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Road ahead
Credit: Midjourney




A Specimen of Fraternal Correspondence, 1992

Behold a rare surviving artifact: a postscript, hand-inked, extracted from a letter sent across a distance of state lines by myself, then nineteen years of age, to my younger brother, aged nine. I had departed the family home abruptly in 1990, drawn by the migratory pull to prestigious university education.


letter to brother


“P.S. Noah — study my handwriting. There is much meaning there left unsaid. Aspire to have scratches as expressive as mine and you will surpass my skill.”

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From Corporate IT to IFS Practitioner: Robert Lilly's Journey

I met Robert when he reached out for an in-person IFS session. At the time, he was on sick leave from employment in corporate IT. He was burned out. Stuck. The income was steady enough that leaving felt irresponsible, but staying felt like it was costing him something he couldn’t yet name.

Robert describes his situation:

I first discovered IFS through an online community focused on nondual teachings, where several members happened to be practitioners. While on medical leave, I realized I needed deep internal work before returning to my career. I started by working through Jay Earley’s Self-Therapy on my own, but while I identified a few protector parts, I couldn’t create true relief alone.

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Mathematical Modeling of the Human Psychedelic Experience

Noonautics and the Trace Institute announced a research collaboration to build a mathematical framework for the human DMT experience. Noonautics, led by neurobiologist Dr. Andrew Gallimore, will use the extended state DMTx protocol, developed with Dr. Rick Strassman, to extend DMT experiences from minutes to hours so trained observers can make sustained observations from inside the state. The Trace Institute, led by Professor Emeritus Donald Hoffman, will apply trace logic and conscious realism, an observer-centered model of reality, to give the resulting phenomenology a quantitative structure.

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Comment on the proposed 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) scheduling threshold

I commented on HHS-OASH-2026-0232-0001, the Request for Information regarding the proposed 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) scheduling threshold.

Comment Tracking Number: mry-8nrd-tg5g

I am submitting this comment in response to the Request for Information regarding the proposed 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) scheduling threshold (Docket HHS-OASH-2026-0232).

First, on the imminent-hazard finding itself: temporary scheduling under 21 U.S.C. 811(h)(1) is meant to address genuinely urgent threats that cannot wait for ordinary scheduling procedure. I would ask OASH to specify the comparative risk data—overdose rate, dependence liability, and ER visits per capita of users—that establishes 7-OH at the proposed threshold as more hazardous than legal, widely available substances such as alcohol, which carries well-documented acute toxicity and tens of thousands of attributable deaths annually without triggering emergency scheduling. Absent that comparative showing, it is difficult to evaluate whether the proposed threshold reflects an evidentiary emergency finding or a policy preference.

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My Child Only Cares About Their Own Feelings. Is This Normal?

Is it normal for a young child to not want to share anything—toys, food, outerwear? #

Yes, completely normal. Young children are egocentric by design. Their brains are still developing the capacity for perspective-taking, impulse control, and emotional regulation. True perspective-taking doesn’t emerge until around ages four to six. Children may eventually outgrow selfishness, but waiting for that to happen is a missed opportunity. The brain is also highly plastic at this age. Parents have enormous power to foster generosity, and the earlier they start, the better.

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The Hiccups Strike Again

Got home from a Santo Daime work tonight. Then I drank some water. Carelessly. The way a person does who has forgotten that the universe enjoys irony.

Hic.

You’d think I’d have learned to sip like a Victorian lady at high tea by now. Instead, I apparently chug like I’m trying to win a contest. The hiccups arrived right on schedule to collect their tribute.

I tried sugar, the classic remedy. Hic.

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Cannabis for Sexual Pleasure

Most cannabis formulations, built around just THC and CBD, can work for intimacy—but they require a certain amount of mental effort to stay in a good headspace. That’s the kind of effort you don’t need to be making.

Relax Blend #

Adding a third cannabinoid—CBN (cannabinol)—to the THC+CBD combination creates something noticeably more stable. In a 1:1:1 ratio of Δ9-THC, CBD, and CBN, the experience is self-regulating. You don’t need to steer your mood. The blend handles that, freeing your attention for your partner, your body, and the moment.

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Why the Honesty Token Misses the Point

The Viral Moment #

A parent hands their child an apple-shaped token. The deal: bring me this token and you can tell me anything—no punishment, no consequences. The video spread because it feels like a breakthrough. Parents watching think, why didn’t I think of that?

It’s an ill-conceived strategy.

Why Children Hide Things #

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy holds that the mind is made up of parts with distinct roles. When a child hides something, a part is at work whose job is to keep the secret—call it Keeper. Keeper fears the parent’s reaction: anger, punishment, shame, withdrawal of love. That fear may be justified by past experience or purely anticipatory. Either way, Keeper concluded that honesty with this parent is too risky.

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Psilomethoxin, My Case Report (Addendum #3)

I recently tried 5-MAPB (5-(2-methylaminopropyl)benzofuran) at 80mg on a single occasion—my first experience with an MDMA-like compound. This gave me a useful point of comparison with psilomethoxin (Pm).

In my judgment, Pm at 0.5–1g most closely resembles 5-MAPB. Below that range, Pm is too subtle; above it, the experience pulls inward too firmly in a way that diverges from the 5-MAPB character.

The comparison confirmed differences I had suspected. 5-MAPB is a stimulant—sleep on the day of administration was a challenge. Pm is not a stimulant; as noted in the original case report, falling asleep at the peak is possible.

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Full Control Over Footnote Placement for memoir

This is a follow-up to LuaLaTeX Footnote Maze, which documented the long road to making memoir paragraph footnotes work inside breakable tcolorbox environments with hyperref. That solved half the problem. This post solves the rest of the problem: deciding exactly where on the page footnotes appear.

Downloads: memoir-fnqueue.sty · memoir-tcolorbox.sty · test-fn.tex · test-fn.py

The Remaining Gap #

After the earlier work, footnotes escaped their tcolorbox prisons and rendered as proper paragraph footnotes with working hyperref links. But placement was still automatic—footnotes released at the end of a box landed wherever TeX’s page builder decided, sometimes colliding with other content when the combined height of sidebar plus footnotes barely exceeded the page.

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