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.