Are you fucking kidding me?

I've read a lot of news over the years, but I cannot even conceive of something I've ever encountered that is this egregious.

Some might think this is a politics story. To view it as that rather than an indictment of what the media are doing is to buy into their bullshit.

Succinctly, this is the sort of thing that made me leave corporate media. There is no longer the slightest veneer of the point of the exercise being to inform their audience, but rather to tell them what to think under the guise of impartial news.

We are here because of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which slightly predates my involvement in print journalism. Justia explains:

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 directed the FCC to review its media ownership rules every four years. The FCC sought to loosen its restrictions in 2002 and 2006, but a federal court struck down the revised rules. In 2017, though, the FCC revoked the cross-ownership rules. Limits on ownership of local television stations also were loosened. The FCC noted the decline of the newspaper industry and the expansion of non-traditional media outlets, including the Internet, in explaining its decision. While a federal court initially wiped out the repeal, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed in April 2021 and allowed the cross-ownership rules to end. However, the FCC has returned to Democrat [sic] control under President Joseph Biden, which could lead to another shift in the rules.

Emphasis mine. There are vanishingly few independent local media sources as a result of this consolidation, but the net result has not been what the GOP likes to hammer away at, choosing instead to do their usual Goebbels-approved thing of accusing anyone else of using their tactics as cover for what is actually happening.

The WSJ used to have news coverage independent of editorial, and in this instance, you're expected to believe that is still the case, then be unaware of who's writing scripts for local news because you're not watching in another market, et voila! Sanitizing propaganda and serving it as service journalism.

ETA: Here's the original reporting.

Even though there are already a couple of other threads about this Schweinerei, there wasn't a good place to insert this into the discussion, and for those unfamiliar, this video's a good starting point.

Were you to ask everyone who's known me to use five adjectives to describe me, I guarantee one that will not show up in the data is "sane."

But the first time I even considered the notion was waking up, disoriented, with a tube down my throat and a catheter in my cock, to say nothing of the spaghetti coming out of my arms. The electrodes, I had no opinion about.

It would still be a bit before I found out about the catheter, and the tube was only confirmed by way of a small mirror on the opposite wall of the ICU room I was in. And I had only one thought:

"Well, fuck. I can't even do that right."

This is, of course, the story that -- back in 2000, especially -- people wanted to hear to confirm the horror show of MDMA killing kids at raves. I also wanted them to at the time, so I did that thing where I wrote a column and ended up winning another fucking award from Columbia ... that's not a brag; a column about drug use ending in a suicide attempt is not really something one points to in interviews.

At the time, I was:

• working in the only role I could conceive wanting;
• pretty much done with the expectations of others;
• experiencing a level of freedom like never before; and (perhaps related)
• ~~single~~ not cohabitating.

These all apply today, though the second and third are way more of a heavy lift after college.

And so two weeks ago, when I rolled again in an anonymous group setting for the first time since -- look at all these comparable data points! -- the same thing should clearly have happened.

Spoiler: It didn't.

For the reasons I wanted to write that column all those years ago, I feel compelled to write this -- and it's Wednesday, so the parallelism works.

It's comparatively easy to write about the psychedelic experience when it's negative; you don't have to describe shit your audience doesn't understand. You're essentially a sympathetic character who admits they lost their way and regret the error, so society basically says, "I hope you learned your lesson."

At nearly 45, I have. It's not at all the one I was supposed to, and it took a quarter-century and psilocybin.

(This isn't exactly a beehive of conformity, so this is likely of little surprise to many. But indulge me in explaining why.)

The aspects I cited earlier are a mix of personal and interactive attributes, but they are all external facing. They are things others can glean from conversation; they are part of my persona; they are not me.

If you cannot understand the difference here, tread lightly with MDMA (not trying to be a dick; this is harm reduction, as I will be encouraging drug use later under the right circumstances).

For all the lip service I've gotten about how "you just need to love yourself" (like everybody else does, since it's so easy), what's been almost universally ellided is "no, no, you don't need to figure out who that is; that's what we're here for." Society, not the people you surround yourself with per se, though if both have the same goals, it's going to be a slog.

That's difficult to escape in adolescence. I met vanishingly few people who actually upheld the ideals of PLUR -- to be sure, there were some, but they tended to look askance at those of us looking to do increasing amounts of drugs without any goal of an epiphany.

Who needs one of those when you can find a cuddle pile? (Narrator: Powderhorn never could.)

The Matrix came out while I was a raver, so "I can only open the door; you have to walk through it" was already floating about in the national consciousness (and sampled in at least one otherwise unremarkable house track). To be exposed to the rave scene was not to become a raver ... necessary but insufficient.

And the girl who opened the door did so because she saw something in me that it would take, again, a quarter-century to figure out. But I was 17 and she was showing attention, so I totally misread it -- and it likely didn't hurt that if you'd asked me to sketch the ideal girl and I had any drawing skill just ahead of going to college?

I was in the rave scene for three reasons: She's really hot, I like oontz, and there are drugs.

Not ideal.

It wasn't all at once. We met in 1997 and went to a single party. She returned two years later, kicked off the weekly schedule (much to my live-in girlfriend's chagrin) since this time I had a car and forbade any of us (she had a couple of dormmates who became fixtures) from rolling. I gave her a ride to the airport one August Saturday, got back to the U-District and rounded up the dorm chicks for the trip to NAF.

We all knew damn well what the plan was.

And if I'd been able to accept what happened that night for what it was, things would likely look a lot different.

Instead, I tried forcing the rave scene and people I knew into the ideal I'd come up with. It's not me; it's them! As with alcoholism, this can work for a time, but there is a fuse.

So we get to June of the following year. By now, I'm rolling three times a week, because reality is way to depressing to actually handle. I'm behind a girl for a massive party (new convention center ... great idea! Drop ravers in a space replete with ATMs!) and when she turns around, there's that "well, she's going to teach me something" gut feeling.

Three weeks later, her screaming at me in my apartment for her "fucking car keys" (I'd provided the ride after she parked at my place; she left the party with another dude) set the wheels in motion for looking in that tiny mirror.

It's tempting to say I didn't push far enough during that period of my life, letting others still define my goals. And I retreated to the societally accepted comfort of drinking instead of those actually dangerous pills.

Where I pretty much stayed for a couple of decades, with a late branching out to adding pot. Talk about growth and personal development.

A few months into sobriety and after all manner of treatment for depression failed with rehab and several further suicide attempts in the rear view, I happened upon a review of Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind miniseries and of course then devoured it.

Here was a journalist I respected presenting information I didn't know. So I did a lot of research and started growing my own shrooms.

Three-and-a-half months later, it's time. The apartment is immaculate, and I have taken intentionality and being able to explain it as a simple statement to heart, so I ask that the rumination be taken away. That cruft, the background noise of self-doubt, the constant reminder of failure that you can dull with practice and concentration but cannot excise.

I'm not going to try to explain the ineffable; suffice to say, when I came to on the floor, I could hear the fridge and my cat sniffing at me. And nothing else.

The questions escalate over the course of several well-spaced trips. By this point, the visuals are actually more irritating than fun, as they're not what I'm here for. And they tell me one required point on my path -- what I want to do next -- but no way to get there.

This kicks off a year in which I slowly reject one layer after another of the expectations of others. I buy a van to live in because a rent hike ate my food budget; I'd already had to rehome the kitty. Having built out the van to survivable, I quit my soul-crushing job. I start hanging out with the old hippie who's been helping with the van. Though looking for work, I'm not feeling it at all ... all I can find is what I don't want, and dear fucking god, will y'all stop telling me I don't deserve better than a meaningless job with no direction that as a bonus barely services my debt? So I cut off a lot of people while literally living off charity and promising it will all become clear Soon™.

(This is where I like to fantasize I didn't go far enough in college, but I didn't have the spine.)

It's a rather isolating position, but the liberation makes up for it.

Unlike that first shroom trip, where the before and after were night and day, allowing me to explore without self-doubt -- not knowing who I am and therefore unable to be comfortable with myself, let alone love myself -- the journey of self-discovery felt glacial at times and perhaps mildly apparent at its most aggressive.

Life is certainly a journey, but finding out what that life looks like is very much a destination. Your life cannot begin until you're at the station. It's a life up to that point, in much the same way people delude themselves into thinking they're a sub between partners. (Like you're not going to get all switchy at some point! Pshaw!)

But once I landed -- and you'll absolutely know when you do if you've been there before, if only in your youth -- things became oddly easy and progressive. The job was one conversation with an old friend, sending a resume and a 30-minute phone interview. Despite my crippling social anxiety that characterized, well my entire life, I hit the ground running as a friendly but sometimes pushy reporter (yeah, the shrooms went for "your field, but nothing you've done before," which is to say I did, but metaphysics is beyond the scope of whatever noun applies to the current length of this post).

And then comes the regional burn, an offshoot of Burning Man, which said retired hippie bought my ticket for as part of his camp, gave me a ride to, made sure I was hydrated after eating some shrooms and pretty much left me to my own devices among 3,000 people who would be wearing less as the days wore on.

I'd be lying if I said the parallels between the raver and burner communities didn't sent a small pang of fear as I took my vape and beer with absolutely no idea where the fuck I was going. So, why was I at raves? Already on drugs; chick ain't here ... ooo ... those are some sweet beats.

And then I got it (remember what I ate). I was here because I was supposed to be here. Whatever happens is supposed to happen. What others give to me; what I give to others. We're all meant to interact as we do. There are no mistakes. It is all ephemeral and will not come again.

And I'd not read the burner literature.

But it was nothing if not logical to just pile on ... some MDMA here, obviously weed, usually with hash, plenty to drink, the occasional nitrous balloon, probably something else I'm forgetting. Putting me in the best actually furnished seat in the entire space for the culmination of the event as the effigy burns to the ground.

But the whole time I was there, because I'd decided someone else's life wasn't for me, I was present. I wasn't thinking about anything other than ... fuck, I really wasn't thinking, truth be told. I was just following whatever was shiny and meeting amazing people.

And I came away with it not with a sense of regret that it was over, but rather thankful that this was the beginning.

Be safe, but don't neglect yourself. This is likely insanely woo-woo, but it's my belief, and I can still write straight news and balance a checkbook. There is no dichotomy, even though I wish I could escape a couple more expectations!

(no time to edit; I've eaten into tonight's burner meetup already)

Run trials with an astounding number of easily avoidable flaws, win stupid prizes. It would be a shame for this to turn into an overall setback for psychedelic therapy.

Sure, the FDA could go against the recommendation, but that's a political nonstarter given the problems included sexual assault. We need studies that are unassailable on the data collection such that the psychoactive (qualitative) effects are just an outlier in the list of quantitative results.

Archive link

Mr. Lewis revealed that The Post was in dire straits, with more than $70 million in losses over the last year and audience declines of 50 percent over the same period.

So, clearly, the only answer is to bring in your old coworkers from Murdoch properties and get rid of that damn estrogen at the top.

No matter how bad you think this could be, it's worse.

I just ran into this being quoted in a YouTube comment and was like, "well, that's horseshit."

There's plenty of examples where I ... well, uh ...

Curious what y'all think.

The comments section on this article is illuminating beyond the story itself (as is frequently the case on Ars) and worth a look.

Anecdotal experience alert!

I've been dealing with treatment-resistant major depression since before the term existed. Presumably, this stems from events when I was 7 and younger which unfortunately informed preferences and decisions starting in college and to some extent continue to this day. My parents were also quite detached, adding in the need to find in adulthood the sort of safety and connection one is supposed to grow up having already felt and thus able to recognize abusive analogs in partners with better than 0% accuracy.

Net result has been a lifetime of self-medication, sometimes with the hope of improvement, but far more frequently some way to just kick the can down the road to avoid feeling those things right now.

My introduction to MDMA came unsurprisingly from the rave scene in 1999. On balance, that period of heavy use (within a year, I'd sometimes roll three times a week, which no one is going to suggest is a good idea) was a net negative, with the silver lining that I did get to feel fleeting connections, but that transitory nature made the reality in between seem that much comparatively worse.

Any amount of research into psilocybin will lead to the phrase "set and setting." The first is short for mindset, the second obviously physical surroundings, including people. What I didn't know back in college was this concept itself, let alone that it applies to any psychoactive substance. At the time, I liked to say that E was a mood enhancer because if I was already feeling low, it was a shovel. And boy, howdy, did I find bottom with a cocktail one night that started with E at a party and then led to intentional contraindicated choices once home.

After a long period away from MDMA, I first rolled again in 2016, this time with my newish girlfriend at my house with chill music and climate control. Wildly different experience. This led to the same sort of experience in 2019 and again in 2021.

By mid-2022, the double whammy of pandemic loneliness and the abysmal job market had led to hospitalizations and detox trips as I hit the point of having a 30-pack of beer delivered to my apartment almost daily. The final detox led to a job, finally, after meeting the owner of a company there, which in turn led to my first year-plus of sobriety by choice.

At which point I was ready to finally tackle some of my longstanding issues instead of brushing them under the rug. Soon after, I heard about Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind miniseries on Netflix, leading to learning to grow shrooms while doing a fuckton of further research into intentionality and realistic expectations.

My first trip removed the rumination -- that constant background voice questioning every choice I made and even every thought -- I'd been dealing with for decades. It was a difficult trip emotionally, though I was never afraid through ineffable reassurance that everything would be fine. On the other side, I was able to take the first step to being present in the moment.

Over several more months, well-spaced trips diminished the frequency and urgency of unwanted memories surfacing, culminating in acceptance that I had to let go to move forward. The final trip of that series also revealed where I wanted to go, and I blew up my life, buying, building out and moving into a van, followed by leaving the soul-crushing job of sending out bills.

After a circuitous path, I've landed. Absolutely no medical professional would suggest what I did, but there's no accessible psychedelic-assisted therapy path I could have instead chosen, which is frankly intentional withholding of treatment. "SSRI's not working? We have no alternative, so you get to suffer!"

Last weekend, I did MDMA in a party setting again for the first time since college. It wasn't planned, but strange things happen in a gift economy with amazing people and music. After eating some shrooms the first night, I finally found my flow state, which I seem to have lost somewhere back in the '80s, allowing full presence.

Other than the inevitable serotonin crash Wednesday, I've felt amazing. Not manic, just happy with who I am and where I'm at and confident about my ability to continue finding my path forward.

After losing decades of my life, I don't want to see anyone else go through that, so I keep tabs (no pun intended) on psychedelic studies, and these MAPS trials seem to be going backward for wider experiments I know can benefit millions. It is so frustrating to have experimental malfeasance from an organization seemingly wanting to move forward but unable to avoid things like sexual assault and other cultlike behaviour from the fucking researchers.

Hopefully, these will lead to further studies with far more ethical guardrails instead of closing the door again.

A number of wheels starting turning a year ago. Haltingly ... maybe more like relay switches.

As we need Point A to be able to differentiate from Point B (Point Q is irrelevant to the discussion), I bought a domain for a website that never happened and just lapsed. I was a billing clerk for a small firm that treated me well but didn't want to ever hear ideas about how to streamline operations. My prior role had been automation. For print newspapers. Not a lot of overlap, but if it can be defined in code, why the fuck am I doing this manually?

I'd been sober a year, having met the owner in detox.

And it was miserable. I was pretty sure rent would go up to the extent that I could no longer afford my cat. Cats, my mom would say, are my totem, so this is desperate times. It's actually worse: also no food budget.

It's about this time Reddit shits the bed and I discover Beehaw. After a few weeks, U.S. News is about to be created, and I'm in the right chat channel at the right time. After this weekend, I don't think my introduction post is actually for anyone else, but me finally saying: This is what I want to do, and anything less is unacceptable.

I'd been sketching out 400-square-foot off-grid cabins for about seven years at the time, and I veered into researching vandwelling, as it would provide flexibility if, say, the climate went to shit and whatever land I'd chosen no longer has water.

Lots of research ensues, and I buy a tool van. Learn electricity, put up solar panels and start living off my own microgrid. I build it out at the local makerspace after a Reddit question, where I meet Eric (it is left as an exercise for the reader to determine if I've changed his name), without whom I would not have succeeded.

Work goes south; irreconcilable differences. I get to the point I'm wanting to drink and feel I need to get out, so the Friday before Thanksgiving, the accounting gig is done. Step 2: ???

I had enough saved up for a month and a half, which on this timeline is assuming I'll magically get hired Jan. 2. (Narrator: It didn't happen.) I was throwing darts with applications, finally purchasing the services of a couple of scam artists on LinkedIn.

Truck breaks down (serpentine belt), and I'm out $400 for an 8-mile tow (Class 4). Same day as the fraud becomes apparent ... and things go poorly from there. By the end of the month, I've borrowed more money and basically drank it away, getting me into a ward.

Eric drives me to the ER and comes to understand that after doing so much of the build myself (solar was all me, and when he saw it, he was rather surprised), I'm not lacking motivation but rather resources. He's a retied rich guy (this will be important later) who also knows vehicles, and so after he buys a new serpentine belt, he spends hours over days tracing the problem, which was a loose nut on the starter motor but presented as wild voltage droops from panels because an A/C line runs near it.

So, to start March, I'm mobile and back on the job prowl for random positions. So here, now while everything like meeting Eric had to happen, I had to be parked where I was because of where I take my morning constitutional for the rest of this to play out.

I'm leaving the washroom, and as I like to vape, I head out the patio door to run into my former assistant and his family. Small talk ensues, and he says, "Well, why don't you send me your resume? Trade pub I work for is hiring freelancers."

Briefly, my editor used to run papers I then ran design for, so absolute alignment on journalistic integrity. I took a writing test, and I guess I don't suck. Part of why they're expanding is they want beat reporters. Like as of me; as of exactly then. You start to see how this is all looking suspiciously like when the shrooms told me I want to be a green-energy reporter but were unhelpful as to how some months earlier, it was a waiting game

So, I say I want to cover green energy. Done. Right place, right time. Good pay.

Meanwhile, Eric's purchased four tickets for Burning Flipside, a regional burn about an hour out of Austin.

And here, dear reader, yes, we finally get to the subject of the title.

The van was not the point. The job was not the point. I had to get all of that done so that when I got to Flipside, I wasn't a whiny bitch but an actually interesting guy who apparently has some pretty awesome dance moves now that I'm old and don't care.

To paraphrase my Reddit post, this weekend I learned that is is possible to experience genuine wonder halfway through my 40s, and the thing about wonder I'd never realized is it is a critical component for joy. Joy isn't something you're expecting. You can't plan for joy. So you sure as fuck need wonder.

Confident in where I was at and unwilling to squander this opportunity, I quickly broke camp and just started looking around. Needless to say, as a former raver who sadly still views a kinky chick with short unnatural hair as the dream, I was not disappointed.

Most amazing weekend of the past 15 years. Walking in expecting nothing, came out with everything. Like, I'm not fucked, we all actually realize how toxic society is. The couple thousand of us, I guess.

I made friends; for the first time, I just danced without giving a fuck, which should have happened at my first party in 1997, but I was wee. I had fucking DJs making it a point to thank me for dancing! People came up to me like never before ... I'm terribly introverted, so yeah ... not where I expect to shine. And I don't mean like two people; I had like four DJs and four new friends in two hours.

Either I didn't care or they didn't care. This is a burn, so assumptions about sobriety per substance are likely incorrect.

But oh, my god.

I recently had that feeling of "you're exactly where you're supposed to be" for the first time since 2009. This weekend was just beating the drum, basically saying: and here's why.

I have the van. I have the remote job. I have the tribe. I am fucking done with your constructs, and cute ravers will cuddle with me for finally getting here. Seriously, what can you ask out of a holiday weekend that is reasonable and exceeds this?

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Niche question, I realize, but I'm going to lend a bit more weight to responses here than elsewhere.

This winter did not go as planned, and as such, I find myself still in Texas, which is bad enough, but I live in a tool van, and even with 2" insulation, it's a metal box exposed to the sun. The forecast for the weekend is 97 all three days, so that reminded me of a friend's suggestion to look into this site.

Ultimately, what I'd like to know is whether it's worth the annual upfront cost to provide a service (unexpected), as while it could get me in air conditioning before leaving this hellhole, it would also be pretty badass to be able to travel the country with indoor plumbing and appliances as my anchors.