HOW WAS YOUR DAY

[mharr]

A solid combination of vaccine boosters, new dog harness letting us hoist her into the car and being allowed over county lines let us spend the day at a loch with a cafe



then visit our coastal witch friend for Beltane bonfire, drum circle, take out noodles and toke passing. Rebooted and recharged.

It's been a year, aye?

[mharr]

Oh yeah, also I got chased off those rocks by a very annoyed diamond back viper, a rare treat in the UK.

[Friday]

Glad you were able to have a good day, and also snake.

[Mongrel]

Glad you were able to have a good day, and also Snek? Sneeeeek!

(I am glad you had a good day)

[Brantly B.]

[Thad]

Headache got better for a couple days, then absolutely crippling yesterday, then better again today. Which is good, because today I took a last pass over my taxes, finally figured out the warning message TurboTax was giving me, filled out a few fields I had missed, and discovered I owed $500 less than I thought I did.

If I'd had as bad a headache today as I did yesterday, or most of the last month, there's no way I'd have been able to make sense of any of that.

[Thad]

The doctor got me to try a new migraine med called Ubrelvy. I took one yesterday and it seemed pretty good; it didn't have quite the unpleasant side effects that I've always gotten from triptans. It still has the same main problem as every other effective migraine medication I've ever taken, which is that it puts me in a condition where I can't really do much of anything for the rest of the day. But unlike the triptans (or just plain old Excedrin), which make me really jittery, this was milder. I felt a little lightheaded and had trouble focusing; I wouldn't have wanted to drive a car or do anything else that requires concentration. It wasn't entirely unlike having an edible (even on down to the dry-mouth), which has been my go-to this past month.

And I don't want to be one of those guys who can't shut the fuck up about weed, but man, it really has helped me; I should have gotten a medical card a decade ago. I've always been a big advocate for medical marijuana, but I never considered it much for myself, partly because I guess I hadn't put much thought into how legalization and regulation could solve my main issue with it, which is getting a stable, predictable dose. I've baked brownies and cookies before, and my experience was that it was fun if I didn't have anything else to do, but it knocked me the fuck out for a few days, and while you can adjust your dose within the same batch, the next time you bake a new batch you're back to square one and don't know how much THC is going to be in any given bite.

Legalization and regulation means I can buy a chocolate bar and know that every square I break off is 10mg. Which has allowed me to figure out that if I have about a third of that, it's enough to get me high and help with pain and help me sleep, but I'll be sober when I wake up the next morning. Controlled dosages are something I hadn't really thought about before but which have proven to be really fucking crucial in treating my pain, and jeez I should have been doing this years ago.

Guess I could still get a card. Even though it's legal for everyone 21 and over now, it looks like the card still comes with certain perks -- I just stopped by a dispensary, and apparently they let you order online and just pick your order up at the front desk if you've got a medical card, but you have to wait in line if you're just there for recreational. Which wasn't an issue today, as there wasn't any line, but...ASU graduation was a week and a half ago; this is the quietest time of the year for my part of town, and I would have to imagine recreational cannabis is one of those businesses that's affected disproportionately by college kids leaving town for the summer. Being able to jump the queue might be pretty handy come September or so.

But man, having a uniformed, armed cop stop you at the entrance and check your ID and then wave you in to go buy pot is fucking surreal.

[KingRoyal]

Legalization and regulation means I can buy a chocolate bar and know that every square I break off is 10mg. Which has allowed me to figure out that if I have about a third of that, it's enough to get me high and help with pain and help me sleep, but I'll be sober when I wake up the next morning. Controlled dosages are something I hadn't really thought about before but which have proven to be really fucking crucial in treating my pain, and jeez I should have been doing this years ago.

This is definitely one of the things that has prevented the true medical capacity of these drugs from being fully explored. When you can't give a controlled dosage, it's really hard to tell what the actual results are. And this is true even of psychedelics. I've had 3 grams of mushrooms that took me on journeys, 3 grams that I barely felt, and .5 grams that I could definitely feel. This gap in the science allows for wildly spurious claims about the drugs (weed cures cancer, psychedelics can fix criminals!) that puts actual drugs in the categories of supplements like St. John's Wort or whatever.

Anyway, today is the first day I feel fully human after getting food poisoning while on vacation last Wednesday. If you've never had food poisoning, I don't recommend. Avoid as best you can!

[nosimpleway]

I wonder how much of that variation is based on the plants (or fungi, w/e) the stuff is made with. You can get a jalepeno that's kind of meh, then a week later get another one from the same plant and it's a little green firecracker. Maybe it's the same thing with THC (or again w/e) instead of capsaicin.

[Thad]

This is definitely one of the things that has prevented the true medical capacity of these drugs from being fully explored.

That and the outright bans on research. Fortunately that's slowly starting to change too, but it's an uphill climb.

[Thad]

Went out to check my mail. There was an UberEats bag from McDonald's on my doorstep. I am fairly confident I was not the intended recipient, but there was no address on the slip. There was a timestamp -- apparently it's been sitting there for 90 minutes -- but I don't remember hearing the doorbell.

The strawberry-watermelon slushy is mostly melted but still drinkable. The fries are pretty bad but I will keep them to give to my dog, who will not mind that they were sitting on the doorstep for 90 minutes. I'm not even going to touch the McNuggets.

[Niku]

touch the mcnuggets

[beatbandito]

Okay, data collected. We poison the shake next time.

[Mongrel]

Had one of our regular calls from the usual "Microsoft" scam guys. Didn't have the time or the inclination to play with this guy (whenever that's the case, I just ask them if they can hold on and mute the phone... usually wastes a few minutes of their time for no effort or cost to us), but this one thought he was being extra clever in saying his name was "Jack Ryan".

My dude, if you're going to rob little old ladies, at least don't pick a scam name that even boomers will recognize. Or do, actually. You just keep on thinking you're the smart one, buddy.

[Büge]

Now, if he had used the name Andrew Ryan...

[Friday]

"Hello this is George Washington do you have computer virus you can trust me I cannot tell a lie"

"My name is Abraham Lincoln I have freed the slaves and now I come to free your computer from the virus"

"Hello this is the Christian Deity "The Lord" I have seen you at night when you do the masturbation, also I have seen your computer it has a virus"

[Mongrel]

friday youve killed me

[Mongrel]

TBH honest one of the things I learned recently was that the horrible grammar and spelling, and the goofy awkward phrases in Nigerian email scams were (and are) a deliberate filter, because the idea is that if anyone replies to that garbled shit seriously you already know they're a few cheeseburgers short of a happy meal.

Actually was that something someone said on Jackbox night? I feel like that's where I heard it.

[Yoji]

I heard about that on... I think Hbomberguy's video on the War on Christmas. Alex Jones and goons like him do the same thing for their marks audience with shit like "the Communist Atheist Council of Islam."* Anybody with more than five brain cells can tell you that collection of words makes zero sense, but the one guy with less than that goes "wow, hold on, you have my attention and money in exchange for patriot protein"

*I wish to Sobek I was just making that phrase up on the spot, but no...

[mharr]

This would all be quite comforting if we didn't know how far that one guy's headspace can radiate into the general population during interesting times.