The War on Drugs Rant

From current problems to past abuses

Tramadol is the least effective prescription-only pain medications.

It’s also the least likely to be abused, because its pleasurable effects are only achieved at a dose that is dangerously close to causing Serotonin Syndrome. This is extremely important if you also take antidepressants.

While I recognize the “Opioid Epidemic” as real, it should be relabeled. The Fentanyl Epidemic would be more precise.

Unfortunately, law makers are idiots. The first steps taken were to impose stronger regulations to prescription opiates that are very common and have a very low addiction rate.

This includes Hydrocodone, Oxycodone, dihydrocodeine, codeine, meperdine, and several others.

By forcing doctors to limit their prescriptions for these medications became scarce.

So, very suddenly, someone with a manageable addiction to a chemical that has a very low chance of side effects, was cut off from their source. And in the pains of withdrawal, no longer under the supervision of a doctor, they have to turn to the local dealer.

Now, with no way, legal or illegal, to get their medication, the drug dealer on the corner offers to ease the pains of withdrawal with a needle and some heroin and/or fentanyl. Addiction is now intense, and occurs within a couple of days.

In an incredibly short time, a person is forced into dangerous IV drug use. All thanks to the US government. Someone with a manageable addiction(Which is also far safer to detox), becomes a junkie for the really dangerous stuff. Thank the DEA and FDA for managing things so poorly that a person with a solvable problem turns into a full blown junkie.

This is just the latest attempt for the US Government to try to convince tax payers and voters that there exists a ‘War on Drugs.’ This so-called war is the longest in US History. It has failed, on every front, in every way, every day since its original inception.

Why will my opinion and insight continue to be ignored? Because the ‘War of Drugs’ brings in more money for the agencies executing it than any other source.

This war has been waged by police departments, sheriffs, the DEA, the FDA, and others, and it is making them all more money than you can imagine.

If a search warrant is issued for your home, and they find the smallest piece of illegal drugs, they can seize anything you own claiming it was paid for by the profits from selling drugs. Even if the charges are dropped, or you are found innocent at trial, you never get your stuff back. EVER.

This war that we’ve never even experienced any sort of victory in, is promoted by the use of propaganda. Propaganda taught in schools, on TV, the radio, and physical posters everywhere, don’t help anything at all, and they are lies.

Marijuana is a gateway drug”
FALSE. Alcohol is far more likely to act as a gateway to hard drugs.

“Marijuana kill brain cells.”
FALSE. Proven false by countless scientific studies.

WHO was ready to publish the results of a test that proved cocaine was healthy, if used every six months, for a day or two, at most. This whole study was buried because the US government threatened to withhold funding. The documents were leaked several years later.

In summary, fuck the government. They are always abusing you. It has nothing to do with political alignment. Governments feed on their citizens poverty. Poverty means less education & less healthy foods, while making sure the individuals in poverty never have access to the tools to change it.

Support sensible and appropriate drug laws.

Ask yourself if the punishment is equal to the crime. Most people imprisoned under drug charges have never hurt anyone. The only reason they are there is because they were unlucky enough to get pulled over.

In 2002, I was pulled over by a county deputy. He claimed I crossed the line, drifting into the other lane. He asked to search my car. I said yes, because saying No means they can say that they saw drugs inside the car. They always get their search. The deputy found a glass pipe(Which, full honesty, I thought I’d lost months prior), and then they found a film container with seeds and stems in it. I’m not saying it was planted, but to this day, I have no clue whose film canister that was.

In many places, cannabis seeds and stems are perfectly legal because they contain no THC. There was less than 1gram of seeds and stems in the container.

My sentence was 24 hours in lock up, a $1000 fine, a year’s probation, and 10 weeks in rehab. If you’ve never been on probation, let me explain it a bit. Once a month for the time you are required, you go into a very small office and hand them a check(Yes, even more money, roughly another $1000 in total), and walk back out.

Does anyone think that was a punishment equal to the crime??

Legalize Cannabis!

Support the complete and total rewriting of drug laws.

RANT MODE: OFF

  • Jack Lhasa
  • “No one sells drugs. Drugs sell themselves.

If you‘d like to help change these probelm, but dont knw where to start, try NORML.Org

iOS App Review: Writerly

App Essentials for Writing


Writerly Review

Writerly is a full writing class available on iOS. The amount of free content is large and insightful. The full paid version requires 3 purchases of $1.99 twice and $0.99 once. And it’s totally worth the low price. 

Writerly assumes you are new to writing, but there is something here for everyone. There are definitely some concepts that are new to me, and writing is kinda my whole life. Writerly is also great as a refresher. 

Creative writing can be beneficial in many ways. First off, it’s an emotional outlet. Writing can help you take control of your emotional situations. Writing fiction is enjoyable, and it provides a source of entertainment and learning for others(hopefully).  

Writing poetry can be very tough, or very smooth.  Sometimes in poetry, the beauty is in what was not said. Also, exercising your creativity within the constraints of many poetry disciplines means there is always room to grow. 

Writerly is like a full college textbook, focusing entirely on what you can do to learn to write, or leveling up your current writing techniques. 

A quick rundown of the features:

  • Available on iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS
  • great ways to build writing habits and overcome writers’ block
  • a full suite of generators for mood, characters, appearance, Journeys and more.
  • Timer & progress tracker for writing exercises
  • Widgets!
  • Fully adjustable fonts
  • Fully encrypted, truly private
  • regular updates
  • Paid options aren’t subscriptions, they are one time purchases.
  • Linear progress for beginners, mix-n-match options for experienced writers.

This app sold me on its upgrades while I was still going through the free content. I’m loathe to spend money on most things, because I generally don’t like have it, but this tool was worth it.

iOS App Review: Miji

Miji App Review

Miji is a database of AI images and the prompts used to create them. Includes prompts for s variety of AI art applications, and allows the editing of a prompt to save your changes.

The directory is far from expansive. It feels like something that could be updated with a simple RSS feed, to create a robust reference library. Also, the most common AI model that the prompts come for is MidJourney. Personally, I was bored with MidJourney after about a week’s use.

In my opinion, MidJourney and Dall-E are overused and they underperform. Similar to the OpenAI products GPT & Stable Diffusion, the models are very popular, but in reality, they are the low end of machine learning.

The prompts the app uses are extremely basic. This app might be good for someone new to AI image generation/editing, but experienced users are unlikely to find much of use.

The developers’ website was down at the time of this writing.

All-in-all, I don’t recommend this app. It might be worth looking through, but its usefulness will run thin quite quickly.

  • Jack Lhasa

App Reviews

I’ll be posting a lot of iOS app reviews soon. I’m always trying new apps. Even if what I currently use is perfect, I’m still looking for more. I’m going to take this constant curiosity and make it useful for other people. This will include some very popular apps, as well as some niche-perfect apps. Some will be paid, but most will offer a free plan as well.

NOTE: No apps by X or Meta will ever be covered in any way. I don’t support the exploitation of social media by technocrats and oligarchs. There will also be no applications from OpenAI. I see OpenAI as the worst choice out of thousands, and won’t waste my time with it.

Here’s a list of some apps I’ll be reviewing in the coming weeks:

  • Day One
  • Drafts
  • Obsidian
  • Scrivener
  • Camp Fire Creators
  • Jetpack
  • Logseq
  • Mythulu Creation Cards
  • Notebook.ai
  • Perplexity
  • Claude AI
  • Google Gemini
  • Microsoft CoPilot
  • Le Chat by Mistral AI
  • rubra – Bookmark Manager
  • Mynders
  • OneTap Note
  • WonderPen
  • Miji: AI Art Prompt Templates
  • Surreal
  • SpellAI
  • PixAI
  • StarryAI
  • Rainbow Wallet
  • Zerion
  • Xverse
  • Lobstr
  • Gallery Labs
  • Snapseed
  • Ente Photos
  • Opera Mobile
  • Wombat
  • Characterize
  • Lists for Writers
  • Dictionary.com
  • LIFEguide
  • Language Tool
  • Spike
  • WonderPen
  • Documents by Readdle
  • StoryCraft
  • Name Dice
  • Article Rewriter
  • Crate
  • Fabric
  • ++ More….

All of the above apps I either use regularly, or I’ve just come across and will be testing as I review. So, new blog article type: iOS App Reviews!

I will provide links for each of these apps when I do the actual review.

Jack Lhasa

((UPDATED on 04/0542025))

Feedback Policy

I don’t take feedback, unless I ask for it specifically. I often ask for it. If you’ve got something to say about my work, hold that thought until I post again looking for feedback. Simple comments are always welcome, as long as we are not talking about my process or what I decide to publish.

That said, please leave comments and/or feedback in the comments. No feedback is acknowledged over social media.

Point:

I publish what I want to publish. I don’t go with fads or popularity contests. I don’t expect things I publish to be seen or read. I publish them because I like them, and I think it’s worth public exposure. I don’t want to hear what you think I should publish.

I will, quite often, ask for feedback. In such situations, I generally specify exactly what I’m looking for opinions on. Some things are simply complete. If something is complete, no amount of pretentious commentary will make me go back and edit it. If you find an actual issue with something like my grammar, I will thank you for bringing my attention to it, and I will fix it.

This post is very concise; to the point, as it were. That’s because it’s a simple issue that shouldn’t be hard to grasp.

I’m asking one thing from my readers, friends, and fans. That was it.

Thank you,

Jack Lhasa

(This post will appear, with slight alterations for readability, on a static page with information on copyrights, FAQ, and the like.)

Terminology Dictionary App

Agile Tortoise is a software group that is most famous for the app Drafts for iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS. Drafts is an app that is essential in my writing toolkit. They also offer Tally, which has been incredibly helpful to me for several freelance projects. More on that later, maybe.

Agile Tortoise’s Terminology Dictionary app for iOS and iPadOS is by far the best dictionary app available. Before I learned of this app, I used Dictionary.com’s iOS app as my main source for definitions. This app blows dictionary.com out of the water.

It is a searchable dictionary, that allows users to bookmark words, leave notes on an entry, play audio of the pronunciation, links directly to Google and Wikipedia, and has a word of the day. All completely free.

Dictionary.com is a free to use app as well, but its features are extremely limited without a few purchases at $2.99 each. Dictionary.com does include a Thesaurus, so it is still worth using. This was my go-to app before Terminology was released.

Here are App Store links to both apps.

Terminology iOS

Dictionary.com for iOS

  • Jack Lhasa

All contents are copyright Jack Lhasa, 1996-2025, unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved.

Part of the Exoteric Project, copyright 2022-2025.

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Blog Archive

Experimental New Blog Architecture

Exoteric Main Hub

New Home for NFTs

I’ve just discovered an NFT marketplace that blows all of the others I’ve used completely out of the water.

If you look at the NFTs I have created, and you see something with multiple copies, that means they are available. If you’d like any of these, let me know. I promise that they will all be reasonably priced.

Surreal

Handles my thousands of NFTs without a single issue. Makes creating new NFTs so simple, anyone can do it!

An Oddity (Surreal NFT)

An AI rendition of my friend Akela.

An Oddity

Akela the Business Pup

A Brand New Way to Blog

PenX.io offers an incredibly robust blogging platform with a host of features that would normally require the use of a half dozen sites and services.

Part 1 in a series: Intro

Last weekend I discovered a brand new startup blog service, PenX. I really enjoyed its unique feature set, and sleek themes from the get. If you are used to the massive theme selection of some web2 blog platforms, the choices here may seem limited at first. I ran into a few problems with some of the more complicated aspects of it, and reached out to the Discord server.

The next day I had a reply from the projects lead developer. He’s a great guy, and took a lot of his own time to walk me through some of the problems I was experiencing.

This is when I learned that the team was very small, and that PenX was in a still very early phase of development. Due to our conversations, 0xZio made several adjustments over the next few days, reconciling all the issues I’d encountered thus far.

0xZio.eth is the lead developer at PenX. There is a Farcaster channel for PenX, in which I’ll be aiding in the moderation. There isn’t much there at the moment, but that will change fast.

Now, because of the extremely early stage in the PenX lifespan, I recommend creating a new wallet to interact with it. Or perhaps you have several sitting around for exactly this reason(As I do).

You’ll need a wallet that is compatible with the Base L2 chain. With this wallet, you’ll sign for most actions, even if they involve no monetary exchange.

PenX has 2 features built in that you cannot find in any other blog suite. The first of which is a fully customizable, set any price you like, establish as many tiers as you like, membership system. Lots of blogs have membership systems. I’ve never seen anything give the user this much control and freedom over how memberships work.

The second, which ties in with the other features is a CreatorFi Launchpad. Here, any PenX user can mint their own token in base, and allocate it as they see fit. Again, there is a high degree of freedom here, unlike any launchpad I’ve ever used.

These features will cost you a fractional amount of ETH on Base to cover the standard, super cheap gas and such of Base.

Another feature you’ll notice quickly is PenX’s proprietary token, which any blog owner may claim daily. The $PEN token currently has no equatable value, but as more users discover this incredible package, I expect that to change.

All content can be token-gated as the author sees fit. And every post can be set to collectible, in the manner you’re probably used to seeing on Paragraph and Mirror. This feature is the final setting before posting publicly, so you are always aware of a posts collectibility. Posts can also be gated until they are minted, which is a unique twist on what we’ve seen from the other Web3 major platforms.

Any post can be commented on. All posts have a Tip button so your readers can reward you without minting. There’s also a fully detailed collaboration system.

Currently content can be set to several formats, including, Journal entries, Blog posts, static pages, an image gallery, and databases.

Each blog also comes with a personal subdomain option, mine is https://exoteric.penx.io/, for example.

I’ve only begun to really dig into the real robustness of this new platform. It’s also available for self-hosting with a one-click deploy.

That’s where I’ll end this post, however, as it’s already far longer than I intended.

Jack Lhasa
A Shaman with an addiction for fresh startups.

Https://exoteric.live

Https://exoteric.penx.io/

Be on the lookout for more posts about PenX from me, as I intend to do a deeper piece on the features I’ve only briefly described here.

December Update

In this style, next year, each month will have an update. These posts will be much like you probably expect.

Content

I will be adding a new category of posts, as I intend to do at least one long format post about music every month. Sometimes this will be more often. I may venture into other areas, as I intend to continue experimentation.

zkSync Era

This month we launched the meme token, $BALLS on the zkSync Era blockchain. This token is something that Jean and I have been discussing/planning for many months now. We’ve received quite a surprising amount of interest. We haven’t exactly dug ourselves out of poverty, but it is still incredibly exciting. The token has been fully generated, and we expect to reach DEX listing very soon. I’ll post about that when we get there. The future is bright, and you gotta have $BALLs!!

NFTs

I continue to offer my own art, mostly set in the fictional universe of Exoteric, on several fronts. Lens is sort of the ‘proto-release’ area with conversation and community being the core. The Uncut Network is home to the majority of low priced, readily available NFTs. In news there, the Only Shadow collection will be coming to a close in January. This region of the Exoteric World is very likely to show up again in the future. The Cost of Magic collection will move to the forefront at Uncut. Details forthcoming.

Fiction

The fictional Storyverse called Exoteric will continue to grow. Each NFT release has included some light flavor text, adding small details to the world. As focused NFT collections begin and end, so will the stories of the related region. I am working on a knowledge base that will debut soon. It will always be a work in progress. An ebook is planned covering The Only Shadow story, including the all the current images used for NFTs, as well as new art, and the story that ties it all together.

Knowledge Base

The upcoming knowledge base will be reminiscent of an RPG manual written in the wiki format. Once I’ve completed a sufficient amount of its skeleton, I’ll make it public while I continue to add to it. The Knowledge Base will become increasingly important to the Exoteric project, as I hope others will want contribute their own stories, art, music, design, etc within the Exoteric multiverse. Anyone interested is welcome to contact me at any time, but I won’t actually be seeking out other creators to collaborate with until I’ve made more of the setting public.

That’s all folks!

December can be a tough time. I hope that my efforts can provide some pleasure to others. The goal is to make my vision come to life, in a way that is fun and relatable; to create a massive fictional context, in which others want to add to themselves, becoming fans and creators.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Thank you all for your purchases, support, companionship, and inspiration.

  • Jack Lhasa

The Short Story

I minted my first NFT in 2021. On the WAX chain. A simple pic that I was using for profiles at the time. I spent the next 2 years doing mostly test mints. Learning how things worked on different chains and in different markets.

Minted stuff that no one else ever saw. Or I sent directly to friends. I took this across many blockchains, learning the nuances of their NFT processes. I used the following blockchains: WAX, Polygon, BSC, Pixie, Base, Optimism, Degen, Zora, & more.

What that gave me was a broad appreciation for NFTs as a medium and the skill to create them anywhere.

LENS chamged that forever. It’s so much easier on the creator, the collector, and the trader. No other protocol has anything so easily used. And now, as Lens migrates from Polygon to a dual-chain system based on ZK rollups, it is poised to change the world’s view of NFTs, as well as revolutionize web3 social media.

Lens is a Game Changer.

Originally posted on lens 04/27/2024. Edited for blog use on 12/30/2024.