Weekend Thoughts - 7.11.15

Image by markheybo, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. A splendid article from The New York Times recapping the Grateful Dead's Fare Thee Well tour. Having live streamed all the shows from the comfort of my couch (traveling to the Santa Clara and Chicago did not work out for me), I felt like this article did the tour justice.

2. Following this week's Fare The Well theme, here is a solid article describing the demise of Shakedown Street, the area that existed in parking lots outside of venues where Deadheads tailgated, sold, and traded goods before, during, and after the shows. From my experience, Shakedown Street lives on at lots outside of certain bands' shows and music festivals. It's not gone or dead, it's just in different places. "You just gotta poke around."

3. I really enjoyed a recent piece on Reality Sandwich that discusses the American religious right to use psychedelics in an effort to "yoke" with the universe. (In this sense, "yoking" refers to becoming one with the universe, in the same way that "yoga" means "union".) It articulates some of my beliefs better than I feel I ever could, and is definitely worth a read.

4. Americans ate 400 million fewer animals in 2014. This may indicate that Americans are increasingly eating less meat and/or becoming vegetarians/vegans, which is great news.

5. Speaking of eating less meat, Arby's wants you to do exactly the opposite. The company has set up a "Vegetarian Support Hotline" for "tempted vegetarians" to call for advice on whether or not to eat its new Brown Sugar-Glazed Pepper Bacon. Supposedly there will be an option to leave a message, so please feel free to troll away!

6. In yet another example of how super awesome asset forfeiture and the DEA is, agents stole $44,000 of cash from a nail salon owner at JFK Airport. There is no evidence that the accused party ever violated the Controlled Substances Act, and now he has no recourse to recover his stolen funds.

7. In case you haven't seen it already, check out some of the psychedelic images that are being randomly generated by Google's DeepDream code.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 7.4.15

Image by Humphrey King, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Best-selling author Don Winslow purchased a full-page ad in the Washington Post as an excellent open letter to Congress and President Obama titled "It's Time to Legalize Drugs" that advises putting an end to the drug war and legalizing drugs. Well worth your time to give this one a read.

2. MAPS' Zendo Project has an Indiegogo campaign right now to raise money to further expand its psychedelic harm reduction services. The Zendo Project provides an incredibly valuable service that helps reduce potential negative incidents that can occur with the use (often irresponsible) of psychedelics.

3. My girlfriend is currently reading Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control by Holly Grigg-Spall, and I thought an article published this week on Reset.me that describes why the pill is bad medicine was timely and great information to share. The article discusses the various ways that the pill actually harms the bodies and minds of women, and may be shocking to someone who is unfamiliar with the material.

4. At last weekend's Electric Forest festival, the harm-reduction DanceSafe tent was shut down. This article explains the festival's given reasoning for shutting down the tent and expresses the need to address this issue in our community.

5. From The Conversation, an article about why meditation should be taught in schools:  

"New research in the fields of psychology, education and neuroscience shows teaching meditation in schools is having positive effects on students' well-being, social skills and academic skills."

6. A new scientific review shows that fluoridation may not prevent cavities and can actually increase the chance of developing fluorosis, which can cause white flecks, structural damage, brown stains, and mottling to the teeth. This makes me grateful for having drank well water for the vast majority of my life, unlike two-thirds of Americans who regularly drink tap water.

7. Carl Force, the undercover DEA Agent who investigated Silk Road, faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of extortion, money-laundering, and obstruction of justice, and was involved in stealing more than $700,000 in Bitcoin. First of all, shocker. Second, shouldn't this require rethinking the life sentence that Ross Ulbricht received? 

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 6.27.15

Image by Airik Lopez, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Summer has officially arrived here in the northern hemisphere, and that means it is time for many of us to attend our favorite thing in the whole wide world—music festivals. I was really intrigued by this profile of Cameron Bowman, also known as "The Festival Lawyer", on VICE Thump. Bowman offers some great advice for festival-goers on his Tumblr blog. The advice is spot-on and definitely worth a read if you're like me and would like to stay out of trouble at your next music festival.

2. A well-researched article written by Kim Williams, MD, the president of the American College of Cardiology, that describes the outstanding benefits to heart health that a vegan diet can provide. Although these findings are probably not surprising to someone familiar with veganism, it is nice to see a credentialed doctor is backing up these claims. I will note that it is possible to be a vegjunktarian, or someone who eats vegan junk food, which obviously is not a healthy variation of the vegan diet, and not something that I would recommend.

3. Owl Farm, the Aspen, Colorado home that author Hunter S. Thompson lived in for 35 years, is going to be a museum. I am a huge HST fan, having read many of his books, and I am ecstatic about the possibility of visiting his former home in the future!

4. Reset.me published an interesting article about a naturally-occurring cancer-fighting vitamin that is found in apricot seeds. Vitamin B-17 has been banned by the FDA but has been shown to assist in the fight against cancer, which may indicate that a cover-up is happening. The theory is that since the vitamin is naturally-occurring, it is thereby not patentable, which obviously means the pharmaceutical industry cannot make a profit. This was completely new to me and is definitely worth a read.

5. In time for Grateful Dead's Fare The Well tour, Casey Hardison has teamed up with MAPS to create a petition asking President Obama to grant clemency to Deadheads and other nonviolent drug offenders in prison. If you have a moment, please take a look and consider signing your name.

6. Reason brought us five public service announcements concerning drugs that tried to scare the shit out of us that didn't work. And for good measure, they followed up with five more.

7. The Marijuana Policy Project has put together a resource guide that grades 2016 U.S. presidential candidates on their stances about cannabis law reform.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 6.20.15

Image by Hugh Manon, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Reset.me has a video of a woman giving birth in nature (NSFW). I had seen this video before, and thought it would be good to share here. Fair warning: this is a live birth, which includes nudity and all the other things you would assume would come with birthing a newborn human baby. To me, this demonstrates that it is possible (and potentially a better experience) to give birth outside of the hospital. If you're interested in natural childbirth, I would also suggest watching the documentary The Business of Being Born.

2. Hopes & Fears has a piece about what it is like to be a pro-cannabis lobbyist working to legitimize cannabis in the eyes of the law.

3. This article from The Onion about a new music festival that offers no music, and only a field for doing drugs, had me cracking a smile this week.

4. On the topic of music festivals, the BBC reported that Leicestershire police in the United Kingdom used face-scanning software to identify 90,000 festival attendees at the 2015 Download Festival. The police claim that they were looking for known criminals that may have been in the crowd. This is simultaneously technologically-impressive and worrisome to me. On one hand, it's pretty nifty that this feat is possible nowadays, and I could definitely see how it could be used for good. On the other hand, this just increases the feeling of being perpetually watched everywhere we go.

5. Privacy-focused search engine Duck Duck Go has seen a 600% increase in web traffic since Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA two years ago. That correlates with when I first began using the search engine a few years ago. Based on my positive experience thus far, I wholeheartedly recommend it. Apple Macs and iOS devices offer the service as a selection for default search engine, so you can easily give it a try on your own devices if you so choose.

6. Autonomous (also known as "self-driving") cars have been in the news recently, and an article on Science Daily explores an interesting dilemma: "Will your self-driving car be programmed to kill you if it means saving more strangers?" The article includes an intriguing debate that discusses the meaning behind the terms utilitarianism and deontology. Definitely worth a read and some thought.

7. The sad tale of a quiet farm kid in North Dakota that went missing and was found two months later drowned in a river—shot in the head and wearing a rock-filled backpack. He was apparently murdered for being a confidential informant for the local police. The college he was attending knew that police were busting its students and using them to inform on more powerful drug dealers. Stories like this are very frustrating and upsetting to me, but it's worth sharing it with people who may be unaware of the shady dealings of our police forces.

8. A war photographer that has 10 years of experience in the Iraq War spent a few days capturing some amazing shots of the world's largest paintball game. His pictures are great, and his explanation of the event and comparison to actual combat is worth a read.

9. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a great roundup analysis of major technology companies' willingness to and followthrough of protecting customer data from governments that is worth a look.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 6.13.15

Image by John Eisenschenk, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Disinfo published a piece critical of mindfulness titled "Mindfulness has lost its Buddhist roots, and it may not be doing you good". The article cautions against the thought that mindfulness is a panacea, or without its respective side effects. I'm not sure what to think of this one, but figured it was worth a share.

2. A New York Times op-ed describing why the author chose to default on his student loans, and why you should too. This isn't something I have personally done, but I do know people who have chosen to go this route. The piece is short but well worth a read.

3. I haven't covered the Silk Road trial on Think Wilder, but I wanted to report that Ross Ulbricbht is appealing his conviction and life sentence, arguing that he was framed by Internet drug kingpins who have not been identified.

4. An innovative idea (with backing logic) suggesting that we run a study that allows police officers to take MDMA to see if it will reduce police violence and improve police/community relations from SmartDrugSmarts.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.