the ticket.

I know, I know—I’m "missing the point." Or maybe the point just wasn't that sharp to begin with. Which "classic" do you secretly (or loudly) despise? Let’s burn some bridges in the comments.

 

An experiment

Inspired by this video by a very, very angry guy in the US who found Google dropped his company search result ranking dramatically, only to get it back to No 1 by following Google AI's re-write suggestions, I thought I would ask Gemini to make a post that would attract views here.

I expect it will definitely not work - it seems to think (perhaps swayed by noting today's post about The Pitt?) that I primarily write about movies and TV and such like.   It suggested the "contrarian opinion" post, and I nominated the three movies that came to mind as awful, even though critics liked them.  The views expressed do sum up pretty well why I think they are terrible - but the writing sounds nothing like me.

But I'll just post it and see what happens.  

The Pitt, noted (with spoilers if you have never watched it)

I've never commented about The Pitt, the first season of which I watched at the end of last year, and I'm a couple of episodes into the new season.

Of the first series, I would say it wasn't 100% flawless, but it was extremely likeable and addictive.

The flaws:   the whole Dr Robby freaking out with guilt on the anniversary of his mentor's (I think) death a few years ago seemed a bit heavy handed and unrealistic to me - as was the framing device of the season that made it seem like doctors at this workplace pretty much routinely consider suicide at the end of each shift!  The black doctor who stoically continued at work despite having a miscarriage - seems to be pushing credibility a bit too.   And a pedant might also argue that Dr Robby is too good to be real - but the season gives him some flawed moments too, and Noah Wylie is such a charismatic actor, he really sells the character.

As to why I like it a lot is pretty much down to the quality of the ensemble acting, some of which felt a bit "clunky" in the first few episodes, but that feeling had gone entirely by about half way through the season.   You really, really start to feel that they are real, and the subtly of some of the interactions - where a mere look on their faces can convey so much meaning - gives me a lot of pleasure.   As does the superb choreography of the camera moving around the set.   I bet Spielberg, the master of "blocking", loves it too.

There's also the fun of whether or not you'll be grossed out (or surprised in some other way) each episode by the extreme care they have taken to depict surgery, injuries, body parts (or childbirth!) realistically.  There must some Hollywood props company that specialises in human bodies and body parts that must be making a great income from this show. 

I also love how it incorporates obviously real issues in the American health system - which probably makes MAGA types think it's being too "political".   (They probably hate the sympathetic way it portrays  multiculturalism in the workplace too.)   

So, overall, it's a fantastic modern update of ER, and a couple of months ago, the New York Times had a long article on the career of Noah Wylie which paints him as a nice guy who really deserves the success of this show.  (He is a co-producer too.)

So, I strongly recommend it.   

      

Suspect this is true

From an article in the Atlantic (mostly behind a paywall, though):

Many people think that they have a set type, and that all they need for eternal bliss is to find someone who matches it. When people peruse dating profiles, they’re often looking for someone who has specific interests, qualities, or hobbies. But according to a growing body of relationship research, many people end up marrying someone with few of their must-haves and a lot of “haves” they didn’t think they desired. A person might say that they’re looking for a partner who’s funny and conscientious, but then end up in a happy relationship with someone who is neither of those things. “People don’t know what they want,” Samantha Joel, a psychologist at Western University in Ontario who studies relationships, told me, “and people don’t know what they’re going to like until they meet someone.”

About the new photo under the title

It's been many years since I changed the photo at the top of the blog (and I think it's only visible on the web version, not the mobile version, anyway); but I just wanted to say that it is cropped from a photo taken on the recent Japan trip, looking towards the mountains around Nangano.

What caught my eye about it is the way the two "background" clouds look very much like they are were put there by two strokes of an ink brush.  

That is all.

Major media warnings on American recreational drug use are on the rise

It has seemed to me for a while now that there is something of a pushback on the easy access to (and overuse of) recreational drugs (of the "other than alcohol and nicotine" kind) being reflected in the big US news sources I subscribe to.   (And it's funny how they are classified by Rightists as "too far Left", even today.)

First, the New York Times editorial board:

It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem

Some of the highlights:

This editorial board has long supported marijuana legalization. In 2014, we published a six-part series that compared the federal marijuana ban to alcohol prohibition and argued for repeal. Much of what we wrote then holds up — but not all of it does.

At the time, supporters of legalization predicted that it would bring few downsides. In our editorials, we described marijuana addiction and dependence as “relatively minor problems.” Many advocates went further and claimed that marijuana was a harmless drug that might even bring net health benefits. They also said that legalization might not lead to greater use.

It is now clear that many of these predictions were wrong. Legalization has led to much more use. Surveys suggest that about 18 million people in the United States have used marijuana almost daily (or about five times a week) in recent years. That was up from around six million in 2012 and less than one million in 1992. More Americans now use marijuana daily than alcohol.

This wider use has caused a rise in addiction and other problems. Each year, nearly 2.8 million people in the United States suffer from cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which causes severe vomiting and stomach pain. More people have also ended up in hospitals with marijuana-linked paranoia and chronic psychotic disorders. Bystanders have also been hurt, including by people driving under the influence of pot.

The article does not argue for re-introduced prohibition, though, but makes a very reasoned case that the legalisation in the US has happened with far, far too light a hand on regulation.   (Something that has been obvious to outside observers - like me! - from the start.)    

The rest of the piece makes some good, practical suggestions, the first of which (significantly raising tax on joints) I bet will have induced some fury in the comments.  But the second point is so obvious, it's baffling why it hasn't happened already:

A second step should be restrictions on the most harmful forms of marijuana, which would also be similar to regulations for alcohol and tobacco. Today’s cannabis is far more potent than the pot that preceded legalization. In 1995, the marijuana seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration was around 4 percent THC, the primary psychoactive compound in pot. Today, you can buy marijuana products with THC levels of 90 percent or more. As the cliché goes, this is not your parents’ weed. It is as if some beer brands were still sold as beer but contained as much alcohol per ounce as whiskey.

Not surprisingly, greater THC potency has contributed to more addiction and illness. The appropriate response is both to make illegal any marijuana product that exceeds a THC level of 60 percent and to impose higher taxes on potent forms of pot, much as liquor is taxed more heavily than beer and wine.  

 Anyway, it's well argued.  Let me dip my toes into the comments section, which (if past experience is any guide) might be full of users naysaying that there is a problem at all.  

Well, blow me down:  I've probably scrolled though to about 50 - 100 comments, and I would say those supporting the editorial are running at about 7 or 8 out of 10.   Seems to me there may be something of a real sea change going on.

Another couple recent articles of interest appeared at the Washington Post, written by a doctor, warning of the dangers in the rise of recreational use of the fly agaric mushroom (you know, this one):

 

 

which, it turns out, is toxic and can kill.  Again, a significant part of the problem is the America capitalist system that gets away with making exaggerated or false claims because of the slowness of government to regulate: 

Despite those dangers, a fast-growing consumer market has taken hold. Vape shops, convenience stores and a cottage industry of online retainers now sell harvested amanita mushrooms and products containing their main psychoactive compound, muscimol. These products are frequently marketed with sweeping and baseless health claims, from curing anxiety and depression to enhancing creativity, improving sleep and offering a “safe” psychedelic high. ...

Eric C. Leas, a public health professor at the University of California at San Diego, believes the surge is partly due to consumers conflating these mushrooms with psilocybin. That confusion is amplified by aggressive marketing and distribution. “A lot of companies are looking for a new edge in the competitive market of loosely regulated psychoactive substances and trying to capitalize on consumers’ interest in mushrooms,” Leas told me.

Then she wrote about "microdosing" on hallucinogens such as psilocybin, MDMA and LSD.   

 

I've always been a skeptic about that practice, and yeah, predictably, it has no proven benefits at all:

A 2026 meta-analysis of 14 studies found no overall cognitive benefit from microdosing psychedelics. In fact, users showed a significant decrease in cognitive control.

People who choose to use these substances for lifestyle enhancement should understand that the current evidence does not back up the promised effects. If the goal is better mood and improved mental sharpness, they should consider evidence-based approaches, including regular physical activity and strong social connections.

Good to see some pushback on silly trends, often pushed along by greed.

 

On another topic related to libertarian views on drug use:   I've noticed that despite the best effort of the tobacco industry to morph itself into a "tobacco and vape" industry, Asian countries seem to be emphatically not buying it.   (Sinclair Davidson must be crushed.   Also - is he still doing blockchain twaddle research for a living?   Along with "I'm the nice one from the IPA" Chris Berg?  Yeah, seems so.  Still, cool that they decided to go in a "let's limit our profile and influence by going into a field that will soon be considered a bit of puffery with next to no practical use" path.  I'm sure it provided some nice conference holidays, but at what cost of relevance to anything real?)

 

Anyway, I digress into bitchiness!

 

The reason I'm talking about vaping in Asia is because I've noticed how widespread the vaping ban now is: 

Major countries with strict bans include

Singapore, Thailand, India, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Brunei, and several Middle Eastern nations like Qatar, Oman, and Bhutan.  

And don't forget Japan, which has something approaching a ban, but one a bit more complicated than other countries.

 

Good to see...