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What could you live without? I started thinking about this awhile ago. Partly through necessity, but then I became interested in following the idea to see how far it could go. I was inspired by the whole “tiny homes” movement - not that I actually want to live in a trailer home - but I was interested in their ideas. Basically they said: why does it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and decades of your life (if you’re lucky) to own your own home? Is it because we have an idea of what kind of house is an acceptable home? Spare bedroom for guests, a shed for the tools, a big backyard… but how often do most people use those things? Once a month? Once a year? Wouldn’t it be cheaper, instead of paying the tens or hundreds of thousands extra to buy the three-bedroom house with swimming pool & 2-door garage, to just buy a one bedroom cottage and then rent tools when you need ‘em, sleep on the floor when you have guests, maybe use a share-car service and spend more time in the local park or gym rather than needing a private workout room or pool. Whatever the activity, there’s probably a way you could manage to do it in a smaller space, or in a public space (yes, all entendres intended - but that’s probably a separate discussion). Most people seem to cringe at the idea - what would you do with all your stuff? Well the tiny-home solution is to just not have much stuff, to borrow or rent tools & things as needed, then get rid of them again. Personally, I think that’s taking it too far - I’m a hoarder, and I like my tools & reference books & out-of-season clothes to be there when I need them. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to count on buying/borrowing/renting whatever they need, whenever they need it. And from what I gather a lot of the tiny-homes folks also keep storage lockers anyway. But I thought the point was an interesting one - how much money are you paying for a house big enough to keep all that crap in? If you could own your own house for a quarter the standard price, if only you discarded 80 or 90% of your crap, would you go for it? Or do you really need that spare bedroom to store all your backup toasters & fondue sets? So that’s how it started originally, thinking about housing & how I could ever possibly afford to build my own house on the income from my part-time unskilled award-wage shitkickin job (so please excuse all the personal digressions in this post, I’ve just left them in as examples) … and then I started expanding the idea - instead of just wondering “can I live without lots of stuff & a big house to make things cheaper?”, I started thinking, “if I can live without a fridge/freezer, I won’t need a big reliable solar system for my electricity, which might knock a good $20K off the cost”, and “hey, I don’t even want an indoor bathroom”, and “if I can learn to make my own X, then I won’t have to buy it” (where X is well, almost anything - bread, fuel, fenceposts, string, entertainment…) And then other things - could I live without a car in a rural area? You’d say no (& I do recognise the safety issues) but I’ve known plenty of folks who do. Because that’d be about half of my income gone right there, just maintaining & running a vehicle good enough to handle those roads. And half the reason for having a reliable vehicle in the first place is so you can get to work… to make enough money to run the car… and round it goes. Or maybe instead I can just ride to work with my boss, and then do a days work on my neighbours fences whenever I need to borrow his spare ute, and save myself the expense of keeping my own. As an added bonus, this would make me really think about whether I needed to go into town, rather than just making recreational shopping trips out of boredom, which would save plenty more money. When you have to make conversation with your racist neighbour & then drive for two hours to buy that wine & cheese, you start wondering if you can make do with some home-brew & raiding the vege garden instead. And then if food is one of your major expenses, well I’ve already had times when my food bill couldn’t have been much more than $1000/year, and that was with full-time work/study and without a real vege garden. How much could I knock off the bill if I put in a few good days work in the garden each month, instead of spending that time working for someone else so I can buy food from the supermarket? Sure it might take some time to harvest & prepare & preserve all that food yourself, but if you don’t have to work a full-time job to pay for it all, then you’ll have a lot more time on your hands! And which would you rather do, spend your time working your current job, or spend your days digging potatoes & making kimchi? I guess we sort of started this discussion in the penny-pinching thread awhile back, talking about tips & tricks for saving money on things. But now I’m trying to think bigger, about lifestyle changes which would mean needing and buying less things overall. I just feel like we float through, or are pushed through our lives without often sitting down to think about these things from a cost-benefit standpoint. How much does it cost us to have all this stuff, all those possessions, this much privacy & personal space, this many “conveniences”, our “job security”? How much do we pay in time & stress & RSI & lifelong back problems? Is it really fucking worth it? For what? He who dies with the most toys wins? Unless you’re a pharaoh you ain’t taking it with you, so what’s the point? Perhaps we could be striving for happiness in each day, rather than waiting on some nebulous future paradise (like “heaven” or “retirement”). So what do you think? What could you live without if it meant you could work 1 or 2 days a week instead of five? Or for those already living on a pension or casual employment or some other sub-poverty-line income, have you thought about accepting Jesus Christ as your personal saviour? Or um, a tiny home. Or some other life simplification. Whichever floats your boat (hey, houseboats! fuck yeah). Or Jesus Christ in a tiny home. I think I’m tangentalising here. I blame the reckless drug abuse. But that’s kinda my point (yeah, nice save). How much of our time and money is spent just distracting ourselves from the fact that we don’t actually like our lives, because we spend half of them working to pay for the distractions from our crappy lives! It’s that same fucken circle I was talking about with the car. Circle of life my arse, it’s a circle of crap & I want out. Living in a tent and eating nettles really does not sound so bad, if that’s the way to escape then I think I can live with that. I guess I’ll find out. I’m sure I’ll miss all the beer & skittles, hookers & blow, bread & circuses like my own left arm, but after the last year I believe that you don’t need all your limbs to be whole anyway. I figure shit is always bound to hit sooner or later, but maybe if I’ve opted for a bit of voluntary simplicity in the meantime, then the involuntary sort of deprivations won’t hurt so much when they arrive. Prepping for the soul, I guess. Or maybe just a midlife crisis, who bloody knows? I really can’t tell anymore if this kind of thinking is soundest rationality or antisocial insanity, but happily I no longer feel like I have to care. Maybe I've just read too much Fight Club. I get that I’m in an easier position than most to make these choices, as I have some land, no dependents, enjoy working out how to do stuff for myself, and am already a recluse with a childish “fuck yourself” attitude towards society in general, so living out bush & growing my own beans doesn’t seem like a big leap from where I’m standing now. But I know that a lot of you folk share at least some of these traits, and I’m curious to know what you think about all this. What might you live without? Electricity? Steady work? Human company? Stable accommodation? Do you like making things for yourself? You mightn’t think that your gardening & carpentry & baking & brewing & so on skills are good enough to make a living from, mine certainly aren’t - but as they say there's a difference between making a living & making a life, and I wonder.. maybe they’d be good enough to just make a life from.

ward. I looked upon the ward and gazed the place were special people have a special place. wondering weather I belong in this twisting maze. I see sorro, heartbreak & delusion painted on faces glazed. I take a sip of water from my jug and sip. I ponder the roads these have taken to end up in there little trip. I'd take to them a basket of treats if I knew it would help even just a bit. but these are the those that the maker has seemingly deemed unfit. wert. 12/12/15

kk 339 pachanoi on the balcony /thanks mutant/:

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5903

DCLIW after 12 months of almost constant failure on a pet project you finally reach a point where you are repeatedly having success

UPDATED first post with pics of some new freaks I'm selling. Check out the link and if anything takes your fancy, hit me up with a PM on here - I will discount 10% for SABers. http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/samsplants_au/m.html?rt=nc&_dmd=2

I took my camera around today while enjoying a lovely bevvo, here are some pics to share. I haven't been real active in here or at camps lately. But I'm still alive, growing plants, battling thru the same shit as everyone! Peace and enjoy the beer Ps - sorry can't stop em rotating Rosie open Mixed bunch Psychotria nexus, catha and viridis 4-5ft tall each My Hoya collection A small cactus mound I made

living - without .. then living within !

Nice pup bedofspines, my two TBM have pupped in the last few weeks too. The first pic was taken on 25/11 and the second pic just yesterday. So it's about 3 weeks old... the pups seem to grow pretty quick. Noticed last week that the other TBM had also pupped. Not sure how long this one has been growing but looking good! :D These were the first two cacti given to me which started off my collection so I'm very happy to see the sudden new growth

I've one for sale brand new in box. used once. $350-+ postage au only.

Very inspiring mate! I've been down your way a little bit lately - setting up a new customer. I'll be back on the 28th January - i'd love to drop by for a beer and yarn.

One of the variegated grandi crosses doing a spiral thing. And just loving the others. The little fella was almost pure white and stalled or ages but h is now just starting to make an attempt at life....😕 Cheers b

Cheers for the spikey Peru ooge graft and the variegated Peru pup Kitesurfer Very much looking forward to them arriving.

not sure if all ready here but this is cool even though its sounds a bit messy.

I agree Sally, it would be wrong to characterize this as being indicative of all TCM (or even herbal medicine in general). Your comment on regulation is particularly true. I think this study says more about the failure of the TGA than anything else. Apparently over half the products weren't 'listed' with the TGA, so should not have been sold for consumption. Nor was being listed any guarantee of quality - the Panthera uncia DNA, high levels of pharms and heavy metals were all found in products that were listed with the TGA. Considering some of what we can and can't sell, and the role that the TGA has in scheduling, this pisses me off. I do think it shows that buying bottles of pills at markets might be a bad idea.

Don't you hate it when you have to break up with someone, when you actually really like and care about that person and you want to keep seeing them, but you know in your gut and your head that it's the right thing to do for both of you. Fuck that sucks so hard. Trying to be a grownup sucks. Everything sucks.

Oooooohhh my god that is one beautiful loph!! Good job for donating to Erowid too! I'll even add another 5% of whatever I bid if I win to Erowid too. $400. (+20 to erowid if my math doesn't suck too bad?)

$333.

High-mesembrine Sceletium extract (Trimesemine™) is a monoamine releasing agent, rather than only a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Extracts from and alkaloids contained in plants in the genus Sceletium have been reported to inhibit ligand binding to serotonin transporter. From this, the conclusion was made that Sceletium products act as selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors. However, other mechanisms which may similarly result in the anxiolytic or anti-depressant effect ascribed to Sceletium, such as monoamine release, have not been investigated. AIMS OF THE STUDY: The current study investigated simultaneously and at two consecutive time points, the effect of high-mesembrine Sceletium extract on both monoamine release and serotonin reuptake into both human astrocytes and mouse hippocampal neurons, as well as potential inhibitory effects on relevant enzyme activities. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Human astrocytes and mouse hippocampal cells were treated with citalopram or Sceletium extract for 15 and 30 minutes, after which protein expression levels of serotonin transporter (SERT) and vesicular monoamine transporter-2 (VAMT-2) was assessed using fluorescent immunocytochemistry and digital image analysis. Efficacy of inhibition of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and monoamine oxidate -A (MAO-A) activity were assessed using the Ellman and Olsen methods (and appropriate controls) respectively. RESULTS: We report the first investigation of mechanism of action of Sceletium extract in the context of serotonin transport, release and reuptake in a cellular model. Cell viability was not affected by Sceletium treatment. High-mesembrine Sceletium extract down-regulated SERT expression similarly to citalopram. In addition, VMAT-2 was upregulated significantly in response to Sceletium treatment. The extract showed only relatively mild inhibition of AChE and MAO-A. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the serotonin reuptake inhibition activity ascribed to the Sceletium plant, is a secondary function to the monoamine-releasing activity of high-mesembrine Sceletium extract (TrimesemineTM).

Not mars volta but i remeber seeing At the drive in at the bdo in the animal enclosure shed :-)

I thought it would be cool to share experiences with types of leafy greens that bugs don't seem to touch. I'm trying to find more plants that I don't have to constantly defend from caterpillars and grasshoppers etc. My favourite kale is the black Tuscan variety, but that seems to be the bugs' favourite too. I used to grow Red Russian kale and nothing seemed to touch that. It was pretty tough textured and bitter though so I didn't like it much either. So far my list of leafy greens that have done well against bugs are: Red Russian kale Malabar/Ceylon Spinach - but this is quite mucilaginous which is probably why bugs don't like it Rocket - just have to find a variety that doesn't go to seed easily in subtropical summers Nasturtium - although I tend not to use the leaves as much, they're mucilaginous and a little hotter than some people like I'm about to start experimenting with Ipomea aquatica/water spinach, and Aibika/hibiscus spinach and some others. Anyone have any additions/suggestions?

DCLIW you have a nasty red-wine hangover, and then you head to the corner store and get a meat pie that makes you feel reborn!

I literally just wrapped leaves, both whole and cracked, in wet paper towels. These were placed in snaplock bags, sealed up and left to do their thing. I opened them up maybe every 2 weeks to check they weren't going mouldy, and that's it. Easy peasy.