rahli

Any email you link to an exchange should have 2 factor. Also setup 2 factor on the exchange so you don't get hacked. If you do get hacked its game over you loose. You can store your private keys in a hardware wallet like trezor which runs through both electrum and mycelium. https://bitcointrezor.com/

A detailed comparison of bitcoin suppliers is given here - http://comparebitcoins.net/ The best wallet is either electrum, which is also included within the tails operating system, or mycelium which runs on your smartphone. All three of these options run through tor. you will need to mix your coins though for your transactions to remain anonymous. https://electrum.org/#home https://tails.boum.org/ https://mycelium.com/ Bitcoin is quite technical to work out but once you get your head around it you should see it has amazing potential. Ethereum is also worth looking into once you understand bitcoin. It has a few more levels of complexity. You can easy download the mist wallet on the ethereum website. Bitcoin can be coverted into ether using the shapeshift webpage or brought through btc markets shown in the first link. Given the technical nature it is best to research crypto on forums and subreddits focused on the topic.

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The most consiquential way to take part in the bitcoin discussion is to invest. Words are free, bitcoin is now au $880. Tomorrow it could be $910....... or $730. invest a few grand and you will be accutely aware which way it goes. But there is no way of knowing before hand. in saying that, these rises then leveling of price, then rise and level are a lot more stable the the rapid consistent rises which end up plumiting back down when they passing the majority psychological market head cap.

I said to myself a few months back that the next bitcoin price run would peak out at $730, but who knows. It looks like this may be the case but who knows what will happen. Its not dropping real fast. Could be a slow bleed due to full blocks or could jump up a few more times. Supposedly the Chinese are reacting to a falling yuan, so new money doesn't know the current market cap. Investing in both bitcoin and ether is the way to go. And if btc starts crashing out on the reward halving coming up, bail into ether before it locks up or burns to the ground. if the price of btc goes up with the halving the price of ether should go down giving good oppertunity to buy ether. However ether is not dropping as much as i had hoped on this btc run. I wish i'd brought ether in the croudfund round $$$$$.

Looking forward to seeing the outcome of your work.

In my experience buttons tend to root easier when they are not too big. Anything greater then 3 or 4 cm in diameter and you are going to have issues. I have rooted much larger buttons, but it can take a while for them to kick off.

In the wild with Harry Butler

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A bitcoin option to donate would be a good way to shed bits of wallet change.

Please change online users default from "All" to "Logged In" Thanks

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A new study on the neural correlates of the LSD experience has just being published, to great fanfare. Naturally, the mainstream media is all over it, because of the loaded history of psychedelics. The Guardian published an article and so did CNN, even with front-page visibility in its website. As many of my readers know, the same group that carried out this study has published other studies earlier, in which they've shown that psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) only reduces brain activity, instead of increasing it. See this earlier essay, as well as this one. Such results are counter-intuitive from a materialist perspective since, if brain activity indeed constituted experience, the mind-boggling psychedelic state should correlate with more brain activity, not less. So the key question of interest in this new study is this: Does brain activity increase or decrease when the subjects are under the influence of LSD? The facts reported in the study Let's focus on the question above and see what the study has to say about it. The researchers first show that a localized increase in cerebral blood flow (CBF) does happen in the visual cortex of the subjects. This is shown in Figure 1 of the paper, which I link below for ease of reference. The third row of images (from the top) shows the CBF difference between placebo and LSD. The small red dots at the back of the brain show the increase in CBF. Naturally, CBF is not brain activity; it only tends to correlate with it. In previous studies, the team has found only reductions in CBF when the subjects were exposed to psilocybin, so this seems to be a discrepancy. Here is how the paper explains it: One must be cautious of proxy measures of neural activity (that lack temporal resolution), such as CBF ... lest the relationship between these measures, and the underlying neural activity they are assumed to index, be confounded by extraneous factors, such as a direct vascular action of the drug. The paper also suggests that magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a more reliable method for measuring actual brain activity because, unlike CBF, it measures brain activity directly. They write: Rather than speculate on the above-mentioned discrepancy, it may be more progressive to highlight the advantages of ... MEG. If you then look at their MEG measurement results, sure enough reductions of brain activity were observed all over the brain. This is shown in their Figure 5, linked here for convenience: Clearly, there is a whole lot of blue, which indicates broad reductions of brain activity in the LSD state, when compared to placebo. This is what the paper actually concludes, suggesting that the localized increases in CBF observed in the visual cortex may be attributable to measurement artifacts. What the media is reporting This is all abundantly clear in the scientific paper but, for some reason, the media is reporting precisely the opposite! Here are some quotes from the CNN article: Images of the brain under a hallucinogenic state showed almost the entire organ lit up with activity. What?! The visual cortex became much more active with the rest of the brain, and blood flow to visual regions also increased. Huh?! "Much more active"?! This is not said anywhere in the paper. Localized increases in blood flow, as we've seen above, were indeed observed, but the researchers themselves do not conclude that this means an actual increase in brain activity, let alone the visual cortex becoming "much more active." What's going on? What is behind all this The Guardian article sheds some light on what's happening here. Out of the five figures used in the original research paper, the Guardian chose to display this one in their article: Well, not quite. They've removed all references to what the figure is actually meant to show ("V1 RSFC"), as you can see in the edited version they published. How interesting. The figure caption they added is even more peculiar: A second image shows different sections of the brain, either on placebo, or under the influence of LSD (lots of orange). Not only does this caption fail to mention what the figure is actually showing, it adds the evocative "lots of orange," as if it were clear what all this 'orange' means. Well, it isn't clear because the Guardian removed the explanation of what it actually means! Let us be frank: if you were a casual reader looking at the picture, as edited and published by the Guardian, and reading its caption ("lots of orange"), what would you conclude? You would, of course, conclude that the picture shows a brain lighting up like a Christmas tree under the influence of LSD. Yet that is just about the opposite of what the technical paper says. "What does this figure then actually mean?" I hear you ask. It's showing the measured "resting state functional connectivity" (RSFC) in the primary visual cortex (V1), a region at the back of the brain responsible for visual processing. RSFC here is a measure of how spontaneous activity in the visual cortex correlates with activity in other parts of the brain. In other words, what the paper shows is that, although brain activity, as measured with MEG, has decreased, the activity that remains is more synchronized across brain regions. This is what the researchers were referring to when they gave the following quote to the CNN article: When the volunteers took LSD, many additional brain areas—not just the visual cortex—contributed to visual processing. That's it; it's just as simple. How to make sense of this? Clearly, the Guardian journalists chose one specific figure to illustrate their article (out of the five available in the original research paper) so to show a dramatic increase in something going on in the brain under the influence of LSD. Only Figure 2 of the original paper shows this, none of the four others does. The journalists also manipulated the text in the figure itself, as well as its caption, in such a way that most readers will likely interpret this something as brain activity itself. Obviously, such editing renders the message of the Guardian article much more consistent with what people expect to see under a materialist paradigm, which states that brain activity constitutes experience. I cannot pass judgment on what the motivations or intentions of the journalists were, but their choices portray the research results as confirming materialist expectations. That the results in fact do the opposite is not discussed anywhere in the Guardian's article. Why not? Why these choices? It gets worse. The CNN article is guilty of more than just being misleading: it's outright incorrect. To say that the results "showed almost the entire organ [i.e. the brain] lit up with activity" is sensationally wrong. The figure that likely motivated this assertion (Figure 2 of the original research paper) doesn't show raw brain activity at all, but RSFC, which is something else. http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2016/04/the-lsd-study-youre-being-subtly.html

Flowers came at the start of the wet. There was a few dry spells that i think may have resulted in some of the young pods dropping.

You wash the nonpolar solvent containing the base extract first, then wash the base extract with acetone.

An author of the study responds http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2016/04/the-lsd-study-author-responds.html?m=1

The basic sodium carbonate polar solution attracts the sodium hydroxide out of the non polar solvent. Failure to remove the sodium hydroxide from the extract results in it taking on the hyroscopic properties of sodium hydroxide. This is no longer an issue after the sodium carbonate wash. Maybe someone with more of a chem theoretical background can chime in with why this is the case.

If extracting bases be sure to do a final wash with a sodium carbonate solution to draw out the sodium hydroxide or it will contaminate your extract.

Great pics Kadakuda. I'm not sure on the difference between yopo and vilca as my yopo are striving and the vilca is kinda struggling. One thing that I have noticed is that the branches of the vilca seem more erect, while the yopo is very pendulous, even as some stages growing to the surface of the ground before lifting up upon maturity. However, this may be because my vilca is not flourishing and so not growing to its full potential. One of my trees currently has two pods on it, containing around 10 between both. They are taking a long time to mature. I keep checking the pod stem and when it is dry and brittle, I'm guessing that the seeds will be ready to harvest.

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April fools?????

Sweet. I'd like one. Thanks

Wow looking great!!!