Ishmael Fleishman

I will put my hand up for one pack - Thanks you.

I purchase 5 liter Bottle of Distilled Water from Coles and tonight I had the thought that they could possible make great bottles for bottle tek. Since they are ribbed, what if the ribs could be interlocked if cut the right way. So I cut off the tops of two bottles and after a little fiddling and cutting I managed to get two bottle to go together. The trick is to cut one bottle above a rib (rib in) and the second bottle below a rib (rib out) that way the bottle slide and lock into each other. I think it would make better tek then coke bottles because they are 5 liters not 2 liters they are taller, more volume, and they are square so more efficient use of space when you have multiples. The down side the lock in between the components is not as solid as the coke bottles and filled with 5 liters of soil I doubt that you could pick it from the top and have it hold together. Would do people think?

Strawberry Pie nothing to see but Strawberry Pie

I just noticed that on Wikipedia Echinopsis pachanoi now redirects to Trichocereus macrogonus var. pachanoi Is this a reflection of an official reclassification that pachanoi is now just a variety of macrogonus and no longer part of Echinopsis. Or is someone taking liberties with Wikipedia. I know that classifications are political to some degree and that their has been a arguments about were San Pedro belongs.

I have found that plantnet struggles with cactus identification - it ask for leaf, bark etc when you add a photo for identification and no matter which one I pick it cannot seem to identify cactus. Says cannot find anything. However for random plants it seems to do a good job. Never tried plantnet on a mushroom, I have a paid app for mushrooms. Not happy to pay but it is the only app that has any success picking mushrooms.

So it looks like the name has reverted to Trichocereus macrogonus (Britton and Rose) with pachanoi and peruvianus are now just varieties. Interesting bridgesii is still Echinopsis lageniformis - What makes it special / different?

Any thoughts?

@Alchemica thanks Not knowing what (R)-DOI is I found this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,5-Dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine Which lead to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumor_necrosis_factor Interesting that very little is being spoken about this area of psychedelics. Inflammation from my limited understanding seems to be the causation and precursors to many disease process. And while we have steroids and NSAIDs this are symptomatic treatments. With serous health impacts like heart disease and stroke risk. Maybe it is because psychiatric conditions are now the number one cause of diseases and disability in society. OR maybe we suffer from the the mind body divide in the believe that the mind has nothing to do with the body. Or something else maybe. Everything is a big circle.

The effects of psychedelics extend well beyond the brain and mind. Research is showing systemic effects and that psychedelics seem to posses immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory properties which could make them of interest in the prevention and treatment for hypertension, inflammation, cardio vascular disease, obesity and diabetes, and I would hypothesis possible in the renal disease and function. Now it is known that acute use of psychedelics do cause a significant increase in blood pressure in healthy subjects, which can be concerning for those with preexisting health conditions however acute stress is not inherently negative. Acute exercise does increase blood pressure and for a short time can increase your risk of experience of death, however over the long term exercise induced hypertension seems to be hypotensive. It is possible this same mechanism is at work with psychedelics. The mechanisms of these effects is not currently understood. There maybe a strong mind body connection or the classical psychedelics may have direct effects on non brain systems. However current research is preliminary and "that the association between lifetime psychedelic use and improved health might not be a case of the one causing the other but might involve a common factor that predisposes people to both use classic psychedelic and to engage in healthy lifestyle behaviors associated with cardiometabolic health." and that "the direction of causality remains unknown," Otto Simonsson from the University of Oxford Regardless of the mechanistic "cause" benefits seem to extend well beyond the mind. I feel this is definitely an area of research that should be considered. Here are a few things I found. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.120.16715#d1e1778 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/202112/the-psychedelic-heart https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2016.00035/full The above lead to Sigma-1 receptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma-1_receptor (The biochemistry is beyond my lay understanding) https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/psychedelic-use-and-lower-heart-disease-diabetes-risk-is-there-a-link As a side note I see a strong vested interest when it comes to possible health effects of psychedelics - while their are many who have jumped on the band wagon and are keen to cash in on the strong profits these medicines promise there is an equal anti-psychedelics crowed who motives seems to be driven by moralistic opposition to these compounds. It is important for us not to succumb to either prejudices.

What I got the the podcast is the how influential Christianity is depends on the tribe. With some tribes have zero Christian influences and other more so. Everything I have heard about synthetic mescaline says that it does not compare to the whole plant which with over 50 active constituents which gives a very different experience. And it is my impression that Peyote is regarded as conduit connecting the people with the spirit of the land something a synthetic would never give you. However eventually something will have to give as wild sources become extinct or endangered and then cultivation will kick in. Or we the US government driven by raciest and religious fanaticism kills the peyotism. Someone should talk to President Trump!

The 1%

This is how capitalism works, at its heart is corruption. "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed" Abraham Lincoln Look at any industry, and the same thing happens again and again. Products and services are legal and approved when there are profits to be made. Those with the means to actualize those profits buy or are gifted the influence they desire. A revolving door of industry consultants, hired by the very government departments whom they have sought to influence, and when said lobbyist tenure in government draws to a close, they are embraced again by their paymaster in the for-profit sector. "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office". Look at the recent ethical conflicts of interests reveled in the US supreme court. Mega-rich benefactors just happen to be friends with supreme court judges who just happen to be making decisions on legal cases that effect the business ventures of the said Mega-rich benefactors. And these very same justices just happen to decide that it is in the best interest of the law and society to vote in favor of laws that just happen to coincide with the very best interest of their friends and buddies the mega-rich benefactors. What a vile state we are in when such morals are held up to be beyond reproach. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" The decisions around the legalization of medical cannabis and the more recent legalization of medical MDMA and psilocybin. Which came about because the private sector seeing a new profit stream, and in so it became imperative that these products be made legal but only in so far as to benefit of the financial backers of these legal reforms. On a recent podcast, Keeper Trout commented that the criminalization of LSD just happened to coincide with Sandoz's patent on LSD-25 running out, and with the growth of competing clandestine LSD suppliers, Sandoz could no longer see LSD as profitable. Criminalization was in Sandoz best interest. Look at the alcohol industry, which is a global US $1700 billion industry in 2023. An industry that makes these obscene profits through the sale of something that is nothing more than a poison deleterious to human health and has ZERO health benefits outside of being a cheap and effective wound cleaner. Does anyone for every a nano-moment consider these profits to be the product of just good fortune on the behalf of the alcohol industry. "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back". - Carl Sagan Behold in all its abhorrence the animal farming industry. An industry that is one of the world's largest contributors to global warming, destroying vast tracts of old-growth forests and land, leading to the contamination of rivers and groundwater with fecal waste (more then 95% of rivers in New Zealand are not safe to drink from due to farming fecal waste), and farmed animals spewing out billions of tons of methane. The vast majority of the grain and soy grown in the world, using up trillions of acres of land, is being destroyed by monoculture farming methods that poison soils and rivers with excessive nitrogen and petrochemicals, leading to desertification and environmental and human destruction. "Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we're tired of hearing promises that we know they'll never keep". Ray Davies So that in the end people can eat meat, eggs, and dairy that science has demonstrated to be deleterious to human health. The WHO classifies processed meat as a class 1 carcinogen and red meat as a class 2 carcinogen. Humans have no need to consume cholesterol, trans fat, or saturated fat. Nor do we need to consume products that drive our epidemic rates of obesity, kidney disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer. All of this is allowed to happen because chemical companies that produce pesticides and fertilizers need to make ever larger profits. Farmers, who are just fronts or near-indentured slaves for multinational agribusiness corporations, need to make ever more profits. Supermarkets and food retailers need to keep up one of their most profitable revenue streams. Governments need to collect taxes. Advertisers and marketers continue to promote the consumption of "tasty" products laden with saturated fat, cholesterol, inflammatory compounds, fecal contamination, and toxic residues from animal farming for ever more profits. Slaughterhouses, which are a haven for animal and worker abuse and are classified as essential services, are allowed to continue to operate because of their need for ever more profits. All of this is because corporations and their consultants and backers influence the government, which itself exists solely to rubber-stamp corporate decisions providing a veneer of corporate transparency and responsibility that serves only to ensure corporations can keep their profits growing. So that, in the end, everyone wins and the only cost is a dead and dying planet. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his prejudices depend on his not understanding it!" This is true for all industries who everyday fight regulation that is in opposition to their own vested interest. People are fooled by the call to deregulate industry to remove red tape that hinders growth. Nothing can be further from the truth. Their is no right or left, just the corporations whose imperative seeks to shape regulation to conform with their own vision of the corporate good. What chance does a brainwashed and deluded population and the very planet on which our survival depends ever stand against an artificially human construct the likes of money imbued with the pestilence of ignorance and corruption?

I have a question about seedlings - I have assorted Trichocereus grown from seed. Now I have noted that the spines seem excessively long for these tiny seedlings. So my question is are seedling spine length indicative of their mature adult state? Also I have a few trichocereus pachanoi matucana the seedlings are 20mm tall but the spines are easy 5-6mm long and the rib count is 9. Will these rib count stay reasonable stable or do seedling loose their ribs as they mature.

Thanks - honestly that is not that big my two largest trichos have been planted into 85L - 600mm wide pots so they should be happy in those for sometime.

yes - they look like pineapples with serious attitude. will wait and see. fyzygy you once posted about a research paper about growing cacti in pots and that a pot above X gallons would allow the cactus to fully grow into its adult form. Do you remember what size the pots was?

Just read another article that said that drugs of dependence not listed under the law will carry a max six month prison penalty. This means that stuff like mescaline, iboga, Ayahuasca, DMT and harmala will still get you six months in jail. Which is kind of a bummer when heroin gets you warning but mescaline, iboga, Ayahuasca, DMT and harmala gets you jail time. Also something like San Pedro tea or Ayahuasca brew - will the Decriminalised amounts be the weight of the liquid or the lab test results that measure the actual weight of the active constituents?

This is a truly great episode - and well worth the over two hours of your time. Full of data, and interesting historical and political tidbits. A few interesting points for me. If you harvest a LW button and you get say 5 pups in 8 years these new pups will only grow in mass as much as the original button would have grown in the same period. Which makes sense since the root system can only provide a finite amount of nutrients, so instead of the nutrients going to 1 button it goes to 5 pups. So it is a zero sum game. The other one was the mescaline content of pups never equal the mescaline of the original button. The Native American Church opposition to cultivation is driven by a faction of fundamentalist Christians that says that God made the medicine and God and Jesus will always ensure that their will be enough medicine and since we are living in the end of days when Jesus returns he will click his fingers and all the problems will be fixed. I will go back and listen again well worth it. Plus I love the Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't host remind of Anthony Bourdain.

I was wondering if anyone has had success with using Indole-3-butyric acid to get Cactus to pup? I bought some Indole-3-butyric acid rooting gel and sucked it up with a large syringe. I then injected selected spots on my Trichos. Anyone got experience?

Listen online Here https://www.spreaker.com/user/16676611/cactus-conservation-institute

Nothing happened with Indole-3-butyric acid

In the last year I have started getting migraines. I was given rizatriptan (Maxalt, Maxalt-MLT) this helps with the acute symptoms. However I have just hesitantly started Sandomigran as a preventative. Since rizatriptan by itself effective I have to use four tabs a day everyday to keep the migraines away. Now looking at the wiki page Sandomigran got me asking a few questions. I am not a neuropharmacologist so forgive my silly questions. Sandomigran is an antiserotonin medication which has been effective in in the treatment of serotonin syndrome or MDMA overdose. From my limited understanding Mescaline is very similar to MDMA. Does this means that Sandomigran would inhibit the binding of Mescaline to the 5-HT2A receptor? Sandomigran half life is 23 hours. Secondly could it be used to end a challenging mescaline experience being a antiserotonergic medication? Or to help come down from mescaline experience to help with sleep like some people use benzos. Thirdly question is Sandomigran acts as an antidepressant, or for the treatment of anxiety or social phobia. The classical model says that depression is caused by a lack of serotonin - we know this to be largely incorrect. How can a Serotonin receptor antagonist in the classical model of depression treat depression if it reduces the binding of serotonin? Lastly does anyone have any experience with herbal based Treatments for Migraines? I see butterbur plant is petasites hybridus has supporting data. However it does not seem cost effective unless you grow it. Would Chrysanthemum indicum standard Chrysanthemum tea possible help? If I can drink a cup of Chrysanthemum tea a day that would be a more tolerable solution. I do not eat fermented foods, or alcohol or other dietary triggers for migraines so I do not think that is my source - definitely stress is a root cause in my case. antiserotonin

Thank you again - 5 half lives x 23 hours is about 6.7 days. or 10 half-lives is about 10 days.

@Alchemica - thank you. - To be honest I have reread your post four times and probably missed half your meaning. I am impressed by your ability to keep this kind of information in your brain. My reading of your posts hinges on "attenuation" - Sandomigran should attenuate mescaline and possible act as a trip killer. However this is not ideal for working through challenging trips. However I feel in post trip wind down it might have a place. However with such a short half-life Sandomigran. Should it not have any attenuation after a few days of Sandomigran abstinence? I am very familiar with mirtazapine used it for 15 years - mirtazapine was the only anti-depressant i could tolerate - what you are saying about mirtazapine being a 5-HT2 antagonists makes sense in my case - I had violent and explosive reaction to all other SSRI's. So are you saying that having to many 5-HT2A receptors can actually make you more depressed/suicidal? Is the quantity of 5-HT2A receptors determined by genetics or environment or both? I come from a family of depressed people however we all lived in a very bad environment - inter-generational political violence and racial suppression - aka apartheid. I think I would easily have a Bmax value. Can you get easily tested for Bmax value?

Would be interesting what is defined as small quantities. They could just change the definition of what small is to extremely small and nothing changes. ACT is a proving ground for decriminalization in Australia first cannabis now all illicit. Honestly having lived in Canberra for three years - you definitely need drugs to make that place livable. I am looking at the experience of Oregon vs Portugal. So personally I would have preferred that their was NO fine and instead their was mandatory referral to drug education and treatment. However that would cost money and offering treatment to junkies is politically suicide most people prefer illicit drug users to just fucking die. Fines just fills to political coffers it does not help drug users but its an easier political sell. Again looking at Oregon - stuff like Fentanyl and xylazine should be treated differently the more we can keep it out of the illicit drug market the better. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/health/fentanyl-xylazine-drug.html

I would say many of these deaths are caused by drug interactions. Only 1 out of 8 of those drugs are non-prescription drugs - cocaine. With stimulants being possible anything from caffeine to meth. Most of these died at the hands of their doctors (128,000 Americans die each year as a result of taking medications as prescribed - for Australia some crude math's says that would be about 10,079 deaths). Everything is relative - Cannabinoids are still one of the safest on the list even if it possible being synthetics. Cannabinoids have almost half as risky of anti-depressants and medical industry gives these out like candy for everything. Every time I go to the GP he offers me an SSRI for everything from Diabetic neuropathy, tinnitus, migraines and more, even if their efficacy is worse then placebos once side-effects are factored in. How common are synthetics Cannabinoids in Australia? - I cannot even understand why you would bother with synthetics Cannabinoids considering the risk compared to the plant source and its wide availability. In the last year due to surgery I have been given fentanyl, codine, & morphine and I f#ing hate them. I do not have the mind or body for opioids. They are the #1 killer on the list. I would not hesitate to consume cannabinoids for pain relative compared to opioids 75% less chance of dying. - Side story - a recovery nurse recommended (without me even asking the question) that I take cannabis to treat my post-op pain. She was was however clandestine about the recommendation - fearing doing so would endanger her employment. Conspiracy Time - I also feel that their is now a concerted push back to try to further stigmatize cannabinoids to prevent its decriminalization and eventual legalization. I see more and more medical doctors proclaiming the evil of cannabis without much data. Cannabis legalization will undercut pharmaceutical profits. Disclaimer I do not like cannabis - and I do not see it as a panacea but as a selective treatment it is safer then many other prescription drug options. However I believe that more data is needed and in time cannabis will be on-label for only a very few conditions. Their are few panacea in this world except for possible exercise. I now almost refuse all drugs it is all to easy to get on the merry-go-round of prescription drugs and many of these deaths are due to drug interaction. At one point I was popping 20 prescription pills a day.