saguaro

Nah, not the Starlink, although it was crazy when I saw that and had no idea what it was 😄

Interesting experience. Has anyone else been seeing the large drones that fly in grid patterns lately? I first saw them pop up about 5 years ago, and they have been flying in a grid more or less every day since. They appear at night just as it gets dark, and I have seen them until 4AM, but presumably they remain until it gets light enough and they are not camouflaged with the stars. It sounds completely insane but everyone I've pointed them out to agrees they are large drones with, presumably, large IR cameras that reflect the moonlight. They appear superficially like stars until they start wobbling in the wind and moving in lines.

Thanks for your responses guys The Panadol thing is pretty standard as far as I'm aware. Might as well call it Coke Zero with how badly most people are getting ripped off. Boric acid and other things have been used, which could cause testicular atrophy. All in the name of $ Using Mortein on cannabis crops is moronic, but at least it make senses in a cause-and-effect sort of way to someone who doesn't care about quality or know much about horticulture. Maybe cutting was a misnomer, I'm just genuinely puzzled how high potency opioids are contaminating a plethora of other recreational drugs the world over. I was just curious if this is a systematic thing that groups of people are doing for a specific purposes or just bad quality control with dealers mixing up cocaine and fentanyl on the same table with same razor type of thing. Part of me thinks there is more to the picture

Basically yeah, that's my question. Why are these people cutting other drugs with opioids that could kill their customers and are also not what they're looking for. Sure, it's unregulated, but its a big leap from cutting it with inert things to make more money versus adulterating with potentially lethal opioids. It's pretty terrible if their hoping to get people addicted to the opioids they're selling by any means and killing people in the process. Customers get pissed off enough with greedy dealers cutting too much, I think cutting with nitazenes would come back to bite you. It just doesn't make sense to me. Sure, there are some parallels between Big Pharma's dodgy sales tactics, but I think this is even more depraved there's no justification for it I can see. I've heard in the US some dealers benefit from the notoriety that their customers die because it means they have quality product and improves their sales which is pretty awful.

Over the past few years, fentanyl has claimed many lives in the US and elsewhere. Concerningly, many other drugs such as methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA and even cannabis oils have been adulterated with synthetic opioids like fentanyl, leading to accidental overdoses and deaths. Fentanyl has never been as big of a problem in Australia as it has been in the US. However, nitazenes have been seized in increasing amounts in the UK and Australia. Recently, 4 people died of opioid overdoses in Melbourne taking cocaine adulterated with nitazenes. I fear this issue will escalate in Australia and we may see a similar situation with nitazenes here as we have seen with fentanyl in the US. At some point, someone is deliberately mixing cocaine or other drugs with nitazenes or fentanyl. Resultingly, people who may be opioid-naïve and were expecting to take cocaine or meth end up dying of an overdose. I'm curious why this is happening and what these people stand to gain from doing this. Are they trying to get customers addicted to opioids? If people die in this way surely it prompts an investigation, I don't know how the scumbags doing this are benefitting from it.

It does seem that way. I know old a 70-year old who dumps motor oil into the soil because he believes it costs money to dispose of it (despite me repeatedly telling him it doesn't). I believe he just cbf going to the tip and recycling it. Single bad eggs like this can counterract 1000s of people's good efforts, and this is one person out of billions. We have people causing long-term damage out of convenience, greed, laziness and malice. One disgruntled person could start a bushfire. This scenario is writ large in the macrocosm with industrial scale pollution. We have not even begun to realise the consequences of our actions. Systematically the majority of people are forced to be complicit in it. Wearing second hand clothes may make me feel like you are on the right side of history, but individual-scale actions really do nothing. We would need to restructure production globally and more or less regress in development, which will not happen. I don't think we are fucked, I just think subsequent generations will suffer more the deeper we get into our endless growth delusion.

Nice post! This could be insightful into the mechanism by which caffeine / caffeinated beverage consumption reduces incidence of neurodegenerative disease. I'm a bit confused by this statement: "Moreover, despite the physiological relevance, also under scrutiny is how caffeine, theobromine and theophylline are able to interact with native double helical DNA" What is meant by interact with native double helical DNA in this instance? As far as I'm aware MTXs aren't mutagens, MTX actions should be accounted for by acute signalling mechanisms and effects on transcription.

Are you confused that the seedlings have more ribs than the parent plants? I don't think rib count is phylogenetically informative in this case.

thanks

I haven't heard of any organised kratom legalisation campaign. This would be an uphill battle because there are dozens of alkaloids in kratom, some with uncharacterised pharmacology. Kratom is physically addictive and there are hepatotoxicity and enzyme inhibition concerns. I doubt we will see it legalised without substantial further research (and even then...)

RDT is a joke. Such an inept and misguided law. Maybe Zali Steggel* was right in suggesting we drug/alcohol test politicians. They're the ones coming up these dumb laws, a taste of their own medicine could wake them up.

The consequences will blow your mind. far out, dude

jeez For the low, low price of 11k you too can receive a qualification as a spiritual carer*. Now with less rapey instructors. *Disclaimer - there is no legal framework for 'spiritual carers' to administer or acquire psychedelic therapies on behalf of other people. No refunds.

it would be interesting if there was a DNA barcode for Trichocereus / Echinopsis and these classifications were phylogenetically informed. Can't imagine anyone would fund that any time soon though

This was news to me. Did anyone else know this? Supposedly Trichoceres pachanoi aka Echinopsis pachanoi was reclassified as Trichocereus macrogonus var pachanoi (syn. Echinopsis macrogonus var pachanoi) in 2023. https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/77125731-1#synonyms

It's possible the phytohormones the coconut water could induce flowering. I've heard it induces pupping too. This is what I always believed, they need a cold winter to flower. In the case of my friend's cutting from my mother plant flowering in a climate with warm winters, his plant was likely stressed. He claims he barely watered it. Possibly cold winters are a similar stressor and induce this kind of abundant flowering: That we associate with healthy plants. As far as I'm aware bridges, pachs and perus tend to flower in early summer and this is consistent whether they've stressed by cutting, by planting in a small plant pot with trash soil and underwatered, or overwintered in a cold environment consistent with their endemic conditions.

They really are hardy, but with regular watering and nutrients these could be nearly 30cm tall by now.

This 'law of attraction'/manifestation is a fluffy belief system rooted in materialism and narcissism. It's insidious because in this belief system whatever transpires, good or bad, is on you. It allows people to justify their problematic behaviour on the people that are affected by it. Spot on. I don't have much time for it, I've only ever heard it espoused by narcissistic and parasitic people. It's always seemed kinda culty to me.

looks like narrow-leaf to me

sure, it makes sense in Yemen, it's not haram*. I still don't think chewing khat has mass appeal considering australian culture in aggregate. can't see it taking off at music festivals or anything lol

I think you're right, lack of water possibly pushes them to flower. cuttings with smaller root systems / logs would be more susceptible to that.

fyzygy is right, with khat you just pick the tender and soft shoots and small leaves. With red khat, these are dark, almost purple. Best material comes from well-watered plants. It is a large amount of material, your jaw will probably be sore. Chewing heaps of leaves isn't for everyone, it's an acquired taste. I don't think it's gonna catch on as a trendy drug in Australia any time soon lol You end up with a huge ball of plant material in your mouth, keep chewing it and adding leaves. When you end up with tough material you spit the ball out and start again. People generally drink a lot of water, because of astringency from the khat tannins. Juicing khat works well, but it can make you sick on an empty stomach. Chewing salvia is quite an ordeal. leaves are wrapped into a cigar-like cylinder and chewed. The taste is memorable.

Certain Tricho species and hybrids like grandiflorus and Zelly's flower readily, but I was always curious what triggered flowering in bridgesii, pach and peruvianus. I have grown bridg, pach and peru from seed, in the ground, for years. Some are 12+ years old and meters tall. Still none of my seed grown mother plants have ever flowered. Where I live is coastal and doesn't get below about 10 degrees. Having seen plants flower in colder climates with frost, I originally thought it was a crucial trigger for flowering in these species. Coincidentally I took a cutting from one of my mother plants, rooted it in a pot, and after two years in a climate with winters down to zero, the cutting flowered! This added to my suspicion that cold triggered flowering. But, last year I gave a rooted cutting from one of my mother plants to a friend who lives about 5km away in effectively the same coastal climate, and their plant flowered! This was with warm(ish) winters never going lower than about 10/11 Celsius. I have also seen unrooted logs in a pile flowering. This is a mystery to me. How can my old mother plants not flower while rooted cuttings flower in a year? What triggers flowering in these species? I've searched for info, I don't think anyone knows for sure

I am downsizing my collection, so I am looking to sell a couple of established ethno plants. Due to size I can only sell these locally (Sydney area). Please PM me and I'll send you a list of what I have.

Mitragynine's competitive inhibition of CYP3A4 has interaction potential with cocaine. You're right it's probably best to caution against it from a common sense perspective That's pretty funny, but surely someone out there has chewed coca and kratom leaf (and lived too tell the tale!).