skews13
Diamond Member
- Mar 18, 2017
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The difference between cocaine and crack cocaine is almost entirely one of pH, the relative scale of acidity or alkalinity. Regular cocaine in its original plant form, coca leaf, is commonly consumed by people across the mountainous parts of South America and has been for millennia, much as caffeine has been used through drinking tea in parts of Asia. It causes little to no harm; people can drink coca tea with no more impact than the caffeine from a soft drink.
But when you concentrate and tweak the compound just slightly to make it more alkaline (called “base” in chemistry), that increases its “stickiness,” the speed and tenacity with which it binds to blood and brain tissue (which is slightly more acidic), increasing the speed with which it’s transported to the nervous system and thus “hits” the user producing the cocaine “high.”
The more sudden and intense the “high,” the more addictive the substance. It’s why most American cigarette manufacturers add ammonia to tobacco: it changes the pH of nicotine and thus converts the nicotine in the cigarette from “normal nicotine” into free-base “crack nicotine.”
Similarly, when we’re confronted by novel or shocking stimuli, it causes a release in our brain of certain chemical neurotransmitters (particularly dopamine) that give us a weak “high” by increasing our alertness while stimulating the reward centers of our brains.
Evolution wired this into us to help us survive: the shocking encounter with the tiger living over in one particular part of the forest will have a much greater mental and emotional impact and thus be remembered far longer than a similar encounter with a squirrel. The more vividly we react to and remember the tiger (and where he lives), the less likely we are to be eaten by him.
This is the essence of how social media algorithms work: when you view certain content online, the algorithm chooses what other, associated content to “push” toward you. If you see a diary with a picture and story of Uncle Ralph at the beach with Aunt Sally and Sally’s wearing an old “Bush/Cheney” T-shirt, the computer algorithm has multiple data points to choose from as it decides what it’s going to show you next.
God damn the pusher man.
But when you concentrate and tweak the compound just slightly to make it more alkaline (called “base” in chemistry), that increases its “stickiness,” the speed and tenacity with which it binds to blood and brain tissue (which is slightly more acidic), increasing the speed with which it’s transported to the nervous system and thus “hits” the user producing the cocaine “high.”
The more sudden and intense the “high,” the more addictive the substance. It’s why most American cigarette manufacturers add ammonia to tobacco: it changes the pH of nicotine and thus converts the nicotine in the cigarette from “normal nicotine” into free-base “crack nicotine.”
Similarly, when we’re confronted by novel or shocking stimuli, it causes a release in our brain of certain chemical neurotransmitters (particularly dopamine) that give us a weak “high” by increasing our alertness while stimulating the reward centers of our brains.
Evolution wired this into us to help us survive: the shocking encounter with the tiger living over in one particular part of the forest will have a much greater mental and emotional impact and thus be remembered far longer than a similar encounter with a squirrel. The more vividly we react to and remember the tiger (and where he lives), the less likely we are to be eaten by him.
This is the essence of how social media algorithms work: when you view certain content online, the algorithm chooses what other, associated content to “push” toward you. If you see a diary with a picture and story of Uncle Ralph at the beach with Aunt Sally and Sally’s wearing an old “Bush/Cheney” T-shirt, the computer algorithm has multiple data points to choose from as it decides what it’s going to show you next.
It's the Algorithm, Stupid!
The difference between cocaine and crack cocaine is almost entirely one of pH, the relative scale of acidity or alkalinity. Regular cocaine in its original plant form, coca leaf, is commonly consumed by people across the mountainous parts of South...
www.dailykos.com
God damn the pusher man.
