Auxin

Its now official, peer reviewed clinical medicine has diagnosed homophobes as being psychotic and immature [Link] I love how the immature correlation managed to score a P < 0.0001 (statistically, less than a 1 in 10,000 chance that theyre wrong)

Religious indoctrination is one. Some religious actually oppose homosexuality, oddly enough. Some ignorant trash want to feel superior to someone, anyone, so they blindly make up prejudice against entire groups so they can pretend theyre better than someone. This is a disturbingly common aspect of human psychology. Some of those dirty, unkempt, beer befuddled guys you mentioned as being unattractive to homosexuals might just be jealous and resentful because they know they would be turned down. Sometimes its simply politics. They think theyre supposed to be homophobes so they act that way to fit in. Recent history in my country is pretty funny, really. Gay marriage was illegal virtually everywhere and politicians were homophobic by default. Then something tipped and politicians realized 'what the hell, people dont actually seem to care if gays marry' and legalization swept across the country at record speed. Now only the politicians that get votes because they are bigots (like the tea party) make homophobic comments in public. I'm not sure on the penis envy one. In my experience, getting my hands on a homophobes penis is quite difficult and I havent managed it enough times for statistical analysis.

Scored a psychedelic afghan for just $1.50 Thanks, random psychedelic granny

Fuck sake thats expensive! The RDA for iodine is 150µg per diem for adults, that translates to just about 200µg of potassium iodide. I got a lifetime supply from a chem supplier on sale for $3, bring on peak oil baby- I'm set! Since the stuff is so godawful potent I make mine into measured solutions preserved with salt. One bottle is 14% salt and enough KI so 1/4 teaspoon is a days supply and another bottle is 14% salt and a days KI in one tablespoon, which I dilute to 1 cup and drink on days I expect to be sweating a lot of salt out. Just 5 grams of KI will last an adult 68.5 years Kelp has a wildly variable iodine content, routinely varying 100 fold in potency. Iodized salt just doesnt have enough unless you consume too much table salt. Commercial products with salt in use non-iodized salt. Do not trust any supplement/vitamin products from the USA. We are notoriously unregulated and random in supplement dosage accuracy. There have even been cases of vitamin D being sold which accidentally contained 10,000,000 units per capsule, and the iodine content of kelp pills has never been regulated here.

BC is right, it looks quite a lot like Apache (which is an F1 hybrid) but I dont think it is. The Daze's chilli has an acutely pointed tip, Apache chillies has a bluntly pointed tip, squint and you can see: Daze's looks like some sort of Aji to me, the flower coloration would prove it. It quite reminds me of Aji Verde: That seems closer, anyway, but Aji Verde is rare. Look to the Ajis (Capsicum baccatum)

I present the prototype for 'Tennis Ball On-A-Stick' ® Ideal for bogan back massage Now with a matching wall mount Kiss my ass, fitness store

Now I just need P-Funk to make an album with a background of grasshopper chewing so my medicines will get more potent when the plants hear me saying 'shit god damn'

The way I consume raw garlic is to dice it up real fine, mix it with raw HOT chilli peppers, and put that on a pice of bread with some food smeared on top. Garlic provides garlicy goodness, chilli peppers drain the sinuses and release phlegm from the lungs, both stimulate the appetite, and the bread... well thats an edible plate. It really is possible to put too much garlic in food I shit you not! ....but only if you regard coffee as 'food'

Well, I'm sure that depends on the listener. I just find it odd. This is what real xhosa looks like:

Indoors in zone 8? Is that because of all the rain? Here, in zone 7a, I tried H. salicifolia straight in the ground. It barely survived the first winter and then died in the second. This last winter I couldnt justify bringing them in so I planted the Heimia pots and mulched them with tons of leaves and sprinkled soil on top. They survived the winter and grew without problem when I removed the leaves in spring, the H. myrtifolias sprung back to life a couple weeks quicker. I'll repeat the experiment this year. Seriously, how did that nickname ever catch on? Was it a vendor or something? [Xhosa is the name of the ethnic group that uses that plant so thats like saying "I dont like the word 'Dates', from now on we'll call them 'Arabs'" ]

[Link]

Dont electromagnetic waves from the sun bounce off the moon sort of like sound bounces off a wall and makes an echo? So the night time electromagnetic signal from the sun would be proportional to the percentage of the moon thats illuminated.

I dont think its harsh. For a couple reasons, in concert... In southeast asia (not just Myanmar) its been illegal to deface images of the buddha for a LONG time. I'm sure you've all seen the cultural meme of a buddha head. The way that came about was theiving foreigners hundreds of years ago went to southeast asia to loot cultural treasures, well whole statues were too heavy to haul out of the jungle and too heavy to ship to england, et al. so these foreign pirates went around the jungles snapping heads off thousand year old buddha statues to take home and sell for $$$. When the people of southeast asia got independence they wanted to stop that shit, and they went one step further and made it illegal to clean your shoes on a buddha statue, etc. as it was a supreme insult to their threatened native culture. This guy didnt get an abnormal sentence, in thailand foreigners are routinely jailed under those laws. Soldiers from my country think its great fun to urinate on a buddha statue and spit beer on pictures of the king. Genuinely apologizing will typically get them out of jail (tho they might have to wait a few months for an audience with the king, lol.) They act like the guy couldnt have known it was wrong. Well 1, everybody and the fleas on their dog knows that music and getting drunk isnt what the buddha supported, even lay practitioners cant do that when visiting temples. 2, he should have known at least the extreme basic 'its in the damn tour pamphlet' rules of the country. 3, the guy asked someone if it was ok. That means he knew it wasnt and just wanted to see how far he could legally offend people. With how much the west has savaged those countries can you blame them for wanting a bit of respect? [because the Buddha was celibate] Its an interesting historical point that in the Buddhas life and for hundreds of years after his death no image of the buddha was made. The most ancient strata of stone carvings would represent him as a tree (for enlightenment), or a set of footprints (for the jhanas), I think there are a few that use a flame (for the teaching he gave to fire worshipers). So its a bit ironic that people worship the image, particularly since he didnt look like that (the suttas make it very clear he was clean shaven- the baby dreadlocks were to impress vedic scholars who thought that was a sign of 'an auspicious man. Another sign is a foreskin that fully covers the head of the penis, be glad the statue has a robe) he also didnt have that bun on his head, its a vestigial turban from the imported greek sculptors that started the statue tradition).

But can you get high by rubbing it on your nipples? I did that with some really crystally bud once, it was awesome just for the novelty of the innovation. Not often one gets to do something with drugs that borders on the avantgarde.

I wonder how flammable it is. I dont drink, but I might be willing to play with fire in unwise ways

Yeah, the researchers indicated that they intend to modify harmine to still work but without the RIMA/psychoactive effect. But lets be honest, they intend to modify it for a patent. When used correctly the RIMA thing is a non-issue, particularly since this isnt an emergency-medicine context- people would have advanced warning. I hope some day we see dosage and efficacy trials with harmine itself so people outside of wealthy nations will better benefit from it. Perhaps Iran could do a trial with esphand, they've been doing a fair number of pharmacognosy trials lately.

If you squint you can see mescaline, lol [Link] Luckily I've just been reading the pharmacopoea of the peoples republic so I recognized the chem. The herb that they annoyingly didnt name is Stephania tetrandra, its dried root is 1-2% tetrandrine. Be cautious with commercial sources as its often switched with kidney destroying Aristolochia species.

Not surprising. The process over here is quite standardized: doctors cycle patients through different antidepressants until they coincidentally start feeling better, the doctor takes the credit and insists the patient stay on the drug, the patient gets heavily addicted, the patient gets the stress of being chained to the drug for years or decades until they die or have the strength to spend months in drug withdrawals. I've seen it in many people, even young children (its not rare for 5-8 year olds to be on antidepressants here and some infants are put on them)

That has a yearly spot in my garden, quite useful. I grow the roots MUCH bigger than the japanese do, like 5 cm x 22 cm, and theyre still perfectly edible cooked. The leaves are edible, theres a 'edible leaf' variety called ha gobo but fuck it, I just eat the normal ones cooked. It has various medicinal properties- the root is used as a detoxifier in the west and is packed with antioxidants and novel critters, the leaves have the antioxidants without the novel critters, the seed is used for head, neck, and upper respiratory infections in asia- packed with lignans and others. First time I grew it I got it in trade from a wild harvester and it tasted like shit tho. It became a vegetable after I bought medicinal grade seed.

One example of the seemingly sparse research into herbal reduction of thymic involution investigated a compound chinese preparation which included such things as Panax ginseng, Cervus nippon, Cordyceps sinensis, Salvia miltiorrhiza, Allium tuberosum, Cnidium monnieri, cervi pantotrichum, and Euodia rutaecarpa. Immunopotentiating effect of a 'Yang'-promoting formula of traditional Chinese medicine on aged female BALB/c mice You can see the effect of Low and High doses on thymus weight and improved thymic weight increased peripheral T-cell responsiveness. They didnt explicitly hazard a guess as to which components were most likely to be responsible tho.

I'm curious if anyone has looked into this topic and could point to (scientifically supported) promising planty lines of research in slowing thymic involution or outright reversing it. I've been intending to look into this for years and have finally started building a pile of research crap to get me started. [Thymic involution is a process of gradual loss of functional cells in the thymus gland which are responsible for maturing naive T-cells from the bone marrow so they can go out and mount new immune defenses. The thymus shrinks from age 1 until death and this shrinkage is why people get less and less able to resist novel infections after the age of 65 or so.] I want to have a good immune system when I'm 85

You can, but why would you? It slows growth. Usually the grafts with no leaves lost their leaves when they went too long without being watered. Pereskiopsis is nearly an aquatic plant, lol

Unusual finding. [Link] I find it interesting, though, that they seem to flatly ignore the possibility that the correlation may exist by a biological mechanism rather than psychological. Little fun flap producing hormones or neurological impulses that effect the brain, etc.

The UV-C killed most and of the survivors a few looked nice and tortured for a year or three but then they just became normal looking cacti. I may not have done enough seedlings. Did a few dozen when I should have done a thousand, lol

The article reminds me of one I read about american vitamin supplements, especially this bit: "You might think that a more expensive fish oil is less likely to be degraded, that is not the case, there is no relationship with price." The drug levels in american vitamins were more or less random, tending toward underdosing, with no correlation to price (and some american vitamins are absurdly expensive). Moral is, never blindly trust a government to be working hard to do their job. By default assume all products are poorly regulated and rarely tested, if tested at all.